Born to Be Wild Read online

  Born to Be Wild

  by

  Patti Berg

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  Copyright © 2013 by Patti Berg

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. This book may not be resold or uploaded for distribution to others.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  First published in the United States by Avon Books: February 2001

  First e-book edition: January 2013

  Cover design: Dar Albert

  Stock photo © Piccia Neri

  Author photo: Bob Berg

  For Bob,

  for a million and one

  wild and wonderful reasons.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Epilogue

  Other books by Patti Berg

  About the Author

  Something Wild (Excerpt)

  One

  There is a charm about the forbidden

  that makes it unspeakably desirable.

  —Mark Twain

  “Oh, dear!”

  Lauren Remington drew a fine line through Zippo’s Delicatessen, the last caterer listed in the Palm Beach Yellow Pages. She couldn’t possibly hire a deli—especially one called Zippo’s—to prepare and serve the fine food for Betsy Endicott’s wedding to Richard W. D. Stribling IV.

  Henri’s, the most in-demand purveyor of fine cuisine in Palm Beach, had been Betsy’s choice. She’d wanted to serve her guests Henri’s fabulous poached quail eggs with Beluga caviar, his medallions of grilled salmon with citrus dressing, and prawns with curry sauce and mango chutney. She’d wanted Henri’s celebrated tall, dark, and handsome waiters, who never dressed in anything more common than Armani, strolling across the lawns as they attended each honored guest. Betsy had wanted her wedding to be the most marvelous event of the season.

  Poor Betsy. She’s in for a big disappointment, Lauren mused, drumming the end of her pen on the Yellow Pages.

  Henri, sadly, had passed away yesterday morning, an act of God that no contract could overrule. This meant he would not be preparing the ultimate in canapés for Betsy’s reception. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Henri’s entire staff, not to mention the best chefs for miles around, planned to attend his funeral, which, unfortunately, was scheduled for the same day and time as Betsy Endicott’s wedding.

  Lauren sighed. Who on earth could she possibly get to prepare the luscious feast that needed to be served in three days?

  Staring at the blue ink running through Zippo’s Delicatessen, she tried to imagine the hors d’oeuvres a place called Zippo’s would concoct. Suddenly, visions of a six-foot-long submarine sandwich oozing with mayonnaise, American cheese, and salami came to mind. And then she imagined the garlic on everyone’s breath!

  She hastily scribbled a zigzag line through Zippo’s, and spun around in the kitchen chair to face her butler. “This isn’t going too well, is it, Charles?”

  The only person she trusted enough to confide in about this dilemma came toward her, the soles of his wing tips silent on the gleaming black and white tiled kitchen floor. His face was totally devoid of expression, the look he usually wore when contemplating what to say. The tall, always slender, white-haired Englishman, who’d been part of her life for all but the first of her twenty-nine years, rarely spoke without careful consideration of his words, not even now, when she longed to hear him say that she’d only imagined the disastrous occurrences of the past few hours.

  Crossing her legs, Lauren absently smoothed the ice-blue silk of her slacks over her knee as she watched Charles stir tea in a delicate Limoges cup. Steam from the Earl Grey whirled before him. It smelled delicious, but she had the feeling an entire box of rich, dark Godivas would be more comforting at the moment.

  Charles set the saucer on the kitchen table and walked away, stopping when he reached the outside door. Lauren wondered if he planned to leave her alone, with this entire mess to straighten out on her own. She’d always—well, most of the time—valued his advice, and she needed it now. Thankfully he turned to face her.

  Linking his hands behind the back of his crisp white jacket, Charles cleared his throat, which, Lauren knew from past experience, was not a good sign. “Pardon me for saying this, Miss Remington, but no, things are not going well.”

  “Those aren’t the words I wanted to hear.”

  He cleared his throat again. “Have you considered contacting Miss Endicott and informing her that you’ve encountered a slight complication in her wedding plans?”

  Lauren’s eyes narrowed at the ludicrous suggestion. She’d failed at many things in her life, but she would not fail as a wedding planner!

  “Betsy’s wedding is three days away,” she reminded Charles. “She’s flying back from Paris today with her gown, and tomorrow the yacht and crew Dickie hired for their round-the-world honeymoon sails into port.”

  She pushed out of the chair and crossed the kitchen. Gripping the edge of the counter, she stared out the window at the swaying palms, at the lawn running down to the sandy beach, and across the dark blue ocean. Lauren remembered Betsy’s happiness when she’d talked about getting married, remembered the wistful look in her eyes when she’d said, “Dickie really loves me.” Lauren had mistakenly thought the same thing a time or two, but she would never burst Betsy’s bubble. She wasn’t that jaded by the misfortunes of love and matrimony to think that all marriages ended in divorce.

  Besides, she truly believed that Dickie did love Betsy and that they were perfect for each other. And perfect people deserved an exquisite, flawless wedding.

