The Glass Kitchen: A Novel of Sisters

Twenty-one

“WHAT IS GOING ON here?”

Gabriel stood in the doorway of her apartment, dark tension carved into his features, and for a heartbeat Portia forgot all about what she was doing. She just stared at the man.

He wore a simple black T-shirt that showed off his chest and arms, his dark hair raked back. He looked rugged and sexy, and memories of his hands and mouth on her body made every inch of her thrum to life.

Bad, bad, bad, she reminded herself.

His dark gaze narrowed.

“We’ve created a version of The Glass Kitchen,” she hurriedly explained, giving him a sunny smile.

Olivia and Cordelia came out of the kitchen to stand behind her. Cordelia glanced from Portia to Gabriel, then back. “Portia, didn’t you clear this with him?”

Cordelia still wasn’t herself, her husband’s problem growing deeper. Portia and Olivia did everything they could to keep her mind occupied, and Portia still hadn’t had the heart to question Cordelia about implying to people that somehow Gabriel was involved with The Glass Kitchen.

“Actually, it’s more a venture where I’m cooking the food of The Glass Kitchen, and people can come to try it.”

After reading the second Glass Kitchen cookbook, she had taken its advice to heart. Losing herself in the words, she had put them into action.

For a meal to work truly, it must be an experience. From the moment a guest arrives in The Glass Kitchen to the moment they set their napkin down, they must be enchanted. More importantly, the giver of food must believe that they have the power to enchant. No person, whether she is a scientist or a cook, can find success if she doesn’t first believe that she holds power in her hands—not to use over people, but to use for the good of another. Food, especially, is about giving. A cook must find a way to make the recipient a believer, for what is a person who sits down to a beautiful meal but someone who wants to believe?

As she read the words, Portia had finally set aside her own misgivings and opened herself up to what might come. It had been then that solutions appeared. Her sisters had shown up without her having to ask, the three of them working day after day in a way that gave each hope that a Glass Kitchen really could happen. For a week they had pulled down Aunt Evie’s dark draperies, replacing them with a cheerful gingham Cordelia found in the huge sale bins in the Garment District. Olivia filled the space with flowers. The sisters had bought white paper bags and pink baker boxes, then sat around the kitchen island drinking wine, laughing, and hand-decorating them.

Once the apartment was ready, Portia had begun to plan out what foods they would showcase in this little glimpse into a Glass Kitchen world. Her sisters couldn’t help her with this part. Portia had let go, and dishes had come to her, all of which she wrote down and prepared to make. Then, at eight that morning, she got to work. Olivia and Cordelia served as sous-chefs; they started by making a decadent beef bourguignon. Olivia and Cordelia washed and chopped as Portia browned layer after layer of beef, bacon, carrots, and onion, folding in the beef stock and wine, then putting it in to slow bake as they dove into the remaining dishes. They opened all the windows and ran four swiveling fans Portia had bought and found that pushed the scent of the baking and cooking out onto the sidewalk. Then they had put up a fairly discreet sign in the window, hand-painted by Olivia: THE GLASS KITCHEN.

Portia had gotten the idea while walking down Broadway and passing the French soap store. Scents had spilled into the street from the shop—lavender and primrose, musk and sandalwood—luring passersby inside. Portia had realized that the best way to get investors interested was to show them a version of The Glass Kitchen. The food. The aromas. She had realized, standing there on Broadway, that she needed to create a mini version of her grandmother’s restaurant to lure people in. This way, they’d have no monthly rent as they would if they tried to lease out space somewhere else. No extra utility bills. It was perfect. Standing there now with her sisters flanking her, she explained as much to Gabriel. “Ta-da!” she finished. “What do you think?”

Gabriel’s jaw hung slack for a second before he snapped it shut. “You can’t open a restaurant here.”

“But that’s the thing! It’s not a restaurant.”

“Definitely not a restaurant,” Olivia confirmed, then raised a brow at Gabriel’s pointed glower.

“It’s just an example of a restaurant,” Portia hurried on. “At best, it’s more like counter service to go!”

He narrowed his eyes.

She gulped and persevered. “We’re showcasing the fabulous food we’ll be making at the real Glass Kitchen when we open it somewhere else. This way, people can get a taste, get the feel of what our café will be like, get excited.”

She spread her arms wide to encompass the old pine table they had painted robin’s egg blue, lightly sanding it in places so the white primer showed through. She had pulled out Aunt Evie’s moss green platters and bowls, filling enough of them with everything from cheesy quiches to creamy chocolate pies, butterscotch cupcakes to the beef bourguignon to cover every inch of counter space. The place smelled heavenly.

“Admit it, you’re drooling.”

“You can’t open anything here. Not a restaurant. Not even an example of a restaurant.” Each word enunciated.

“Says who?”

“Says the zoning laws,” he bit out.

Portia felt his exacting gaze all the way down to her bones, and not in a good way. She ignored it. All they were doing was giving people a taste of her food. Granted, they would be charging for those tastes. But they weren’t doing anything close to opening a real retail establishment.

“Olivia and I will let you two talk,” Cordelia said, gathering her bag.

“Seriously?” Oliva protested. “This is just getting interesting.”

Gabriel turned to Olivia with an expression that made her shrug; then she strolled out the front door after Cordelia.

Portia swallowed as Gabriel stepped closer. Then she squared her shoulders. “Has anyone pointed out how moody you are? One minute you’re all—” She searched for the right word.

“I’m all what?” The words were deep, sensual, but still exacting.

“One minute you’re, well, nice. Then the next you go all Sybil on me and out comes the big bad beast.”

The words flew out, yet again, before she thought them through, and emotion shot through Gabriel’s eyes. But a second later that implacable façade was back in place.

“This is just an experiment, Gabriel,” she hurried on. “We’re going to show investors how much people love my grandmother’s food. That’s it.”

Portia felt a flash of panic. She had spent the rest of her meager savings pulling it together. “This is just temporary, and only a way to show investors how great our food is,” she pointed out.

“You can’t run a restaurant out of my home!”

“My home. And it’s not a restaurant!”

His gaze slammed into hers, then took a deep breath, dragging his hands through his hair.

The doorbell rang.

“Now what?” he snapped.

Footsteps clattered down the steps before Cordelia and Olivia dragged a woman inside.

“Our first customer!”

“Seriously?” Portia squeaked. “I mean, yay!”

“Ah, well,” the woman looked a little frightened by the sisters’ enthusiastic welcome. “I was just walking by, smelled the heavenly aroma, and noticed your sign tucked in the window. I thought … well, I thought this was a restaurant, not a home.”

“Actually, it’s just three sisters cooking!” Portia emphasized for Gabriel. “Cooking and baking very real food! Think of it as a kid’s lemonade stand. Come in!”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t worry, we’re from Texas, which might mean crazy, but definitely not dangerous. Just look at all the wonderful things we have.”

Hesitantly, the woman came farther inside—though one glare from Gabriel made her stop dead in her tracks.

“Don’t mind him,” Portia said. “He’s not as ornery as he looks.”

The woman saw the fragrant dishes on the counter, and every bit of hesitation evaporated. “This is wonderful!” she said, walking straight past Gabriel. “Quiche? And pie? Is this a tart?”

Portia explained the dishes while Cordelia offered samples. By the time the woman headed out, she was loaded with food Olivia had wrapped up. At the door, the woman stopped and shook her head. “I just have to tell you, you saved me.”

“What do you mean?” Portia asked cautiously.

“I’m having a book party for a friend tonight, and the caterer canceled. Last minute, said she had an emergency and no backup plan. I had no idea what I was going to do. I turned down Seventy-third by accident.” She beamed at all three of them. “At least I thought it was an accident.”

The woman left in a rustle of white bags and pink boxes. Cordelia and Olivia started talking. When Portia turned, Gabriel was still there. Their eyes met and held. Despite herself, a slow pulse of heat went through her body. He was like the darkest, richest hot chocolate she could have imagined. She remembered the way he had stared at her, hard, his jaw ticking, then the ruthless control that seemed to shatter when she had reached up on tiptoes and kissed him. Barely a kiss, tentative, before he crushed her to him with a groan.

A breath sighed out of her at the memory, and his gaze drifted to her mouth. But then the buzzer rang again, making her blink, and he seemed to remember that they weren’t alone.

“This isn’t over,” he said, his voice curt.

He left before she could respond. She drew a breath, pushed worry from her mind, before all three sisters squealed in delight and danced it out in the seconds before their next customer arrived.

For the next two days, Portia cooked and baked like a dervish while Cordelia sold The Glass Kitchen’s fare to a growing line of people who had heard about their amazing food. She still cooked breakfast and supper upstairs as well, though there were no more cheeky conversations in the kitchen with her employer. Actually, she didn’t see Gabriel at all, as if he stayed away intentionally.

But after the third day of sales, with every minute of her last three days filled to overflowing, she was lying in her bed, still damp from a shower, completely exhausted, when there was a knock on the garden door. She opened it to find Gabriel. Surprised, she glanced from him to the fire escape.

He stood there and looked at her, just looked, his jaw working, his eyes narrowed in frustration. “Even with strangers traipsing in and out, I can’t stay away from you.”

His voice was hungry, and he reached for her even as the words left his mouth.

They fell back into her apartment, he kicking the door closed. He made love to her with an intensity that made her arch and cry out, his hands and mouth possessively taking her body. There was a near desperation in the way they came together, both of them knowing it was a bad idea, but neither able to fight it. He lost himself in her body until early dawn, when he rolled over, kissed her shoulder, and said, “I have to get back upstairs before the girls wake up.”

Portia felt drugged, her limbs deliciously weak, her body sore and aching in a wonderfully used way. “Be up soon,” she murmured, burrowing into the sheets and covers. “Making huevos rancheros for you guys this morning.”

A few days later, she finished another breakfast upstairs—after Gabriel had pulled her behind a door, slammed her against the wall, and kissed her until her head spun—then she came down to her apartment to start cooking for The Glass Kitchen. She decided to make salmon baked in a touch of olive oil, topped with pine nuts, and served over spinach flash-fried in the salmon-and-olive-oil drippings. She added brown rice that she had slow-boiled with the herb hawthorn. Just as she finished, Cordelia arrived with a woman she had found standing on the sidewalk out front.

“My husband has high blood pressure,” she explained, negotiating the stairs down into Portia’s apartment with care. “He’s never happy with anything I make for supper, so I should tell you that you probably don’t have anything that will work for me.”

Cordelia took a look at the meal, raised an eyebrow at Portia, and then turned to the woman. “This is the perfect meal for your husband’s high blood pressure. Fish oil, nuts, hawthorn, whole grains.”

Next, a pumpkin pie went to a woman who couldn’t sleep.

“Pie?” she asked in a doubtful tone.

“Pumpkin,” Portia clarified, “is good for insomnia.”

An apricot crumble spiced with cloves and topped with oats and brown sugar went to a woman drawn with stress. Then a man walked through the door, shoulders slumped. Cordelia and Olivia eyed him for a second.

“I know the feeling,” Olivia said, and fetched him a half gallon of the celery and cabbage soup Portia had found herself preparing earlier.

The man peered into the container, grew a tad queasier, and said, “No thanks.”

“Do you or don’t you have a hangover?” Olivia demanded, then drew a breath. “Really,” she added more kindly. “Eat this and you’ll feel better.”

He came back the next day for more.

“Cabbage is no cure for drinking too much,” Cordelia told him.

He just shrugged and slapped down his money for two quarts of soup instead of one.

The knowing was steering Portia with a force and intensity that she had never experienced before. She tried to be happy about it, but it was hard not to worry. Yes, the knowing had brought good into her life, but the good was far outweighed by the bad. So she worked all day, and then when Gabriel came down the fire escape to her, they made love half the night. She didn’t tell her sisters. He was her secret. They behaved with circumspection when they met in the kitchen (most of the time); they never went on dates; they never talked about anything serious. When it came to The Glass Kitchen, they existed in a sort of wary standoff, too busy losing themselves in each other to talk about it.

