Free What Love Tastes Like by Zuri Day Page A

Tiffany. Tiffany, are you there?”
    â€œYes, Mom. I’m here. What’s the business that’s bringing him to town?” Tiffany asked the question because she knew he wasn’t coming just to see her.
    â€œSome new partnership he’s checking out. I don’t know the details. Would you like his number? Just in case, you know, he gets busy? You know how single-minded he can be when he’s working on a deal.”
    â€œYes, Mom, I know all too well. But if he’s too busy to call his only child, especially when we’re in the same city? Then he’s too busy.”
    Janice sighed at the sarcasm she heard in Tiffany’s voice, even as she understood it. She couldn’t blame her daughter for feeling resentful, and she couldn’t deny that her daughter was right. Her father had always put business first—before his child and his marriage. She’d probably shared too much of the bitterness she felt toward him with her daughter, but at the time, she’d been too angry and hurt to care. That the divorce was acrimonious was an understatement, and for years after it was over, Janice tried to wipe every trace of Keith Bronson from their lives. That’s why when she’d taken back her maiden name, she’d changed Tiffany’s last name also—from Bronson to Matthews. She’d justified it at the time, saying it would be easier for her, her daughter, and the grandmother who was helping to raise her to have the same last name. Later she regretted it, and when Tiffany was sixteen, Janice asked if she wanted to have her father’s last name again. But by that time, Janice’s bitterness had become Tiffany’s. She said no.
    â€œWell,” Janice concluded, “let me give you his number, honey, just in case.”
    â€œNo, Mom, if Dad and I talk, it will be because he calls me.”
    An hour later, Tiffany pulled up to a familiar curb in the older, yet well kept neighborhood of Los Angeles known as View Park. The row of medium-sized, stucco-covered houses stood behind freshly mowed lawns and newly trimmed bushes. A profusion of color burst forth from bird of paradise plants that lined the walkway leading up to the bright red front door. As Tiffany approached the porch, a giddy lightness replaced the wisps of heaviness that still coiled around her heart following the conversation with her mother. The mood had lifted somewhat as she walked the aisles of her favorite market, gathering up items for the dinner she planned to cook. But it was only now, as she rang the doorbell shaped like a flower, that a smile flittered across her face.
    â€œTiffany!”
    â€œHey, Grand!”
    Tiffany stepped into the cozy foyer and hugged Gladys Matthews, her favorite person in the world. It was at the elbow of Gladys, her maternal grandmother, that she had not only developed a love for great food, but a love for preparing it as well. While both her parents had adamantly opposed her decision to become a chef, one of the few things on which they agreed before, during, or since their ten-year marriage, Gladys had encouraged her to follow her dreams. Whenever Tiffany was at her grandmother’s house, the world righted itself and everything was possible. If anybody could help her make sense of what was going on in her life, it would be the woman Tiffany simply called “Grand.”
    â€œCome on in the kitchen,” Grand said, noticing the bags Tiffany carried. “What have you got here?”
    â€œDinner,” Tiffany replied. “I hope you’re hungry.”
    â€œChild, a little bird must have tweeted in your ear. I was just thinking about how I sure didn’t feel like cooking tonight. And here you are.”
    Tiffany felt the tension begin to leave her body as soon as she stepped into Grand’s kitchen. The familiar smells of the onions, peppers, and garlic that were hanging in a vegetable basket by the window, as usual, blended perfectly