Worth the Risk

sixty top chefs who donate their time to the Chef’s Advisory Board and work with the children through the Chefs in Schools™ program. Classes have also expanded to include after-school and summer camps.
    “I never thought that one hour a month would have such an effect on children, but after one year I could see a change in how they spoke about food,” says Randy Evans, an area chef. “It wasn’t just something that came from a box, but it was produce that came from the earth and needed respect.”
    At least eighty-five percent of the children in five original Recipe for Success participating schools are part of the federal free or reduced lunch program and often their only meals come from school. Now the program is available in a broader range of communities, but Gracie remains particularly focused on lower income neighborhoods.
    For the first year, Gracie taught all the classes, but now most of her time is spent behind the scenes. She is hard at work fine-tuning and designing a new curriculum, developing a related television show, writing her cookbooks and expanding Recipe for Success to more schools and community centers across the country. She’s also finalizing details to build a 100-acre urban farm overlooking Houston’s skyline. In 2010, she had more than 120 schools and districts on her waiting list to bring the program to them, too, and she and her board launched a national push to put Recipe for Success’s Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education™ in every community in America.
    Busy, yes, but children will still find Gracie rolling up her sleeves and digging in the dirt with them. Her philosophy—if people cared as much about food and cooking as she does, they would treat it with care and moderation—drives her to be hands-on, too.
    She thinks back to a little boy who refused to participate in the program at first, a boy who turned up his nose at anything green. Every day his mother would show up at school with his lunch in a fast food bag. But on the last day of the program, as he gleefully cut, stirred and diced vegetables with his friends, he waved his mother and the takeout lunch away.
    “He wouldn’t even touch it,” says Gracie. “This is a huge gulf that we crossed.” She admits that she has so many other success stories she doesn’t know where to begin. “What we teach is a lesson they’ll have for life.”

MERYL SAWYER
Worth the Risk

MERYL SAWYER is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of twenty-five romantic-suspense novels, one historical novel and one anthology. Meryl has won an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award for Contemporary Romantic Suspense as well as an RT Book Reviews award for Best New Contemporary Author. Meryl lives in Newport Beach, California, with her three golden retrievers. She loves to hear from readers and may be contacted at her Web site at www.merylsawyer.com.

Chapter 1
    Lexi Morrison swept through the doors of Stovall Middle School along with a gust of spring wind. She waved at the secretary as she sailed down the hall to the cafeteria to volunteer in her sister’s class. She hated being late, but it couldn’t be helped. Professor Thompson had kept her behind to compliment her work. It would have been unspeakably rude not to listen, especially since she was counting on him to give her a reference once she’d completed her MBA.
    “Lexi, there you are,” called Mrs. Geffen as Lexi shouldered her way through the double doors into the cafeteria.
    “Sorry I’m late,” she whispered to the teacher. The second the words left her lips, Lexi realized the room was silent, which was unusual when over thirty teenagers were assembled in one place.
    Then Lexi saw why. At the front of the room was a tall man with dark hair and striking blue eyes. He wore a navy shirt with Black Jack’s emblazoned in red on the pocket. He must be the guest chef who was scheduled to demonstrate today.
    “Mr. Westcott was just telling us that he learned to cook in the CIA,” Mrs. Geffen told her in a voice everyone could hear.
    Lexi nodded and understood what he meant, but she couldn’t imagine the students would catch on. No doubt they assumed he’d been in the Central Intelligence Agency.
    She quickly glanced around the room to locate her younger sister, Amber. Volunteering once a week in Amber’s culinary arts class was the commitment Lexi had made to encourage Amber with her studies. This cooking class was an elective and the only subject that