Lessons Learned

heart. “I don’t seem to have anything listed here.”
    “It came up at the last minute. I called your hotel at nine, but you’d already checked out.”
    “I see.” Should she have expected Elise to phone the television studio and leave a message? Juliet looked into the personality-plus smile. No, she supposed not. Resigned, she checked her watch. The setup could be dealt with in time if she started immediately. Carlo would just have to be paged. “How do I call mall management?”
    “Oh, you can call from my office. Can I do anything?”
    Juliet thought of and rejected several things, none of which were kind. “I’d like some coffee, two sugars.”
    She rolled up her sleeves and went to work.
    By eleven, Juliet had the range, the island and the ingredients Carlo had specified neatly arranged. It had taken only one call,and some finesse, to acquire two vivid flower arrangements from a shop in the mall.
    She was on her third coffee and considering a fourth when Carlo wandered over. “Thank God.” She drained the last from the styrofoam cup. “I thought I was going to have to send out a search party.”
    “Search party?” Idly he began looking around the kitchen set. “I came when I heard the page.”
    “You’ve been paged five times in the last hour.”
    “Yes?” He smiled as he looked back at her. Her hair was beginning to stray out of her neat bun. He might have stepped off the cover of Gentlemen’s Quarterly. “I only just heard. But then, I spent some time in the most fantastic record store. Such speakers. Quadraphonic.”
    “That’s nice.” Juliet dragged a hand through her already frazzled hair.
    “There’s a problem?”
    “Her name’s Elise. I’ve come very close to murdering her half a dozen times. If she smiles at me again, I just might.” Juliet gestured with her hand to brush it off. This was no time for fantasies, no matter how satisfying. “It seems things were a bit disorganized here.”
    “But you’ve seen to that.” He bent over to examine the range as a driver might a car before Le Mans. “Excellent.”
    “You can be glad you’ve got electricity rather than your imagination,” she muttered. “You have an interview at eleven-thirty with a food editor, Marjorie Ballister, from the Sun. ”
    He only moved his shoulders and examined the blender. “All right.”
    “If I’d known it was coming up, I’d have bought a paper so we could have seen her column and gauged her style. As it is—”
    “ Non importante. You worry too much, Juliet.”
    She could have kissed him. Strictly in gratitude, but she could have kissed him. Considering that unwise, she smiled instead. “I appreciate your attitude, Carlo. After the last hour of dealing with the inept, the insane and the unbearable, it’s a relief to have someone take things in stride.”
    “Franconi always takes things in stride.” Juliet started to sink into a chair for a five-minute break.
    “ Dio! What joke is this?” She was standing again and looking down at the little can he held in his hand. “Who would sabotage my pasta?”
    “Sabotage?” Had he found a bomb in the can? “What are you talking about?”
    “This!” He shook the can at her. “What do you call this?”
    “It’s basil,” she began, a bit unsteady when she lifted her gaze and caught the dark, furious look in his eyes. “It’s on your list.”
    “Basil!” He went off in a stream of Italian. “You dare call this basil?”
    Soothe, Juliet reminded herself. It was part of the job. “Carlo, it says basil right on the can.”
    “On the can.” He said something short and rude as he dropped it into her hand. “Where in your clever notes does it say Franconi uses basil from a can?”
    “It just says basil,” she said between clenched teeth. “B-a-s-i-l.”
    “Fresh. On your famous list you’ll see fresh. Accidenti! Onlya philistine uses basil from a can for pasta con pesto. Do I look like a philistine?”
    She wouldn’t tell him what he looked like. Later, she might privately admit that temper was spectacular on him. Dark and unreasonable, but spectacular. “Carlo, I realize things aren’t quite as perfect here as both of us would like, but—”
    “I don’t need perfect,” he tossed at her. “I can cook in a sewer if I have to, but not without the proper ingredients.”
    She swallowed—though it went down hard—pride, temper and opinion. She only had fifteen minutes left until the interview. “I’m sorry, Carlo. If