board and set it in front of her. “Fine, then let’s get to it. This soup’s not going to make itself.”
For their first lesson, Sarah had requested that they make the same zuppa Toscana he’d made for Uncle Emmett. After showing her how to read the recipe and explaining which cooking tools to use, they’d made a list of the ingredients, which Sarah had picked up at the store.
Having her in his kitchen might have been a mistake. But if he was going to teach her to cook, he needed the right tools—his tools. Her knives consisted of a paring knife and a couple of serrated steak knives. If only he could get rid of her fragrance of wildflowers, which was wafting through the room, curling through him and flaying open those wounds best left covered.
She pulled the link of Italian sausage out of the package and flopped it onto the cutting board. She picked up the French knife and started to cut.
“Not that knife.” Alec pulled a utility knife out of the block and handed it to her, handle first. “Try this one. You’ll have more control as you slice through the sausage. Be careful—it’s sharp. How did you become an adult without learning to cook?”
She took the knife and started sawing at the sausage. “Growing up we had a housekeeper who prepared our meals. Mrs. Nelson wouldn’t allow anyone in her kitchen. When I left home, I ate in the dorm cafeteria, ordered takeout or lived on cereal and freezer meals.”
He shook his head. “You have so much to learn. Frozen foods are filled with sodium and preservatives. You need to cook nutritious meals.” Catching her action, he stifled a groan and schooled his tone. She wouldn’t learn if he kept barking at her. “It’s not a log, Sarah. You don’t need to saw it. That knife is sharp. Pierce the casing with the tip of the knife and slice through it in a single cut. Like this.” He took the knife from her and demonstrated. Just as he’d done with the onion. After handing it back to her, he pressed his back against the sink to watch. Once he was sure she wasn’t going to lose an appendage, he turned around to wash the other cutting board.
“How did you learn to cook?”
He dried the cutting board, then slid it back into place on the shelf between his stove and refrigerator. “By reading recipe books and watching cooking shows on TV. I did it to help out my mom after my dad was killed, but then I found out I enjoyed it.”
“You lost your dad? I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. He was a marine killed in friendly fire when I was fifteen.”
The knife clattered against the board as Sarah sucked in a sharp breath. “You weren’t kidding about the knife being sharp.”
“I don’t kid about knives.” He turned to see her about to bring her bleeding index finger to her mouth. He grabbed her hand. “No, don’t. You’ve been handling raw pork.”
Still holding on to her, he pulled her to the sink and flipped on the water. He pumped hand soap onto her palm. “Wash your hands while I grab a Band-Aid.”
Sarah lathered her hands and rinsed. “It’s a minor cut. I’ll wrap a paper towel around it.”
“You’re working with food. It needs to be clean and covered.” Alec folded a paper towel and pressed it against the cut. “Hold this to get the bleeding stopped. I’ll be right back.”
He strode down the hall to the master bathroom. Rummaging through the medicine cabinet for the box of bandages, he kicked himself for letting his mind wander. He should’ve known better than to get distracted. If he lost focus, then someone got hurt.
He pulled out the last two and tossed the empty box in the trash. Leaving the bathroom, he turned off the light. As he passed his dresser, Christy smiled at him from her crystal frame.
His breath caught in his chest, and he nearly dropped to his knees. The Band-Aids fluttered from his fingers. He reached down and picked them up, then braced himself against the doorway. Sarah’s humming drifted down the hall.
Why had he invited her into his kitchen?
His lonely, vacant life of going through the motions without Christy wore on him, but he’d had his chance at love once. He couldn’t risk his heart a second time. The pain of losing her had gutted him. And he couldn’t go through that again. He needed to keep his distance from Sarah.
Keep it simple, Sarah.
How many times had Alec repeated that phrase over the past week?
Simple. Right.
She glanced at the clock hanging over the sink. Where was he anyway? He promised to be here an hour ago. She’d tried to stall as long as she could, but the teens were getting antsy.
The group of twenty teenagers, aged thirteen to eighteen, were assembled in the Shelby Lake community center kitchen and were currently swatting each other with dish towels and singing into spatulas as if they were auditioning for The Voice. Daniel Obenhaus and his brother, Toby, stood off to the side, talking to each other while taking in the ruckus created by everyone else.
Sarah pulled in a deep breath and raised her hands in the air. “Hey, everyone, let’s settle down and get back to work. Now it’s time to practice some of what we learned this morning.”
Once she had all eyes watching her, she shot another glance at the clock, murmured a silent prayer and pulled cartons of eggs out of the industrial-sized side-by-side refrigerator. She set them in the middle of the long worktable in the middle of the room, opened a carton and reached for an egg. “This morning we talked about the importance of good nutrition. Eggs are cheap, and they offer protein and nutrients. I’m going to demonstrate how to crack one.” She hit it gently on the edge of the bowl and pried the shell apart. The whites and yolks slid into the stainless-steel bowl without taking even a sliver of shell with it. She smiled and resisted breaking out into a happy dance. At home, she’d even attempted cracking them with one hand the way Alec did and managed not to create too much of a mess.
Scanning the group surrounding three sides of the table, she picked up the whisk, and then she beat the yolk into the white. “This is called beating the egg. We’re adding air into our egg mixture while getting it as smooth as possible. You can use a whisk like I am, or a fork...either one works.”
Fifteen-year-old Amber Jennings, whose dad worked at the Shelby Lake Police Department with Sarah’s brother, Caleb, tossed her blond braid over her shoulder and raised her hand. “Miss Sarah, my mom just like cracks the eggs into the skillet and scrambles them with a spatula. Why do we need to like mess around with bowls and whisks and stuff? Makes more dishes to wash.”
“Amber, your mom’s way is totally fine. And I hear you about having extra dishes to wash. But beating isn’t just for eggs. As we progress throughout the summer, we’ll create other dishes that use this technique, so if you learn how to do it in the beginning, then we can continue to build upon those skills to make more challenging dishes.” Or at least that’s what Alec said when he’d reviewed the lessons with her. Hopefully her words carried more confidence than she felt.
“The only time anything gets beaten in my house is when my old man goes on a bender.” Brushing his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes, seventeen-year-old Garrett laughed and elbowed the kid next to him. “Know what I’m saying?”
Despite the kid’s teasing tone, truth sliced through his words. In her career of working with youth, Sarah had seen too many bruises that came with ready excuses. She’d have to keep a watchful eye on this group. These kids weren’t young men and women she’d been associating with on a regular basis through the church’s youth ministry. Most of them didn’t attend church. But she hoped to forge those lasting relationships by the end of the summer and draw them into her youth group.
Having worked with youth in community outreach programs in her former church, Sarah had approached Pastor Nate and Melissa with her idea after Christmas—instead