Ring of Truth (13 page)

“Ren! I'm serious! I want to savor what seems to be happening here...”

“You mean this?” he said, gently cupping one breast and strafing her stiffened nipple with his thumb through her clothing. “Or, do you mean plain old falling in love? Because I think that's definitely what's going on here.”

“You do?” she whispered, wondering if she could keep her balance should he touch her other breast.

“It's happened,” he stated flatly. “At least to me, it has, and if I don't get out of here in the next five seconds, I might just drag you into Nona Concetta's spare bedroom and have my way with you on top of that quilt in there she stitched... which
would
feel pretty insane.”

He leaned forward and kissed her again with a ferocity that left Kerry feeling as if she were a marked woman. Then he abruptly turned and left the cottage.

She stood at the open door, watching him stride down the hill toward the low-slung farmhouse where he worked and slept. The instant his tall figure disappeared into the gloom, she felt her ring finger pulse with warmth.

Know thy heart, indeed, Kerry m'girl...

The following morning, Kerry awoke at six with birds chattering outside her window, as if scolding the universe for the low-lying fog that enveloped the rows of olive trees outside her window. She forced herself to fire up her laptop and wrote another two blogs, one about the work of the UC Davis Olive Oil panel of experts whose mission it was to determine which oils they deemed of highest quality. The second post was about preparing a dinner for the same distinguished group later that night with ingredients that would come within a ten-mile radius.

By eight-thirty, a damp chill continued to linger in the air when she walked down the hill, her mind focused on sipping a strong cup of coffee that she hoped José had made by the time she arrived at the building housing the ranch's commercial kitchen.

She pushed open the door to an empty room and flipped the light switch to search the well-organized pantry for the coffeemaker, filters, and grinder, happy to discover a bag of San Francisco Fog coffee beans in the big walk-in freezer.

She'd scrambled a dozen eggs for whoever would eat them and perused Tuesday night's menu that Jeremy had posted on the cork bulletin board. José soon appeared, followed five minutes later by Chef Jeremy, himself. After a congenial consultation, all three got busy doing the prep for the UC Davis dinner. When Sara hadn't made an appearance by eleven o'clock, Kerry called Tony, “the Salad Associate at LifeStyleXer,” she explained with a grin to Jeremy. Tony instantly said he was delighted to lend a hand as soon as he got off work at the company cafeteria.

“If we can't depend on her,” Jeremy agreed, “a cook's gotta do what a cook's gotta do.”

Around one o'clock Sara flounced into the kitchen with Ren—who'd been informed of her tardiness by Jeremy—following close behind. She announced pointedly to the chef that she would make the dessert and salad dressing.

Jeremy and his second-in-command exchanged looks, but Kerry kept to the task she was currently assigned without comment. Ren assumed the job of peeling a pile of root vegetables José had pulled from the garden that morning.

Out of the corner of her eye, Kerry noticed that Sara had quickly proceeded to measure out oil for the cake batter she was making. While the round pans were baking in the oven, the young woman silently poured oil from the same bottle into a bowl containing the ingredients for mustard vinaigrette.

Fifteen minutes later, Kerry smelled something burning.

“Your cakes!” she cried, and raced over to the large stainless steel commercial oven on the far side of the room. She glanced at the temperature gauge. “You set it at
five hundred degrees
, Sara!” she shouted. “What the—”

Sara merely smiled and said, “Oh. Really? Gee. Sorry. My mistake,” and continued to whisk the oil into the salad dressing.

Jeremy pulled himself off the couch and moved with obvious discomfort to Kerry's side, glancing worriedly at the clock.

“Shit, Sara!”

Kerry opened the oven just as one of the cakes burst into flame. The others were already blackened and useless. She flicked off the oven, grabbed a quilted mitt, and tossed the cake and its pan into the stainless steel sink where José turned the water on to put out the flames. Alarming hissing sounds and smoke filled the kitchen while Sara remained where she was, calmly whisking the salad dressing.

“You did this on purpose,” Kerry accused her, racing to open the door and windows to prevent the smoke alarm from sounding. “You're either just a jealous idiot or a very sick puppy. You could have burned down the place!”

By this time, Jeremy and Ren had joined the two women who were less than a foot apart, glaring at each other through the smoky interior.

“I don't actually care which it is,” Jeremy shouted at his erstwhile sous chef. “Just get
out
of here, Sara. Go sit in your room until your two weeks are up!” Kerry could tell that Jeremy already appeared to regret he'd jumped off the couch so quickly when the cakes caught fire.

