The Cook's Secret Ingredient. Meg Maxwell

this woman,” Olivia said.

      “Well, I appreciated that you came and were fair,” Carson said. “It’s not like you were necessarily on either our sides.” He felt her looking at him. “And I don’t think he’ll give up, either. I’ve tried for two weeks now, ever since he first mentioned it to me. You were my last hope.”

      “Two weeks? My mom’s been gone for six, and I know their appointment was just days before she passed away.”

      “He said he tucked the fortune away, let himself really think about it, and then decided he was ready to see if it was possible, if there really could be a second great love out there.”

      “Carson?” she said, darting a glance at him. “Is the reason you’re so against his trying to find the woman because of your mother?”

      “My mother died five years ago. I don’t begrudge my father love or companionship. It’s the fortune-telling aspect that I have problems with.”

      “My mom tried to keep a list of all the marriages she was responsible for. Her last count was three hundred twelve.”

      Please. “I don’t believe that.”

      “You don’t believe much,” she said.

      That wasn’t true. He believed in a lot. In his love for his son. In doing his job and helping bring criminals to justice by tracking them down for the police. In the way Olivia Mack’s big brown eyes drew him, making him unable to look away from her face.

      Olivia looked past him toward the beautiful horse pasture. The thoroughbreds weren’t out tonight. “Did you grow up in that house?” she asked.

      “No, I grew up in Oak Creek.” A town over, Oak Creek was the fancy cousin of Blue Gulch, filled with estate ranches and mansions. “My father sold the family house a year after my mother died. He said the memories were killing him and he needed a fresh start and had always liked Blue Gulch with its quaint mile-long downtown.”

      “Ah,” she said. “That’s why I haven’t seen you around. I think just about everyone in town has been to the food truck in the two weeks it’s been open.”

      “I meant to tell you—the shrimp po’boy was pretty darn good. I have no doubt that word of mouth will bring in business from the surrounding towns.”

      She smiled. “Thanks. My mother’s business worked that way, too. Word of mouth brought in client after client, just as it did with your dad. Relative and friends came in from neighboring states, too, for a chance to meet with Madam Miranda.”

      “So tell me how this supposedly works. Your mother had this magic ability to predict the future but it wasn’t passed down to you?”

      “According to my mother, all the women on her side of the family have a gift,” she practically mumbled.

      “What number am I thinking of?” he asked.

      She smiled. “I have no idea.”

      “So what is your gift?” he asked.

      “That’s a lovely tree,” she said, eyeing the weeping willow at the edge of the Ford property. She clearly didn’t want to talk about this.

      He leaned toward her. “You can read minds. You can move objects with your eyes. You can make yourself invisible.”

      She laughed. “None of the above. I’m not sure I want to talk to about it, Carson. I’ve struggled with believing it myself, but based on what I’ve seen with my own eyes, I seem to be able to affect people with my cooking.”

      What? “Your cooking?”

      She nodded. “Aside from running the Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen food truck during the week, I’m a personal chef. I seem to be able to change moods and lift hearts with my food.”

      She glanced at him, and he tried to make his expression more neutral but the disappointment punching him in the stomach made that impossible.

      “Not what you want to hear, I know,” she said. “But this is my family. This is me. I’m not saying I understand it or even want it, but I seem to have this...gift.”

      He resumed walking, shoving his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. “You made me a shrimp po’boy. What effect did that have on me?”

      “I don’t think any. Which is unusual.”

      He was disappointed. For a moment there, despite everything, he’d felt drawn to this woman. But here she was, spouting the same nonsense her mother had. He wanted to walk away, but he wasn’t going to just abandon her in the evening on the sidewalk, even in very safe Blue Gulch. He’d been raised to be a gentleman.

      So he’d play along. Maybe he’d trip her up, get her to admit how ridiculous the idea was. Lifting hearts with her food? Lord. “So how do you set this up? You offer customers a chance to turn their frown upside down for an extra five bucks?”

      She shot him a glare. “Did I say one word to you when you ordered? No. I don’t charge extra. I just get a sense of what someone needs and I infuse the food naturally. Maybe an insecure person will get a boost of confidence. A hurting person will feel a bit stronger.”

      “And a pissed-off man like me, worried about my father wasting his time and energy on some crazy fortune? Why didn’t the po’boy change my mood?”

      She bit her lip and looked down at the ground. “I really don’t know.”

      “Shocker.”

      “You don’t have to be rude,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

      Right then, under the darkening sky, the combination of her hurt expression and how alone she seemed made him feel like a heel. “Sorry. I’m just...my father is new to me, Olivia. My whole life, until my mother died, my father was a stranger I barely saw. Work was the most important thing in his life. Now, he’s a different person. Kinder, interested in family, in people, in the community and world around him. I once thought he had no heart, and now he has too much heart. You see how he is with Danny.”

      She tilted her head. “Can a person have too much heart? He’s wonderful with Danny. A dream grandpa.”

      “All that extra heart means a lot more room to be hurt and easily swindled.” He stopped walking for a moment, struck by what he’d just said. He hadn’t realized how worried he was that his father would be hurt—not just swindled. The man who made Danny laugh and shout “yay!” whenever Carson mentioned they were going to see grandpa was not going to get that heart stepped on by a con artist.

      “I think my mother meant every word of that fortune, Carson.”

      Why was she so frustrating? Who cared if Madam Miranda believed in her phony “gift”? There was no such thing as predicting the future. There was probability and possibility and plain old-fashioned guesses. But there was no crystal ball. “Right, Olivia. So somewhere out there is a green-eyed woman named Sarah in a hair salon with some ridiculous blow-dryer tattoo. And she’s my supposedly my father’s second great love.”

      Olivia nodded. She seemed about to say something, then looked away.

      “Well, I’m not going to let my father go on some wild-goose chase and let some swindler snow my dad for his money. I finally have my dad. I’m not going to let him get hurt.”

      “Or you could have a little faith, Carson Ford.”

      He rolled his eyes. “I’d laugh but I don’t want to be rude again.”

      She lifted her chin. “I live just down this street,” she said, pointing to Golden Way. “Please thank your father for his hospitality.” Then she stalked off.

      He watched her walk to the second house on the left, a tiny yellow cottage with a white picket fence and a bunch of wind chimes. A black-and-white cat was sitting on the porch and wrapped around her legs, the yellow-brown cowboy boots. Olivia bent down and scratched the