Lessons Learned

well. She spent several hours a year doing just that while handling the management of the kitchen in the Philadelphia Cocharan House, satisfying her own select clients with a few trips a year if the price and the occasion were important enough, and, most important of all, learning to enjoy her marriage.
    Though she’d often cooked with Carlo, in the kitchen of a palace, in the less expensive area of the flat she still kept in Paris and dozens of other places, she never tired of watching him in action. While she was said to create with the intensity of a brain surgeon, Carlo had the flair of an artist. She’d always admired his expansiveness, his ease of manner, and especially his theatrics.
    When he’d put the finishing touches on the pasta dish he’d named, not immodestly, after himself, she applauded with the rest of the audience. But she’d hitched a ride to the studio withhim and Juliet for more reason than to feed an old friend’s ego. If Summer knew anyone in the world as well as she did herself, it was Carlo. She’d often thought, in many ways, they’d risen from the same dough.
    “ Bravo, Franconi.” As the crew began to serve his dish to the audience, Summer went up to give him a formal kiss on the cheek.
    “Yes.” He kissed her back. “I was magnificent.”
    “Where’s Juliet?”
    “On the phone.” Carlo rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “ Dio, that woman spends more time on the phone than a new bride spends in bed.”
    Summer checked her watch. She’d noted Carlo’s schedule herself. “I don’t imagine she’ll be long. I know you’re having a late breakfast at the hotel with reporters.”
    “You promised to make crêpes,” he reminded her, thinking unapologetically of his own pleasure.
    “So I did. In return, do you think you could find a small, quiet room for the two of us?”
    He grinned and wiggled his brows. “My love, when Franconi can’t oblige a lady with a quiet room, the world stops.”
    “My thoughts exactly.” She hooked her arm through his and let him lead her down a corridor and into what turned out to be a storage room with an overhead light. “You’ve never lacked class, caro. ”
    “So.” He made himself comfortable on a stack of boxes. “Since I know you don’t want my body, superb as it is, what’s on your mind?”
    “You, of course, chérie. ”
    “Of course.”
    “I love you, Carlo.”
    Her abrupt seriousness made him smile and take her hands. “And I you, always.”
    “You remember, not so long ago when you came through Philadelphia on tour for another book?”
    “You were wondering how to take the job redoing the American’s kitchen when you were attracted to him and determined not to be.”
    “In love with him and determined not to be,” she corrected. “You gave me some good advice here, and when I visited you in Rome. I want to return the favor.”
    “Advice?”
    “Grab the brass ring, Carlo, and hold on to it.”
    “Summer—”
    “Who knows you better?” she interrupted.
    He moved his shoulders. “No one.”
    “I saw you were in love with her the moment I stepped into the room, the moment you said her name. We understand each other too well to pretend.”
    He sat a moment, saying nothing. He’d been skirting around the word, and its consequences, very carefully for days. “Juliet is special,” he said slowly. “I’ve thought perhaps what I feel for her is different.”
    “Thought?”
    He let out a small sound and gave up. “Known. But the kind of love we’re speaking of leads to commitment, marriage, children.”
    Instinctively Summer touched a hand to her stomach. Carlowould understand that she still had small fears. She didn’t have to speak of them. “Yes. You told me once, when I asked you why you’d never married, that no woman had made your heart tremble. Do you remember what you told me you’d do if you met her?”
    “Run for a license and a priest.” Rising, he slipped his hands into the pockets of the slacks Juliet had selected for him. “Easy words before the heart trembles. I don’t want to lose her.” Once said, he sighed. “It’s never mattered before, but now it matters too much to make the wrong move. She’s elusive, Summer. There are times I hold her and feel part of her pull away. I understand her independence, her ambition, and even admire them.”
    “I have Blake, but I still have my independence and my ambition.”
    “Yes.” He smiled at her. “Do you know, she’s so like you.