I'm casting the spotlight on Lynn Rae's novel, The Secret Ingredient! This story sounds yummy in more ways than one. Check it out.
Nate Garner is a happy-go-lucky short order cook looking for his big break. When he answers a casting call for a new reality cooking show, he needs a person behind the camera to help with his audition. Enter June Sinclair, a hyper-organized school secretary recruited by Nate's sister to produce his video. Nate and June get to know each other as they film him cooking, shopping, and mixing drinks at his mother's bar. Nate fights his growing attraction to June, because he knows she needs someone reliable to write into her well-worn planner, while June assumes he’s already involved with his best friend, Heather. What sort of future can they cook up together when Nate gets the call to go to Hollywood?
A taste...
“Miss Sinclair!
There’s a man here to see you!” Ralston Tippet’s voice trilled out, and she
unfolded her legs preparing to crawl out from under the beans. Probably a
father in search of a wandering child. She seemed to attract any stray in the
neighborhood, just like Ralston and his friend Emma Dooley who’d spotted her in
the garden that morning and rushed to help make a mess of things.
Heedless of the dirt
she was grinding into her knees, June pushed herself up and out into the hot
July sunlight, blinking at the man-shaped silhouette in front of her. As her
pupils contracted, she took in broken-down jeans, a soft brown T-shirt with a
cartoon pig on it, broad shoulders, sunglasses, and a bright green ball cap. At
least he wasn’t standing on any vegetable plants.
“Here he is, Miss Sinclair!”
Ralston capered around while swinging a hoe with little regard for the safety
of those in his vicinity. June reached out and grabbed the handle and wrestled
it away from the kid. Yes, there he was, and what was she supposed to do with
him?
“Can I help you?”
“I guess so, if
you’re June Sinclair.” He tilted his head and altered the angle of his
sunglasses as he looked her over. She saw a dark reflection of herself for a
moment. She was dirty, sweaty, and unimpressive.
“I’ve been June
Sinclair ever since I was a teeny-tiny baby.” Ralston giggled at her feeble
joke, but the man just put his hands on his hips.
“You’re still little,
Miss. Sinclair.” Ralston piped up, proud of his recent growth spurt, which
nearly put him at her eye level.
“Ah, okay. My sister
Becky just called you. I’m Nate.”
Oh.
Oh no. June wanted to go back into the bean teepee and think about this for a
while. When Becky Wray had called earlier and explained she’d needed a favor on
behalf of her little brother, June had automatically defaulted to thinking of a
kid needing help and had agreed without much thought. That was the trouble with
working with kids all the time—she wasn’t used to meeting big adult men with
stubble on their chins.
“Right. I was
expecting someone else.”
“I’m the only brother
she has.” He sounded peeved.
“She said you needed
a video, but she didn’t explain much.”
“Ah, it’s a lot to go
into over the phone.” He brushed one hand down his side as he glanced over the
garden. It certainly looked a lot better than it had before she and the kids
had gotten to work on it earlier. Now at least most of the weeds were uprooted
and wilting in the sun.
As she waited for
Nate to get to the point, she directed the kids to pick up the gardening debris
and pile it into the wheelbarrow parked in the middle of the plot. Emma and
Ralston were mutual sidekicks and had been since first grade. June wondered how
their friendship would weather puberty. Reflecting that hormones messed up most
things, she leaned over and gathered discarded tools, wiping soil from the
edges off with her boot soles.
“Maybe this wasn’t a
good idea,” Nate spoke up. “You’re busy.”
“I’m always busy. It
doesn’t mean I can’t listen and work at the same time. We’re wrapping up here
anyway.”
With a shrug of his
big shoulders, Nate waded in and retrieved a shovel Emma had left among the
popcorn seedlings. “I need help with a video. They have a list of things they
want, and it’s complicated.”
Complicated. June
relished complicated. “We need to stack the tools in the shed, right over
there.” Handing him her collected trowels and Ralston’s hoe, she pointed the
man in the direction of Mike the Custodian’s outdoor-equipment shed. Mike was
on the grounds mowing today, and he’d lock up later. June tried not to notice
Nate’s rear view as he walked away, but she couldn’t help noticing how the soft
shirt clung to the muscles of his back. Hmm. He didn’t seem to be much younger
than she was.
Ralston and Emma had
almost tipped the wheelbarrow contents over by the time she got to them, but
together they pushed the awkward cart to the compost heap the fifth-grade
science classes had constructed. The front tire stuck into the soft ground at
the edge of the open enclosure, and she and the kids struggled to lift up the
handles and dump the load. Just as she bent her back to give it a shove, Nate’s
hands were easing hers away and with an easy shrug, he tossed the weeds into
the bin. So those shoulders weren’t just for show.
Emma and Ralston
disagreed over who was going to push the wheelbarrow back to the shed until
June told them to each take a handle and work together. With a glance at the
man next to her, she wondered what to say. “Thanks for your help. With
cleanup.”
“What is this? I
don’t remember a garden here.”
June looked over the
ragged square cut into the lawn beside the school building. The students always
put it together with such enthusiasm in April and May, but once school was out,
it tended to run wild over the summer. The yellow pear and black tomatoes
seemed to be faring well with benign neglect, as were the onions and beans. The
peas on the trellis were sad, but peas always were once the temperature rose.
“It’s a community garden.”
“Who eats all the
produce? There’s no one here.”
“I take it to the
seniors at the Acres. What exactly is this project you need help with?” June
peered at him.
Nate turned to face
her. “It’s an audition video for a television competition. A reality show.”
“What, you’re a
singer?” June’s heart dipped. Just her luck. He was a musician surrounded by
groupies and having reckless sex every night. Nate laughed out loud, and her
nerves hummed.
“No way. I’m a cook.
A chef, I mean.” He straightened up and gave a nod like he’d promoted himself.
June was intrigued
despite her good sense warning her to step back from her curiosity. “You mean
like Top Chef, or that horrible one
with the cursing man ... ah, Hell’s
Kitchen?”
He nodded and leaned
her way. “So you know about them. Yeah, it’s like those, but it’s a new one.
The audience votes on it, kind of like American
Idol.”
June shook her head.
“That doesn’t make any sense. How can someone watching in Idaho know what the
food tastes like?”
He shrugged, and she
was again distracted by those shoulders. He must lift really heavy bags of
potatoes every day. “I have no idea. But they want another tape from me, and
there’s this long list of things they want to see before they bring me out to
Hollywood. Or Burbank maybe. I’m not sure where they’re filming it.”
About the author...
Lynn Rae makes her home in land-locked
central Ohio after time spent in the former Great Black Swamp, beside the Ohio
River, and along the Miami and Erie Canal. With professional experience
in fields ranging from contract archaeology to librarianship along with making
donuts and teaching museum studies, Lynn enjoys incorporating her quirky sense
of humor and real-life adventures into her writing (except the naughty bits). She writes sci-fi, contemporary, and
historical romances. Join her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/lynnraewrites or check out her website at www.lynnraewrites.com.
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