Ariel started wandering into The Glass Kitchen after school and doing her homework at a space she had carved out for herself in a corner. It was easy to forget she was there. One afternoon about two weeks into their new endeavor, Olivia jumped when Ariel spoke.

“Sweetie, you scared me.” Olivia laughed. “When you scrunch up like that, doing homework like a mad little scientist, it’s like you’re practically invisible.”

After that, Ariel planted herself at the end of the kitchen counter, where no one could help but see her.

A few days later Portia was upstairs completing the Kanes’ meal of grilled lamb chops, sliced potatoes roasted in olive oil, and sautéed broccoli rabe. After having found a stack of blood oranges at a street cart on Columbus, she planned to surprise her charges with a blood orange ice she had thrown together, minus the orange liqueur Gram had always included.

Miranda walked into the kitchen, ignoring Portia and Ariel. She pulled out some green tea in a tiny bag, threw it in a cup of water, then slammed it into the microwave.

Miranda’s phone beeped with a text. Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she responded, forgetting as the tea circled. Portia wasn’t paying close attention when Miranda pulled the cup out and immediately took a drink.

“Ahg!” the girl cried, dropping the cup to the counter with a splash.

Portia had just finished chopping the flavored ice. She instantly put a scoopful into a glass. “Put this in your mouth!”

The girl gasped and gagged, closing her eyes, and she sucked on the shards of ice. After long seconds, she sagged back against the counter and swallowed, then just stared at Portia.

“It’s weird, you know,” Ariel said, looking at them.

“What’s weird?”

They turned and saw Gabriel walking into the kitchen, going through the mail.

“Hey,” Portia said softly.

He shot her a look under those thick lashes of his that made her remember the way he had shuddered the night before when she had kissed a path down his abdomen.

After a second, he shifted his gaze to his daughters.

“What’s weird, A?”

The girl shrugged. “Portia makes stuff downstairs, and then random people show up who need whatever she makes. Or even here. She made some strange ice just before Miranda burned the cra—I mean, crud—out of her mouth. It’s, well, weird. Like magic.”

“Ariel,” Gabriel stated, his voice crisp. “There’s no such thing as magic. It’s a fact of life that people see what they want to see. They adjust their expectations to what they see in front of them.” He turned to Miranda. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she snapped.

“See, you’re fine now, after the ice,” Ariel persisted. “I’ve seen it happen, lots of times.”

Portia felt a shiver of unease. “I wish I had a magic wand,” she said with a laugh she didn’t feel. “But the truth is that I make whatever I feel like, and hungry people want it. End of story.” She displayed their dinner. “Just like you all want to eat tonight.”

Ariel rolled her eyes. “There’s that you all thing again.”

“Yep, you all better eat before it gets cold.” Portia walked over to the door as casually as she could.

“See ya!”

She waved, bolting when Gabriel gave her a curious look and started to say something.

Twenty-two

ARIEL HAD BEEN SITTING at her spot in Portia’s kitchen for days, brewing over how she could get more info on her mom and dad, while the sisters cooked. She did her best to keep the whole invisible thing to herself. If she hadn’t already been going to the Shrink, mentioning the invisible thing would definitely have gotten her carted off to one.

Somewhere between a batch of cheese tarts and custard-filled cream puffs, Ariel realized that with some careful questioning, surely her grandmother would spill some info on Mom and Dad that would help with the report. Which left Ariel figuring out a way to get to Nana’s house that didn’t involve a taxi. Subways, Ariel had learned, didn’t go across town north of Fifty-ninth Street.

It was a few days later when she finally managed to sneak her old bike out of the town house. Of the few things from the old house they had brought with them, she wasn’t sure how a bicycle had made the cut. But, yay, it had.

She hopped on the bike without bothering to change out of her school uniform. She had a good three hours, maybe four, before her dad came home—plenty of time to get to her grandmother’s, then back.

She went straight into Central Park at Seventy-second Street because obviously that was way safer than riding around with all the taxis at her back. She hadn’t ridden the bike in years. But now that she was wheeling down the curving road into the park, streamers on the handlebars fluttering in the wind, remembering just how much she used to love riding Ethel.

She named her bike that because of watching reruns of I Love Lucy with her mom. As much as Ariel would have liked to be Lucy, she knew she was more the sidekick. She was Ethel. Mom never agreed with her, but Ariel went ahead and named her bike that, to mark the truth of it. Moms always think their kids are lead actors, even when it’s obvious to the whole world that they aren’t.

All she had to do was cross at the Seventy-second Street transverse, then take the walking path to the pedestrian exit at Seventy-seventh Street on the east side. Bikes weren’t allowed on the walking path, but still she decided it was better to risk getting chased down by a park ranger than to ride on the park road because of all the cabs.

It didn’t take Ariel more than fifteen minutes to make it from her house to her grandmother’s. After chaining the bike to a pole on the sidewalk, she rang the bell on the towering stone town house. Ariel’s town house was nice and all, redbrick with a fancy green tin mansard roof, but her grandmother’s was like a mansion. Big blocks of stone, curlicues carved everywhere, and a massively imposing door. Even after her dad managed to buy the basement of their town house from Portia, it would never be this fancy.

Ariel buzzed a second time before the intercom crackled and the housekeeper’s voice floated out.

“Hi, Carmen. It’s Ariel. I came to see my grandmother.”

“Oh, chica. Does your abuela know you are coming?”

“No. But I wanted to surprise her.”

True. She didn’t want her grandmother to put her off.

“So sweet. Such a good nieta.” The door lock buzzed. Ariel grabbed the handle and pushed inside. Her grandmother was coming downstairs with a confused look on her face when Ariel walked into the living room.

“Ariel?”

Helen Kane didn’t look happy. Not that it was a surprise. She wasn’t exactly the milk-and-cookies type of grandmother.

“Hi, Grandma!”

Helen shuddered.

“Oh, sorry,” Ariel said, adding, “Nana.”

Helen drew a deep breath, as if Ariel tried every last ounce of her patience. Ariel had always assumed that it was her mom who made Helen crazy. But Mom was dead, and her grandmother hadn’t changed.

“Why are you here, dear?”

At least she got a dear out of the deal.

“I thought I’d stop by and say hello.” Hopefully put some of her weird worries to rest. “Now that we live so close, it seems like a shame not to see you more!”

She could tell from Helen’s hard gaze that she wasn’t buying that fib.

“Is Uncle Anthony here?”

Helen hesitated. “No, he’s out.”

“Oh, darn.” Not.

“You’re here to see your uncle?”

“I’m mainly here to see you. But I was just thinking about all the amazing things he’s done in his life.”

Her grandmother’s hard gaze softened. “Yes, he has done a lot.”

Forget the fact that the man didn’t work—or so her dad said—but whatever. Ariel knew that complimenting the golden boy would soften Helen Kane right up.

“Yeah, I was thinking about Uncle Anthony’s trip to Africa. It sounded really awesome.”

Her grandmother raised an eyebrow. “Anthony told you about his trip?”

Actually, no. Ages ago, Ariel had heard about the Africa trip when her mom and dad were fighting. Dad had used Africa as an example of her uncle’s irresponsibility. Mom said it showed he was adventurous. But Nana didn’t need to know that.

“Actually, my dad talked about it.”

“Well, I suppose it was a long time ago.”

“Totally. But I don’t remember when exactly he went. Ages and ages ago, right?”

“It was nineteen ninety-eight.”

Helen walked through the living room and went into the kitchen. Despite the lack of invitation, Ariel followed.

“Carmen, I’d like my tea now,” Helen said.

“Si, señora.” The housekeeper gave her employer a meaningful look and nodded toward Ariel.

Helen sighed. “Ariel, would you like some tea?”

“Sure. Tea would be great.”

She followed her grandmother into a back sitting room that overlooked the gardens one level below. The gardens at Ariel’s house were a mess, though she had seen Portia out there a time or two digging around.

“Oh, yeah, I remember now. Uncle Anthony went in nineteen ninety-eight. I wasn’t even born then.”

Carmen brought a tray filled with fancy china stuff and made a big to-do about serving, like Nana was a queen or something.

“So, you were telling me about Uncle Anthony going to Africa,” Ariel prompted, taking a sip, trying her best not to spill anything.

“Was I?”

“Yes, you said he went in nineteen ninety-eight? Did he go in the spring or summer?”

“Why do you want to know?”

Ariel wasn’t about to answer that question, at least not truthfully. “I just can’t quite get it in my head. You see, I’m writing a social studies report.” That was true. “About our family.” Also true. “About cool things our family does.” Sort of true. “And Uncle Anthony is the King of Cool Stuff.”

Nana smiled, but it was a sad smile. “Yes, he is. Always has been.” She sat back and looked out into the garden. “You should have seen him as a little boy. The most beautiful child anyone had ever seen. Everyone said so. I couldn’t go anywhere without people stopping me—on the street, mind you—and commenting on what a beautiful child he was.”

Ariel refrained from asking where Dad had been in all this walking-the-beautiful-baby-around business. She wanted answers and while she didn’t completely have her head wrapped around the thoughts bubbling to the surface, she figured it was better to avoid bringing her dad into it.

“When he was young,” Helen continued, “Anthony went on any adventure his father and I allowed. When he was six, he asked to go to sleepaway camp in Vermont. Sleepaway camp at six!” Helen chuckled. “At ten, it was camp in Colorado. Then Montana. I couldn’t believe it. At seventeen, he wanted to travel to Costa Rica on summer break to build houses for the less fortunate.”

In some recess of her mind, Ariel remembered another conversation she’d overheard. Her dad and uncle going at it, yet again.

You had to go everywhere I did, her dad had shouted.

I looked up to my older brother. What of it?

You didn’t go because you admired me. You went to show that everyone, everywhere, loved you better.

Ariel had expected her uncle to deny it.

And they did, didn’t they?

Silence, followed by her dad’s cold voice.

Yes. They always loved you more.

Ariel hadn’t understood at the time, and she hadn’t thought of it again until now. Sitting with her grandmother, a sick feeling started to build in her stomach.

“Yeah,” she said with a laugh she didn’t feel. “Uncle Anthony is amazing. Costa Rica at seventeen. And you said he went to Africa in nineteen ninety-eight?”

“Yes. May nineteen ninety-eight. He hasn’t lived in New York full-time since.”

Ariel’s heart pounded so hard that she bumped the teacup, the china clattering. Helen jerked her gaze away from the window, her normal smooth beauty pinched as she took in Ariel. “It’s your father’s fault that he left, you know,” Helen said, as if trying to gain supporters to her cause.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a very sad thing when one brother is jealous of another,” Nana said, her mouth sort of pinching together. “I’ll tell you for your own good, since you have a sibling as well. And so you can understand that your father is just plain being unfair to your uncle. Your father has always hated the attention Anthony received. So when Anthony wanted to go to camp, Gabriel made us send him, too. Vermont. Colorado. Costa Rica.”

Ariel wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this. I believe it was the other way around didn’t seem to be what Helen had in mind.

“And then Anthony met Victoria.” The pinched look turned bitter. “Even more than your father, Victoria was responsible for everything falling apart. As much as I’m not one to speak ill of the dead, the first time I met her, she looked like—” She cut herself off and focused on Ariel, her lips pursed hard. “Like a girl raised in a housing project. But your mother was smart. The next time I saw her, she was wearing a sweater set and pearls. She played Gabriel against my Anthony. In the end, she ran Anthony off to Africa, heartbroken, when she chose Gabriel over him. I’ve always wondered what Gabriel did to win her. He’d never won against Anthony. Ever.”

By then, her grandmother was leaning forward, intent, lost to her own words. Then she sat back abruptly and eyed Ariel warily.

Ariel sat, stunned. She couldn’t believe what her grandmother was saying. Uncle Anthony had said he met her mom first—but he’d dated her? More than that, how could Nana say this stuff about her dad?

She sat up straight. “A mom shouldn’t love one kid more than the other.”

Helen glanced out the window. “Mother or not, there are some people who simply pull everyone to them. Anthony is like that.” She looked back, directly at Ariel. “Your father always made it hard to love him.”

