A Taste of Heaven: A Romance

By Jennifer Rose

Possibly the only romance ever set in a high-end Montreal kosher restaurant, A Taste of Heaven layers spicy love scenes with directions for making velvety pâté and musings about babies. Will Dena and Richard Klein’s marriage overheat—or will they find more savor and sweetness?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504020411

Book preview

Chapter 1

He was a tad under six feet tall, with a pared-down silhouette and an air of restless intelligence; and Dena Klein wanted to go to bed with him.

She stared across the crowded room, soaking up the shock waves from the kinetic energy he exuded. Even standing still, he seemed to be in motion. The sleek bondage of dinner clothes might have been jogging togs for all that the dark cloth restrained him. His collar-length hair, brown verging on black, waved about the broad, sculpted planes of his face with a dynamism all its own. Under mobile brows that rose to eloquent peaks, the deep-set blue eyes swept the room, radiating a laserlike curiosity about the human species.

Easily the most attractive man in the place, Dena thought. Really the most appealing man she’d seen just about anywhere.

His probing eyes became fixed on her face. Their blue turned a bruisy purple. The chiseled mouth opened in flagrant suggestion, then relaxed into a friendly grin, though not exactly platonic friendly.

Dena’s heart seemed to relocate itself somewhere south of her midline. Her body arched toward the man, as responsive to his summons as if he’d stroked the private skin he was clearly thinking about.

A sip of icy champagne did nothing to cool her down. But why should she cool down? The man happened to be her husband. And a good thing he was, she decided. If he really were the alluring stranger she’d seen him as for an instant, no power on earth could have kept her from having an affair with him!

Giving in to a wide smile, tossing the dark strands of hair that haphazardly framed her elfin face, Dena started toward Richard to share her mischievous insight. He looked as though he would welcome rescue, anyway. His great-aunt Celia, the matriarch of the Klein clan and a world-class talker, had him in her clutches. Richard loved Celia too much—and was simply too gallant—to cut off her jet stream of words, but his darting glances gave away his impatience.

Oh, well. What was a big wedding without its colorful family characters, even the ones who irritated as well as endeared? All in all, this certainly was a happy occasion. That morning Richard’s younger sister, Sally, had married David Roth in Rabbi Kenner’s study at Temple Sholom. Now a hundred relatives and friends were celebrating the union at the home of Belle and Sam Klein—the bride’s parents and Dena’s parents-in-law—in the Westmount section of Montreal.

Dena loved the amber tones and crazy angles of the eighteenth-century house she and Richard had restored in Old Montreal, but she always felt refreshed by the clean light and high arches of Belle and Sam’s spacious peach-and-white house. It was sherbet for the eye, she liked to say, purifying her visual palate after a heaping helping of Canadiana. Most of the furniture in the double living room had been removed for the wedding reception, making the house seem airier still. Great baskets of white roses echoed the ethereal theme. As the dance-music trio released Gershwin into the late afternoon, Dena reeled pleasantly, not sure whether she was smelling the music or hearing the roses or just succumbing to Richard’s magic.

Dena! A tall blonde in a chiffon rainbow swooped down on her before she could get to Richard’s side. Dena fumbled for the woman’s name. Belle’s side of the family … Toronto … an interior decorator … took her coffee black with one sugar. Jean something. No, Joan. Joan Hurwitz. Married to Alan, who worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Company and was allergic to garlic.

Is it true you did all the catering for Sally? Joan gazed with wonder on the half-consumed canapé she was holding, a dill-flecked mousse of salmon on a paper-thin disc of hand-crafted melba toast. Baked all the breads and everything?

Everything, Dena said happily. It was the only present Sally and David wanted from us. Richard paid, I made.

But it’s fantastic! Joan gave the impression of not so much biting into the mousse as inhaling it. I don’t think the Ritz or Le Fadeau could have done better, she added, invoking two of the jazziest eating places in Montreal. And someone said it’s all kosher. Is it really? She leaned forward, inviting confession. No butter or cream at all? You can tell me. I couldn’t care less. My kids think the only thing to do with a bagel is put ham salad on it.

I don’t care, either—for myself, Dena said. But I wanted to make food that Aunt Celia and Uncle Jake and all that generation would eat. Of course Sally could have had one of the traditional Jewish caterers, but then she wouldn’t have liked the food. Stuffed derma is hardly her style.

