On Lavender Lane by Joann Ross Read Free Book Online Page A

assured Madeline as she escaped into the backseat. “It did.”
    The taxi had no sooner pulled into traffic when her phone rang again.
    She debated not answering, but knowing her agent’s tenacity, she’d just keep calling. And calling.
    “Please tell me there’s not another video out there,” she said.
    “No,” Pepper said. “At least not that I know of, but considering all the rumors over the years, I need to warn you, Madeline, you should prepare yourself for yet more shoes to drop.”
    “What rumors?”
    There was a pause on the other end of the line. For a moment Madeline thought that perhaps the call had been dropped, but then her agent, sounding uncharacteristically hesitant, asked, “Are you actually telling me that you’ve never heard the stories?”
    “About Maxime? No.” Apparently, the old saying was true: The wife really was the last to know.
    “Oh. Well, don’t worry about it. You know how rumors are; they probably don’t mean a thing.”
    “What rumors?”
    “Oh, Madeline.” A huge sigh. “You’ve already had such a rotten day.”
    “It hasn’t exactly been a picnic. But I did sell a bunch of pots and pans.” Which was so not why she’d worked nearly her entire life to become a chef.
    “Yay, you.”
    “Yay, me,” Madeline echoed with a decided lack of enthusiasm. “You were telling me about rumors?”
    “Oh, nothing specific. You know this city is basically just a small town. And people do gossip.”
    “People gossip about my marriage?”
    There was another longer, deeper sigh. “We need to talk. Why don’t you drop by my office on the way home?”
    “Which one?”
    There were two, including the “official” one in a beautiful landmark Victorian built by William Waldorf and John Jacob Astor III in the late 1800s. The other, which was usually saved for celebrations or serious career-planning sessions, was the Temple Bar in lower Manhattan’s NoHo, located between the East and West Village.
    “The one with alcohol.” The bar. Which likely meant bad news. “I’m leaving now.” The line went dead.
    After giving the driver the new destination, Madeline leaned back against the seat, closed her eyes, and tried to tell herself not to borrow trouble. But that didn’t stop her from worrying that perhaps ChefSteel had changed their mind about her being a proper spokesperson.
    After all, there was a morality clause written into the twenty-six page contract. At the time she’d signed it, Madeline had assumed it referred to
her
behavior. But maybe any scandal would void the terms.
    But would that really be such a bad thing?
    In an attempt to bring in some much-needed additional income during the downturn of the economy, she’d started a part-time catering business. A chance meeting with a producer at a baby shower luncheon she’d prepared had led to a booking on
Today.
    Which, in turn, had led to a call from a vice president at the Cooking Network, who, after seeing Madeline cooking dolmades and pastitsio for Kathy Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb, invited her to cook for a panel of network executives. Declaring her a natural, to her amazement, the executives offered her own show,
Comfort Cooking
.
    She’d been inclined to turn down the offer. But, as Maxime, who’d always derided TV chefs in the past for prostituting their talent for the masses, had pointed out, it wasn’t as if they could just pass up the money.
    “Do you have any idea what it costs to open a five-star restaurant on the Vegas strip?” he asked. “One that can compete with Bobby Flay, Tom Colicchio, Wolfgang Puck, and Emeril?”
    Which was how she had ended up on television.
    And within six months had a second show,
Dinner at Home
, featuring quick and easy meals for busy families.
    Forgoing anything resembling a normal life, she’d also published a cookbook, had a second in the publishing pipeline, and, on the advice of her newly acquired agent, had inked a deal with the company that made the cookware she used