Ariel’s chest was burning so much that she couldn’t even think of what to say. So she jerked up from her seat and dashed to the front door, slamming out into the street. As soon as she managed to free her bike she pedaled as fast as she could back across the park to the Upper West Side, tears flying in the wind along with the streamers.

Twenty-three

PORTIA LOVED THE SMELLS of cooking and baking. It turned a house into a home.

It was October, barely two weeks after she and her sisters had opened up the test version of The Glass Kitchen. Standing at the sink, she washed her hands, getting ready to start cooking for the day. Ariel had been quiet lately, sitting at the end of the counter, busy doing homework and writing in her journal. But sometimes she just sat there, lost in thought, her brow creased. Portia had asked if anything was wrong. Ariel had blinked, then scoffed, diving back into homework.

And then last night Portia had dreamed of apples again. When her mind swirled with images of her grandmother’s moist apple cake, she had gasped awake, her heart pounding. Between Ariel, Gabriel, and her rapidly dwindling money, Portia felt as if a noose were gradually slipping tighter around her neck. And with every day that had passed, the knowing grew a little bit more. Part of her reveled in it. But the other part still held out against it, worried about what it meant to give in to the knowing completely.

Given the dream, she shouldn’t have been surprised a few hours later, as she stood at the counter making a fresh batch of sweet tea, when Cordelia arrived.

She looked tired and disheveled, distracted as she walked in carrying a bag of groceries. “I thought we could give that cake a second try.”

“What cake?” Portia asked carefully.

“The apple cake.”

The only thing that surprised Portia was the pure, unadulterated spark of excitement that flared inside her, as if finally she could let go of any remnants of worry.

Cordelia looked at her, though her eyes were dull. “I knew it. I knew that today was apple cake day. Just like I know that my life is over.”

Portia stiffened. “What?”

Olivia walked in next. “What do you mean your life is over? What’s wrong now?”

Cordelia looked her sisters in the eye, seeming to come to a decision. “You mean what’s wrong besides lying to people and telling them that Portia works with Gabriel Kane in order to get meetings?”

Portia’s head snapped back. “You really did it?” She had hoped there would be some explanation, some misunderstanding.

Cordelia pressed her eyes closed, then sighed. “Yes, I did it. I started out doing it the right way when I first tried to get appointments with investors. But I never got past the receptionists. Then I sort of casually mentioned that you knew Gabriel Kane, which morphed into you worked for Gabriel Kane, which morphed even more into you worked with Gabriel Kane.” She cringed. “That had people lining up to take a meeting with you.” Her face was red with strained emotion. “I shouldn’t have done it, I know. But with all this mess with James, I felt desperate. It was like getting the appointments was proof that I could make something happen in my life.”

Portia came over and took the bag away, setting it down. Olivia joined them.

“Hey, sweetie,” Olivia said, wrapping her arms around Cordelia. “It’s okay. It will all work out. Things always do. Just like it will all work out with James.”

“But it won’t. It turns out there’s an e-mail trail a mile long.”

Olivia couldn’t seem to help herself when she snorted. “Who, in this day and age, leaves an e-mail trail?”

“Obviously my husband.” Cordelia drew a shaky breath, and when she spoke, her voice cracked. “Me. Dirt poor. Again.”

Portia took her sister by the shoulders. “Not a single one of us wants to go back to our trailer-park roots. But whatever happens, I know you’ll get through this. Daddy taught us to be fighters. And I just realized that not one of us has been fighting for ourselves. Not really. Not well enough. We’ve been hanging in the wind, at the mercy of what comes our way. Daddy would hate that.”

She saw the shift in Cordelia’s eyes; she even saw it come into Olivia’s eyes, as if the mention of their father brought his strength into the room.

“You’ve been dealt a bad hand, Cord,” Portia continued. “But it’s time you started taking control in the right way. You’ve got to pull your head out of the sand, start fixing your life.”

Cordelia pressed her eyes closed. “But how?”

“I don’t know,” Portia said honestly. “But we’ll figure something out, just like we figured out how to open a version of The Glass Kitchen without money, and it’s working.”

She prayed she wasn’t lying.

“Now,” she said, stepping away with a decisive nod, “we are going to drink to that.” She retrieved three glasses and poured lemonade into each.

Portia and her sisters raised their glasses. “To Earl Cuthcart,” she said.

“May his daughters do him proud,” Olivia continued.

Cordelia drew a deep breath. “To taking charge … and responsibility.”

The three of them clinked, then drank, and more of what Portia thought of as her father’s strength swirled through the room like a warm Texas breeze.

Just then, someone knocked. A second later, Gabriel walked in.

As always, everything about him spoke of a man who took his power for granted. Portia watched as he surveyed the scene.

Cordelia didn’t bother with so much as a hello. Her chin rose, the glass still in her hand. “I’ve been using your name to get appointments for us with investors. I’m sorry. I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway.”

Olivia gave a snort of surprised laughter. “Way to jump into it, Cord.”

Gabriel’s expression grew scary. Portia held her breath. But at the same time, she couldn’t have been prouder of Cordelia.

“Gabriel,” Portia started to say as he strode over to them with a slow, predatory gait. This was a man who crushed people, happily, for less than using his name without his consent.

Portia’s heart all but stopped when he halted in front of Cordelia. Portia scuttled closer to her sister protectively as Gabriel looked at Cordelia hard.

“I appreciate your honesty,” he said finally, surprising Portia. “I appreciate you telling me face-to-face. There are more than a few men who don’t have it in them to do the same.”

Cordelia’s squared shoulders started to round, relief putting out the fire.

“Hey,” Gabriel said, this time softly. “Things have a way of working out like they should.” Surprisingly, a smile eased his face.

The smile he gave her sister made Portia’s knees weak with gratitude. And when he turned to look at her, she nearly threw her arms around his shoulders. As if he understood, one side of his mouth crooked up in a smile as he took her glass, drinking a long, slow pull.

Somehow the gesture felt intimate, as if they had kissed rather than shared a glass, and Portia blushed.

Thankfully, Cordelia was too caught up in being let off the hook to notice.

Flustered, Portia swiped the glass back. “Would you like me to get you some lemonade?”

“No need.” He took hers again, turning back to Cordelia as he leaned against the counter. “If there’s anything I can do to help, I will.”

If Cordelia had been anyone else, and Gabriel a less formidable man, Portia was sure her sister would have flung her arms around him. Instead, Cordelia steadied her trembling lip and said, “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

Gabriel nodded, took one last pull on Portia’s lemonade, then handed it back. “I have a meeting and won’t be here for dinner. It’ll just be the girls.” He focused on her. “I won’t be home until late.”

Up went Olivia’s radar and eyebrow, and Portia felt another blush coming on. But still, Cordelia was too caught up in anything but her own misery as Gabriel said his good-byes and was out the door.

Portia was doing a little shaking of her own as she began cooking. Olivia started to say something, but Portia jerked her head in Cordelia’s direction. Olivia relented and got on the computer. Cordelia managed to find a smile and chat up the customers who trickled steadily through the door.

But just as Portia finished the regular items on their menu and was about to start on the apple cake, she froze, having to brace her hands on the counter.

“Portia? What’s wrong?”

She couldn’t answer. Her head spun; her heart pounded. The knowing was getting stronger. It had never felt like this before. It had never demanded. “I need figs,” she said, her eyes closed, the words labored. “And chocolate. And chili.”

“What?”

When Portia opened her eyes, she saw that Cordelia’s face radiated concern.

“I need it. Now.”

They left the place a mess, and she and Cordelia dashed to the store, leaving Olivia to man the counter.

“I spoke too soon about the knowing. I hate this part of it,” Cordelia muttered as they flew through the small Pioneer market just a block from the town house. “The sudden bursts? The way everything used to come to a standstill, our lives, everything on hold while Gram went off on a cooking tangent? That was when we were little. Later, she’d have you doing the cooking.” Cordelia grabbed a packet of chili powder and tossed it into their basket with more force than necessary.

“You’re the one who pushed me to get back into this. Do you think I like being at the mercy of a bunch of figs, for pity’s sake?”

Cordelia gave a shout of wry laughter.

They made it through the market in record time, returning to the apartment just as the timer went off for a small potato casserole. Cordelia’s phone buzzed with a call from James, so she had to go. Olivia took off for the yoga class she was now teaching regularly, and Portia dove back into the kitchen as if the very thing she had been running from for the last three years could save her.

After twenty minutes, her nerves started to calm. Not a single customer found their way to the front door to disrupt her. After forty minutes, her breathing had slowed. And after another hour, she was lost in the rhythm, following the knowing as if it were steps to a dance she’d learned as a child.

She brought port wine, sugar, and chili powder to a boil and let the mix simmer until she had a fragrant syrup. At the last minute, she added cinnamon. Setting it aside, she melted bittersweet chocolate, stirring until the mixture was smooth.

With every stir of the wooden spoon, images danced in Portia’s head. Of happiness, of love, of forbidden fruit that promised sex. She thought of Gabriel’s chest as he reared over her at night, his gaze locked with hers, and felt a shiver that went down her fingers and made the spoon shake.

For some reason, she didn’t dip the figs whole, but decided to chop them into bite-sized morsels, then dipped the pieces in the chocolate and set them on a waxed paper–covered baking sheet to cool.

When that was done, she realized she had plenty of the chocolate-chili-cinnamon concoction left over—along with a bag of unsalted peanuts. Refusing to question it, she dipped the peanuts and set those out, too.

That afternoon, after the candies were cooled and wrapped in cellophane bags, she escaped the apartment and perched on the front steps outside. The day had gotten surprisingly cold.

The old man next door, whom Portia had only seen sitting in the window, emerged from a cab. He looked dapper in an ancient but immaculately kept sports jacket with equally ancient pants, perfectly polished cordovan loafers, and steel-wool gray hair.

“Hello,” Portia called out.

The man nodded, walked toward the curb in front of his town house, his posture severely stooped. When he got to the curb he took a step toward it, but his cane stuck on a crack in the sidewalk.

Portia dashed over and offered a hand.

The man gave Portia a wry little smile and took her hand. Together they managed the steps one at a time. Halfway up, the man had to stop to catch his breath. “It’s awful getting old,” he told Portia. “Just in case you’re wondering.”

“It’s not for sissies,” Portia answered. “That’s what my grandmother always said.”

The old man snorted. “Not for sissies, indeed. It’s this blasted chest cold I can’t get rid of that makes me so weak. Congestion, I suppose.”

“Really? You have congestion?”

He peered at her. “You don’t have to look pleased about it.”

“No, no! Not pleased that you’re congested. It’s just that this morning I made chocolate-and-cinnamon-chili-coated peanuts. The cinnamon and chili are perfect for cold congestion, the peanuts provide protein for strength, and the chocolate, well, chocolate gets your endorphins going so you’ll feel better.” She laughed, delighted and relieved. The demanding sense of needing to make the candies hadn’t meant anything bad was going to happen. “Can I give you some for your cold?”

“That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. Chocolate peanuts for colds.”

“Chocolate cinnamon-chili peanuts! Just try some. They certainly aren’t going to make you feel worse.”

Before she could say anything else, another man came down the stairs to meet them. He was equally old, dressed equally well, but was more mobile. Where the man on Portia’s arm had wiry gray hair, this man had dyed his red. His skin was smoother, his carriage erect.

“Well, look what we have here—the woman from next door.” He stopped in front of her, beaming. “Even prettier up close.”

Portia smiled back, charmed.

“I’m Marcus, my dear. And while this old grump bucket probably hasn’t mentioned a word about it, he’s Stanley.”

“Hi, Marcus. I’m—”

“Portia, from next door. We know. Stanley has been giving me regular reports on his sightings.”

Of course she’d seen him at the window, but … “You’ve been watching me?”

“I haven’t,” Marcus said. “But Stanley here has done little else.” He smiled wickedly and leaned forward. “Very Rear Window, don’t you think? And, rest assured, you’ve provided more entertainment than we’ve had around this place in ages.”

The whole thing was a little weird, but Stanley’s complete lack of guilt and Marcus’s smiling charm made it difficult to do anything but laugh a little herself. “But how do you know my name?”

