Read Online The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman - Free Book Online Page A

heading for the stairs with Kevin close behind. Kevin was a graduate student in accounting. Laura was twenty-six, just three years older than Jess, but there she was with two children. They were so beautiful, blue-eyed like their mother, their hair even blonder than hers.
    “They’re easy to make,” Laura told Emily in the kitchen.
    “They don’t look easy,” Emily said, admiring the giant glossy rolls.
    “When I was a kid I had a summer job at Cinnabon,” Laura explained. “I took the recipe home and divided it by forty.”
    “What temperature do you want?”
    “Just very low, as low as you can.”
    “All right, let me see,” murmured Emily, fiddling with the controls. She was unfamiliar with her oven.
    “You don’t want to bake them any more, just keep the glaze gooey. Here, let’s put them on the counter.” Suddenly Laura looked a little pale.
    “Are you all right? Do you want a drink? Do you need to sit down?” Emily asked.
    “I’m fine. I’m pregnant again,” Laura whispered.
    “Really? When are you …?”
    “We aren’t telling anyone yet. We just found out,” said Laura, and almost imperceptibly she sighed.
    Emily wanted to talk further, but Milton manned the waffle iron just steps away. “The green light means they’re ready, right?” he asked.
    “Let me get you a platter.” Emily was reaching for one when Jess burst through the door bearing an umbrella stand for the sunflowers.
    “Come sit,” Emily told Laura. “You too,” she called to her sister, who was using the sprayer from the kitchen sink to fill the umbrella stand. “Everybody has to eat a lot of fruit salad.”
    “Did you get Bruno’s halcyon-days e-mail?” Milton asked as they sat down together, eight at the table, counting Meghan in Kevin’s lap.
    “Bruno’s out of town, so now it’s open season?” Emily asked lightly.
    “I had to look up halcyon,” said Laura.
    “These are the halcyon days,” Alex declaimed in his best imitation of Bruno. “But the days are numbered when we can spend as we choose and operate without scrutiny …”
    “With a public offering comes public accountability,” Milton chimed in with his own version of Bruno’s German-Swiss accent.
    “Move the syrup, hon,” Kevin warned Laura, as Meghan’s little hand stole across the table.
    “He talks too much,” Alex said of Bruno.
    “That’s his job,” Milton pointed out.
    Alex rolled his eyes.
    “Still angry?” Emily murmured.
    “Well, how would you feel?”
    “I think I’d be a little patient,” said Emily. “And wait for my idea to settle in, and see if maybe there were ways to develop it. If there was a different context …”
    Alex looked at her with his dark eyes. “It’s easier to be patient when you have some hope of success.”
    “He’s just got a crush on you,” Jess told Emily after the guests had left, “and you’re a little mean to him, don’t you think?”
    Emily tore off plastic wrap to cover the fruit bowl. “How am I mean to Alex?”
    “You ignore him.”
    “I do not.”
    “You pretend you don’t know how he feels.”
    This was true, but Emily didn’t know any other way to behave. She needed to work with Alex.
    He thought he loved her, but what did he know? He had finished college at eighteen and founded a company before he could drink legally. To Emily’s knowledge, he’d never had a girlfriend. He’d fixed on her the way a hatchling fixes on the first moving thing it sees. He looked at her longingly, helplessly. Watched her as she walked down the hall, e-mailed her logic puzzles he thought she might enjoy, left chocolate on her desk.
    “It’s strange,” Emily said. “It’s difficult. It’s like having a secret Valentine every day of the week.”
    Jess knelt down and rearranged the sunflowers in the umbrella stand. “You have to give the guy a little credit.”
    Emily leaned over the counter to glimpse Jess in the pass-through between kitchen and dining room. “I can’t lead him