Ruined By My Stepbrother novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Deck Chair
At her mother's beach wedding, Hattie kisses a stranger behind the tent, learns he's her new stepbrother and the critic who ruined her that morning, and drafts him into her kitchen in her toast; then he asks if her ex is named Dane.
The review went up at six in the morning.
By the time my mother said "I do," I had twenty-two cancellations.
I read it for the first time at seven-thirty that night, in a white sundress, at her reception.
"Low Tide Goes Out." One star out of four.
"The scallops arrived cooked like an apology."
"The clam chowder tasted of the can."
"A chef in over her head."
It was signed the way it was always signed. Cold Plate.
Nobody knew who Cold Plate was.
He'd written nine years of Sunday columns for a Philadelphia magazine, and they'd never run one photo.
My phone buzzed again in my hand.
"Sorry, something came up, please cancel our six for Friday."
That was twenty-three.
Then a text from Frankie, who ran my dining room. "Do NOT read it. Go dance with your mom."
My chowder was my dad's recipe.
Salt pork, no flour, a splash of the clam liquor at the end.
He made it on his scallop boat every winter, until the winter the boat didn't come back.
It had never seen a can in its life.
Under the tent, eighty people in white were clinking glasses for my mother.
I was the maid of honor. I had cooked the whole dinner myself that morning.
I walked out the back of the tent before anyone could see my face.
Behind it, the beach club kept a row of striped deck chairs against the canvas wall.
One of them was taken.
A man was stretched out in it with his ankles crossed.
He wore a loose white linen sweater and shorts, and he had a dark beard and dark messy hair.
A beer was sweating in his hand.
He looked like he was hiding too.
"Bad night?" he said.
"Bad morning. Bad night's still coming."
I held up my phone so he could see the headline.
He read it for a long second.
"Brutal," he said.
"I'm the chef in over her head."
"Hm."
"You know what's funny? That critic came on the worst night of my life."
"What happened?"
"My cooks walked out at four o'clock. My ex-fiancé hired them out from under me, eight bucks an hour more."
"Starting when?"
"Starting that night. I cooked alone for two full turns."
He set the beer down in the sand.
"Maybe the critic should eat there again," he said.
"Maybe the critic should eat glass."
He laughed, low and surprised.
"I'm twenty-eight years old," I said. "I've got a lease that ends in September and an ex who wants it. And I'm telling a stranger my problems behind my mother's wedding tent."
"I'm thirty-two," he said. "And I'm hiding from the photographer. So we're even."
His eyes were gray.
They went down my dress and came back up slowly, and he didn't pretend they hadn't.
"Sit down," he said. "You've been on your feet since five."
"How do you know that?"
"Your hands smell like garlic."
There was one chair.
I sat on him.
My knees went on either side of his hips, and the skirt of my dress bunched up over his thighs.
His hands settled on my waist.
"This is a bad idea," he said.
"I've had a bad day. I want a bad idea."
I lifted my hair off my neck so he would look.
He looked.
Then I kissed him.
He tasted like cold beer and salt.
His hand slid up my back and pulled me down hard against him.
The deck chair creaked under both of us.
He kissed me like he was angry about it.
I could feel exactly how much he wasn't angry.
His thumb found the bare skin above the back of my dress, and my breath caught in his mouth.
"Barrett!"
My mother's voice carried across the sand.
"Has anybody seen Glenn's son? Barrett? We're doing the family photos!"
The man under me went completely still.
I pulled back an inch.
"Please tell me your name isn't Barrett."
He shut his eyes.
"My name is Barrett."
My new stepfather had one son, and he lived in Philadelphia.
He'd skipped the engagement party and the rehearsal dinner.
Glenn always said the same thing about him. "Barrett writes about food."
I climbed off his lap so fast I lost a sandal.
The family photo had four people in it.
My mother, Arlene, glowing in white linen.
Glenn, huge and sunburned and beaming.
Me, with my lipstick fixed in a phone screen.
Barrett stood a careful foot away from me with both hands in his pockets.
"My two kids!" Glenn boomed. "Hattie, smile!"
He threw an arm around each of us, and Barrett's shoulder pressed against mine.
I smiled for the camera.
At the head table, they served the chowder first.
I watched Barrett taste it twice.
Then he put the spoon down and didn't touch anything for a while.
Glenn was laughing at something across the table, holding my mother's hand.
Barrett leaned toward me and spoke without moving his face.
"You told me this was your father's recipe."
"It is."
"There's no can in it."
"No."
He was quiet.
"I wrote that it tasted of the can," he said.
The tent got very loud and very far away.
Cold Plate, nine years, no photo, hiding from the photographer.
He was eating my dad's chowder at my mother's wedding, and he was the man who'd written it off.
"Say something," he said.
I picked up my champagne glass and stood up.
It was time for the maid-of-honor toast.
The DJ handed me the microphone, and eighty faces turned toward me.
"Mom, you spent nine years alone after Dad," I said. "You never once let me see you tired."
My mother pressed her fingers to her mouth.
"Glenn, you came into my restaurant for chowder two summers ago and asked for her number instead. Thank you for making her laugh like that."
Everybody said "aww."
"And I want to welcome somebody new," I said. "My brother, Barrett."
I looked down at him.
He looked up at me with his whole face gone careful.
"Glenn tells me Barrett used to cook," I said.
"So he's going to spend his summer on the line in my kitchen. Every night, until Labor Day. Aren't you, Barrett?"
Glenn whooped and pounded the table.
"That's my boy! Finally doing something useful!"
People laughed and clapped.
Barrett held my eyes, and then he raised his glass to me.
"Every night," he said.
When I sat back down, I took my phone out under the tablecloth.
Dane had opened a glossy place called Brine across Jackson Street in May.
That afternoon my landlord had texted me about him.
Dane had offered him double my rent for my space.
Dane would also pay me twenty thousand dollars to walk away from my lease by July.
"The paper says you're done, honey. Take the money."
I typed my answer.
"No. I'm staying. Come eat at Low Tide on Labor Day weekend and see who's done."
I hit send.
Barrett was watching my screen.
"Your ex-fiancé," he said quietly. "The one who hired your cooks out from under you."
"What about him?"
"Is his name Dane?"
My skin went cold.
"How do you know that?"
He took out his own phone and turned it toward me under the table, where nobody could see.
It was an email to his editor, dated the first of June.
"Low Tide is the hottest table at the Shore. Go Friday the 5th. Ask for the scallops."
It was signed D.C.
It came from Brine.
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