Marcus hooked his arm through Portia’s free elbow. “Didn’t you know that the postman knows everything? And he’s about the only company we get these days.”

Stanley coughed.

“The peanuts!” Portia said. “I have to get them.”

“I’m not eating anything you make. How do I know they aren’t poisoned?”

“Ha! Do you think I’d get you all this way into your apartment only to poison you?”

“Portia, love, go get whatever it is you’re talking about,” Marcus said. “We could use some new nuts around here.”

Portia laughed, dashed out of the men’s apartment and into hers. Grabbing two bags of peanuts, she wheeled back next door, flipping the OPEN sign to CLOSED. When she returned, Marcus was helping Stanley back into his favorite spot by the window with a caring devotion.

Embarrassed to be walking in on such a sweet scene, Portia set the bags down quietly and started to leave.

“We knew your great-aunt,” Stanley said, his eyes still closed, his head back.

“You knew Evie?”

“She bought her town house around the same time Marcus and I bought ours. And let me tell you, this wasn’t considered a good neighborhood back then. We didn’t spend time together, really. She was an actress,” he said, tone at once disdainful and amused. “I was a Broadway producer, and Marcus here was an agent. Actresses always tried to befriend us, and we learned to keep our distance.”

He sat up a bit straighter and opened his eyes. “Evie was different. She didn’t want any favors from anyone. Swore she would make it on her own, and she did. Even after she found success, we didn’t socialize, but we watched out for each other. How could we not, all of us living in these giant town houses? Just me and Marcus, and Evie by herself. Plus, there was the Texas thing. I was born in Texas to a Southern mother who loved to cook. Evie’s sister loved to cook—well, you must know that if you’re her niece.” Stanley gave Portia that wry little smile of his. “I remember you, too,” he continued, “along with the rest of Evie’s wild Texas nieces. Running up and down the fire escape at all hours. I was sure one of you was going to fall to your death.”

Portia smiled back. “It was just me on the fire escape. And I survived.”

“Yes, you did. And now that man and his daughters have moved in. Are you living with him?”

“No!”

Stanley snorted.

Marcus wiggled his eyebrows at her. “I still haven’t managed to catch a glimpse of him. Though Stanley says he’s something to be seen. All rugged and manly.”

“Good God, man, you can’t let the neighbors know that I’m ogling them!” Stanley said.

Marcus laughed, and Stanley began slowly eating his nuts. A few minutes later, Portia found herself in their kitchen, making a cup of hot chamomile tea. She brought it back out to Stanley, who sipped it, and soon his breathing grew easier. A tension in Marcus’s face, which she hadn’t realized was there until it was gone, also eased.

“I’d better go.” Portia wrote down her cell number. “If you need anything, I’m right next door.”

“Evie always said you were like her own children. She loved it when you came to visit.”

“We loved visiting.” Portia squeezed Stanley’s hand, hugged Marcus, and headed home. That was one of the things she had made herself forget when she pushed the knowing away: It always brought about unexpected interactions with strangers. Food had a way of bringing people together.

But every peaceful thought evaporated when she walked into her kitchen and found that someone had taken all the candied figs and nuts. The question circled in her head. Why? And, more important, who?

Twenty-four

ARIEL USED HER KEY to get in the town house. The muted sound of rock music drifted down to her through the walls. She dropped her backpack in the foyer, tilting her chin up to look at the ceiling, trying to understand where the noise was coming from. “Dad?”

But Dad wouldn’t be home. It was barely three. And he sure as heck wouldn’t be listening to any sort of music that thumped and buzzed.

“Miranda?” No answer.

“Portia?” No way Portia would be playing loud music in their house.

She headed up the stairs to the second floor, then on to the third, the music getting louder the higher she went. The whole thing made Ariel feel nervous. But she was pretty sure Miranda was up in the attic doing who knew what.

When she got all the way up, the door was closed, but the music was impossibly loud now, thumping through the wood door. Ariel hesitated, her hand on the knob, then opened the door.

If she thought the music couldn’t get louder, she was wrong. The beat pounded through the room, making her body buzz and her eardrums hurt. No one noticed her, not any of the three guys who lounged around the floor, or the two girls, plus Miranda, who sat Indian style next to them. Ariel only recognized the creep Dustin.

All of them were laughing hysterically. Not that Ariel could hear the sound of their laughter over the music, but she could see how their faces contorted and moved, like watching a silent movie where everyone on-screen was laughing.

It took another second before the smell hit her. A weird sweet smoke smell. And wine. Like her mother used to drink in their house in New Jersey with its big formal living room and dining room, the giant kitchen and den. Ariel still held out hope that her dad would see the light and take them back to Montclair. Weird stuff like Miranda smoking pot and drinking alcohol didn’t happen back in New Jersey.

Ariel stood there frozen, smoke wrapping around her stinging her nose and eyes, as she wondered what to do.

The teenagers still didn’t know she was there. They kept laughing and throwing little chocolate-covered balls, trying to get them into each other’s mouths. As if this were really funny.

The creep noticed her first. He reached over and turned down the sound system. “Hey.” Dustin laughed. “Dude.”

Seriously?

“What’s up?” he added.

Miranda jerked around, her hair flying around her shoulders. When she saw Ariel, her eyes narrowed to mean, thin slits. “Are you spying again?”

“I am not spying!”

“I am not spying!” Miranda mimicked cruelly, making the other kids laugh.

Ariel felt a burn, thinking it was embarrassment, but even that didn’t deter her. “You’re smoking pot. And drinking. Dad could come home any minute.”

“Yep,” one of the girls said, still laughing. “She’s spying. Little sisters are a pain in the ass.”

Miranda glared. “Dad isn’t home. And he’s not coming home anytime soon. So just go and mind your own business, freak.”

The name hurt worse than it should have. Ariel knew people thought she was a freak. Even she had put the description in the title of her journal. But Miranda had never called her that. Since their mom died, Miranda hadn’t been that nice to her, but she hadn’t been outright cruel like she was being now.

Ariel pushed back the tears in her throat, dashing at her eyes that burned and teared, and not for the first time she wished she were a tougher sort of sister, one who would put shaving cream in her sister’s bed, or pour ice-cold water on her feet when she was sleeping. “You’re going to get in trouble, Miranda,” was all she managed, the words sticking in her throat. “Big trouble. You’re smoking pot.”

All of a sudden, the creep leaped at her. Ariel felt her eyes pop open like some sort of cartoon character and she started to back up.

He grabbed her around the shoulders and spun her around. “She isn’t a spy! She’s cool! Right, dude?”

Everything around her rushed by. It was beyond insanity, she knew, but she felt something. Noticed. Which was ridiculous. Appalled at herself, she pushed at his arm. “Put me down, you Neanderthal!”

He did, then offered her a chocolate ball. “For the lady,” he said, sweeping a bow. “In fact, you can have all of mine.” He pushed a little bag filled with chocolate at her.

Ariel scowled at him. But his smile, his bow, his offer of perfect chocolate candy drew her in and she took the bag.

“You have the coolest hair,” the other girl said, as if she were her greatest friend, then turned a pointed look at the girl who had called her a spy.

“Oh, yeah, majorly cool,” that girl added.

They all started talking to her then, each of them offering her chocolate. Miranda rolled her eyes.

Ariel didn’t need Miranda to tell her that the kids didn’t really think anything about her was cool; they just wanted to make sure she didn’t tell on them. But the whole not being invisible thing seduced her even if it wasn’t real.

“Don’t you dare tell Dad,” Miranda said, dragging a deep pull of the joint into her lungs before blowing it out in a rush.

Ariel just stood there, holding tight to the bag of chocolate, smoke wrapping around her as she tried to figure out what she should do. She had just decided that it was her dad’s problem, not hers, when she realized that the burning in her throat and lungs had gotten worse. It happened fast then. Her throat started to close off in a way it hadn’t in years, teasing her into believing that she had outgrown stupid reactions to weird things in the air.

In a flash, she could hardly breathe.

Miranda and the other kids had fired up the sound system again, and the walls throbbed and swelled. Trying her hardest not to panic, Ariel dropped the chocolate and pivoted toward the door. She half ran, half tripped down the stairs to her room, frantically digging around in her backpack as she tried to suck in gasps of breath. Calculator. Antibacterial gel. Socks. Pen after pen. Her head started to throb and swell like the walls upstairs, the music growing fainter even as some part of her realized the music was really getting louder. But just as a massively tired feeling swelled through her body, her fingers clamped around the inhaler, and she jerked it out. The nail-polish picture her mother had painted on it fluttered in front of her eyes. Without thinking, she jammed Einstein into her mouth, squeezing as hard as she could, praying he was smart enough to save her.

Twenty-five

PORTIA WALKED INTO the Kanes’ house at five that evening. As she was walking in, a small crew of what she knew were Miranda’s friends came out. The boy Dustin wagged an eyebrow at her. She glowered back in what she hoped was a stern schoolteacher sort of way. The boy only laughed.

Portia had been spending her days doing exactly three things: cooking, baking, and telling herself to stop thinking about Gabriel Kane. Actually, that made it four things, the fourth being the time she spent thinking about Gabriel. Which was a lot.

Then there had been the nights. But she really tried not to think too much about those. She still found it hard to believe that she was having utterly passionate, completely uncommitted sex with her upstairs neighbor. Her, Portia Cuthcart. Always safe. Always careful. Always proper. She still hadn’t even been out on a date with him. The Bandana Ball didn’t count. Olivia had all but forced him to go.

Sure, something in her old Texas soul whispered unhelpful things about cows and milk for free. But everything in this newer New York soul had her reveling in being someone so unlike the woman she had become in Texas—soft, a ghost of her former self.

Her thoughts were interrupted just as she was finishing up dinner for the Kanes when Ariel walked into the kitchen looking a bit gray. She sat down without saying more than a listless hi.

Miranda followed a few second later. “What is Ariel telling you?” she demanded, more belligerent than usual.

Portia considered. “What’s going on with you two now?”

“Nothing,” they said in tandem.

Miranda shot her sister a sharp scowl, then wheeled around and left. A moment later Ariel got up and walked out, too. Portia heard first one bedroom door slam, then another.

Don’t get involved, she told herself. A smart woman doesn’t get involved with her secret lover’s children.

Which just got her mind circling back to the same thing she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about. Gabriel.

Last night he had come down the fire escape in that way he did. When she had opened the door, she found him standing there, his hair still damp from a shower, raked back with his hands. He wore a T-shirt instead of a button-down, old jeans that hung low on his hips, and a pair of Converse with no socks. He stepped inside without asking, as if he couldn’t do anything else, a strong man giving in to her in a way that made her feel heady with a foreign sort of power. This strong man wanted her. This powerful man couldn’t stay away from her. A thrill ran through her at the thought.

Standing at the door, he showed no trace of the civilized businessman who stepped out of his town car every evening. He walked into the room as if he owned it and pulled his T-shirt over his head, throwing it to the side.

The twist in Portia’s stomach at the sight of him was so raw and primal that she couldn’t shape words.

“Portia,” he said finally, the word dragged out on a breath, then just stood there.

“Gabriel, are you okay?”

He pressed his eyes closed, blowing a hard breath out his nose. “No.”

Then he dragged her into his arms and took her over to the old wrought-iron bed. They made love with a kind of ferocity that made the bed slam against the wall. But even that wasn’t enough, and five minutes after, they started over, sweaty bodies turning over each other, the only sounds ragged gasps and moans. At some point, he flipped her on her back and pinned her down, his face wild as they gave in to sensation without words, he never taking his eyes off her.

Finally, later, when they were lying next to each other, gasping, it was Gabriel who broke the silence, the edge in him eased, if only slightly. Lying in the semidarkness, he came up on one elbow, demanding to know everything about her, pinning her down when she was elusive.

So she told him about her parents, her grandmother, the stories all whitewashed and pretty. Evie and the town house, the way it had looked in its prime, the way she had loved it. The way she and her sisters used to play dress-up with their aunts’ old costumes.

He listened intently, his fingers running along her arm and shoulders, circling slowly across her collarbone, as if drawing her words along her skin.

