Out to Lunch (37 page)

“Damn, girl, you make the best scrambled eggs on the planet.” Patrick is a lot of things, but disingenuous is not one of them. When he lets fly a compliment, which is infrequent, he makes eye contact and lets you know he means it very sincerely.

I let go of my annoyance. “I know. It’s the grated butter.” I can’t stay mad at Patrick for longer than eighteen point seven minutes. I’ve timed it.

“I know. Wish I had thought of it.”

“According to the
Feast
episode about breakfasts for lovers, you did,” I tease him. I’m not mad about this. It’s my job to help him develop recipes and invent or improve methods. And since I am petrified at the idea of being on camera or in the public eye in any way, shape, or form, he is most welcome to claim all my tricks as his own. Lord knows, he pays me very,
very
well for the privilege.

“Well, I know I
inspired
the idea.” He’s very confident of this, thinking that I came up with the technique to enhance his dining experience when he foists himself upon me in the middle of the night, which I also think he believes I secretly love.

He is enormously wrong on both counts.

I came up with it for Bruce Ellerton, the VP of show development for the Food TV Network and senior executive producer of our show. Bruce comes to Chicago periodically to check in on us since we are the only show that doesn’t tape in the Manhattan studios, and he and I have been enjoying a two– to three-day romp whenever he is here or I am there for the past four years. We are, as the kids say, friends with benefits, and I like to think we enjoy a very real friendship in addition to an excellent working relationship and very satisfying sex. We have enough in common to allow for some non-bedroom fun, and easy conversation. We also have a solid mutual knowledge that we would be terrible together as a real couple, which prevents either of us from trying to turn the relationship into more than it is. We stay strictly away from romantic gestures; no flowers or Valentine’s cards or overly personal gifts. If either of us begins dating someone seriously, we put our naked activities on hold.

Or, I’m sure we would, if either of us had time to actually date someone seriously.

Bruce’s favorite food is eggs, so I developed the recipe for him one evening when bed took precedence over dinner and by the time we came up for air, take-out places were shut down for the night. Patrick is blissfully unaware of the special nature of my relationship with Bruce, so I just let him think they are “his” eggs.

“You inspire all my best ideas. Or at least you pay for them. So was tonight business or pleasure?” I crunch into my apple.

“Biznuss,” he says around a mouthful of toast and egg. “The New York investors want to push the opening back a few months. Michael White is opening another place around the same time we were going to, and everything that guy touches is gold, so we don’t want to end up a footnote in the flood of press he will get. Mike is a fucking amazing chef, so I don’t want to invite any comparisons. Let him have a couple months of adulation, and then we’ll open.”

Patrick, to his credit, is a chef first and a television personality second. He keeps a very tight rein and close eye on all of his restaurants, develops all the menus in close consultation with his chefs de cuisine, who train the rest of their staff in his clean and impeccable style. For all his bluster, and as much as he has the vanity to enjoy the celebrity part of his life, the food does come first, not the brand. He is at the pass in each of his Chicago restaurants at least once a week, and checks in on his out-of-town places once a month or so. And he is secure enough to recognize when someone else is really magic in the kitchen and to not want to muddy the media waters. Having eaten at almost all of Michael’s restaurants over the years, I can’t blame Patrick for wanting to bump his own stuff to let the guy have his due. The words
culinary genius
come to mind immediately and without irony.

“So, late spring then?” I’m mentally adjusting my own schedule, since whatever Patrick does inevitably impacts my life not insignificantly.

He takes the last morsel of toast and wipes the plate clean, popping it in his mouth and rolling his eyes back in satisfaction. “Yup.”

“I’ll go through the calendar with you tomorrow and we can make the necessary changes.” Crap. I have eight thousand things to do tomorrow, or rather, today, and this was not one of them.

“Sounds good. You just tell me where to be and when and what to do when I get there!”

I wish. “How about you be at
your
house in ten minutes, and go to sleep . . .”

He laughs. That is not good. That means he is choosing to believe that I am joking so that he can stay longer. There is not going to be enough caffeine on the planet to suffer through tomorrow. Er, today.

“So guess what started today?” He smirks at me, pushing his empty plate aside and moving my computer in front of him.

“I can’t begin to imagine.”

“EDestiny Fall Freebie Week!”

Oh. No.

“Patrick . . .”

“Let’s see what fabulous specimens of human maleness the old Destinometer has scraped up for our princess, shall we?” He chuckles as his fingers fly over the keys, logging into the dating site with my e-mail and password, settling in to see what new profiles the magical soul-mate algorithm has dredged up for me. It should be the last thing I would ever let him do, or even tell him about, but my ill-fated brief stint as an online dater somehow became part of our business practice. And it is my own damn fault.

Dumpling nuzzles under Patrick’s chin, another betrayal, and I clear Patrick’s plate and flatware, and go to wash dishes, while my bosshole in the other room yells out that there’s a very nice-looking seventy-two-year-old bus driver from Hammond, Indiana, who might just be perfect for me.