1
" I do appreciate you saving my toes from being severed." Instead of remorse an icy coolness dripped from her tone, a mockery of what he'd done.
The throbbing in his knee spread all through him like rage. He stepped into her space, the memory of betrayal vibrating through him, and leaned close to her ear. "They were the first toes I sucked." His tone was cruel, but he didn't care. "Letting them get severed under my watch would be callous, wouldn't it?"
She stepped away from him, face flaming, her scent flooding his brain. Her hair still smelled like it always had. As though her essence was wrapped up in it, clean and fiery like freshly bloomed roses. He hated how it reached inside him and dug up memories. But like everything else about her, even her scent had become colder. The fire almost snuffed out, even the vibrancy of roses too restrained to be real.
The full blast of her jet-black glare met his. "Since when is being callous a problem for you?"
It was Rico's turn to stiffen, but he had spent too much time in the spotlight to let it show.
What about chasing her around like a puppy had been callous? Or about begging her not to leave him?
Please, Ash. I'll do whatever you want to make myself worthy of you. Don't leave me.
How had he had so little self-respect? "
― Sonali Dev , Recipe for Persuasion (The Rajes, #2)
6
" These are good." Rico popped an extra piece in his mouth.
"As good as the ones they sold at your fiera livre?" As soon as she said it, they both froze. This was all on camera. At least she wasn't holding a knife.
"No." Rico smiled at the camera. "Better."
The skip of joy in her heart brought with it a shadow of fear, but she ignored it and grabbed square black platters and started to plate the bright white pancakes in delicate quarter folds to form a clover. She handed spoons to Rico and he poured doce de leite into them and placed them next to the pancakes.
They were done a good two minutes before the rest of contestants, but they would still have to act like they were rushing at the end because it made for better television.
"It looks a little plain," Rico said, taking in everyone else's workstations, where everything from empanadas to elephant ears and patajones (Danny, naturally) were being tossed up. "Should I cut up some strawberries? It could use some fruit, and maybe whipped cream?"
He was right. It needed something. Plain would definitely get them hammered by the judges. But not strawberries and whipped cream. Not anything so predictable.
Ashna raced to the pantry, picked up a mango, and tossed it at Rico. Then without waiting to see if he would catch it, she turned to grab some saffron and ran back to their station.
"Can you dice the mango?" Before the question was even out of her mouth, he was slicing.
DJ called out the one-minute warning.
Ashna pinched out a fat clump of saffron into a metal spoon, mixed in a few drops of milk, and held it over the fire. The saffron dissolved into the milk, turning it orange, and despite the smells from all the workstations, the aroma of saffron permeated the air.
DJ started to count down the last ten seconds.
Ashna drizzled the saffron milk onto the four spoons of doce de leite just as Rico arranged the mango at the center of each plate. "
― Sonali Dev , Recipe for Persuasion (The Rajes, #2)
10
" What do you remember most about what your pai put in his lamb chops?"
"I think it was basically salt, pepper, and garlic." He squeezed his eyes shut and focused so hard that not dropping a kiss on his earnestly pursed mouth was the hardest thing. His eyes opened, bright with memory. "Of course. Mint."
"That's perfect. Since we're only allowed only five tools, simple is good."
"My mãe always made rice and potatoes with it. How about we make lamb chops and a biryani-style pilaf?"
Ashna blinked. Since when was Rico such a foodie?
He shrugged but his lips tugged to one side in his crooked smile. "What? I live in London. Of course Indian is my favorite cuisine."
Tossing an onion at him, she asked him to start chopping, and put the rice to boil.
Then she turned to the lamb chops. The automatic reflex to follow Baba's recipe to within an inch of its life rolled through her. But when she ignored it, the need to hyperventilate didn't follow. Next to her Rico was fully tuned in to her body language, dividing his focus between following the instructions she threw out and the job at hand.
As he'd talked about his father's chops, she'd imagined exactly how she wanted them to taste. An overtone of garlic and lemon and an undertone of mint. The rice would be simple, in keeping with the Brazilian tradition, but she'd liven it up with fried onions, cashew nuts, whole black cardamom, cloves, bay leaves, and cinnamon stick. All she wanted was to create something that tasted like Rico's childhood, combined with their future together, and it felt like she was flying.
Just like with her teas, she knew exactly what she wanted to taste and she knew exactly how to layer ingredients to coax out those flavors, those feelings. It was her and that alchemy and Rico's hands flying to follow instructions and help her make it happen.
"There's another thing we have to make," she said. Rico raised a brow as he stirred rice into the spice-infused butter. "I want to make tea. A festive chai."
He smiled at her, heat intensifying his eyes.
Really? Talking about tea turned him on? Wasn't the universe just full of good news today. "
― Sonali Dev , Recipe for Persuasion (The Rajes, #2)
14
" There's still time. The first episode hasn't aired yet. You can ask for any other chef and they'll give you what you want. I don't think I can do this."
"The habit of walking away from things must be a hard one to break," he said, when the last thing he wanted to think about right now was that particular moment from their past.
She's just a girl I dated in high school.
Her long, incredibly delicate fingers squeezed her temples, her jaw clenched, every inch of her screamed how badly she did not want to be doing this with him.
If she wanted to walk away, she was going to have to be the one to do it. Again. "As for how I behaved with DJ," he said when the silence had stretched out long enough that he knew she wasn't going to respond, "it was an honest mistake." None of this was about DJ.
"Dropping a knife from shock, that's an honest mistake," she said, the new shell she'd grown melting like ice around pine needles after a winter storm. "Being rude to someone because you're angry with someone else? That's just being spoiled and self-centered. "
― Sonali Dev , Recipe for Persuasion (The Rajes, #2)
15
" Next up is Chef Ashna Raje and her partner, the greatest striker in the history of football, Frederico Silva."
The audience went wild, their share of applause noticeably louder than everyone else's. DJ made a production out of waiting for the applause to die down without seeming like a hack. The network had done well with their choice of host. The man had a deep, sophisticated voice and a London accent that moved comfortably between posh and working class. He grinned at Rico with the friendliness of someone Rico had not been an arse to just recently.
The person who had provoked him enough to make an arse out of himself turned to him and seemed to read exactly how guilty he was feeling. That of all things seemed to loosen out the knots she'd been tied up in since they had arrived at the studio today.
"Bonus points for calling it football, mate," Rico said, and the crowd booed playfully.
"And by football they both mean soccer," Ashna added. "This is America, guys!"
The crowd went nuts. "
― Sonali Dev , Recipe for Persuasion (The Rajes, #2)
17
" Winning the Padma Shri was never my goal. Helping people was."
"Wow, so that's the part you decided to address in what I said?" Every single time her mother showed her where Ashna fell on her list of priorities it hurt as though it were the first time. How could she be so weak?
Her mother sighed. "Don't you at least want to try to understand what my life's been like?"
"I do understand. I was there, remember? Watching from eight thousand miles away." Because you left me. Over and over again.
"I was forced into a marriage with your father."
Not this again. "Thanks for sharing that. After overhearing your fights my entire childhood, you think I didn't figure that out myself?" She had heard those words innumerable times. "You didn't want Baba, you didn't want me. I know. You got stuck with us, and you did what you had to do to make sure you didn't lose yourself, to break the chains, to find your voice. All the things. Now look, Padma Shri! Boom! It all worked out. I'm proud of you and everything, but I'm not the 'Economic Status of Rural Women.' You can't fix me by putting the right systems in place." It was a little late for that. "
― Sonali Dev , Recipe for Persuasion (The Rajes, #2)
