It was during this time that Jill’s sister, Kelly, said she was taking a little time for herself and wanted to drive up to Virgin River to check things out.

“Either she’s way more concerned about me than she let on, or something else is going on—it’s like pulling teeth to get Kelly to take time away from the kitchen,” Jillian told Colin. “For at least the past ten years the only vacation of the year she’ll take is one week or so with me and our two best girlfriends, and we usually plan it for early fall.”

“Did you tell her you’re fine?” Colin asked.

“A hundred times. I want her to come, of course—I miss her. Finding time for each other with our demanding jobs has always been difficult—having her for a week will be heaven… As long as everything is okay.”

“I’m going to ask you something,” Colin said. “I want you to be completely honest with me. Would this be a good time for me to be scarce? Entertain myself so you and your sister can have some time alone?”

She almost jerked in surprise. “Are you kidding? I’m sure part of the reason she’s coming is to meet you! You don’t have to disappear.”

“Should I plan to sleep alone…?”

She laughed at him. “I think Kelly can handle the idea of us sharing a bed as long as we don’t embarrass her with the sounds of our wild lovemaking.” She ran her fingers over his lips. “We’ll find something to stuff in your mouth.”

“All right, consider this option—I’ve been meaning to make a road trip with my work. Lake Tahoe, Sedona, Albuquerque, Sante Fe…. I met a man while I was out painting in a pasture—a Native American guy who said his cousin is an artist with a gallery in Sedona and that Southwestern galleries were big on wildlife art. I looked at the cousin’s work online, emailed him, spoke to him on the phone and he recommended some other galleries as well as his own. I’ve been putting out feelers, but the bottom line is that I have to show original work. Since I have to take some representative work, I have to drive.” He noticed her eyes lit up. “It’s going to take me a week or so. I could meet your sister, spend a couple of days here while she’s visiting, then take off. You’ll have some privacy with her while I’m gone, but I wouldn’t be running out on you.”

“You’re going to do it, Colin? Get an opinion on your work?”

He nodded. “I’m curious, Jilly. But we could both be disappointed, you know. Could be I’m just a novice staying busy while my bones mend.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. But it really says something that you’re going to check it out anyway.”

“So you like that idea?”

“Spend a couple of days with us, two or maybe three, then head out on your road trip? I like that idea—but you have to promise to be in touch every day. I want to hear all about it. Everything, I want to know everything.”

He promised. “What’s Kelly like?” he asked.

“She’s very beautiful,” Jill said. “Maybe it’s for the best you’re only going to spend a couple of days with us—you might find yourself hopelessly in love with her.”

He couldn’t help it; his eyes got as big as hubcaps. “Whoa, Jilly! In my mind there isn’t anyone on earth more beautiful than you—inside and out.”

She smiled sweetly. “And this is why I let you hang around, Colin. Because you always say the most intelligent things.”

As Kelly made her way toward Virgin River she couldn’t help but wonder if her younger sister had found true love. Oh, she’d been told it was love with an expiration date, but would that really come to pass? If it was real, something would have to change. He would stay or she would give up her garden and go with him. Simple. If you found The One, you did what you had to do.

Fortunately for Kelly, she’d found The One. Unfortunately, he was not available to her. Professionally, they were close—he was a mentor and a good friend. They were in touch all the time and had many long discussions that always started with food and went from there. All Kelly could do was exactly what she was doing—perform as an exceptional sous-chef and try not to take these intense discussions too seriously or too personally. She tried not to let it show that he’d already swept her off her feet and she was consumed with him.

Luciano Brazzi, an Italian chef with his own restaurants and merchandising food products, was a wealthy man; a beautifully sexy man; a charismatic man who spoke to her inner chef and inner woman. He was eighteen years older than she, but it didn’t seem like there was an age difference at all and she knew in her heart that he would prove to be incredibly virile. “Italians, you understand, do not grow old there,” he once told her in a joking manner.

He romanced her with food and they often cooked together, either at her restaurant or in one of his kitchens. When they did, sometimes he would feed her, slipping a morsel past her lips. He loved to spoon tiny bites into her mouth; she fantasized about being free to let him kiss the taste from her lips. He shared his most secret recipes with her; she made some of her great-grandmother’s best for him. For chefs, this was almost as intimate as foreplay.

He praised her talent and promised to help her get her own kitchen, perhaps her own restaurant—something she’d lived for and worked toward for years. If anyone could make that happen, it was Luca; he was very influential and very rich.

She dreamed about what the sex would be like. They would surely come together like mating cyclones. She wanted him with all her heart. They seemed completely compatible.

But there was one glitch. He was married.

Now was a good time for Kelly to be away. It was to be a busy week in the Brazzi household. Luca’s children, who were either married or had been away at school, would all be at home and Luca would be completely unavailable. They wouldn’t even have a phone chat, much less a cooking session.

Kelly had heard all about Colin, but she’d kept Luca to herself. Kelly had never once mentioned his full name or the details of their professional friendship. Chances were good Jillian would have heard of him or even seen his name on the side of a deli container.

It wasn’t quite four in the afternoon when Kelly pulled up to the front of the Victorian. She parked and followed the drive around to the back where she thought she might find her sister—and she was right. She could see her prowling around a huge garden inside a five-foot cyclone fence with a large gate at each end. Kelly watched. Jillian would walk a few feet, crouch and examine a plant, pinch a bud or flower, stand to walk a few more feet, crouch again, and so on.

As she neared, Kelly saw that the garden flourished; some of the plants were growing tall, full and dark green. There were vines winding up parts of the fence and small trellises. Some plants were staked to hold them up, some had strong stalks, some were covered with porous cheesecloth, some were bushy. The rows were immaculate and the color rich.

