Chapter 1 - The Birthday Cake Ryan Needed Me to Finish
Natalie Pierce was balancing a three-layer bourbon-vanilla cake in one hand and a crutch under the other when the rubber tip slipped against the polished kitchen floor.
The cake hit the island hard.
Diane caught Natalie around the waist before she went with it.
“Easy.”
Natalie’s left leg, trapped in a white cast from ankle to knee, swung awkwardly beneath her cream dress.
Ryan came through the crowded kitchen from the backyard.
He looked at the damaged cake first.
Not his wife.
“Seriously?” he said. “I asked you to do one thing right.”
Natalie stared at him.
The birthday party outside their Franklin, Tennessee, home was for Ryan’s fortieth.
Sixty guests.
Neighbors.
Business contacts.
Several senior employees of Pierce Family Kitchens, the regional catering and prepared-food company Ryan’s parents had started nearly thirty years earlier.
Natalie had spent two days cooking for it despite the cast.
“She can barely stand,” Diane said.
Ryan shoved the cake tray farther across the island.
“Nobody asked her to perform surgery. It’s cake.”
He stepped through the French doors onto the patio.
Natalie heard him before she saw him.
“Don’t pity her,” Ryan told the nearest guests. “She loves making herself the victim.”
Conversations around the patio thinned.
Natalie stopped beside the doorway.
Six weeks earlier, she had broken her leg when she missed the final step leaving a restaurant after a client dinner.
An ordinary accident.
No conspiracy.
Just a fracture, surgery, a cast, and a husband who appeared to become more irritated with each week she needed help.
Diane came beside her.
Ryan’s mother was sixty-four, silver-haired, and normally so conflict-averse that she apologized when waiters brought her the wrong order.
Not tonight.
Diane crossed the patio and switched off the speaker.
The music vanished.
She returned carrying an old clothbound recipe notebook Natalie had seen in the Pierce kitchen for years.
Diane pressed it into Natalie’s hands.
“Enough.”
Ryan turned.
Diane looked directly at her son.
“Tell them why you really made her cook.”
Ryan’s expression tightened.
“Mom.”
“Tell her.”
Natalie looked down at the notebook.
She knew those pages.
Diane had started filling them when Pierce Family Kitchens was still a six-table lunch counter outside Nashville.
Natalie had added recipes after she married Ryan.
Ryan had always called the notebook sentimental clutter.
Now he seemed frightened of it.
He moved toward Diane.
“Give me that.”
Diane pulled it back and opened the cover.
A photograph slipped free and landed face down on the patio table.
Ryan stopped.
Diane picked it up.
“Mom. Give me that. Now.”
Natalie had never heard him use that tone with her.
Diane turned the photograph toward herself.
Her mouth tightened.
Then she held it toward Natalie.
“This is what he never wanted you to see.”
Ryan moved quickly.
Natalie caught the photograph first.
It showed Ryan standing inside a commercial test kitchen in Atlanta.
Beside him was Lauren Bell, senior vice president of acquisitions for Hearthstone Foods.
Natalie knew Lauren.
Eight months earlier, Hearthstone had offered to buy Pierce Family Kitchens.
Natalie had rejected the deal.
She owned thirty-four percent of the company.
Her signature was required for any sale of substantially all operating assets.
Ryan had told her negotiations ended.
The photograph was dated three weeks ago.
While Natalie was in a cast.
In front of Ryan and Lauren sat six plated dishes.
Natalie recognized every one.
She had developed them herself.
Ryan reached for the photograph.
Natalie moved it away.
“Why were you doing a tasting with Hearthstone?”
Ryan glanced toward the guests.
“Not here.”
Diane answered for him.
“Because this wasn’t really a birthday party.”
Natalie looked at her.
Diane’s voice dropped.
“Three of the people outside are here to decide whether Ryan can deliver what he promised them.”
Natalie looked through the patio doors at the guests.
Suddenly the party made sense.
Ryan had not needed a perfect cake because he cared about turning forty.
May you like
He needed Natalie cooking, smiling, and serving Pierce Family food in front of potential buyers.
And whatever he had promised them apparently required his injured wife to look as though she was still willingly part of the company.
