Page 70 of The Nanny and the Hothead
“Another camper van?” she guessed.
“There’s one way to tell,” Oscar cried, borrowing her words with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. Before she could tell him to stop, he sprinted to the covered vehicle and pulled the corner of the tarp, revealing…
Say Cheese, Louise?
“I know this truck! My mom showed me pictures of Louise,” the boy exclaimed excitedly. He ran to the back of the vehicle and disappeared from her view. A metallic squeak and clang echoed through the garage. “Look at me, Charlotte! I’m making grilled cheese in a food truck,” the boy called, popping up in a window on the side of the bright orange truck with the ancient spatula in his hand.
Charlotte stepped back and surveyed the food truck.
She’d seen it before too!
She opened her bag, then slid the framed photo Amy had given her from the side pocket. Her gaze bounced from the opening where Oscar sat with his elbows on a small shelf to the image of three people in that exact location.
“Come check it out!” Oscar called, waving her over with the spatula.
Slowly, she walked to the window and stared inside the truck. It was like a super-condensed version of the Crystal Cricket’s kitchen with one glaring difference. Photographs of the food truck in different locations with the same three people standing together were plastered to the walls and to the windows. And Mitch was smiling ear to ear in each photo. It was such an easy, contagious expression. She found herself grinning at the enigma of a man. She touched one of the faded images tacked near the window that must serve as a place for patrons to order. “I recognize your dad and your mom in this picture. Who’s the other person? Do you know his name, Oscar?”
Oscar stopped pretending to make sandwiches on the large stovetop, then came over and used the spatula to point to the other smiling man. “That’s Seth! He used to visit my mom and me, but he stopped. I don’t know where he is now,” the boy answered with a shrug before returning to the stove to pretend to flip sandwiches. “The three of them started Say Cheese, Louise and got real, real famous. They were on TV and everything. But that was before I was born,” he finished, then plucked a picture from the wall and passed it through the window. It was a shot of Mitch, Holly, and Seth standing in front of a camera crew. She turned it over. It was dated a decade ago. Mitch had to have been in his early twenties then.
She nodded to the boy and examined the image. She’d known that Mitch was a former TV chef, but that was about it. She wasn’t sure where he’d gotten his start…until now! This food truck had to be it. She loved splurging on food truck delights, but she wasn’t a foodie. It wasn’t like she spent her free time watching television. No, ten years ago, she was fifteen. She bristled at the memories of her home life—if you could even call it ahome life. Growing up, she’d spent as little time as possible at her house. Her life centered on her friends, school, and photography.
She took a few steps back and peered at the truck. The more she thought about it, the more she remembered hearing about an amazing food truck that made out-of-this-world grilled cheese sandwiches. It was featured on the news or in the paper—she couldn’t quite remember. To the best of her knowledge, a major food network had signed on to follow the food truck chefs as they started out. It had to be Mitch and Say Cheese, Louise.
She stared at the picture of the hothead chef. Beaming with joy, the man didn’t seem to possess an ounce of hotheadedness in any of the photos. “What happened to you?” she whispered as roaring music blared from the truck—a festive booming sound that startled the hell out of her.
“I don’t know how to turn it off, Charlotte! I was playing with some of the buttons up here by the steering wheel,” Oscar shouted from the front of the truck.
When had he climbed into the driver’s seat?
She ran over to the driver’s side window, knocked a few times, then gestured for him to roll it down. “Tell me what you touched, and we’ll figure out how to turn it off,” she replied to the wide-eyed child when the passenger door to the vehicle swung open. She gasped as Mitch slid into the seat, red-cheeked, with a scowl pasted to his face.
Here comes the hothead!
He flicked a switch, and the music stopped. The garage grew dead quiet. “What are you doing in here?” he asked, eyes burning with anger—or was that agony. But she didn’t have time to analyze the man’s mood. Instead, she hurried to his side.
“You said we could look around, Dad,” Oscar answered, lifting his little chin as he narrowed his gaze, going mini-hothead.
“And what are you doing with that?” Mitch pressed, pointing to the old spatula in Oscar’s hand.
“I found it in a bag in the RV,” the boy replied defiantly.
“That was my bag, Oscar. You had no right to be rifling through it. My knives are in there. You could have gotten hurt,” the man growled.
“I know how to be careful with knives. My mom showed me,” the boy shot back.
“Well, you shouldn’t be in here. I said you could explore the house—not the garage!” he boomed.
“Stop being such a hothead, Dad,” Oscar shot back.
She had to do something. That spatula totally set Mitch off and threw him for a loop. She touched his arm, and the man whipped around. Breathless, she studied his face. She’d expected to see anger in his eyes, but what she saw was the same broken expression he’d had on the side of the road. Again, this man was in pain.
“Mitch,” she breathed when the door to the garage opened.
“I didn’t know you still had her,” Ines remarked, entering the space and looking absolutely gobsmacked with Gwen on her heels.
Charlotte glanced between father and son. With his little face scrunched up and Mitch going all hothead, these two were on the brink of another eruption. She couldn’t have that—not in front of the stuffy publisher.
“I’m sorry, Mitch. We didn’t mean to interrupt your meeting,” she said, trying to defuse the situation.