Sara whirled to face the chef. “So Ren told you I have to leave in two weeks, instead of a month?” She was red-faced and Kerry wondered if she would, indeed, seize a butcher knife and go after anyone within reach.

“Yes,” Ren confirmed. “I told him this morning.”

Ignoring her employer, she shouted at the chef, “And did he tell you he's already shacking up with Ms. Perfect here?”

“It's none of my business who he's shacking up with!” Jeremy replied, his complexion drained of color. Kerry thought she saw him wince with pain.

Kerry banged her fist on the counter near the bowl of vinaigrette.

“I am
not
sleeping with the boss, though I imagine I will one of these days, Sara, so I think you have a choice: make an utter mess of everything in the time you have left here on the ranch where your brother-in-law offered you shelter and amazing kindness—or pull yourself together and grow up! But one thing is certain... you can't have your late sister, Sandra's life, and you sure as hell can't have
mine!
”

The look that passed over Sara's features was a blend of shock and pure hatred. Meanwhile, Kerry detected a highly unpleasant odor wafting from the bowl of salad dressing Sara had been making. On impulse, she grabbed a spoon and stuck it into the emulsified liquid to sample it.

“Good God!” she exploded, squeezing her eyes shut. “This salad dressing is
rancid
!” She opened her eyes to stare at Sara, the full extent of the woman's efforts to sabotage them becoming all too clear. “You deliberately used discarded oil from that back shelf in the mill that would
ruin
the Montisi Ranch's reputation with the UC Davis olive oil experts tonight when we served them a salad that would taste absolutely disgusting!”

Sara ignored Kerry's accusations and turned on Ren, instead.

“You haven't even known this woman a
week
and she swans in here and practically takes over the place.”

“Sara, just stop it!” ordered Ren.

“I won't stop it!” Sara's voice had gone up an octave and she seemed on the edge of hysteria. She shook a finger at Ren, her eyes narrowing. “I know what you've got planned, installing her in your grandmother's cottage that Sandra always wanted for her workout studio! You're just waiting for Concetta to kick off and until she does, you'll keep this Hannigan woman around until her stock options reach ‘bingo' in a couple of years. That should tide you over and solve your current cash-flow problems, won't it?”

“How do you know about
my
stock options?” Kerry demanded, glaring at both Sara and Ren.

Sara continued, unfazed by Kerry's outburst.

“You'll be sitting pretty, won't you, Ren? She's got a better payout potential than the Lang family, you think? Traded us in for that little bitch, have you, you bastard!”

Ren ignored Sara, urgently saying to Kerry, “I have
never
discussed your financial situation with anyone!”

It was Sara's turn to bang her fist on the counter. “You think it's beneath my dignity to listen at office doors when our future is at stake, Renato Montisi?”

“
Our
future? For God's sake, Sara, we don't
have
a future!” Ren exploded. “We've never had one—before, during, or after I met your sister. And as sorry as I am that Sandra died at such a young age—and in such a terrible way—neither of you, nor your parents, ever seemed to grasp what was important to anyone but yourselves!”

Sara was shaking with fury. “Well, I can see, now, that the only thing really important to you is this ranch... and that you'll do virtually anything to keep it afloat! Even latch on to Ms. Moneybags Hannigan, here, whom you've known about ten minutes! And you think
I'm
crazy?
You're
crazy—like a fox!”

Kerry's gaze swept the kitchen. Ren and Sara looked as if they were about to come to blows. Jeremy had collapsed on the couch and was massaging his stomach. José's face had a pinched expression, no doubt straining to better understand the heated English being shouted by his co-workers.

Oh, Lord, thought Kerry, was Ren Machiavellian enough to be waiting for his grandmother to die, meanwhile latching onto some potential ‘venture capital' to keep the business going? Was all the heat generated last night manufactured because of a couple hundred thousand dollars' worth of stock options?

Her brain felt as if it were about to explode. Then a voice in her head brought her up short.

Kerry! Don't be daft. Get the facts!

Kerry shook her head as if refusing to listen to the thoughts flying through her mind and made a beeline for the door, slamming it shut with tremendous force and sprinting up the hill to the safety of her little cottage. All the way along the path she blotted out the Claddagh's cautioning voice, wondering—even if Sara was a “borderline personality” and her accusations about Ren were false—how she, Kerry, could ever achieve any sort of serenity in her life with Ren's past with the Lang family permeating everything?

