Just One Taste Read online

  Wes ducked to the back of the bakery classroom, behind a couple of speed racks filled with trays of cookies iced with intricate white lace patterns, and flipped open his phone.

  “Weston! My boy!”

  Wes closed his eyes. “Hi, Pops.”

  “Why are you whispering? What did I tell you, Weston—never whisper, it makes you look guilty. Project total confidence and no one will question you!”

  “I’m in class right now,” Wes informed him. “And talking on my cell won’t get my brioche to rise, so make it snappy.”

  Pops clicked his tongue. “So touchy. And so eager to get the old man off the phone. Anything going on that I should know about?”

  Wes cursed silently. His dad was still way too good at reading him. “Nothing big,” he said, hoping to give just enough to get Pops to quit poking around. “I was thinking about running a short con, but it’s not going to work out. So. Back to the straight and narrow for me.”

  “Oh?” Pops perked up right away. “And what manner of con would tempt my sweet, reformed son to take up his old father’s wicked ways once more?”

  Wes screwed up his face. He should’ve known better than to give his dad an opening.

  “Nothing, Pops. It was just to get my grades up in this one class, but it’s over now.”

  “Tell me about the mark.”

  “Let it go, please.”

  “Oh, come on, boy. Indulge an old man’s pride in his son! It’s been years since we got to have a good chat about the game.”

  Despite everything, the guilt and regrets, the knowledge that he was working on living a better way—sometimes, Wes admitted to himself, he actually missed living on the road with Pops. Figuring it couldn’t do any harm, since the con was off now, anyway, he said, “Well, there’s this new professor, right. In Food Chem, the class I’m sort of flunking? And she’s …”

  He shook his head, stymied for a moment on how best to describe the most fascinating woman he’d ever met.

  “A looker, is she?” Pops asked. “I bet she’s a blonde. Tell me she’s a blonde, Weston.”

  Wes couldn’t help it. He grinned. “She is. And at first I thought she was all vague and dreamy, in that not-all-there kind of way brainy people are sometimes …”

  “Good quality in a mark,” Pops observed.

  “Right, only she’s really not. She’s sharp as hell when she’s paying attention.”

  The way her mind worked boggled him. On the surface, she seemed distant and clinical, but beneath that nerdy exterior, Wes sensed … well, a nerd. But a nerd who made his heart jump into high gear whenever she was around.

  “Hmm. Is that why you stopped the con?”

  Wes rubbed a scrap of dough between his thumb and forefinger, the springy, elastic texture of it odd against his skin. “No. Not really. I just … I guess I remembered why I quit doing that stuff.”

  Pops sighed, but didn’t launch into one of his diatribes against Mrs. N. and the folks at Heartway House for corrupting Wes with their law-abidingness, so Wes had to be grateful for that. All Pops said was, “So what’s the blonde brain’s name?”

  “Dr. Rosemary Wilkins.”

  There was a long pause during which Wes actually heard his father’s breath quicken slightly. “And which class was it?” he asked, all studiedly casual.

  “Food Chemistry,” Wes said slowly. “Why?”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, boy! Do you know who that is?”

  Wes’s stomach clenched at the excitement in his father’s voice. “No.”

  “You remember the last con we ever ran together?”

  How could he forget? They’d been in Reno. Wes had been playing a child math prodigy while Thomas Murphy was the bumbling dad who’d been conned by a talent scout into giving up their life savings. There’d been several layers of complications to it, all geared toward getting the chosen mark to part with cash, first to help the beleaguered pair, then to front money for the math prodigy kid to count cards at a casino.

  It was the con that landed Wes in Heartway House, and he’d been damned lucky not to be shuffled off to juvie. “Yeah. So?”

  “Remember the book that gave me the idea? Remember who wrote it?”

  “No.”

  “A Dr. Helen Wilkins. Married to another hotshot scientist, and they had a kid named Rosemary who was supposedly the inspiration for the book. It’s got to be the same family. And if they are, Weston—you’ve landed in the honeypot, my boy, because they are loaded!”

