The Marriage Recipe
The Marriage Recipe (2008)
Harlequin Books
New York loves pastry chef Rachel Palladia’s desserts, and her boss in the A-list Italian restaurant where she works is desperate to make her his wife. A country girl’s dream come true-until she catches her fiancé making love to someone else.
When her ex-fiancé sues her for the rights to her recipes, Rachel heads home to Morrisville, Indiana, to ask Colin Morris-the town’s hotshot lawyer and her former secret crush-for help. But while they’re working on an ironclad defense, their relationship really heats up!
The two are concocting a recipe for the perfect marriage-except he’s determined to stay small-town, and she yearns for the big city’s bright lights.
A dilemma, for sure, unless they can cook up a solution…
Returning soon…
- Publisher: Harlequin American Romance; Original edition (April 8, 2008)
- Language: English
- Mass Market Paperback: 224 pages
- ISBN-10: 0373752113
- ISBN-13: 978-0373752119
- Item Weight: 4 ounces
- Dimensions: 4.22 x 0.59 x 6.61 inches
What are Readers Saying
Delightful……another good story by Michele!
Rachel & Colin were neighbors and grew up together. Rachel had a crush on Colin, but he didn’t seem to be interested in her. She moved to NYC because she wanted to get away from Colin to later become a pastry chef. Rachel found herself coming back to her small hometown, looking for a job and a place to stay. Her ex-fiancee was suing her for all her recipes and she had no money or job. Rachel seeks out the help of her old friend Colin, who is a lawyer, to defend her against her ex. Colin always had a crush on Rachel, but thought she was interested in his friend Bruce who was now his law partner. One night, while talking, they clear out their misunderstanding from many years ago, realizing that she liked him instead and that he have a crush on her as well. Colin felt like life cheated him out of an opportunity to be with Rachel, so he kisses her. After that one kiss, they both realize the feelings they once had were still there. How could they be together? Rachel was a big city girl & Colin just loved being in a small town. She wanted to open her own bakery in NYC and he wanted roots in the country.
Very enjoyable story. Loved it!
Delicious
Michele Dunaway has cooked up a wonderful mix of humor, spice, justice, the boy/girl next door, family and sighs with her newest release, The Marriage Recipe.
Anyone who’s ever had a secret crush, fallen for the boy next door, or sought to find greener pastures then learned that life is good in your own hometown, will connect with this story. If you’ve ever been the underdog, or rooted for one, you will cheer Rachel as she seeks freedom and retribution from the ex-boss/ex-fiancé who turned from a prince to a toad, leaving her in debt from wedding bills and threatening to take the one asset she’d worked so hard to develop- her recipes.
Colin Morris is a hunk, a good guy, and totally hero worthy. He’s the boy she left behind, only neither he nor Rachel knew it at the time, and he helps Rachel realize that she only needs to look in her own backyard to find happiness.
Don’t miss this delightful story!
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Rachel Palladia was up to her elbows in dough. Unfortunately, none of it was green—the kind she really needed. Specifically, one-hundred-dollar bills, and lots of them.
Damn it all. No, damn him. Rachel let the curse word fly as she thought of her thirty-six-year-old fiancé, Marco Alessandro. Make that ex-fiancé. A woman simply did not marry a man to whom faithfulness meant he could sample the sous chef whenever his libido demanded it.
“I’m Italian,” Marco had proclaimed when she’d caught him and the nubile sous chef buck naked and bopping like rabbits in Rachel’s bed. “Italian men take mistresses. You will always have my heart. You will be my wife.”
Rachel had uttered a few choice expletives, tossed his diamond ring at him, told him to get out of her life and her apartment—and promptly donated her bed and linens to Goodwill. She was sleeping on one of those inflatable single mattresses until she could afford something else, but at least the inflatable was pure, unsoiled.
Rachel sighed, slapped the white-flour blob on the stainless-steel worktable and used a rolling pin to smooth out the piecrust. She was out several thousand dollars in nonrefundable deposits for wedding items and there were charges on her credit cards for other nonreturnable ones.
Even worse was that she was still working for the son of—Rachel bit off the word. Her mom insisted that ever since Rachel had moved to New York City at eighteen she’d started cussing like a sailor. Rachel planned on cleaning up her language, but this fiasco with Marco wasn’t helping any.
She placed the rolled-out dough in the pie pans and began trimming the crusts. To have come this far only to come to this…Rachel resisted the urge to throw the excess dough. She’d been in food service all her life, beginning at her grandmother’s diner in Morrisville, Indiana. Instead of attending college, Rachel had graduated from the
CIA—Culinary Institute of America, that is—then worked her way up in a succession of kitchen jobs until she’d landed here as head pastry chef at Alessandro’s, a fine Italian restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
God knows how many other women had revolved in and out of Marco’s life before she’d caught him with the sous chef one week before Valentine’s Day.
She’d spent the holiday of love alone, nursing her wounds and chastising herself for missing the signs. She had to be an idiot. That mistress stuff only happened on TV, or so she’d thought. Now she was stuck in an employment contract with a noncompete clause that wouldn’t allow her to work within fifty miles of the restaurant. Which left out finding another job in New York City, a town she’d loved from the very first minute she’d stepped foot in Penn Station the summer she’d been eighteen. Unless Marco let her out of her contract she had no option but to keep on at Alessandro’s if she wanted to stay in any of the five boroughs.
New York had vibes rural Morrisville didn’t. Sure, the tall buildings hid the sun. But the neon lights and nonstop crowds generated an energy that inspired. Despite being mostly anonymous in this city of over eight million people, she’d never felt rejected, as she had during her high-school days at home.
“So, are you surviving?” Glynnis, Rachel’s second in command, took the pie pans from Rachel and began adding the rich chocolate filling.
“I’m fine,” Rachel replied. She tucked the bangs of her dark brown hair under her pink baseball cap. She preferred something less ornate than those big white chef hats. “It’s definitely been the week from hell. Thankfully, Marco took that last-minute trip to Italy. I’m finally ready to face him when he returns today.”
“You think he’s man enough to own up to what he did and still work with you?” Glynnis asked. The pies now filled, the older woman put them into the oven.
Many restaurants bought their desserts from specialty companies, but Alessandro’s baked everything on the premises. In fact, over the past two years, Rachel’s desserts had become so popular that the restaurant had now sold them to patrons and other dining establishments. When she’d dated Marco, she’d enjoyed helping him grow the family business this way. He’d told her that once they were married she’d receive half his stake in the restaurant. He’d insisted that married couples shared everything. He was lucky he hadn’t passed along some sort of STD to Rachel in his spirit of sharing.
Rachel suppressed her anger. She couldn’t believe she’d been so naive in the twenty-first century. But she’d wanted that alpha-male fairy tale. How stupid to have fallen for a lie—that his type of man was perfect for her.
She’d deal with the bas—him, she amended, when he came in to work today. She prayed she was ready.