“It actually looks like you know what you’re doing,” Kelly said.

Jillian jumped and whirled. “Kell!” Jillian ran down the row in her red rubber boots and cargo pants, out through the gate and threw herself on her sister, hugging her hard.

Kelly laughed and returned the hug. Then she held her sister away from her eyeing her gardening clothes. “Not exactly what I expected,” Kelly said, “but close. When was the last time you wore a bra or panty hose?”

“Panty hose—once. And a bra now and then. I have this sports thing on. It does the trick.”

Kelly just laughed. Then she turned full circle to take in the yard—things had certainly changed since she’d first seen it almost a year ago while out here on vacation with Jillian and their girlfriends. The house was beautifully groomed, for one thing—freshly painted and sparkling in the late-afternoon sun. There were two new aluminum storage sheds nestled between big trees and a road cut through the trees out back. Just then, she saw a young man on the road driving a golf cart toward them.

When he pulled up to Jillian and jumped out she said, “Denny, meet my sister, Kelly. Kelly, my assistant, Denny Cutler.”

Kelly put out her hand, but he just stared down at his. “Um,” he said, wiping it on his pant leg. “Sorry, I’m kinda dusty. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Kelly said with a laugh.

“Grab those flats off the bed, Denny,” Jillian said. “Jump in, Kell, and I’ll give you a tour. This is my garden-mobile.”

“This is quite the operation,” Kelly said as she climbed in beside her sister.

Jillian drove them through the trees to the back meadow. There were two freestanding greenhouses and just past them, someone had begun clearing another garden plot. “We put up these greenhouses a couple of months ago and are using lights and irrigation to start plants. We’ve been moving half of them into the outdoor garden and leaving half inside so we can monitor the difference in growth, gestation and quality. I have another shelter ready to put up when that plot is cleared, tilled and fertilized—but the new one is made of screen with retractable panels, and it’s very large. We might be trying it with smudge pots as the weather cools. Everything is experimental right now—but so far it’s working exactly as I’d hoped. We have some heartier early vegetables coming through and I’m cutting lettuce, pulling a few carrots and scallions, but the special heirloom starts are another month from appearing.”

Kelly gazed at her little sister in wonder. “Okay, I already know this, but tell me again how this all started.”

“I remembered being here last autumn with you and when I arrived here I just wanted to come over and see the back porch and garden, which was looking a little neglected. I was literally crying into the mud, crying over my losses in San Jose….”

“Kurt…?”

Jillian shook her head. “When you get down to it, it wasn’t about Kurt. I was upset over the demise of my career, my loss of innocence, missing my mentor—all the things I had put sixty to eighty hours a week into. I was so hurt and angry, and instinctively I started digging. Next thing I knew I was sitting at Jack’s bar having a glass of wine, talking about the stuff Nana used to grow and a guy at the bar asked me why I didn’t grow that stuff here. He said they grow pot year-round up here—using grow lights run on a generator. He said the special plant seeds I was talking about had to be available somewhere. I found them online, I ordered many varieties and I got moving.” She smiled. “I hired Denny so I could catch up with the planting season and I’m keeping him as long as I can.”

“And Colin?” she asked.

“Oh, I found him painting out back here. I was sitting up on the widow’s walk trying to figure out how to access this area through the thick trees when I noticed a guy had driven up here and was painting. He liked this meadow because it was large and there were no shadows from the trees. I clawed my way through to find out what he was doing here. And, little by little… Well, he’s the most wonderful man I’ve ever known.”

“When do I meet him?” Kelly asked.

“Now, if you’re ready. He’s here. Painting upstairs in the sunroom. Waiting for you to get here.”

Thirteen

Colin had never before met a woman who traveled with spices, condiments and recipes. He supposed it should come as no surprise that Kelly had stopped at the grocery store on her way into town to buy the food she wanted to prepare and eat—she was a chef, after all. Wherever she went, she cooked. But recipes in a locked box, the case of spices and another of condiments—this was interesting. And her cases were more like tool boxes with handles so she could carry them with her wherever she went. And then there were her knives—special knives that could slice your finger off if you didn’t know what you were doing. She always had a set of her own knives with her in case she’d be cooking, and if she was going to be eating, she’d probably be cooking.

After meeting Kelly and visiting for a while Colin had taken a place at the kitchen table with his laptop, watching and listening as the girls cavorted around the kitchen. Their choreography combined with chatter was interesting; they had a system for everything. Kelly was the leader in this venue: “Chop this tomato very small, no bigger than your baby fingernail. Mince the parsley and I mean mince. So this Denny helps around the garden? I don’t remember you telling me about him.”

“This size?” Jilly asked. “Sure you do—I told you all about him. Did I tell you I thought he asked me on a date?”

Colin’s ears perked up at that.

“That size is good. No way! A date?”

“I misunderstood—he was offering to take me to Jack’s for supper because he thought I wasn’t getting out enough. So I told him I had Colin.” She shot him a look with a smile. “Now he feels better about things. He didn’t really want to date me at all. Which is good because I wouldn’t have considered it under any circumstances, even if I didn’t have Colin. And I’d hate to fire him—he’s indispensable.”

“And awful young,” Kelly said.

“Awful,” Jilly agreed. “You still seeing that cook?”

“Chef, not cook. Preacher’s a cook, Luca is a chef. We’re really just friends. Friends with potential. We talk on the phone, text, email and sometimes cook together, but neither of us has much free time. Those pieces are getting too big, Jill.”

“Sorry. Maybe you should find a way to have more time. Is he well-known, your chef?”

“In culinary circles I suppose he is. That’s probably what attracted me in the first place. We talk food.”