Skinny Bitch in Love (23 page)

Hysterical laughter from every kid in the room.

Alexander was trying not to smile at me. I mouthed a “sorry” at him. Clearly, I wasn’t cut out for Cooking 101 with tweens.

“Are you Alexander’s girlfriend?” a kid asked, drawing out the word girlfriend and shaking his skinny hips. Fifteen pairs of eyes stared at me. Two girls made kissing noises.

“Chef Clementine is a very good friend of mine,” Alexander said, smiling at me.

Someone took a bite of his Healthful Eating Burrito, declared it “actually good,” and the kids shut up long enough to eat every bite.

Alexander insisted on buying me a drink for my time and trouble. Over margaritas at Fontana’s, he told me about his now
ex
-girlfriend, the one I’d met over the Dr. Who cupcakes, who’d turned out to be a jealous freak who he’d caught following him one night when he’d said he’d had to visit his sick grandmother. I told him about the four-star restaurants hiring me to design vegan menus for them, that I was baking all over town, which he knew because he’d ordered a slice of my German
chocolate cake the other day at Julia’s. We had so much to say to each other, got each other’s references, knew all the same people. I could sit here at this wobbly round table and talk to Alexander all day.

We were on our second margaritas when he leaned over so fast and kissed me, full on the lips.

Unexpected.

“I couldn’t help it, sorry,” he said. “I know you’re seeing someone.”

Someone I wanted to punch.

This kiss wasn’t quite the blah one like before. Maybe because I
was
seeing someone. Or maybe because there was something between Alexander and me, something . . . easy. When nothing about being with Zach was easy.

But I realized something while I was sitting there at the bar in Fontana’s, sipping a margarita across from Alexander, my perfect match. I had it bad for Zach Jeffries. He infuriated me. He was the antithesis of me. But he challenged me. Made me think. And he was so damned complicated. An ass one minute, but incredibly great the next.

And had I actually referred to him as my
boyfriend
—to him—without even realizing it?

I needed a plan. Something to show Zach Jeffries once and for all that I didn’t need his help, that I’d take over this town on my own. And as Alexander chatted up the bartender—who wanted to know the British version of his favorite curse words, and then wrote them all down on a napkin and taped it to the wall—a lightbulb blinked on.

It took me until midnight, but I emailed every major and minor newspaper, television station, radio station, and cooking website a one-page press announcement about Skinny Bitch. My background. Skinny Bitch Cooks. Skinny Bitch Bakes. Skinny Bitch Cooking Classes. Skinny Bitch at Your Service. Skinny Bitch Vegan Menus—and how hot restaurants had hired me to design vegan offerings for them. If I wanted to take over L.A., everyone had to know about Skinny Bitch—from me.

The next morning, I went to Chill to help Ty bake twelve hundred fancy cookies for a wedding reception being held there that night. As we mixed batters and took tray after tray from the ovens, I filled him in on Alexander. On Zach. On my press announcement—that so far had been completely ignored. Then again, I’d emailed it at one a.m. It wasn’t even nine in the morning yet.

“I know who Alexander Orr is,” Ty said. “British, tall, great ass, right?”

“Decent ass,” I said, dropping down on a chair for a break. “But he’s so . . .
sweet
.”

“Sweet is good, Clem. Like this blackberry granita I’m testing here tomorrow night.” He took a container out of the freezer and then handed me a tiny bowl of the semi-frozen slushy not–ice cream. Which was damned good.

“What am I supposed to do about Zach?” I asked.

“Exactly what you’re doing. Calling him on his crap when he needs it. Same thing he’s doing with you.”

“So you think I’m wrong to be pissed at him about what he did with Java Joe’s?”

“That’s who he is, Clem. He’s a fucking billionaire. Covering a few hundred bucks of your cookies that might not sell? It’s like the pennies some people throw out because they’re pennies. He thought he was doing you a favor because you lost Cali Bakes.”

“I know, but—”

“You’re teaching him how to be with you, Clem. And he’s teaching you how to be with him. You’re gonna bump heads sometimes. You’ll get pissed at him. He’ll get pissed at you. You’ll have amazing make-up sex.”

Ty went into the pantry to get more flour. I ate up the granita and thought about what he had said. And about that make-up sex.

My phone rang. Unfamiliar number.

“Clementine Cooper?” a woman asked.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“I’m Stephanie Stemmel, a reporter with the
Los Angeles Times
. I’d like to talk to you about your press announcement about Skinny Bitch. Can we arrange an interview—a photo shoot, too, of you cooking? Maybe we’ll shoot some video, also, for the online interactive feature. Sound good?”

Hell, yeah!

When we hung up—with plans made for the reporter to stop by my cooking class on Tuesday for the interview and photo shoot—Ty was staring at me.

“Who was that?” he asked.

“Skinny Bitch is going to be in the
L.A. Times
,” I said. “The
L.A. Times
. Interview. Pictures. A video interactive thing of me teaching my class.”

“Shove it in the hot billionaire’s face!”

“Oh, I will.” Said billionaire would be very happy for me, though. I had no doubt.

So maybe you were right
was the text from Zach after word spread about my press announcement.
No wonder I like you so much.