Hardly, Joan agreed, popping the rest of the canapé into her mouth.

By the way, you can tell Alan that there isn’t any garlic in anything. Garlic’s too unromantic for a wedding reception.

His name is Paul, but how marvelous of you to remember about the garlic. Joan licked her fingers.

Richard says someone’s going to have fun dissecting my brain one of these days, Dena commented cheerfully. I’ve forgotten my own name at times, but never a recipe or people’s feelings about food. Be sure to have some of the white asparagus before it runs out. It’s fresh. Everything’s fresh.

Speaking of fresh—Richard slipped an arm around her waist as she joined him. He drew her close. He dropped a playful kiss on her tip-tilted nose, then gently brushed her lips with his.

I have a shocking proposition, Mrs. Klein, he murmured. Dena’s mouth heated as his lips pressed home. Around them the sounds of celebration rose and fell, but it seemed a distant, misty music. Reality was the pulsing in her throat, the sweet aching at her center.

Richard’s fingers found a magical spot at the nape of her neck, and he traced a spiral there. The spiral turned into an electrical current that widened like ripples on a pond, reaching purposefully to lap at her breasts. Part of her mind pictured her swelling nipples straining at the thin silk of her green dress under Great-Aunt Celia’s watchful eyes, and she forced her mind out of bed and into the kitchen. Chicken breasts came to mind, covered with a tarragon-scented aspic—but heaven, why was she thinking of breasts? No help at all—

Celia cleared her throat, and only Richard’s mouth sealing Dena’s kept her giggles from exploding. Celia was the one flesh and blood person who, when she cleared her throat, actually made the sound that novelists of another era had written as Harumph.

So what are you two, the newlyweds? Celia asked with a disapproving air Dena knew was pure charade. The bosomy, gray-haired matriarch was as noted for her wide tolerance as she was for her long-windedness.

Richard unhurriedly detached himself from Dena’s mouth. Someone’s got to show those children how to do it, he said, grinning. He and Sally had a loving sibling rivalry going.

Hah. Listen to the big shot. I’m sure ‘those children’ could write a book about how to do it. Celia shrugged her shoulders philosophically. That’s human nature, right? So they had the honeymoon first. At least they decided to get married second—which is more than you can say for some people nowadays. But tell me something. She fixed her pale blue eyes on Richard, then Dena. "What is this business about Sally keeping her maiden name? She gets married, then makes it sound as though she and David are just living together. Nonsense. Narishkeit," she added, as if nonsense became yet more nonsensical when tagged in Yiddish.

Nothing wrong with the name Klein, Richard said. It goes with everything. Just because you gave it up for Roseman—

Celia made an impatient gesture with a pudgy hand. Gave up, nothing. It’s what a woman does.

Sally says her clients have enough to handle without her suddenly changing identities on them, Dena put in. I guess they take it very personally when a therapist marries.

So how are they going to take it when Sally gets pregnant? Celia asked triumphantly. A big family, she told me. The sooner, the better. At twenty-seven, who needs to wait? she added innocently, as though it had slipped her remarkably lucid mind that Dena was twenty-eight. She stared unsubtlely at Dena’s belly, which was perfectly flat in its casing of green silk. Thank God Belle and Sam will finally have the joy of grandchildren.

Dena and Richard groaned in chorus.

Come on, Celia, Richard said. I know there’s an unwritten law about Jewish weddings that someone in your generation has to twit someone in our generation about not having children yet, but does it always have to be you twitting us? His arm tightened protectively around Dena. We’ll have children when the moment is right. We may surprise you sooner than you think.

Celia looked distinctly unimpressed. What are you, Solomon? Time has played tricks on smarter people than you.

We’re planning to have triplets the first time around to make up for the slow start, Dena said brightly, hoping that neither Richard nor his great-aunt would read the heaviness in her heart.

A dozen people at the wedding reception had told Dena that if Sally and David were as happy after five years of marriage as she and Richard seemed to be, they would have everything they could hope for—and she had felt mocked by the words. She and Richard did have something she regarded as spectacularly special—a blend of heady infatuation and profound friendship—but there was one area of passionate disagreement she certainly wouldn’t wish on her sister-in-law and new brother-in-law.