But at some point he captured her hands with his and rolled over on top of her, breaking off her sentence. “Portia,” he groaned against her mouth, his free hand sliding down her body, no longer lazy, rather intent.

She lost herself to his touch. But at the back of her mind she worried. What they shared was sweaty and complicated. Despite all her talk of uncommitted sex, he refused to let her keep her boundaries. With the exception of that one earlier kiss, he maintained control of her, her body, of his. But she also knew that he let down his guard with her. Gabriel was a man who was used to control. What would he do if he lost what he no doubt felt defined him?

The bang of the kitchen cabinet yanked her out of her thoughts.

“Dinner still isn’t ready?” Miranda demanded. “Hello, I’m starving.”

Portia blushed as if the teenager could possibly know what she had been thinking. Miranda made a strangled scoffing sound. “Dinner. In this century.”

By the time Ariel and Miranda were seated at the table and Portia was neatening up from preparing the meal of juicy pork chops, green beans with almonds, and creamy cheese-filled grits before she left, she heard the front door open, and her knees went weak.

She glanced up and saw Gabriel coming down the hallway. He stopped in the doorway and just looked at her.

“Jeez, what’s up with you, Dad?” Miranda sneered.

Portia jerked her head down and focused on the stove. Instead of snapping at his daughter’s tone, Gabriel walked over and kissed the top of Miranda’s head. “Sorry, honey. It’s been a good day.”

For a second, Portia was certain Miranda was about to cry. But then she jerked up from her chair.

“A good day?” she bit out. “Have you looked outside? It’s, like, totally cloudy.”

She slammed her chair back and stomped off, leaving her nearly full dinner plate behind.

“Miranda!” Gabriel snapped, all that ease disappearing from his eyes as he started after her.

Ariel dropped her head and concentrated on the food Portia had set in front of her.

Later, after the girls had gone to bed and Portia was sound asleep, he came down the fire escape.

“This is New York,” Gabriel said, his tone sharp, waking her. “You need to keep your windows locked.”

“I do,” Portia murmured. “You came in through the glass door. Using a key you shouldn’t have. There has to be a law against that.”

She was dimly aware that he carried the cardboard sign she had posted earlier. “I take it that among your plethora of skills, reading isn’t one of them?”

“I read.” He tossed the sign aside, then slid between the sheets, pulling her close.

She rolled over onto her stomach, burrowing deeper into the sheets and blankets, hugging the pillow. Gabriel lifted up her hair and ran his lips along the nape of her neck. Then other kisses, his hands leaving her hair. “You think I’m sexy,” he said.

She groaned. “Of course that’s what you took away from the sign.”

“‘All Sexy Cat Burglars Keep Out.’”

“I should have just written ‘Keep Out.’ Simple. To the point.” It had just seemed too mean. But she wanted him to stay away. The more he came down the fire escape, the harder it was to remain in the frame of mind of being okay with an arrangement where they were nothing more than two single adults having casual sex. She was turning into a pathetic, old-fashioned cliché. The more she had sex with him, the less casual it felt. Given the man she realized he was, there was no way this could end well. She had come to understand that he wanted something from her that he hated needing. Hated that he gave in to repeatedly.

“That isn’t fair,” she gasped when he pulled the sheet low.

“What isn’t fair?” he asked, running his tongue along the shell of her ear.

“I’m exhausted. I’ve been cooking all day.”

“I’m the one who’s exhausted,” he countered, sitting up briefly to rip off his shirt and kick his shorts away. Falling back to her, he rolled her over, her arms above her head, loosely pinning her wrists with one of his large hands. His eyes flared as he took her in, her breasts high through the old T-shirt she wore. “I haven’t slept since I met you.”

“At all? Not one second of sleep.”

He grinned down at her. “Barely.” His free hand slipped beneath the soft cotton of her tee, his thigh sliding over her hips. Portia moaned into his mouth, tasting him.

“You’re like a demented cat burglar,” she murmured, gasping as his thumb brushed the peak of her breast.

“A sexy cat burglar,” he reminded her, running his tongue along the same path his thumb had just grazed.

“You’re also my boss,” she managed. “My upstairs neighbor. A man, need I remind you, who is trying to kick me out of my apartment.”

He had the good grace to tense at that.

“Basically,” she continued, trying her hardest to stay focused as he resumed his attention to her body, “this all adds up to a really bad idea. Beyond that—if you need a beyond that—one of these days someone is going to figure out what is going on here. My money is on Ariel. And as much as she likes me, I’m not sure she’s going to like you and me. I know Miranda won’t.”

“Let me worry about my daughters. Besides, at one point, Ariel was trying to get me to ask you out.”

“Really?”

“Really. She thought it a small price to pay for a decent meal.”

Portia snorted.

He tugged her shirt over her head and left it tangled around her wrists, his hand holding her wrists secure. There it was again. Gabriel maintaining control. “You’re beautiful, you know.”

This time, she scoffed. “I’m cute, at best.”

He met Portia’s eyes with an intensity that made her breath catch. “You are beautiful,” he said in a way that dared her to contradict him.

She loved the sound of the words, the fact that she could tell he believed it. He dipped his head, making love to her with his mouth, going slowly, never rushing. She felt the electric pull between her legs.

“Oh, to hell with the sign,” she whispered, and stopped thinking altogether.

He still held her captive, but she turned as best she could to press up against him. He laughed when she cursed at him, his palm sliding over her stomach, then lower to her hip. Portia felt as if she had stopped breathing when he brought one of her knees up, nudging her legs apart, the palm of his hand skimming down the inside of her thigh. But he avoided her center.

“Gabriel, please,” she pleaded, twisting again to free her hands, but he held her secure. She wanted more.

“I know,” he murmured against her skin. “But not yet.”

He dipped his head back to her. Her breath came in pants as he refused to allow her to move.

He stroked and kissed, then surprised her when he dropped his hand from her wrists and slipped down her body, pressing her knees farther apart.

Reality flashed into her head like lights flipped on with a switch. She had never done anything like this. She sat up and tried to pull free. “Gabriel!” she said, pushing at him.

But he was far too strong for her. “Shhh,” he said, nipping the skin of her inner thigh.

“I just don’t do that,” Portia said, even as her body shook. “I’m not comfortable with that. It’s private.”

“Not private,” he stated against her skin. “Mine,” he said so softly that she felt certain he was saying it to himself rather than to her.

She fell back at the first touch of his tongue to her core, and when he pressed her legs even farther apart, she allowed that, too. Sensation rode through her, the kind that lust lends to a girl who isn’t used to being wild. She let go, she opened to him, and when she gave in so freely, she felt a shift in him.

With a groan he reared over her like he could do nothing else, entering her hard, his careful control lost. He didn’t say anything else, just moved, fast and sure, needing something, reaching, bringing her to another orgasm. Only when she cried out did he let go completely, his body tensing and shuddering.

He collapsed on top of her and they lay that way for minutes, or maybe longer, connected, her eyes closed. She could feel his warm breath on her neck, his breathing ragged. When she opened her eyes, he pushed up on his elbows and stared at her. “What are you doing to me?” he whispered.

“Gabriel—”

He pressed his forehead to hers, then rolled away. She expected him to keep going and get off the bed. Instead, he dragged her to him, wrapping her in his arms.

“Go to sleep, Portia.”

“But—”

“Portia, sleep.”

She debated. But then he tucked her close, his chest to her back, the tension finally easing out of him completely, and she drifted off to sleep.

Twenty-six

“DAD, REALLY, I don’t need to go to the Shrink anymore. I’m fine. You’re fine. Miranda’s fine.” Ariel plastered a big fat smile on her face. “We’re all fine, remember?”

Which was far from true, but Ariel was tired of figuring out ways to avoid talking to the Shrink. It was exhausting to come up with new and increasingly inventive ways not to talk about anything that mattered.

Her dad sat at the desk in his study, looking out the window instead of at all sorts of business stuff spread out in front of him. Just sitting. Just looking. So not like her dad.

She felt a flicker of worry. No way her dad could die on her, too, surely.

He turned back and studied her. She studied him right back. Something was definitely different about him, though thankfully as best she could tell, he looked perfectly healthy.

An image of her mom popped into her head, dancing around her dad, laughing. “What can I do to wipe that scowl away?”

Her dad would look back at her mom in that way of his, massively intense.

Her dad was scary, but he was really great, too. Like, she remembered that when he got home late from his office, he would come sit on the edge of her mattress even though she pretended to be asleep. He wouldn’t say anything; he’d just have a look and then lean down and kiss her forehead. She knew he did the same thing to Miranda. Miranda had told her once. Of course he hadn’t sat on the edge of either of their mattresses since their mom had died. As far as she knew, anyway.

“First off, Ariel,” he said, “I don’t appreciate you calling Dr. Parson the Shrink.”

Ariel swallowed back the retort that no amount of lipstick on a pig was going to make that pig anything but. Calling the Shrink Dr. Parson wasn’t going to make him less of a quack.

“Second, Dr. Parson said that when you’re in his office, you refuse to speak to him.”

“I talk.”

“About the weather. Or you grill him on his credentials.”

“I ask: Does a man who lives and works in the twenty-first century seriously wear a goatee and round tortoise-shell glasses? I have two words for you: Fake Freud.”

“Ariel.”

“Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t judge him based on his Freud facial hair, but come on, he has a black leather sofa. Seriously, Dad, I know everyone says you’re a genius, but maybe money smarts don’t translate into regular street smarts. I tell you, the guy isn’t for real.”

Her dad looked amused for a nanosecond before he wiped the humor from his face as fast as good old Wink swiped his big block letters from the dry board at school.

“As much as I appreciate your assessment of my intellect, I assure you that Dr. Parson is for real. And for real you have to go tomorrow.”

Sure enough, at 3:30 the next afternoon, Ariel found herself on that black sofa.

“Have you ever considered getting one of those Victorian-type couches, or whatever they’re called? Chesterfields. I Googled that for you. I think Freud must have had a Chesterfield in his office.” Ariel made a production of considering the idea. “Tell me, Dr. Parson, do you think Freud would have had a leather sofa in his office if they’d been available back then? Because, really, I don’t think yours is working.”

Ariel could have sworn that the guy actually blushed—at least as much as a guy with a beard could blush. No matter how hard she tried, she never managed to flummox her dad. She had to give him that.

“Ariel,” Dr. Parson finally stated, “we are here to discuss the unfortunate things that have happened to you, not my furniture choices—”

“Maybe you should talk to someone about your unfortunate furn—”

“Ariel.” He barked her name before pulling himself together. Ariel’s personal diagnosis? The guy was losing it.

He leaned forward. “We’ve been talking for three months. I’ve been patient. I’ve let you discuss whatever you want. I’ve asked you to write your feelings down in a journal. And I’ve done this in the hopes that you’d learn to trust me.”

She barely held back a snort.

Dr. Parson narrowed his eyes. “Ariel,” he said. “There’s one question I haven’t asked you directly, the one question that matters, the one question that I shouldn’t have to ask because you should want to talk to me about it on your own. Since that hasn’t happened, tell me: What happened in the car?”

Her heart came to a full-blown stop.

Ariel had to force herself to breathe, air in, air out. She felt the sweat on the palms of her hands. It took a second to drum up a smile.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do.”

Life had been so simple before. One dad, one mom, one sister—all of them living in a house in Montclair, New Jersey.

“You’re only hurting yourself by bottling it up.”

He leaned even closer, his elbows on his knees, his tablet and pen set aside.

“Why won’t you talk about it, Ariel? Are you protecting someone?”

The words were like a kick to the stomach. She searched for something to say, something sarcastic, something to distract him. But she couldn’t find anything. The facts were just facts. Life could change in an instant.

She turned her head and focused on all those degrees framed and lined up on the plain white walls. One frame was slightly off. She had told him several times. Once he had stood up all of a sudden and strode over, straightened it, and then turned back. “There,” he had stated.

Ariel had seen that he regretted his show of temper. It was the only time she had liked him. It was the only time she had thought about showing him what was inside her. But then he had come back to his chair, drawn a deep breath, and settled back into his Fake Freud persona.