  Every alarm bell in Wes’s head started clanging simultaneously. “Whoa, slow down there, Pops. There’s no guarantee it’s the same Wilkins family. I’ve never seen Rosemary wear anything flashy; I think she even lives in campus housing. So just cool your jets.”

  There was that insanely expensive antique desk in her office … but maybe Wes would just keep that little tidbit to himself.

  “The worst of it is, she’s wasted on you,” Pops nearly wailed. “A prime pigeon like that, just waiting to be plucked, and you won’t touch her.”

  Wes bit his tongue and carefully didn’t disagree with his father on that last bit. “Yep, it’s too bad, Pops. But she’s probably not related to the book woman, anyway.”

  “Well, what are you planning to do with your ex-mark?” Pops asked. “Cut her loose completely?”

  “Oh, shit.” Chef Wolensky was approaching Wes’s empty station with a frown. “I’ve gotta go. I’ll talk to you soon. Stay safe.”

  Wes flipped the phone closed without waiting for a response and strode back to his station with purpose, as if he’d had a perfectly legitimate reason for lurking around by the sinks for ten minutes.

  He didn’t want to examine too closely exactly what his endgame was with Dr. Rosemary Wilkins. The idea of wanting something real was like a new cut from a clean, sharp knife—it seemed okay on the surface of it, but give it a good poke and he was ready to whimper for mercy.

  Chapter 6

  Wondering if he could get Rosemary to show some of the same softness she’d betrayed that first day in her office, Wes smuggled Lucille across the quad and into the lab for their daily research session. But his lovely lab-coated quarry was nowhere to be seen.

  “Where could she be?” Wes asked a clearly uninterested Lucille. He peered around the small, barren lab. Nope, not hiding under a micrometer or something. Lucille jigged up and down in an obvious bid for the walk she’d been promised.

  He sighed. “Okay, this is a bust.”

  Maybe they’d find her in her office. They took off, skirting around the green and keeping a sharp eye out for marauding security officers. And sure enough, as Wes chivied his recalcitrant fuzzball up the creaky stairs to Dr. Wilkins’s new digs, he heard her voice, staccato and precise, if muffled, from down the hall.

  Yahtzee, he thought with satisfaction. The doctor is in.

  Old habit had him pausing at her door, just to check if he could hear anything incriminating through the narrow space.

  She seemed to be alone in her office, from what he could tell. On a phone call. He could only hear the murmur of her voice, then a pause, then Rosemary again. But what was she saying?

  Even while knowing down to the tips of his toes that it was dumb, not to mention an invasion of her privacy, Wes leaned closer and closer until his body was pressed against the doorjamb. His ear was as close to the opening as he could get it without actually humping the door.

  And just as Rosemary said, “No, Mother, for the last time. The Journal of American Science declined my article. I’m not going to call and harangue them about it,” Lucille leaped into action.

  Apparently excited by the suddenly raised and familiar voice, she danced a quick circle in place. Then, finding that not enough to relieve her feelings, she darted a circle around Wes.

  Who was still holding the leash.

  Tangled inextricably, Wes was in no shape to react smoothly when Lucille then decided that a circle in the hall was as nothing compared to the joy of turning a circle
actually in the office with the familiar voice, and jerked on her end of the leash with all the force of her small, wriggly body.

  Off-kilter, legs bound together at the knee, Wes tottered against the door, which swung wide and dumped him on his ass in front of a shocked Rosemary.

  Lucille yipped, mightily pleased with herself.

  Rosemary stared in silence for a long moment before saying into her phone, “I’m going to have to call you back.”

  Wes offered a sheepish smile and a shrug as she slipped the cell into the pocket of her cargo pants. “Well. Fancy seeing you here.”

  She blinked. “This is my office. I work here.”

  “I know. It was a joke to cover the awkwardness. But it didn’t fly, and I had to explain it, which produced even more awkwardness. I’m not doing so hot here, am I?”

  “Maybe you’d do better if you got up off the floor,” she suggested.

  Struggling with a frantically leaping mixed-breed dog who definitely had a buttload of stubborn, excitable terrier in her makeup, Wes wrestled his way to his knees and said, “I’m trying. Scout’s honor. Could you just …”

  She breathed out something that sounded weirdly like “Oh, for Buffy’s sake,” and bent to unclip Lucille’s leash from her collar.

