“Shit!” Del hissed and quickly ground some sea salt on top of the delicate pieces of fish
He slammed down the salt grinder and looked around the kitchen to locate the noise. He managed to find his cell phone under a stack of papers on the counter and grimaced when he had to swipe twice to get the thing to work. Tuna fingers, ugh.
“What?” he barked into the phone, propping it between his shoulder and ear as he moved to the sink to wash his hands.
“Calm down, Delly, geez!”
Del grimaced. “Sorry, sis, you caught me mid-cooking.”
“Apology accepted. Now sit your ass down, I have some interesting news.” Bernice sounded almost gleeful, which immediately perked Del’s interest.
He dried his hands quickly and took the closest seat—an old dining chair by the island. “Oh?”
“Guess who called me tonight?” Before he could answer, she cackled and said, “One Clyde Harding.”
Del’s jaw dropped. What the fuck did his treacherous asshat of an ex-husband want from his sister?
“What the fuck, Bernie? What—”
“Oh, it gets gooood, brother mine,” she almost-purred. “He wanted to ask if I could sell him the recipe for the Stew.”
Mind blown. That’s what Bernie’s daughter Abigail would’ve said. That one gif she’d sent him with the guy and the explosions flashed through Del’s brain.
“He what?”
“The call started all nice and cordial, which already was weird as fuck. I mean that fucker knows exactly what I think of him and—you know what, that’s not important here.” She took in a deep breath, and Del smiled a little. Bernie had always had their mom’s Irish temper and it had taken her forty years to figure out how to de-escalate her own temper. Boy was Del happy about it now.
“Okay, he calls to kiss ass and then…?” he prompted, pulling her back on track.
“Then he leads the conversation, such as it was, to the restaurant and how diners were displeased about not having the Stew anymore and maybe there was a way for him to get the recipe and how he’d be happy to pay big money for it.”
The longer she spoke, the tighter Del’s fingers had wrapped around the edge of the island. He consciously unclenched them and shook the hand to get his circulation going again.
“What did you tell him?”
“That the Stew wasn’t actually my recipe, or even our grandma’s like he thinks it is. I told him the truth; that it was a family recipe, but my brilliant chef brother tinkered with it for a decade to make it what it is today, and that he could go fuck himself with a hot pitchfork.”
Del wiped his eyes, not even surprised when his hand became wet from his tears.
Anything to do with his ex-husband, Clyde, made him pissed off and suspicious in equal measure these days. It had been a year since the divorce was finalized and he was finally free of the bastard, but he still expected a knife in his back whenever Clyde was mentioned. For a good reason, of course, but the fact that his brain had gone there even for a second when it came to Bernie…
“Hey, I know,” she whispered down the line.
Del chuckled wetly. It was true that nobody knew the recipe but him. The Stew was his, despite the meager start as a family favorite when their maternal grandmother had come over from Ireland as a young wife.
He still hated that his mind was now suspicious enough to think that somehow his sister would betray him. It wasn’t going to happen, ever, even if she’d known the recipe.
“He got a bit pissed off, you know?” And there was that gleeful tone again.
“Oh?” Del reached over to grab a piece of kitchen towel from the roll on the other side of the island.
“Yeah, but he couldn’t really get any real momentum going before I hung up on him. But I think it’s safe to say they haven’t been able to come close to your recipe and the restaurant is starting to fail.”
Part of Del loved that news, not that it was news to him, really. He still had people in there who kept him posted, even after a year and a half from his departure. But the restaurant Clyde had bought for him as an engagement present a decade ago had still been Del’s baby.
As the head chef of Trim—named after the town in Ireland where his grandma had been born—he’d been able to mold it into whatever he’d wanted. He’d ended up with a very successful Irish-French fusion with guest chefs who had brought their own flavors into play.