Now the frame was crooked again.

“I’m not keeping a secret,” she said finally. “There’s no one to protect.”

“Tell me about the accident, Ariel.” He hesitated. “Please.”

A sigh escaped her lips. “Fine. My mom was driving me to a Mathlete competition in Paramus. I was in the backseat; she was in the front.” Her leg betrayed her, swinging too fast and hitting the coffee table. She made it stop. “She was driving really fast on the Garden State Parkway. We were late. We swerved. We wrecked. The car flew over the rail. Mom died. I didn’t.”

The guy sat there for something like a full minute. Ariel knew, because she was counting, not to see how long it would take before he talked again, but to keep her mind focused on something besides the accident.

Finally he found words again. “How did that make you feel?”

How did it make her feel? How did he think it made her feel?

She glanced at the clock and stood. “Oops, look at that. Time’s up.”

Startled, the Shrink glanced over at the clock and blinked. “Ariel,” he said.

But she was already banging out the door.

Twenty-seven

FOR THE LAST THREE WEEKS Portia had done little more than cook for The Glass Kitchen. Now she stood in the middle of her apartment, the day’s assortment of menu items already sold and out the door, and her head swam with images of cake. But not just any cake: a festive concoction loaded with candles. She closed her eyes and knew she needed to plan a birthday party.

But for whom?

She’d have to make the cake later because she needed to get upstairs to make dinner for the Kanes. When she walked into their kitchen, Miranda and Ariel were sitting at the table. Ariel was pretending to do homework; Miranda was staring at her silent cell phone.

“Hey,” Portia said.

“Hey,” Ariel replied with little enthusiasm. Miranda just rolled her eyes.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing,” Miranda snapped.

“She’s waiting for the creep … I mean, Dustin … to call,” Ariel explained hastily.

Miranda shot her little sister a glare. “You didn’t think he was a creep the other day when you—”

She stopped abruptly, glancing at Portia. Both girls jerked back to what they had been doing.

Miranda looked back down at her cell phone, her jaw set, but a moment later her lips started to tremble. “He’s not going to call. He broke up with me. He says I’m not mature enough for him.”

Portia sighed. “Boys can be real jerks,” she said, leaning her hip against the kitchen counter. “Let me guess: You wouldn’t … sleep with him, right?”

Ariel gasped.

Miranda scowled. “It wasn’t like that.”

Portia just waited.

“Okay, maybe it was like that. Don’t you dare tell Dad!” She dropped her head to her arms. “I hate New York! I miss New Jersey!”

With a mental sigh, Portia walked over to Miranda and, after only a brief hesitation, stroked her hair. “Oh, sweetie.”

Miranda drew a shaky breath. “My mom used to call me that.” She started to cry. “It’s her birthday today. Or it would have been.”

A shiver ran down Portia’s spine. The birthday cake. Not for some unknown someone who would show up at the apartment.

Once again, her first instinct was to run, but she sat down and hugged Miranda instead. Ariel looked on with that same expression she’d had when Portia and her sisters were dancing it out. Portia extended her other arm, and Ariel tucked under it like a baby bird. With another sigh, Portia realized she was getting pulled in closer and closer to this family.

“I miss her,” Miranda choked out, sobs racking her body.

Ariel didn’t say anything. She just squeezed in closer.

“When my sisters and I were your ages,” Portia finally said, “our parents died. So I know how awful it is.”

“B-b-both of them?” Miranda asked.

“Yep. We went to live with our grandmother.” Portia hesitated one last second, then plunged ahead. “And every year on our mom’s birthday, we celebrated with a party. What do you say we make a cake and have a birthday party for your mom?”

Miranda sniffled and straightened up. “I guess so.”

Ariel peered across from under Portia’s arm at her sister. “But what if it makes Dad too sad?”

Miranda’s features hardened. “Erasing her is the wrong way to miss her.”

That’s all it took. Instead of making dinner, Portia showed the girls how to make a birthday cake. And then she let them do it by themselves, trusting that the act of making something for their mother would be healing.

Portia started on party sandwiches, little small square bites of cucumber and cream cheese, smoked turkey with gouda, ham and cheddar nestled inside bread with the crusts cut off while the girls worked together as a pair. When Ariel saw what she was doing, she laughed, the clear, bright laughter of a child rather than the mini adult she so often sounded like. “It’s going to be a real party!” Ariel cheered.

The three worked together in a surprising harmony, and soon the cake was done. When Portia finished making the sandwiches and putting them in the refrigerator, she went downstairs and found streamers and an old HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign in Aunt Evie’s boxes.

By the time they heard the front door open and close, they had the dining room set with birthday paraphernalia, party sandwiches covering the table, and a cake at the center of it all.

“I smell something good,” Gabriel called out when he came in the front door.

Portia held her breath. She had simply followed the knowing without a thought for the consequences.

“What’s this?” Gabriel asked as he came around the corner. He took in the balloons and the banner. “Whose birthday is it?”

No one spoke. Portia watched as understanding dawned, and she went cold. The hard planes of Gabriel’s face crumpled, sharp edges going weak. He didn’t look like he was on the verge of crying. It was more that some aching part of his soul had escaped the carefully controlled façade.

Miranda must have been watching his face, too, because when she spoke her voice was harsh. “It’s a birthday party. For Mom.”

Gabriel couldn’t seem to find words, but he looked every inch a wounded beast.

“All you want to do is forget her!” Miranda accused him when he didn’t say anything. “You want us to forget her! You made us come to this awful place and be with these awful people who break up with us and don’t like us and tell us we don’t fit in—all because you don’t want to think about Mom. Well, guess what, we loved her! We miss her!”

“Miranda, that’s enough,” Gabriel said, the words catching in his throat.

“No, it’s not! I hate you! I hate you for moving us here!” She bolted from the room, her steps rapping a staccato beat up the stairs.

Ariel’s small face looked so thin and fragile that Portia was shocked. The girl was obviously taking in everyone’s pain, with no idea what to do about it.

“I’m sorry if we hurt you with the party,” Ariel choked out, and ran from the room before Gabriel could speak.

He looked at Portia. The hard planes were back in place. “What in the hell is going on?”

Portia took a deep breath. “The girls were upset when I got here. Miranda’s boyfriend broke up with her.”

He narrowed his eyes at the boyfriend mention.

“But the real problem, Gabriel, is that they feel they can’t talk about their mother.”

“I’m paying a fortune to a shrink so they have someone to talk to!”

“They need to talk to you.”

He plowed his hands through his hair. “So you got it in your head to throw a party for a dead woman.”

“Exactly,” Portia shot back. “My grandmother did the same thing for me and my sisters after our mother died. It made us feel as if she was still with us, somehow.”

He strode to the table and stared at the cake.

“Of course you miss her, Gabriel, but your daughters are still here. They need to celebrate their mother. If they’re at all like me, they’re terrified that they’ll forget her, that at some point a whole day will pass and they won’t even remember it was her birthday.” Idiotically, tears pricked Portia’s eyes.

Gabriel turned to leave, but stopped at the door, his back to her. “Things are fine, Portia. Just leave it alone.”

Her mouth dropped open when he left. “Things aren’t fine,” she called after him. “You’re smart enough to know that.”

He disappeared up the stairs without replying. Stunned, Portia stared after him. Was he going to leave it at that?

She had promised herself that she wouldn’t get involved, wouldn’t open herself up to this family. While she had opened herself to the knowing, she had promised herself that she wouldn’t use the knowing with Gabriel and the girls. Look what had happened when she had. She’d made a cake for the man’s dead wife, wrecking all three of them.

Go back downstairs, she told herself.

Instead, she followed Gabriel, taking the stairs two at a time up to the office level. He wasn’t there, so she kept going, hearing noise from the floor above. She tiptoed up the last flight and stopped in the doorway of a room that she had barely noticed the night they had gone to the roof. She saw now that it was being used for storage. There was an old bike and boxes, though there was also a sound system and television, even though there were no sofas or chairs.

Gabriel stood inside a closet, pulling a box that seemed to have been hidden in the very back on a high shelf. He strode over and set it down with a thump, wrenched off the top, and pulled out several framed photographs.

Something aching and painful twisted inside her: jealousy. Every time Gabriel came into her arms, she conveniently forgot about his wife. But watching Gabriel stare at the photos of the woman, she had a blinding reminder of why she had told herself to stay away from this man. She started to turn away.

“I’m selfish.”

His voice stopped her.

“You asked weeks ago why I didn’t have photos out, why I wasn’t keeping the memory of my wife alive for the girls. Miranda’s right. I didn’t want to remember.”

Portia’s heart twisted a little more. “You loved her, and now she’s gone,” she said, her voice coming out a near whisper. “It’s okay to want to avoid the pain.”

He hesitated. “It’s not that.” He ran his hands over his face. “How am I supposed to know what’s right or wrong? For the girls? They don’t come with an instruction manual.”

Portia gave him a faint smile. “You just have to keep trying. That’s all they want.”

He swallowed, nodded at her. “Get the girls, will you? I have an idea.”

Portia found Miranda lying on her bed, curled on her side, eyes squeezed shut, earbuds in her ears. Portia knocked, then knocked more loudly, but there was no answer. With no help for it, Portia walked through the open door and sat on the bed. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Hey, kiddo.”

Miranda rolled her eyes. “Who calls people ‘kiddo’?” Her voice rasped a little from all the tears.

Portia knew Miranda was lashing out because she was hurting. “Your dad wants you and Ariel to go upstairs.”

“What’s he going to do, lock us in the attic?”

“Oh, honey, he’s figuring things out as he goes. He’s bound to make some mistakes along the way.”

The girl snorted. “You think?”

“He’s trying right now. Give him a chance.”

“What? You’re telling me that he’s planning to sing Happy Birthday? Dive into the cake?” But Miranda sat up and scooted off the bed.

Portia didn’t have the faintest idea what Gabriel had in mind, so she just said, “Let’s get Ariel.”

They walked down the hall. Ariel’s bedroom was empty.

“Where is she?” Portia asked, frowning.

Miranda gave her a funny look, walked into the room, and knocked on the closet. “Hey, A, you in there?”

“No,” came the muffled reply.

Miranda pulled open the door. Portia could just make out Ariel sitting cross-legged in the corner, writing in a journal.

“What part of no didn’t you understand?” she snapped.

“The part where Dad doesn’t take no for an answer when he wants us upstairs.”

Ariel scowled.

“Supposedly, he sent Portia down for us,” Miranda added.

Ariel glanced between Miranda and Portia, then closed the journal and started to put it away, only to stop. “Turn around,” she instructed them.

Once the book was hidden, Portia, Miranda, and Ariel headed up the stairs to the top floor and found Gabriel standing in front of a television set.

Miranda glared at him, not making it easy.

“I thought we could watch some DVDs.”

“You made us come up here to watch TV?” Miranda demanded.

Gabriel didn’t let the sarcasm deter him. “Not TV. Home movies. Ones of you girls and … Mom.”

Ariel flew forward. Miranda just stayed by Portia in the doorway, visibly tense.

Gabriel looked at her. “There’s that great one of you and Mom dressed in matching clothes for Easter.”

Miranda bit her lip, and then came forward reluctantly. As she got close, Gabriel pulled her into a hug and then pulled Ariel in with them. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Portia felt tears backing up in her throat. She began to turn away.

“Where’re you going?” Gabriel blurted.

“It’s time for me to get home,” Portia said, summoning a smile.

“No!” Gabriel and Ariel said. Even Miranda gave Portia a half smile. Ariel raced over and pulled her into the room.

In addition to the DVDs, Gabriel had gotten four slices of cake and a tray full of the party sandwiches. The four of them sank down onto the floor to eat and watch.

Victoria Kane had been a beauty. Dark hair, deep blue eyes, and the sort of rosebud mouth that made men go wild. She seemed about twenty-five in the first DVD. She danced for the camera and winked before pulling Gabriel close and kissing him. The kiss was deeply intimate, like a movie kiss between two characters in love. Portia had to swallow hard.