  Wes clambered to his feet with another sheepish grin. “Thanks. I’m starting to feel like a perpetual damsel in distress around you, Doc.”

  Rosemary gave him a narrow look. “I can only infer that you enjoy it, given how frequently you appear in my presence.”

  “What can I say? I’m a glutton for punishment. Plus, I like how my insides go all squishy when you swoop in on your white horse and make all the bad stuff go away.”

  “The association of a white horse with heroics is a throwback to medieval paintings of Saint George fighting the dragon. He’s usually depicted on an ivory stallion, which isn’t terribly common, unless it’s a Lipizzaner.”

  The way her mind darted around the conversation like a hummingbird gave Wes a dizzy, drunken feeling that he thoroughly enjoyed. “Oh yeah? Lipiwhatsits are white?”

  “Lipizzaners, and frequently.” She blinked as if suddenly becoming aware that they’d gotten off track. “Did we have an appointment?”

  “It’s about that time.” Wes tapped his nonexistent watch before shoving his hands in his pockets. He was wearing black jeans under his chef jacket today, not quite a uniform violation that would get him in trouble with Cornell, but not exactly the letter of the law, either. He liked skating on that edge.

  “The aphrodisiac project.” She groaned and slapped her palm against her forehead. Wes didn’t think anyone actually did that.

  “Bad day?” Wes gave her his most sympathetic face. She jerked upright and squinted at him suspiciously. “The door was open! And sound carries in these old buildings. Couldn’t help but overhear.”

  “Hmph. Well. At any rate, yes. I’m sure someone will be interested in my study on the quantum mechanics of protein chain linking in the digestive tract, but apparently, the Journal of Science is not.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “It’s inconsequential.” She waved it away, but the unhappy set of her mouth didn’t change. “What I need to focus on now is the question of how to help a room full of bored, disinterested culinary students gain a closer understanding of food chemistry.”

  “In other words, your lesson plan.”

  “Isn’t that what I said? You’re very repetitive. And what is that dog doing?”

  Lucille was busily investigating the dusty corners of the office, no doubt finding many intriguing smells along the way.

  “Don’t mind her, she’s conducting her own form of research.”

  Rosemary smiled, and it warmed something in Wes. He rested a hand on her gorgeous desk.

  “Can I make a suggestion?” he asked. “I don’t want to give you unsolicited advice, but—”

  “Just spill it, Mr. Murphy. What is it you want to say?”

  “Well, about your paper—and your class lecture—why don’t you try to make it a little more …” Interesting. Lively. Fun. He searched for the right word. “User-friendly. Maybe you need to spice the whole thing up, give it some flavor and zest. Sex sells, right? Even to the Journal of Science.”

  She looked disgusted. “You sound like my mother. ‘You have to give the editors what they want, Rosemary! Publish or perish, Rosemary!’ Ugh.”

  “Oh, come on. The Journal of Science guys might be big-brained nerds like … ahem. I mean, they might be scientists, but they’re guys, too. Right? Tart up that article, and I’ll bet you a million bucks they take it. It’s just like our class. I bet the students would soak everything in even better if you made it more interactive.”

  Rosemary opened her mouth, probably to deliver another scathing indictment of Wes’s bonehead ideas, but then she paused. “I wonder,” she mused, stroking her fingers across her lips in a thoughtful way. “I hadn’t considered taking the kinesthetic approach, but perhaps you’re right. Even if modern teaching methodologies have been shown to overemphasize the hands-on style of instruction—still, that could be very useful.”

  “If nothing else, it would take up a bunch of class time,” Wes pointed out.

  Her eyes glittered happily, setting off a rapid tattoo in Wes’s rib cage. “So it would. Thank you, Mr. Murphy. I’ll have to try that methodology.”

  They didn’t manage to work on their aphrodisiac research that afternoon, but Wes left her office feeling as if he’d made a huge breakthrough.