  She walked back to the table and sat down, resolved to succeed. “No, Charles, I’m not going to tell Betsy that the caterer died, or that I can’t find a suitable replacement for the lavish event I talked her into letting me plan.” She didn’t add that Betsy had agreed to hire her in spite of her family’s protests, which furthered Lauren’s resolve. “Betsy is one of my dearest and oldest friends, and one way or another, I’ll make sure her wedding goes without a hitch.”

  “I have every faith in you, Miss Remington.”

  Charles had never been good at telling lies. Still, she appreciated his effort.

  “Do you have any cookies to go with this tea?” she asked, taking another sip of the Earl Grey as she turned toward the table once again. “Something chocolate would be lovely.”

  Determined to find a solution to the problem, she slid an index finger down the column of caterers to make sure she hadn’t missed anyone, or crossed out one by accident. When that proved fruitless, she skimmed the list of other people she’d already contacted: chefs she knew, every country club she’d ever been a member of or visited, and cooks Charles had recommended. She’d come up empty-handed everywhere she’d turned because no one wanted to handle a wedding of this magnitude on such short not
ice. Obviously she had to look beyond the norm—but definitely not Zippo’s.

  She plucked a heavily-dipped-in-chocolate cookie from the plate Charles set before her and nibbled the edge as she watched Charles moving expertly around the kitchen. She’d never noticed how comfortable he seemed in this room. She wondered if he kept company with Mrs. Fisk, her cook, who, unfortunately, was on vacation in Tahiti. Could there be a possibility that Charles dabbled in the culinary arts, that he could prepare a meal as well as serve it?

  Dunking her cookie in the tea, she studied the vast array of cookbooks filling a cabinet on the far side of the kitchen. Time and time again she’d watched Mrs. Fisk look up recipes and whip out seemingly effortless masterpieces. How hard, she wondered, could fixing canapés possibly be?

  “I think I’ve come up with a solution to the problem,” she announced to Charles.

  “You have?”

  “Of course. You and I will do the cooking.”

  Charles cocked his head toward her, and one of his bushy white eyebrows rose. “You, Miss Remington?”

  “The two of us, Charles.”

  “But I don’t cook, and, pardon me for saying this, but neither do you.”

  “I prepared a meal for you once when I was a teenager, and I believe you told me it was delicious.”

  Charles’s eyes darted toward the black and white tiles on the floor. “I lied, Miss Remington.”

  She smiled, trying to disguise her hurt and to ease Charles’s discomfort. The revelation that she couldn’t cook shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise, she realized, taking another bite of cookie. She stared at the blur of papers in front of her, remembering another time when she’d tried to please a man in that age-old-way: through his stomach.

  She’d been a young bride of not quite twenty when she’d fixed a meal for her husband, hoping to give Chip a reason to stay home rather than run off to the track where he did nothing but lose money.

  Chip, sadly, had preferred horses to her—and her cooking.

  And then there was Leland Lancaster—husband number two—who’d preferred liquor to food, and sex with other women to making love to his wife. She hadn’t bothered cooking for any man following her disastrous marriages to Chip and Leland. After all, the men she knew weren’t interested in her homemaking skills, only in merging their old blue-blooded money with hers.

  She’d learned far too late that neither one of her husbands was interested in a family life, a house full of children, or loving her, all the things she’d truly wanted, desires that were nothing more than elusive dreams.

  But none of that mattered right now, she decided, shaking away the dregs of her past and her insecurities about her present and future. The important thing was finding someone who could create fabulous canapés. She would not let Betsy down on her special day.

  Charles stepped toward the table, adding a few more cookies to the plate. “Are you sure you’ve called every caterer in the book, Miss Remington?”

  “Every one. Even Bad Bubba’s Barbecue.”

  Charles ran his own finger down the page, slowly looking at each entry. “I believe you might have missed one.”

  Lauren leaned close. “Where?”

  “Right here.” He tapped the page. “It’s nearly hidden by the line you drew through Bad Bubba’s.”

  Lauren scrutinized the entry for a moment, then laughed. “You don’t really believe that a place called Born To Be Wild Catering could live up to the standards of Palm Beach society?”

  “Might I remind you, Miss Remington, that you’re beginning to sound like your mother.”

  Lauren gritted her teeth. She was not a snob— she had never been and never would be. On top of that, she was tired of doing things that pleased her mother, her father, her brother, her ex-husbands, or her friends.

  She wanted to do things her own way, on her own terms. Her friends snickered about the choices she’d made in the last couple of years. They’d lambasted her for dumping Australian polo player Peter Leighton shortly before their wedding, and the tabloids were having a ball talking about her attempt to be a wedding planner.

  The laughter hurt. They didn’t know and they obviously didn’t care how much succeeding at this venture meant to her. She’d failed at all the meaningful things in life, and she wanted desperately to change all that. Her business was just the first step in starting over; she wouldn’t let pride get in the way.

  Taking a deep breath, she stared at the phone number in the Yellow Pages and decided that desperate times called for desperate measures.

