Page 19 of Best Laid Plans
“Grace,” she called to a woman who was working at a narrow table in the hallway with focused attention. It looked like she was staring at a large diagram of the event space, the booths drawn on a whiteboard. “Can you bring me that tablet? I need to check something.” Grace, a woman about Cam’s age, wearing a shirt with the word ‘volunteer’ emblazoned across it, scurried over with the tablet that Cam noticed sitting at the corner of the table.
Grace handed over the tablet, her eyes locking on Cam before they went absurdly wide. “Oh my god. You’re Cam Devers. Mom, you know I loveUltimate Chef,” Grace said excitedly, bouncing from foot to foot. It was clear now, maybe not in behavior, but in looks, that the two women were related.
“Guilty,” he drawled, smiling broadly. Put that saddle on him and trot him around the ring. He was committed.
“He’s the one I kept talking about all season.” It was clear that Grace was trying to be quiet when she leaned over and whispered in her mom’s ear, but her exuberance got the best of her. She sounded like she was whispering into a microphone.
“Don’t believe everything you see on tv.” And then, in a moment he’d lock up somewhere in his brain like Fort Knox and never think about it again, he winked. He goddamn winked, and if he needed to, he’d do it again.
“You’re like… a bonafide celebrity.” Grace looked like she was going to pass out, but shockingly, she was able to find the fortitude to keep going. “Winner of season ten ofUltimate Chef. Executive Chef atGossamerin Boston. I’ve been there. It took me six months to get reservations. You’re originally from RockHarbor, though you didn’t mention that on the show. I found it in a magazine write-up from when you were atXYZ. I’ve been there, too.” Finally, she paused, taking a deep inhale. Her cheeks were flushed, matching her fiery red hair.
At the restaurant, women would slip him their numbers when he’d come out to see their tables and check in on their experience. He’d encountered people who liked his food before, though never to this degree. No one had ever repeated his Wikipedia profile to him. A fan ofhim, maybe more than his cooking.
“Seems like you’re a foodie, huh?” Cam asked, only pulling his attention away briefly to see whether Sandy was still working her magic.
“There isnothingsexier than a man in the kitchen.” She said it with as much conviction as someone pleading their innocence after being accused of murder. She looked him up and down, and for a second, Cam wondered if she was going to jump him.
Sandy looked up from the tablet, then. “Seriously, Grace?”
“It’s not just me,” Grace argued, not a hint of embarrassment in her voice. “He has, like, a hundred social media fan accounts dedicated to him.”
That stopped Cam in his tracks. He had an Instagram where he sometimes posted new menu items, but generally, he kept a low profile. He didn’t even know what these people would have to talk about if it wasn’t his food.
He’d already made a name for himself among Boston chefs, and had won the coveted Thomas Stone Award as the best New England chef last year. The year before that,Gossamerhad won for best new restaurant.
And though he’d done a few local appearances in Boston the week after he’d won, he’d declined anything bigger. He was already getting too far away from the food, Michael continually pushing him to schmooze and delegate and become ‘the face’ ofthe brand–whatever the hell that meant. He was a chef, and that’s all he wanted to be.
Except for today, when he’d already committed to doing anything to help Pierce’s Lobster Co. survive another year. Which was the sobering thought that anchored him as he pasted on another smile. He resisted rubbing his jaw, aching from playing the part.
Grace, seemingly needing to be believed, pulled out her phone and held it next to Cam. “I follow the good ones. No one’s going to believe you’re in Rock Harbor,” she gushed.
He glanced at the phone, where she’d pulled up a list of accounts, all with some version of ‘Cam Devers’ in the name. Some were more… overt than the others, like the one with hisUltimate Chefphoto named ‘He Can Whip Me Up Anytime.’
He didn’t comment on that one. God, he hoped that Wyatt never found these pages. Cam would never hear the end of it.
“Whatever gets people interested in food,” he said with as much restraint as he could manage. Just then, Sandy looked up from the tablet and he let out an audible sigh of relief that he wouldn’t have to look through any more of the profiles dedicated to him. “Any luck?”
Sandy put the tablet to sleep and gave him a no nonsense look that he appreciated. “We can fit you back in.”
Thank fuck this hadn’t all been for nothing. “That’s great news.”
“You won’t be in the program, but you’ll have a full booth in your original spot.”
“Sandy, you are incredible,” he said, meaning it. “And if there’s anything you need from me, please let me know.”
Sandy looked at him thoughtfully, her lips pursed together. “I may just do that. Tell Jim I said hello.”
“Will do.” He was out of the building as fast as he could, but not before Grace asked for a picture of the two of them, which there was nothing he could do but oblige.
As he walked back outside into the warm day, he thought of the Pierces and what him playing up his celebrity status could mean to them. Shockingly, he didn’t feel the normal twinge of embarrassment when he was recognized or talked about as the idea of a person instead of an actual human being. And when he thought about Elle, and what helping her dad would mean to her, well… he didn’t hate that either.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ELLE
“Elle, I’m not dying. Really, honey.” Elle’s dad looked at her imploringly. He was sitting across the kitchen table from her in the house he and her mom had lived in for the last decade, eating a breakfast of egg whites and turkey bacon. Which Elle knew, because five minutes ago, she’d followed him like an annoying shadow from the kitchen to the table.
She picked at the breakfast sandwich her dad had cooked for her. It would have been hard to miss the envious glances he’d shot her way when she’d taken the first bite. Bacon, egg, and cheese. So much cheese. Just the way he knew she liked it. The bites she managed to take sat heavy in her throat, until finally set the half-eaten sandwich down. It was hard to enjoy her food at a time like this. Especially when it used to bebothof their favorite sandwich. “Maybe I should stay here. Be closer to you and Mom.”