  Rosemary never failed to astonish herself. One of the greatest minds of her generation, the youngest woman ever to graduate from Yale with highest honors, future winner of the Nobel Prize—and yet, here she was, holding a beaker and facing down a classroom full of wannabe chefs.

  “This hard-boiled egg has been soaking in a solution of white distilled vinegar for the last seventy-two hours. What do you think will happen when we take it out of the beaker?”

  Blank looks all around, except for the grin creasing Wes Murphy’s handsome face. Unreasonably irritated, Rosemary thrust the beaker at him. “You. Murphy. What will the egg be like?”

  “Um. Slimy?”

  “Let’s find out. Come up here.”

  Wiping his hands on his thighs, Wes stood and sauntered to the front of the classroom, where he stood facing her. Motionless.

  Rosemary shook the beaker, careful not to spill. “Well? Go ahead.”

  “Do I need gloves or anything?”

  “It’s only vinegar. Your fingers will be fine.”

  He looked doubtful, but all he said was, “Good. These fingers are my fortune, Doc.” Waggling them, he flashed a grin at the audience of students and stuck his hand in the beaker.

  He pulled the egg out and rinsed it at the faucet in the corner, at Rosemary’s direction.

  “Oh, sick,” he said, feeling the once-hard shell sloughing away under the cold running water. “I was definitely right about the slimy.”

  “Now drop it,” Rosemary said.

  He slanted her an incredulous look. “Doc, I know you said it’s hard-boiled, but it’s still gonna make a mess.”

  “I’m not interested in your hypotheses, Mr. Murphy. Kindly do as I say.”

  Shrugging, he tossed the egg into the air with an unnecessarily theatrical flourish, saying, “You’re the boss.”

  The egg arced up above their heads and then began its downward trajectory. Wes moved back a pace as if to save his black leather chef clogs from the indignity of being splattered with hard-boiled yolk, but when the egg hit the floor—it bounced.

  Everyone gasped. Rosemary calmly swept out a hand and caught the white orb in her palm.

  “Anyone know why that happened?”

  “The vinegar, obviously,” Wes said, his face alight with curiosity. He reached for the egg again, and Rosemary let him take it, telling herself it was for the good of the demonstration, not because she liked the slide of his fingers against hers.


  “Yes,” she confirmed. “The acid in the vinegar attacks the calcium in the eggshell, dissolving it slowly. Just as slowly, the vinegar penetrates the denser proteins of the egg white, turning them rubbery.”

  “What would happen if you soaked other stuff in vinegar?” Wes wanted to know. “Man. Bones have a lot of calcium. I bet you could make a chicken drumstick look like it came from a rubber chicken.”

  “Correct. This is a good demonstration of the importance of vinegar in the kitchen. Edible acids like vinegar, citrus juices, and so on, are extremely useful in terms of breaking other foods down, or they can be used to preserve other foods, as in canning and pickling. In ceviche dishes, acid is used, usually with finfish but sometimes with shellfish …” She studiously avoided looking at Wes, but felt her cheeks get hot anyway. “That is, to cook the fish. Without heat. Although really, it’s more of a quick pickle. Any questions?”

  Several hands shot into the air. Flushed with success, Rosemary was about to call on the first young woman when she felt a brush against her hand. Wes clasped her wrist and rotated her hand so that her palm was up. It immediately itched, sensitive to every current of air that moved across it.

  Wes dropped the egg onto her palm and closed her fingers over it lightly. “Thanks for the fun,” he said, low, with a swift, secret smile no one else saw. “You really know how to show a guy a good time.”

  Then he was strolling back to his seat, leaving Rosemary to somehow regulate her heart rate and get through the rest of the class.

  Which went surprisingly well, once she remembered how to breathe without smelling his rich, complicated scent of salt and smoke. The other students were abuzz with questions and ideas, ways to relate the demonstration back to their reading, and Rosemary found herself actually enjoying keeping up with them.

  The whole time, though, she was acutely conscious of Wes in the front row, the white cuffs of his chef jacket rolled up to reveal sinewy, tanned forearms dusted with black hair. He crossed those arms on the table in front of him and rested his chin on his wrists, a smile warming his eyes to tawny gold, and he didn’t say another word for the rest of the period.