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I’m pretty sure Antoine isn’t that much taller than me.”
    If I thought I could escape living in Antoine’s shadow when I left Napa, I had been mistaken. His television show,
Cooking the Belanger Way
, kept getting more popular, and he’d launched a line of salad dressings three months ago. The pasta sauces launched this week. He was everywhere. There were articles in magazines, ads on TV, and now apparently life-size replicas in supermarkets. There was no way to escape him. Most people didn’t really understand why I’d wanted to. Sometimes I didn’t understand, but then I remembered all the lonely nights waiting for him to come home from the restaurant or a taping. All the lonely days waiting for him to come home from a trip. All the lonely hours when he was home, but was too busy planning menus for L’Oiseau Gris, creating new dishes and writing scripts for his television show to talk to me or even notice I was still alive.
    I met Antoine Belanger when he did a series of guest lectures at the CIA when I was still a student. He liked my béarnaise. He liked it a lot. He liked it so much that he showed up the next week and asked me out.
    I went.
    We were married six months later.
    Whirlwind? You bet. Romantic? Absolutely. Deeply flawed? Oh, baby. More fatally flawed than a fallen soufflé.
    â€œI can’t hide from him,” I told Haley. “Although I appreciate the effort.”
    Haley had never exactly approved of my marriage to Antoine. She’d gotten married the way she felt we were supposed to get married: in a white poufy dress with half the town there to see who caught the bouquet. Antoine and I had gone to the justice of the peace in downtown Napa with the maître d’ and hostess from L’Oiseau Gris as witnesses. I hadn’t even told Haley we were getting married until after the fact. For a while, I thought she’d never forgive me.
    Luckily, she’s not that kind of sister.

Four
    I gave Evan his bath, which seemed like a travesty to me when I picked him up from his booster seat after Haley fed him his dinner, which did not include peas. He smelled like grass and apple juice, pretty much the best cologne I’d ever sniffed. Why wash that away? I put too much bubble bath in the tub and an epic battle between a plastic stegosaurus and a Fisher-Price boat was waged. We were both pretty much equally soaked by the time I got him out to put him in his jammies.
    He was also getting sleepy and had molded himself to me as I carried him downstairs on my hip. Dan and Garrett were on the back porch with the grill fired up while Haley finished making a salad in the kitchen. She smiled as I walked in and reached her arms out for Evan.
    I shook my head. “It’s the last thing your back needs. He’s getting bigger every second, I think.”
    â€œI know. I’ll go get Dan. He’ll want to tuck him in.” Herbrows furrowed. “The timing’s not so great. Maybe Garrett can take over grilling the steaks.”
    I sighed. “Haley, I have a degree from the Culinary Institute of America. I can handle a grill. I can probably even make the steaks do fancy flips as I turn them.”
    â€œCould you just maybe make sure they’re cooked through and not charred anywhere?” She waved me on.
    â€œConsider it handled.” I opened the back door with my free hand. “Hey, Daddy-o. I think your services are needed.”
    Dan looked up from the grill. He’d changed out of his uniform into a T-shirt and jeans and he looked like my old high school buddy Dan more than Sheriff Cooper again. I swear his whole body melted a little as he looked at his son. I nodded my head at Evan. “Haley says you want to be on bedtime duty.”
    â€œBest duty ever.” He held out his spatula to me. “Trade?”
    â€œYou bet.” I handed over Evan and took the spatula, then went to check the grill. It was a classic