  She grabbed the phone and punched in the number. Born To Be Wild might not sound like the perfect caterer for Betsy Endicott’s high-society wedding, but Born To Be Wild appeared to be her only hope.

  As she listened to the first ring at the other end of the line, she silently prayed for a miracle, for Born To Be Wild Catering to be available on Saturday and—she crossed her fingers—to be able to make something besides fried chicken or ribs.

  The people of Palm Beach could laugh all they wanted at her attempts to be a businesswoman. She didn’t give a fig for what they thought. All that mattered was her own self-esteem, which had been knocked for a loop a few times over the years.

  She’d failed at two marriages, and would have failed at a third if she’d gone through with marrying that jerk Peter Leighton. The tabloids painted a picture of her as a flighty, not terribly bright fashion plate. But they were wrong—dead wrong! It didn’t matter if she proved it to the people of the world or not. She had to prove it to herself.

  oOo

  Max Wilde lifted the wooden spoon to his mouth and tasted his newest concoction—sizzling pork ribs with pineapple and papaya hot and spicy barbecue sauce. Not bad, he had to admit. Helena Fabiano had asked for something special for her husband Luigi’s seventy-fifth birthday party, because Luigi had grown tired of her raviolis and lasagna, and Max planned to go all out.

  Tonight he’d test the menu for Saturday’s event on his kids. Ryan and Jamie never failed to tell him when a recipe sucked—their choice of words, not his. If he got even one set of thumbs down, he’d spend all night improving the recipe. He didn’t know Luigi from Adam and he could have told Mrs. Fabiano that she’d have to select from the stock catering items, but that wasn’t his style. Born To Be Wild Catering aimed to please. Besides, Mrs. Fabiano had tweaked his cheek when she’d asked for something special. How could he possibly turn her down?

  “Hey, Max!”

  Jed Trumbo’s voice hit Max’s ears long before his teenage assistant pushed through the swinging doors and swaggered into the kitchen. Before Max could stop him, Jed stuck his finger into the pot of steaming sauce. “Shiii...” The curse was stifled when Jed shoved his finger into his mouth.

  “Lesson number thirty-two,” Max said, turning off the burner. “Don’t stick your finger in anything that’s bubbling on top the stove. That’s a sure sign it’s hotter than hell.”

  Max turned the cold water on in the sink, grabbed Jed’s hand, and shoved it under the faucet. “Hold it there for a minute and it’ll feel better.”

  “You know, Max,” Jed said, shaking his hand under the water, as if that would make the pain die down faster, “I’m not too good at this kitchen stuff. It’s not that I don’t like working with you, it’s just that I’d be better off fixing engines or something.”

  Max knew full well that Jed knew how to fix engines, He knew how to hot-wire them, too, which was what the kid had been doing when Max first laid eyes on him. Jed hadn’t had a record when he’d tried to take off with Max’s ’68 Corvette, and Max was determined the kid never would.

  He was a seventeen-year-old who’d been knocked around by his father, had dropped out of school, and was living on the streets—the same thing that could have happened to Max if his foster dad hadn’t taken him in. So he’d found Jed a place to stay, had given him a job and attempted to be his mentor. After three weeks of trying to make things work, Max knew that Jed’s mechanical skills
far outweighed his abilities as a chef’s assistant.

  “Why don’t you head over to the Hole and talk to Jazz or Gabe,” Max suggested, pulling a tray of sweet potato biscuits from the oven. “See if they can help you find a new job.”

  “Does that mean I can’t hang around here no more?”

  “You can hang out here or the Hole whenever you want, as long you get another job, show up to work on time, and stay out of trouble.” Max tossed Jed a towel. “Before you take off, could you call—”

  “Oh, crap!” Jed blurted out. “There’s some lady on the phone wantin’ to talk to you about catering a wedding on Saturday. I told her you was busy, but she refused to take no for an answer.”

  Max bit back his irritation and slapped Jed on the shoulder, knowing the kid needed encouragement more than harsh words. “I’ll see you at the Hole later.”

  Jed didn’t waste a minute getting out of the house, and before the back door slammed, Max grabbed the phone at the end of the kitchen counter. “This is Max.”

  He expected someone to yell. He thought for sure the woman at the other end of the line would ask him what the hell took him so long to get to the phone, but he didn’t hear a word. Instead he heard the distinct sound of fingernails drumming against the mouthpiece.

  “Sorry for the delay,” he said. “I had an emergency in the kitchen.”

  “I know all about emergencies, Mr.—”

  “Wilde.” He liked the sound of her voice. Sultry. Sexy.

  With his luck she was probably ninety-two years old!

  “I have a definite emergency, Mr. Wilde,” she said. “I have a wedding planned for Saturday and my caterer died.”

  “Henri?”

  “Please don’t tell me you’re going to his funeral.”

  She sounded frantic... and a lot younger than ninety-two. “No, that day I’ll be catering Luigi Fabiano’s seventy-fifth birthday party.”

  “That’s too bad” she said, followed by a very deep sigh. May I ask what kind of food you’re serving Mr. Fabiano?”