What
was
this?
Fatal Attraction—Part 2
?

Exhausted by her warring thoughts, Kerry shut the Dutch door with a bang and turned the lock, her eyes filling with tears. Had she been so vulnerable last week that she had blindly walked into a situation that was either Charlie Miller all over again—or something worse?

She lowered her gaze to her right hand. The ring's clear emerald stone stared back at her coldly. Maybe she should have just toughed it out in her cubicle at LifestyleXer. At least, in two years she'd have half a million bucks coming her way and not have to deal with lunatics like Sara Lang.

So, you're going to believe the one person on this ranch who wishes you ill?

“Oh, shut up, will you?” Kerry exclaimed, shocked to see that the ring was glowing as if it were a white rose in full bloom.

Renato Montisi loves this land and its bounty in the same way you do!

Kerry clapped her hands over her ears. If she couldn't stomach Life With Sara, or the cubicle on Howard Street, or the techie creeps in all of Silicon Land—she could just chuck it all!  She could simply hand over her blog's rights to Harry Chapman, go back to New York, and work at her parents' restaurant until she figured out the rest of her life.

But even if you did slink back to Manhattan, you'd never know how it might have turned out with you and Renato Montisi!

The Claddagh ring had suddenly begun to pulse like a mixed-up stoplight, alternating between an emerald gemstone and an opal. Obviously, her thoughts and the ring's were clashing and it was slowly driving her crazy.

“Will you please
stop!”
she begged aloud. “Leave me alone!”

Unbidden, a memory of Ren flashed in her head, outrageously handsome in his well-worn jeans and work shirt, leaning forward in the kitchen as she slid a lettuce leaf, dripping in the mustard dressing she'd made with the ranch's olive oil, between his lips and the intimate look of pure pleasure that had passed between them.

Remember those moments... remember what makes you happy...

“It's going to make me happy if my blogs keep driving traffic to LifestyleXer dot com and I earn half a million bucks!” she yelled into an empty cottage.

Oh, really?

Steeling herself, she sat down at her tiny kitchen table, the early afternoon sun flooding through the front windows. She knew what to do! She'd write about as many subjects as she could think of in order to bank pieces if she should decide, in fact, to throw in the towel at the ranch and move back to San Francisco to live in some hideous apartment that doubled as a dog house.

She might as well face it, she though morosely. She and the ring on her finger had painted themselves right into a corner.

***

Hunched over her laptop for the next hour, Kerry's back was aching. Before she shut down her computer, she made a quick check of the online metrics in the last twenty-four hours to confirm that her blog posts were still were gaining page views as they had been since the very beginning of CookChic. Then, as was her habit, she scanned the comments posted below her last several blogs, and reared back in her chair, staring in disbelief. A series of nasty remarks from visitors whose names were unfamiliar and did not include any of her usual fans formed a column of negativity the likes of which she'd never seen from the first day she began posting. Even while she was looking at the screen, four or five more popped in between a few of her stalwart supporters that had begun to reply in her defense.

“What the—?”

Every time she refreshed the page, a few more ugly comments winged in, all of them slamming either her writing or her opinions.

There could only be one answer to what was going on: Sara Lang.

That woman is a devil!

Kerry felt the ring grow warm on her finger.

That woman has a big hole in her heart that you didn't cause and you can't cure. Just do your job!

Her job? She
was
doing her job! She was writing the best material of her life and look what was happening!

Then she suddenly remembered: tonight's dinner for the visiting olive oil experts! She'd abandoned ship and it was just after four. Out her window, Tony's battered Jetta had just wheeled into the gravel parking lot and screeched to a halt.

Two hours to Show Time!

Whatever was going on in her personal life had to be put on hold. She couldn't let poor Jeremy down.

***

By some miracle, Jeremy, José, Tony, Ren, and Kerry produced an excellent dinner of roasted Petaluma organic chicken, marinated in this year's Montisi olive oil, garlic, fig-laced balsamic vinegar, and crushed, fresh rosemary. The poultry was plated on a bed of perfectly steamed root vegetables, fresh from the garden, along with Tony's
carpaccio
salad as a starter. Dessert consisted of tarts made with fruit from a neighboring orchard. Kerry had folded puff pastry over halved pears, along with caramelized sugar, in several of chef's large frying pans and baked them—pan, fruit, and all—in the oven.