But both girls were smiling. “Mom was beautiful,” Miranda breathed.

Gabriel took a deep breath as he stared at the screen.

They watched Miranda’s third birthday, an elegant Christmas party, and Ariel’s sixth birthday before they were finally done. At the end, Ariel threw her arms around her dad’s neck, and he hugged her fiercely. Miranda conceded a nod, and he nodded back, though Portia could see that he wanted more.

The girls trooped downstairs to go to bed. Gabriel sat quietly, staring without seeing. Portia went over and slipped down next to him on the floor, their backs against the wall.

“That was a lovely thing to do for the girls. But obviously painful for you.”

“Painful?”

“It’s not just the girls who are grieving,” Portia said, stumbling over what to say. “You have to remember that you’re in pain, too. I could see how much you loved her.”

Gabriel reached over and took Portia’s hand, running his thumb over her knuckles. Then he said, in an absolutely even tone, “I never loved her at all.”

She barely understood the words. “What?”

He heaved a sigh, dropping his head back against the wall. “We never should have married. She loved partying, just like Anthony. We wouldn’t have gotten married, but she got pregnant.”

Portia was stunned. Gabriel didn’t seem like the kind of man who got anyone pregnant by accident. “So you married her?”

“I figured I wouldn’t be the greatest father, but I couldn’t allow a child of mine to be raised by a woman who liked partying as much as Victoria did. The only way I could make sure that my child was taken care of was if I married the mother.” He sat quietly for a moment, then added, “Victoria wasn’t very maternal, but she did her best. And she loved the girls. You can see that.”

Portia leaned her head on his shoulder. Gabriel had intrigued her, maddened her, filled her with desire. But now all that swirled together into something stronger. She thought of how he had handled Cordelia’s confession. How he struggled to be a good father. “You’re a good man, Gabriel Kane.”

There was a long pause. “Tell that to Miranda.”

“She’ll come around.”

He sighed, then stood, taking her hand and drawing her to her feet. “Will she?”

He looked exhausted and ravaged, as if his young daughters could bring him down in a way that multinational conglomerates couldn’t. He might have been ruthless when it came to business, but this man was anything but when it came to Miranda and Ariel. This man loved his girls, but he didn’t know the first thing about how to manage his way through their lives.

Portia reached up and wrapped her arms around him. He leaned over, pulling her into him, burying his face in the crook of her neck. Seconds ticked by before she felt his body ease.

“Thank you,” he whispered into her hair. “Thank you for tonight.”

Finally, he let her go, and together they cleaned up the mess. Downstairs in his kitchen, they worked like two cogs in a wheel. When they finished up in there, she realized that finger sandwiches and cake couldn’t possibly be enough for him to eat.

“Sit,” she told him softly, gently pulling him over to the table. When he tried to pull her to him, take control, she spun away.

He watched her with greedy eyes, greedy for her, greedy for the food, as she made an omelet gooey with melted cheese, bacon on the side, along with thick slices of homemade bread slathered in butter and jam. It was the kind of meal her mother used to make for Daddy when he came home late and exhausted from one of the manual jobs he had managed to drum up. Food that comforted as much as it sustained.

Portia set the plate in front of Gabriel. He looked from the food to her, something deep and nearly overwhelming in his eyes.

“Thank you,” he whispered to her again.

When he picked up the fork and took a bite, she knew that the emotion in his face was about a great deal more than how delicious it tasted. And she realized then that with his mother, his brother, and even his wife, this was a man who had always taken care of everyone else. No one had ever taken care of him.

She remembered the way he had taken her the night before, holding her down, kissing her so intimately. She had expected to feel awkward afterward. Instead, she felt only a flare of slow carnal desire at the memory. And rightness.

She realized something that had been there for a while, but she had been reluctant to admit it, even to herself. She wanted more from him than a secret love affair.

At the thought, she sucked in her breath when images of food hit her. The fried chicken, the sweet jalapeño mustard—the same images that had hit her the first time when he walked toward her on the sidewalk, then again after the first time they made love. Gabriel’s Meal.

Every day it had shimmered just beyond her thoughts, like a heavy pan of sauce simmering on a back burner. The more they made love, she realized, the stronger the image of the meal became. That was what she had been trying so hard not to think about.

Was it a gift? Or a warning? Good news or bad?

She didn’t know.

But if she wanted more from him, more for them, then she would have to find out. She would have to make Gabriel’s Meal.

Twenty-eight

LIFE, ARIEL KNEW, often made no sense, a fact that could make even a smart girl want to trade in her brain for an obsession with acne cures and makeup tips. Almost.

Life didn’t hand out easy equations with perfect answers. Instead, there were things like one minute your mom was there, and the next she was gone. One minute your sister was awful, and the next she was nice. But how long before Miranda turned mean again?

The second Ariel figured her dad was asleep, she snuck back upstairs and retrieved the DVDs. Back inside her room, she curled up in her closet and popped one of the discs into her laptop, fast-forwarding to all the scenes with her mom.

There were days when she could hardly remember what her mom looked like—at least, how Mom looked before the accident. What she mostly remembered was the way Mom looked in the car.

Ariel’s stomach hurt at the memory, which never did anyone any good. What’s more, a real shrink should have gotten that. Shouldn’t he know that talking about the accident was massively screwed up and totally a waste of time?

Of course, in all her trying to convince her dad that the guy was a quack, she couldn’t talk about the accident because she had zero interest in letting him or anyone else know that she had to watch her mom die in the car. If Dad knew she had been conscious while it happened, he’d have her locked up for good, figuring she was about to go all Girl, Interrupted or something. So she kept quiet. Besides, it would just make him feel worse. That was something she’d figured out since the accident: Why say the stuff that hurt other people? No point.

Sitting in the closet, Ariel started to fall asleep to footage of her own birthday party the year before. But she jolted fully awake when she heard a crash in the entry hall. Sharp voices sounded, coming all the way up the stairs and into her closet. Miranda and her dad.

Ariel focused on the computer screen. “Everything is fine,” she whispered, tracing the lines of her mother’s image as she brought a store-bought cake from the kitchen, birthday candles flickering.

But her father’s voice boomed, making it hard to stay focused on the screen. “Where the hell do you think you’re going, young lady?”

“Out, Dad. I’m going out!”

“Like hell you are!”

Miranda sounded as angry as their father, the truce from earlier swept away like store-bought or even homemade cake scraped from a plate into the trash.

Ariel started to hum. She found another DVD, one they hadn’t watched, and popped it in the computer. She could ignore the fight if she tried hard enough. She would pretend that everything was fine.

She clicked on play and Mom and Miranda flared to life, laughing as they chased each other around the den. Mom was dressed up in a tight red dress that stopped just above her knees, her hair teased and puffy, and her lips painted a darker shade of red. Ariel’s own voice from behind the camera asked where she was going.

Her mom laughed. “Where am I going?” She made a big production of considering the question. “A book party, darling. Yes, one of those book groups where people talk about characters who are happy and lead exciting lives.”

“Is Dad going, too?” Ariel heard herself ask.

For a second, her mom’s smile tightened. “Dad is busy.”

Mom had put makeup on Miranda, who was in seventh grade back then, and her sister strutted into the frame, primping for the camera. “I’m fabulous,” she cooed into the lens. “Simply fabulous.”

Ariel heard herself snort in the background.

Miranda stuck out her tongue and twirled away.

Pulling the computer closer, Ariel focused on the screen, remembering the details of their old house. The dark hardwood floors, the huge rugs, the fancy furniture. Her mother had liked fancy. Her dad never had.

“All you have to do is pay for it, Gabriel. It’s not like you live in it all that much.”

The memory leaped out from somewhere, jarring Ariel back into watching the DVD. Their old doorbell rang and Ariel watched her mother’s expression change, her laughter gone as she smoothed her dress.

“How do I look, sweetie?”

“Perfect,” Ariel heard herself say.

In the background of the spinning footage, Miranda raced to the door while her mother stood, waiting.

“Turn that thing off, A.”

But she hadn’t, and Mom had forgotten she was there. Miranda ran back into the room, excited, and suddenly Ariel remembered what had happened next.

Her heart started to pound as Uncle Anthony walked onto the screen, dressed in a sports jacket, blue shirt, and jeans. He stopped when he saw her mom, smiling at her.

“Anthony!” her mother cried.

Then the footage snapped off. She could remember hitting the power button and going over to say hi.

Uncle Anthony had come in and out of their lives for as long as she could remember. And for as long as she could remember, he made her mom smile and made her dad really mad.

The difficult thing about life was that once you learned things, you couldn’t unlearn them. Like remembering her uncle walking into their house in Montclair. Her uncle loving her mom first, before her dad came along. The date of her parents’ marriage and Miranda’s birthday. It was like her parents had done everything they could to hide the date they got married. Ugh. Her heart thumped in a way that made the back of her eyes hurt and her throat swell.

Suddenly, she heard Miranda flying up the stairs.

“Your acting out stops now, do you hear me?” Dad roared, his voice thrumming through the walls as he followed after her.

“Up yours!” Miranda shrieked back.

“You do not sneak out of this house,” he ground out.

Ariel shut the laptop and pressed her hands to her ears.

“No, no, no,” she whispered. Whispering no never did any good, but she did it anyway. Same as she had in the car, lying there with her mom.

The memory made her get to her feet, unsteady at first, before she threw open the door. This time she wasn’t locked down by a seat belt and crumpled metal. This time she could do something. Help, maybe.

She opened the door to her bedroom just in time to see Dad walk by, gripping Miranda by the arm, propelling her toward her bedroom. For a second, she barely recognized her sister. Miranda wore a tight dress that she definitely didn’t buy with Dad in tow, and she held a pair of those super-high heels. The five-inch ones that Miranda would never have been able to walk in. Not that she was going to get a chance to try since Ariel was pretty sure their dad would kill her first. Or lock her away until she was twenty-one.

“You can’t do this! My friends are waiting for me! It’s hard enough to make friends around here without you making it impossible!” Miranda screamed.

Not that Dad listened. He forced Miranda to her room. “What kind of friends are you meeting?” he demanded. “Dressed like that?”

Ariel backed up and closed her door, then ran over to her window that led out to the fire escape. When she pulled it open, cool air struck her face, bringing the sound of the city with it. Ariel clenched her teeth as she stepped out onto the thin metal landing. She hated heights, hated the fire escape, had loved it when her dad had forbidden both her and Miranda from going anywhere near the fire escape. In her nearly thirteen years, Ariel had never completely defied her father. She had left that to Miranda. But the only way she knew how to help was to distract her dad from how mad he was at Miranda. She would make him mad at her.

Clasping her fingers tightly around the railing, ignoring the fear that the metal would disintegrate under her feet, letting her crash into the garden below, making her disappear, Ariel crawled over to her sister’s window. By then, her dad stood inside Miranda’s room lecturing, Miranda screaming back.

Just then the wind gusted and the fire escape swayed, the metal groaning in protest. Ariel’s stomach heaved, and she realized she was acting like an idiot. She leaped up, but her sneaker caught in the metal grating and she fell against her sister’s window.

Faster than she would have thought possible, her dad was across the room. He had never been pretty, not like Uncle Anthony. But now the look on his face was terrifying. For one thing, he didn’t recognize her at first. The minute he did, he wrenched open the window and hauled her inside.

“Oops,” she managed, a smile faltering on her lips. “I guess I’m in trouble now.”

Ariel watched the gears in his head churn, emotion flashing across his face. Miranda was staring at her like she was crazy. Which she probably was.

“Go to your room, Ariel,” her father said. The words seemed to stick in his throat.

“You know how you always think I should talk?” she said instead. “Well, guess what, I’m ready.”

“Go to your room!” he shouted.

He didn’t wait for her to leave. He turned around and went down the stairs without another word.

Ariel stood frozen, hoping he wouldn’t leave the house, leave them. Instead, he slammed the door of his study.

“Are you crazy?” Miranda hissed.

Ariel forced a smile she didn’t feel. “Me? Nah?”

“You did that on purpose.”

“Get caught on the fire escape on purpose? Now you’re crazy.”

