The Lost Recipe for Happiness Read Online Free Page A

seemed to buzz.
    Damn it.
    Elena pulled away. “Thank you, Mr. Liswood. I’ll let you know as soon as I can.”
    “A pleasure meeting you, Ms. Alvarez.” His eyes twinkled. “I look forward to hearing from you.”
             
    The rain had slowed to a soft drizzle, and Elena fetched her dog Alvin from the neighbor who kept him while she worked. They headed for the seawall. If she didn’t walk, all the broken bits of her—the shattered hip, the pinned left leg, her spine—stopped working.
    So, every day, rain or shine, blizzards or gales, Elena headed out. Here in Vancouver, it was mainly to the seawall that looped around Stanley Park, always next to the water, a six-mile trek that kept her joints lubricated and head clear.
    What a morning! The article and the Blue Turtle and getting fired and Julian Liswood and the possibility of a kitchen of her own. It was so much to think about.
    And there at the center of it all was the fact that her home was gone. Again. Dmitri and the Blue Turtle. Her heart burned with sorrow and anger, like those flaming hearts on saints.
    Not that it was a surprise. It had taken three months, three months of breaking up and getting back together in wet and heated make-up sessions; and more recently, three weeks of late night phone calls—both his and hers.
    The usual. Civilized breakups probably happened, but not between a Russian man and a Latin woman.
    But she also felt the end was solid now. This time, they would not get back together.
    A slap of wind gusted over the water, and Elena winced against it. This was not how she had imagined her life would turn out, that she would be nearly forty and still husbandless, childless, rootless. As a girl, curled up in the corner of the kitchen in the roadhouse where her grandmother had tended bar, Elena had read every fairy tale known to man. All the pretty American Disney ones, with princesses who had flowing blonde locks and long white gloves. Cinderella, notably, with her lost shoe and the determined prince who knew he would find her, who would not give up until he did. She had liked Snow White, with her black eyes and black hair, and it seemed her world of seven dwarves was a comforting depth of family. There was Sleeping Beauty, locked away in her briar, and enchanted cats who turned into princes, and cursed orphans, and fairies who brought blessings spiderwebbed with curses.
    There was simply no doubt in her mind that she would one day find her own prince. He would kiss her, and Elena would Know, and they would Live Happily Ever After.
    Depressing that none of that had materialized. She loved her work, but honestly—how much longer could she do it? It was a challenging occupation for those with good health. Her pinned, patched body was not in that category.
    Alvin, sensing Elena’s mood, nudged her hand with a wet, cold nose. The king of empaths, Alvin was high-strung and utterly devoted to Elena. He couldn’t bear it if she was shouting or weeping or distressed in any way. “It’s all right, baby,” she told him, rubbing a hand on his silky red head.
    Now fate had delivered a chance. It rose through her like a harp note.
Executive chef.
    It would be a make-or-break opportunity. Visible. Public. There would be reviewers from high places, and some of them would still judge her more harshly because she was a woman, and American, and trained in Santa Fe. Her long education had taken her many places after that, San Francisco and Paris and London and New York, but that was what the bios all said, “a woman chef trained in Santa Fe.”
    Colorado was awfully close to New Mexico. Her family was there still, and she sometimes visited, but only for brief stints. Watching the seabirds whirl and spin in the air above the rocks, she saw a map in her head, with one star each on Aspen and Santa Fe, and a red dot showing Espanola in the northern New Mexico mountains.
    Alvin licked her hand, bumped her knee. “I’m okay, honey. Promise.”