Page 1 of Recipe for Rivals

CHAPTER ONE

NOVA

Arcadia Creek lookedlike something out of a 1950s movie. Idyllic homes wrapped in porches lined the road leading to Main Street, which was emblazoned with red and gold flags bearing panthers mid-leap—obviously the high school mascot. All it was missing was a parade down the center of the road with the mayor waving from the back seat of a red convertible. One word popped into my mind when I saw this place for the first time yesterday: quaint.

Ironic, since that’s the word my ex most frequently used to describe me, a born and bred New Yorker. If I was quaint, this place was primitive.

I’d only been in town for twenty-four hours and already felt out of my element. The slow northern Texas twang was soft here, lilting, and entirely the opposite of the brisk New Yorker speech I was used to.

It was like stepping back in time, which I still wasn’t sure was a good thing. Certainly not for Ben and Alice, who had been removed from an elite private school in Manhattan. Yesterday, I peeked at the elementary school they would be enrolled at down the road, and it was—you guessed it—quaint.

“Mom, can we get ice cream?” eight-year-old Ben asked, hanging onto my cart with both hands, his round brown eyes peering up at me. We were walking the aisles of the small town market, the wheel swiveling like a spasm every few feet.

“I want root beer floats!” Alice said, joining her brother’s campaign.

“Gigi probably has ice cream,” I told them, pushing the grocery cart away from the frozen foods aisle and back toward the snacks. Carter had always been a stickler for organic foods and avoiding high fructose corn syrup. It was important, he’d said, to keep our bodies clean from toxins and our kids free of harmful dyes. I tossed a box of Fruit by the Foot into my cart alongside the Captain Crunch we picked out earlier.

Ben shifted his eyes to me suspiciously. “Does Gigi have root beer too?” He’d jumped on Alice’s dessert train, apparently. It wasn’t often my kids joined forces and agreed. Usually their bickering forced them to opposing sides, where they each dug trenches and held strong.

It almost made me want to fold on the ice cream. A quick calculation of what I had in the cart proved I’d already spent more than I could afford by hate-buying the junk food. Besides, now I had to balance those choices with something better. “Let’s swing by the produce again,” I said, earning scowls from both of my blond-haired little sprites. I didn’t know why they were so short when I was a solid five-foot-ten. No, I knew. They got their height genes from their dad.

Ben groaned, dragging his feet like I was forcing him to the dentist, but Alice skipped along, holding on to my cart and clutching her pink monkey to her side. It was one of those long-limbed stuffies with the Velcro paws that could fasten around her neck, but she mostly carried it around like a toddler on her hip, arms flipping about.

The aisle with household necessities like toilet paper andHot Wheels caught Ben’s eye, and I groaned inwardly. His gaze flashed to me. “Can I look at the cars?”

“Yes, but we aren’t buying any today.”

He agreed, though I knew he was already working on his pitch to change my mind.

“Me too!” Alice squealed, following him toward the Hot Wheels.

“I’ll get the carrots and be right back.”

Produce was two aisles away and we were almost the only ones in the shop. We’d passed a tall guy looking at cat food earlier, but otherwise the only sounds were the tinny country music from the overhead speakers and a woman stocking soup cans. I’d never have left them in another aisle in New York, but this place felt different.

How many vegetables did one need to eat to reduce the harm caused by Captain Crunch and Fruit by the Foot? I threw a bag of baby carrots into my cart and searched the fluorescent-lit shelves for something else my kids would reasonably eat, something that wouldn’t end up as brown soup in the veggie drawer.

Cucumber, maybe? Broccoli if it was cooked and doused in teriyaki sauce. I chose both of those and threw in some celery for good measure. I could maybe persuade Alice to eat ants on a log.

The kids and I had gotten into the habit of eating on our own at least a year before Carter asked for a divorce. He usually left for work before the rest of us woke and didn’t get home until the kids were preparing for bed. I had still kept our meals to his dietary specifications on the off-chance he might join us but, by the end, that wasn’t even occasional.

The end. It was such a dramatic way to look at the death of a ten-year relationship, but so fitting. Occasionally, while I was packing our things in New York to vacate the apartment, I found memories of moments that panged my stone heart. Things that made menostalgic for the way he used to be in college. That version of Carter had disappeared by the time Alice was born. My kids only experienced the overworked and impatient Carter, not the one who used to text me ridiculous haikus about my hands and went out of his way to bring me my favorite pad thai on his way home from work.

My blood heated anew, simultaneously angry and saddened that I’d been forced to leave my life behind—my home, my friends, my brother, my husband…myex-husband—and go at life on my own.

Passing an endcap covered in Pringles, I tossed a few canisters on top of the broccoli. Forget my budget today. Rage-buying junk food Carter would never see was the lowest form of revenge, but it felt amazing.

If he wanted a say in our children’s lives, he should have fought for more parental rights. How easily he’d given them up made me see red when I thought about it for too long. He was supposed to get the kids for two weeks during the summer, but I had a feeling if I never booked their tickets to New York, Carter wouldn’t enforce it.

The idea of sending my babies to him for any length of time might make me break out in hives. It was a new thing my skin was doing. Super attractive, especially during legal proceedings with my ex and the lawyer he was seeing now.

I could hear my kids talking, so I knew I had another minute before they missed me. I rounded the aisle toward the ice cream, wholly committed to this new junky version of myself, and nearly collided with Cat Food Guy. “Sorry,” I said perfunctorily, moving out of his way.

He gave me a once-over so quick I almost missed it, then his face broke out in a wide smile, catching me off guard. He was one of the types who knew exactly how attractive he was, with a square jawline so sharp you could peel a cucumber with it. He was much taller than me, which was a feat in itself, and his armswere muscled in a way that was visible beneath his navy blue Arcadia Fire Department shirt.

This guy was exactly the sort of man who would have made Carter puff up his chest and flash his five-thousand-dollar watch to assert his manliness.

My eyes dropped to Cat Food Guy’s watch. Plain, black, and looked like it probably came from Walmart.

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