Since early in the marriage, Dena had longed for their exquisitely sensual bed life to culminate in conception. Richard kept insisting that his career as a television producer be one notch more firmly established so they could have a financial cushion and his delight in his children wouldn’t be marred by money worries. Several weeks ago he had been handed a new daytime show to oversee, For Better and For Worse, and Dena had breathlessly awaited his announcement that they could start thinking about converting their guest room into a nursery. She was still holding her breath.

At moments she’d been tempted to say, But you promised … The last thing she wanted, though, was to pressure Richard into fatherhood. For everybody’s sake, he had to want to have a baby as much as she did before they took that most major of steps.

Now when Jake and I— Celia started to say, but Dena and Richard were delivered from that particular comment on family planning by none other than the bridal couple, a happily flushed Sally and her beloved David Roth.

Sally resembled her brother Richard in her sharp wits and good-heartedness, but there the similarity ended. With her carrot hair and freckled moppet face, she always reminded Dena of a huggable rag doll. She had played the image up, not down—wisely, Dena thought—with a puffed-sleeved, hand-embroidered Guatemalan wedding dress and ropes and ropes of tiny seed pearls. David had the sun-streaked fair hair and layered tan of the compulsive athlete. A track star in his undergraduate days at McGill University, he had gone on to law school at the venerable Montreal institution. Now he combined vocation and avocation by specializing in sports-related legal matters.

Sally and David had in tow a tall, angular, olive-complected man whom Sally introduced as Jacques Margolies. Briefly acknowledging the existence of Celia and Richard, the stranger took Dena’s outstretched hand and pressed it to his heart. "Madame, he said reverently, with a decidedly Gallic intonation, I must tell you that your pâté de foie is equal to if not the superior of the finest pâtés of France."

The kid sure can make chopped liver, can’t she? Richard said jovially, as Jacques bestowed reverent kisses on Dena’s hand.

Jacques glared. "Monsieur. To call your wife’s pâté de foie chopped liver is to—"

Is to be a damned good translator, Dena said briskly.

Ah, but no, Jacques protested, sucking in his cheeks to underscore his dismay. "We must never be simply literal in this life, no? Is sauce hollandaise to be translated as Dutch gravy? He turned his hands palm up, as though to say the question answered itself. Yes and no. And so it is, Monsieur, with pâté de foie. The words ‘chopped liver’ do not convey the delicate scenting of basil, the hint of chives, the brilliant balance of walnut oil and olive oil, the soupçon of Cognac—"

Canadian whisky, Dena corrected him, her eyes sparkling. The man’s appalling yet amusing performance had them all riveted, and she barely managed to get out the words. A good cook always uses local produce when possible, right?

Seagram’s Crown Royal she calls produce, Richard moaned to the others in mock agony. At twelve dollars a bottle.

Jacques Margolies squeezed his eyes shut and rocked back on his heels as though stifling unspeakable agony. So few people, he said to Dena, understand the cook’s sensitive nature. But you are not Canadian, surely? These ears are as responsive to inflection as this nose is to spices, and I hear New York City in your voice. Manhattan, to be precise.

If you narrow her old address down much further, Richard said, I may have to ask a few questions.

His voice bantered, his grin reassured; but Dena knew he had taken a dislike to Jacques, and she was relieved when Sally changed the course of the conversation.

Come on, Jacques, the new bride said impatiently. Tell Dena your idea. She linked arms with her husband, giving him a conspiratorial squeeze. Dena, you’re going to flip.

But Jacques was not to be cheated of his moment of drama. He fixed solemn brown eyes on Dena’s face. Is it true what they tell me? That these culinary masterpieces of yours—so elegant, so French—are also kosher? There is no pork in that extraordinary terrine? Such a brilliant touch, the pistachio nuts.

Pork! Celia’s hand flew to her throat.

No way! Dena exclaimed. Veal from Moishe the Butcher’s on St. Laurent.

Come on, darling, Richard said into Dena’s ear as the trio loudly struck up Fine and Dandy. Don’t you want to hear my shocking proposition? Enough of this fellow.

Before she could answer, Jacques was nodding with apparent satisfaction and proffering