Miranda looked at her, and suddenly Ariel couldn’t stop herself. “Mir?”

“What?”

“Couldn’t you be a little bit nicer to Dad?”

Miranda’s lips pursed. “Why would I do that? Dad’s an ass.”

“So—so he doesn’t get, like, so mad that he leaves us,” Ariel whispered. “He could just hire someone to deal with us, you know, and go back to work all the time.”

For a second, Miranda looked shocked. Then the hardness returned. “No. I cannot be one bit nicer to Dad, and frankly, if he hired someone to be here with us, all the better. My friends talk all the time how they just have to pay their nannies or help or whoever twenty bucks every time they want to sneak out.” She flopped on her bed, grabbed a pillow, and hugged it tight. “I’m going to pray he hires someone. Anyone’s better than him.”

Ariel bolted out of the room before Miranda could say another hateful word. She didn’t know how to explain that while Miranda might not be a perfect sister, and their family was massively broken, they were all she had left. It was like a punch in the gut to think that Miranda didn’t care one bit what happened to what was left of their sorry family.

Ariel waited an hour past the Vesuvius blowup before she tiptoed downstairs. She was starving. Drama did that. If this family stuff didn’t get fixed soon she’d probably get as fat as a beach ball. Whatever, she told herself. Again.

She had pretty much repeated that word over and over in the last hour. Wasn’t there some sort of three-strikes rule? Crawling out onto the fire escape was her first offense. Two more to go before her dad did something like send her off to boarding school.

After eating a sandwich, she saw a dim light coming from her dad’s study, so she peeked inside. At first she didn’t understand what he was doing. He was sort of lying in his big leather chair, the one with oversized padded arms. Sound asleep. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d seen her dad sleeping. Lying there, he looked almost peaceful.

It was a strange thought, and Ariel felt stupid tears well up. She, the non-crier.

Just like with the fire escape, before she could think better of it, she slid carefully down into the big chair right next to him. They used to sit that way sometimes, back when he would read aloud to her. She was still skinny, so she fit next to him, like a cork in a bottle. He didn’t wake up.

“Sorry I climbed the fire escape,” she whispered.

He didn’t move.

He had one of those clocks that actually ticked, and Ariel’s eyelids started to get heavy. She wondered if the Shrink had told her dad about their last session. If he had, her dad hadn’t mentioned it.

Just as her eyelids were fluttering closed, she whispered, “What would you do if I told you why I was really in the car with Mom? Why we were going so fast?”

He didn’t answer, his breathing still deep.

Ariel didn’t remember drifting off, but when she woke the next morning she was tucked into her bed.

Twenty-nine

NOT EVEN A MONTH after Portia and her sisters opened the doors, so to speak, word of mouth about The Glass Kitchen rippled through New York City like a YouTube video going viral. Sure, the food was great, but it didn’t hurt that Portia was able to provide everyone who came to her door with just what they needed, and Cordelia made sure they knew it. It also didn’t hurt that Olivia was a natural with social media on the Internet. The Cuthcart sisters had become a perfect team.

But what Portia was really thinking about was that it had been two days since she had made Gabriel the plate of eggs and realized she wanted more from him. But as it happened, since that realization he hadn’t come down the fire escape once. He hadn’t so much as stopped by. It was odd, not to mention disconcerting, since she’d been trying to drum up the nerve to make the Gabriel Meal.

She was on the verge of finding some schoolgirl way to run into him when he walked through her front door.

Her heart squeezed with a mix of disappointment and relief when he didn’t rush toward her with a kiss. Not that he was the rush-toward-her sort. But still.

Instead, he had that dangerous look of his, and his greeting consisted of precisely seven words. “You are not meeting with Richard Zaslow.”

Portia stiffened. “How do you know I’m meeting with Richard Zaslow?”

“Did you really think I wouldn’t hear about it?”

Portia’s eyes narrowed.

“Don’t get that look,” he said, his expression guarded. “He’s not for you.”

“Not for me? He has billions of dollars, is famous for turning food businesses into huge successes, and he called us. How’s that not for me?”

“Let me guess. He called you after he saw the photo in The New York Observer.”

“So?”

“The three of you looked great, kind of like Charlie’s Angels in aprons. Richard likes women. And he’s especially good at making things happen for business owners he sleeps with.”

Portia gasped. “I don’t believe for a second he was sleeping with Bartalow Bing when he turned him into the Fat Chef.”

“Bing was an exception.”

“I think his ex-wife is the exception.” Everybody knew the story of how struggling cookie baker Rachel Turnbell met Richard Zaslow. Pretty soon they were rumored to be sleeping together, then they married, and all the while he poured millions into making her business a success. Not long after she was dubbed the Cookie Queen, Rachel had filed for divorce, but not before her business had started selling about 35 percent of all cookies sold nationwide. “My guess is he learned his lesson about mixing business with pleasure.”

She finished setting out the day’s fare with a little more energy than was needed. Bang! went the brussels sprouts and pancetta. Slap! went the flour tortillas next to the fajita meat.

He came up next to her and turned her back to him, his hands surprisingly gentle. “Look at me, Portia.”

Reluctantly, she did.

“He’s not for you.”

“Really?” Portia sliced him a wry expression, stepping away. “Do you have someone better in mind? Are you offering up the money?”

She had tossed out the words without thinking, but he looked at her long and hard.

She held up her hand. “Don’t bother answering with that ‘Restaurants in New York City have an eighty percent failure rate.’”

He still stared at her.

The doorbell buzzed. Gabriel went to the door before Portia could. “Dick,” he stated, pulling open the door.

Richard Zaslow looked surprised. “Gabriel, what are you doing here?”

“Actually, I’m here trying to convince Portia that you’re not a great investor match for her.”

“Gabriel!”

Both men looked at her, and then Gabriel swung back to Richard. Richard gave Gabriel an appraising grin that Portia didn’t like one bit. She realized belatedly that these two men were friends.

“She has you by the short hairs, doesn’t she?” Richard said.

Gabriel grunted, not so much a threat as a primal acknowledgment between two men who were man enough to admit how things really were.

Richard slapped Gabriel on the back. “Good luck with that,” he said, then turned to Portia. “Take him for everything he’s worth,” he teased, then left.

Portia’s mouth fell open. “What was that all about?”

Gabriel looked dangerously pleased, a full-watt smile that made Portia want to laugh despite the fact that she was furious.

“I guess he wasn’t all that interested,” Gabriel said with an innocent shrug.

Portia’s answer involved the kind of profanity that would have made her ex-husband faint. But not Gabriel. He grinned at her, and then hooked his arm around her waist and pulled her to him, kissing her in that way that made her knees weak.

That night he came to her with no words, just strode up behind her as she sat brushing her hair at her great-aunt’s vanity. He took the brush and began slowly pulling the bristles through her thick hair. It had grown out and bore no resemblance to a blown-out pageboy perfectly contained by a velvet headband.

Their eyes held in the mirror.

“I’m giving you the money,” he said softly.

She blinked, then stared back at him.

“I’ll take care of you. You don’t need to worry about money anymore.”

Portia jerked around to face him. “What are you talking about?”

“You want to open a Glass Kitchen. I’ll provide the money.” To prove his point, he pulled a check from his pocket.

She gasped at the amount, followed by a slow burn starting under her breastbone.

“You can stop wearing your aunt’s castoffs—”

She cut him off. “Are you giving me this money because you believe in The Glass Kitchen?”

He stared at her. “Does it matter why I’m giving it to you?”

“Of course it does! I don’t want you giving me money just because you’re sleeping with me!”

Gabriel’s expression darkened. “This has nothing to do with us sleeping together. You need money. I have money. And before you rip up that check, if I were you, I’d ask your sisters what they think of the offer. I’m not so sure they’d be as quick to turn my money away.”

She ground her teeth. She knew he was right, but still. He believed she would fail. Could she take money from a man who didn’t believe in her? Part of her cheered with a resounding yes. But another part of her, this newer part that was trying hard to prove she could make it on her own merit, cringed.

Finding an investor who genuinely believed in The Glass Kitchen held more meaning to her than simply being provided with the money. It was symbolic. Gaining an impartial investor would prove that someone truly believed in what she was doing. Finding an impartial investor struck her as a powerful step toward proving that she wasn’t dependent on a man in her life. Her husband had supported her, given her a home, provided her with a life. But the minute he got tired of her and wanted to move on, all of that had been swept from underneath her like feet giving way under a wave.

She felt her chin set.

His eyes narrowed, but there was a glint of laughter in them, too. “Stubborn females will be the death of me.”

During the next week, despite Gabriel’s frustration at her refusal to deposit his check, Portia cooked and baked for potential investors. Every night when she was alone, she pulled the check out of The Glass Kitchen cookbook, where she had hidden it. With each day that passed, her bank balance ticked lower, and she knew she couldn’t afford not to take his money. But every night she ended up tucking the check back into the book.

Cordelia set the table again and again with the pitted silverware and stoneware dishes. Olivia arranged everything until the setting was a worthy tableaux for an elegant country-style magazine. Portia fed them food that made them melt, made them happy. And then it began to happen. The food began to work. By the end of the week they had offers from four different investor groups, as if the food combined with Gabriel’s check in the cookbook had worked like a magician conjuring up a rabbit in a hat.

Cordelia, Olivia, and Portia sat around the table on Friday evening going over each offer, as stunned as they were thrilled.

“Can you believe it?” Olivia laughed.

“I’m amazed,” Portia said.

“I am not,” Cordelia said, shaking her head. “I’ve said it all along. In this age of cooking madness, who wouldn’t want to invest in three sisters from Texas cooking food to die for?”

Portia’s mind froze, memories of her grandmother springing to her mind. The storm. The meal of pulled pork and the lightning.

Cordelia reached across the table. “Sorry, sweetie. I wasn’t thinking.”

Olivia jumped up from her seat. “Let’s celebrate!”

After no more than one circle around the living room to Toby Keith, Ariel must have heard and poked her head in the door, dancing her way inside without waiting for an invitation.

Two songs in, Olivia headed back to the kitchen. “This calls for margaritas!” She glanced at Ariel. “And a virgin margarita for the kid.”

Cordelia went in search of chips. Portia made a batch of fresh guacamole. Ariel threw herself onto a stool, grinning madly.

“You guys are the weirdest adults ever. You know that, right?” She took a sip of the sweet drink. “So what are you celebrating?”

“Great investor meetings, and”—Olivia dragged out the word—“a newspaper interview with The New York Post coming up!”

“That’s good, huh?”

“It’s fabulous,” Cordelia confirmed.

“Dad’ll be happy, too.”

“No need to tell your dad,” Portia said instantly.

“But he’ll want to know!”

“Of course, he will. But could I surprise him?” Portia wanted to tell him herself. Return his check. She felt certain that he would grumble at her, but that deep down he would be proud of her.

She also hoped that it would be the beginning of a shift between them. If she felt she was making her life work, she could breathe again, she could believe things were supposed to work out. She could make Gabriel’s Meal without fear.

Ariel blinked, but then she nodded. “Okay, you tell him.” She glanced at the clock. “I’ve got to go.”

Portia, Cordelia, and Olivia lifted their glasses as she left. “To The Glass Kitchen!”

“To three sexy sisters in New York City!” Olivia cheered.

Cordelia made a face. “You’ll have to carry that flag by yourself. I’m too old, and Portia hasn’t had sex in months.”

Portia choked on her margarita.

Cordelia and Olivia stopped and studied her. “Portia?” they said in unison.

“What?” She tried to look nonchalant. Innocent.

“Hell,” Olivia snapped. “Who are you sleeping with?”

“No one!”

“Liar! You’re blushing!”

“Stop!”

“We are not stopping,” Cordelia persisted. “Who in the world are you having sex with?” She blinked in confusion. “One of the investors?”

“Of course not!” Portia exclaimed.

Olivia laughed as she sat back. “Then who?”

“That’s private.”

Olivia raised a brow, glanced at Cordelia, then back. “How very un-Portia like. Our little sister has a secret lover.”

But when Portia looked closer, she was sure Olivia knew just who that secret lover really was.