Stuart - Sugar

P RAISE FOR

Sugar

An irresistible mixture of humor and heart fabulously funny, Sugar will leave you satisfied and wanting more.

Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Weight in Silence and These Things Hidden

Sugar serves up a winning combination of wit and heart in pastry chef Charlie Garrett, who reluctantly becomes a reality TV star. But as she tries to balance her ex-boyfriend, who is now her boss, and an intriguing man she just met, she soon discovers that sometimes the sweetest things in life are the most simple. Sugar is an addictive and delicious pleasure, meant to be savored.

Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, authors of The Year We Turned Forty

A mouth-watering delight of a story about love, work, and yes, dessert! Like a perfect pastry, Sugar is a book to be devoured.

Jamie Brenner, author of The Wedding Sisters

Sugar is a deliciously relevant novel about one chefs struggle to balance the insatiable desire of food celebrity while remaining true to her craft. I ate it all in one sitting and loved it. Sugar satisfies in every way.

Lei Shishak, author Beach House Baking and owner of Sugar Blossom Bake Shop

Sugar hits the spot! A mnage trois between dramatic reality television, the merciless Michelin star chefs competition, and a heart-fluttering romance. When Kimberly Stuart creates the marriage of true love and luscious pastry, the pages melt like chocolate between your hands. As an aphrodisiac chef, this is a must-read!

Chef Fed, creator of FEDish and Love Bites

Copyright 2017 by Kimberly Stuart

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the authors imagination or used fictitiously.

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Skyhorse and Skyhorse Publishing are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation.

Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Laura Klynstra

Cover photo: iStock photo

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-1413-7

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1414-4

Printed in the United States of America

To Marc, always

W ITH another shift almost completed, I wondered for the millionth time if the restaurant business attracted a disproportionate number of insane people. I glanced at the oversized clock on the wall and saw the hands reaching for one in the morningdawn would be creeping into Manhattan in a matter of hours.

Folding a damp towel into a precise square, I took a look around my pastry station. After the scrub job Id just done, I needed a postintimacy cigarette. I narrowed my eyes and inspected the corners and crevices of the pastry station, looking for any remaining streaks or stains, and then ran my set of scouring toothbrushes under scalding hot water. Satisfied, I turned off the faucet with my elbow and stacked the toothbrushes in rainbow order on a drying rack. Five more minutes and I would be on my way home. The sweat prickling the back of my neck was just starting to cool, and I could practically feel the hot shower that beckoned me from my apartment three subway stops away.

The waitstaff had finished serving the second seating, tidied up, and clocked out. Hours ago, Executive Chef Alain Janvier had abandoned the kitchen of LOmbre, one of New Yorks most prestigious restaurants. Embracing the perks that came with being the boss, he slid home in the comfort of his vintage Corvette. Even many of the line cooks had finished prepping their stations for the following day and had begged off, figuring any loose ends would keep until the next shift. I remained, tottering on exhausted legs and looking like every before picture of every TV makeover show, but remaining behind nonetheless. I wouldnt leave until the job was done. Done and gleaming.

But in one moment, my fantasies of the new body scrub that smelled like pomegranate and jasmine; the promise of a few hours sleep in a clean T-shirt that had never seen the inside of a commercial kitchen; the room-darkening shades of my tenth-floor apartment in Sohoall that disappeared. My boss, the talented but unstable pastry chef Felix Bouchard, began yelling his head off. He was on the hunt for blood, and I was unlucky enough to be the first person he saw as he rounded the corner from the storage room.

Who took my baby? He spoke with the intoxicating sensitivity of a French serial killer.

Felix Bouchard had graduated with high honors from Le Cordon Bleu, Paris. Before coming to LOmbre, Felix had worked as pastry chef for a slew of Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe. He had served his famous apple butter crpes with marsala-laced vanilla sauce to the former president of Yugoslavia. He had been honored twice with a James Beard Award and had been nominated for it many times. Felix was unmarried, had no family to speak of, and hadnt been to a movie theater in seventeen years. But Felix was not a man without love. In fact, Felixs love for one particular object was unparalleled.

Who took my baby ? he said again.

I peered through the metal shelving separating the pastry prep area from the rest of the kitchen. The dishwashers were barely visible in the fog of steam rising from the industrial sinks. The humidity was fierce, and the few of us who remained looked as if wed survived a tropical Armageddon.

She is gone, Felix said. His comb-over had dislodged from under his toque. No amount of Aqua Net could defend against the air of the kitchen.

I snapped shut a container of spindly vanilla beans, marked the container with my trademark yellow painters tape, and cleared my throat. What are you missing, Chef?

Felix narrowed his eyes at me. In my early days at LOmbre, before Id earned the right to boss around a few underlings myself, Id once saved Felixs ample arse during a Valentines Day disaster by running down the block to Sals Grocery to buy a box of sea salt. This was the first in a long line of logistical rescues I had performed on his behalf throughout the many years that followed. His present sneer suggested he had no memory of these events, or of the indentured servitude I offered him every single day.

Charlie, I am missing my knife. My best knife. My favorite knife. The one gifted to me from the great Jacque Ppin, may God bless his soul! Felix bowed his head on those last words.

Did Ppin croak? Only I heard the muffled voice of Carlo, my favorite and most irreverent of the line cooks as he emerged from the fog over by the dishwashers.

Chef Bouchard, I said, we dont have your knife. Right, guys? I turned to the guys on the line. Rudy looked like he wanted his mom. He shook his head of red hair with vigor.