Personal chef Beau St. Clair, recently divorced from his cheating husband, returns to the small Ohio River town where he grew up to lick his wounds. Jack Rogers lives with his mother, Maisie, in that same small town, angry at and frightened by the world. Jack has a gap in his memory that hides something he dares not face, and he’s probably suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Maisie, seeking relief from her housebound and often surly son, hires Beau to cook for Jack, hoping the change might help bring Jack, once a handsome and vibrant attorney, back to his former self. But can a new face and comfort food compensate for the terror lurking in Jack’s past? Slowly the two men begin a dance of revelation and healing. Food and compassion build a bridge between Beau and Jack, a bridge that might lead to love. But will Jack’s demons allow it? His history could just as easily tear them apart as bring them together.

Dinner at Jack's

Jack shivers. The night has been one of magic.


Ever since he graduated from law school and moved out here to the Pacific Northwest, his life has been one of single-minded drive and purpose. He makes time for little else beyond his legal career and making a name for himself at the firm. Eighty-hour workweeks are not uncommon. Weekends are filled with briefs—and not the fun kind you pull down to reveal the surprise nestled inside—and lots of research. But he needs to make his mark, he reasons, in spite of the lack of social life, in spite of the lack of that mythical beast the human resource gurus refer to as “work-life balance.” He’s not the only junior associate on staff, and all the others are just as young and hungry as he. He knows that if the time should come when the herd needs to be thinned, the weakest will be the first to go. And he can’t let it be him. Not when he’s come so far, an only child of a poor single mother in a little town clinging to the banks of the Ohio River.


Chapter 71