CHAPTER 7

Natalie hung up and preheated her oven.

She had a date, all right.

A date with her stove.

Ever since she was a little girl, Natalie loved to cook. People always guessed that about her, but they were just judging by her weight that she could throw down in the kitchen. But Natalie had a gift, something special. It went beyond frying a chicken or making Southern-style gravy. Natalie actually knew the difference between chicken soup and bouillabaisse. She knew the difference between liver and onions and a good foie gras. She loved the taste of toasted brioche with gravlax on the side. Sure, she could just say she liked buttery bread with thin pieces of salmon on it, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that she loved to cook. Loved it to the point where Food Network was her daily fix, and most weekends she went to Barnes and Noble to get new cookbooks.

But now what used to be a hobby, something Natalie did just for fun, was slowly turning into her passion. Cooking was something she felt compelled to do, something she needed to do. She had binders upon binders of original recipes that she’d worked on for years. Now her hand itched when she wasn’t making some kind of culinary delight.

How did I ever get so caught up in doing hair that it became my job, my career?

She had never plotted her way to hairdressing. But that, too, she had a knack for. She was good at it; she made good money and, most importantly, she was comfortable. She could do a haircut blindfolded, could do a weave in her sleep. But when she thought about cooking, that’s when her palms began to sweat and her chest pounded with excitement. That was her true love.

Natalie knew she couldn’t keep this up. Cooking was her love, yes, but it was also affecting her job. She wasn’t as focused as she used to be, didn’t have the same drive. She knew she was going to have to put cooking where it belonged. On the back burner.