Damned straight. No Sugar Daddy was going to save my ass. Ever.

By the time Friday night rolled around, I texted Zach to say I was coming over, if he still wanted me to.

You know I do
was his response.

He had this way of making a smile spread inside me, even when I was pissed at him.

I put on skinny jeans and a cute yellow peasant shirt that showed off my tiny cupcake tattoo, dabbed my favorite perfume in my cleavage and behind my ears, then packed up a box of Zach’s favorite scones, and headed over to the beach.

It was another gorgeous night in California. Warm and breezy and the streets were mobbed with people out on a Friday night. By the time I got down to Ocean Avenue, I was dying to see Zach: his gorgeous face, his amazing body. I’d
missed him like crazy and it had only been two nights since I’d seen him.

“I want to kill you
and
I owe you,” I said when he opened the door, Charlie the beagle at his knee. “If you hadn’t been selling me up and down the street, I never would have gotten pissed enough at you to send out my press announcement.”

He took the bakery box, set it behind him on the console table, then pulled me into a hug.

I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Why do I think this is how it’s always going to be?”

“Maybe we’ll mellow out as we get to know each other better. But I have a feeling neither of us will make this easy on the other. Ever. I can take it. I think you’re worth it.”

He made that smile spread inside me again. “I think you’re worth it, too. And by the way, I do like favors—and appreciate them. Just don’t
buy
me favors.”

“Noted,” he said. “My father would call it cutting off your nose to spite your face. But you impress me once again, Clem. I’ve dated women who would have given me a long list of other vendors to call on their behalf.”

I was about to say something about his blowhard father, but then remembered a) I shouldn’t and b) his father had done okay by Jolie, after all. “I operate on my own behalf just fine. The
L.A. Times
is going to do a photo shoot of my cooking class on Tuesday night. That’s huge for Skinny Bitch.”

He handed me a glass of champagne and clinked it with his. Then we spent the next four hours in his bed, leaving only to get the scones and the rest of the champagne from
the kitchen. There was a surprise downpour, a hard rain hitting the windows while we explored every inch of each other. Zach ordered in Japanese and we ate while watching movies—
When Harry Met Sally,
which he’d somehow managed never to have seen before, and
Casablanca
—with Charlie lying next to me, his paw on my stomach.

On Saturday we flew up to Napa in his private plane—which I could get easily used to—and stayed in an amazing hotel with pre-warmed hand towels. We drank the best wine I’d ever had. We had the most amazing sex I’d ever had. We had an hour-long couples massage that was almost better than the amazing sex. We ate good food, talked and talked and talked. And Zach told me stories about his stepmothers that made me laugh my ass off—and be very grateful my parents
were
still married after thirty years.

And in between wine tastings and tours of the winery and all that hot sex, I got to know Zach Jeffries better and better. He was everything I thought he’d be and nothing like that at all. Everything about him was a contradiction.

We flew back Sunday morning because I had a day of baking ahead of me, menus to create, and a personal chef client who wanted me to introduce her to juicing, which seemed like a no-brainer, but hey, I’d take her two hundred bucks.

He drove me home and kissed me like he’d never see me again, which actually managed to freak me out for a second until I remembered that that was just how Zach kissed.

Chapter 16

Tuesday was not only the final cooking class—which Duncan might or might not show up for—and my interview with the
L.A. Times
reporter, but it was Sara’s twenty-sixth birthday. Sara said she wanted a makeover for finally being as old as we were and for hitting the twenty-pound mark on the Skinny Bitch plan, and yeah, because she was kind of bummed about Duncan. Ty and I were all over it.

We were also throwing her a party at our apartment after the cooking class. I needed a night of doing nothing but sitting on my ass and talking to people I liked. For the past couple of days, I’d been busting it on baking and coming up with menus for the restaurants. I had close to thirty original recipes that I’d worked on over the past three or four years, thanks to my father for telling me to keep my recipes handwritten on white paper, my scrawls and additions and deletions for me to clearly
see as I changed them. I’d spent the past couple of days shuffling the pages around, coming up with entrees and sides, adding new ingredients, deleting others. On Sunday night, after I taught a woman with a serious Texas drawl how to juice all her favorites, I’d come home and made a lasagna and then one of my favorite pastas: organic brown rice fettuccini with porcini mushrooms in a wine sauce. The fettuccini was perfection, but the lasagna was missing something. Monday, I’d worked on the lasagna all day, but it was still meh. I’d gone over the recipe with my dad on the phone, and he suggested adding a layer of avocado or pesto. Didn’t I say the man was brilliant?

Tonight, when everyone was gone, I’d get back to work on it. And tomorrow morning I’d work on my blackened pad thai for Asia Asia.

But right now, I had a birthday party to make happen. Ty and I had spent two hours in boutiques looking for the perfect outfit as a gift to Sara from me, while Ty’s sister Val, a famed hairstylist who specialized in curly hair, went at Sara with her scissors, Ty’s present. Apparently you were supposed to individually snip each curl in the center of the S to stop frizz. When we’d left, Sara had been in a swivel chair in front of Ty’s huge hall mirror for an hour, and only one side of her hair had been “carved.”