It only takes a few days for Ollie D'Angelo to lose his boyfriend, his job, and his home. Instead of mourning what he doesn't have, Ollie celebrates what he does: the freedom to pursue his real passion -- cooking. He begins Dinner at Home, a home-catering business, and it takes off.<br><br>Late one night, Ollie catches Hank Mellinger, a streetwise hood down on his luck, about to rob his car. Ollie soon discovers that appearances aren't necessarily what they seem. Hank isn't a criminal caught red-handed, but a hungry young man trying to make a life for himself and the four-year-old niece he's trying desperately to take care of.<br><br>Instead of calling the cops, Ollie offers Hank a job and a way to pull himself up by his bootstraps. Together, they discover they can really cook ... and that their shared passion for food just might lead to a passion for each other.

Dinner at Home

Ollie decided a break was in order, unless he was going to let the bitterness he felt eat him alive.


He wandered back into the kitchen, where all the ingredients for that morning’s “celebratory” breakfast were still aligned on the counter. He got busy making scrambled eggs and toast—for one.Chapter 2


“You really want to feed people this crap?” Hank Mellinger snapped at his new boss. Lined up in the kitchen of Haven, a charity that housed and fed the homeless of Seattle and provided chef training for some of its residents, were several industrial-sized boxes of generic mac and cheese mix. Alongside the boxes were sticks of no-name margarine and boxes of powdered milk.


His boss, E.J. Porter, an African-American woman with her hair braided tightly to her scalp and oval-rimmed frameless glasses, shook her head as she took in her latest charge.


Chapter 7