Food of Love

R. Allen Anne

Description

After Princess Regina, a former supermodel, is outed in the tabloids for gaining weight, someone tries to kill her. She suspects her royal husband wants to be rid of her now that she's fat. Stalked by the mysterious assassin, she seeks refuge with the only person she can trust: her long-estranged foster sister, Rev. Cady Stanton, a right wing talk show host who has romantic and weight issues of her own.

Sujets

• Love
• Love (disambiguation)

Informations

• Publié par: Mark Williams international Digital Publishing
• Date de parution: 05 avril 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908961037
• Langue: English

Extrait

Food of Love


by


Anne R. Allen




This edition © Anne R. Allen 2012
Originally published and © 2003



All rights reserved.



ISBN Number: 978-1-908961-03-7



Published by Mark Williams international Digital Publishing.
www.mwidp.com

Formatted by Epublishing Media Service
www.epublishingmediaservices.com


Cover design by Kate Smith based on an original design by Meghan Derico.
Table of Contents

Publisher's Statement
Table of Contents
Introduction by Saffina Desforges
Chapter 1-The Smile of the Spoon
Chapter 2-King of the Wild Frontier
Chapter 3-White Light for Breakfast
Chapter 4-Bearing the Cross
Chapter 5-Oasis
Chapter 6-The Pits
Chapter 7-Angels and Bears
Chapter 8-California Dreams
Chapter 9-Lush Life
Chapter 10-Pie With the Angels
Chapter 11-Out of the Box
Chapter 12-Hunters
Chapter 13-Rotten in Denmark
Chapter 14-Colored Girls
Chapter 15-Chocolate Envy
Chapter 16-Old Maids Never Wed and Have Babies
Chapter 17-Wise and Foolish Virgins
Chapter 18-Television Angels
Chapter 19-Under Siege
Chapter 20-Arthuritis
Chapter 21-Family Values
Chapter 22-Stradivarius
Chapter 23-If You Small at Me
Chapter 24-Join the Jamboree
Chapter 25-Vermin
Chapter 26-Alien Abduction
Chapter 27-Bluebeard
Chapter 28-Mothers and Daughters
Chapter 29-A Pair of Kings
Chapter 30-The Goddess Out of the Machine
Chapter 31-Elvis Leaves the Building
Chapter 32-Queen of the Wild Things
Chapter 33-Vermin Redux
Sample Chapter - The Gatsby Game
Sample Chapter - The Best Revenge
Sample Chapter - Sherwood Ltd
Sample Chapter - Ghostwriters in the sky
Introduction by Saffina Desforges.


Food of Love was Anne R. Allen’s first published novel, and continues to be her most popular of her five (and counting) books.
First published in the UK in 2003 by the now-defunct Babash-Ryan, it’s a romp through the world of the booming late 1990’s. Part thriller and part screwball romantic comedy, Food of Love appeals to readers on both sides of the pond. Beneath its roller-coaster plot and comic exterior, the story addresses some complex issues about body image, religion and a woman’s right to choose. 
Food of Love tells the story of Regina, a former supermodel, now princess of a tiny European principality (yes, these places do still exist, although the one in this novel is of course fictional), who has lost her skeletal figure and finds herself threatened by an unknown assassin. Fearing her royal husband wants to kill her now that she’s not model-thin, she seeks protection from her estranged African-American foster sister, conservative Christian television pundit, Rev. Cady Stanton. 
Reverend Cady has some serious weight and romantic issues of her own, compounded when an “accident” intended for Regina leaves her temporarily blind. But when Regina is declared dead and Cady’s seventy-year old secretary is wrongly arrested for smuggling a small nuclear bomb to the funeral, Cady takes control. 
With the help of a porn mogul, a Russian spy, a rap diva and her fierce hairdresser-girlfriend, Cady is able to save Regina, restore the bomb to its proper owners, and unearth the long-buried family secrets that  hold the key to her own happiness.
Food of Love has all the classic elements of comedy thriller and believable farce that have become the hallmark of an Anne R. Allen novel.
Sample chapters from Anne’s other works, including the acclaimed Camilla Randall Mysteries series, can be found at the end of this book.

Saffina Desforges
UK best-selling author of Sugar & Spice and the Rose Red crime thriller series and the YA Holocaust novel Anca’s Story .
Chapter 1-The Smile of the Spoon

Her Royal Highness Regina Saxi-Cadenti, Princess of San Montinaro, backed out of the bathroom stall on her knees, pulling the scrub bucket.
She felt her backside collide with something.
Or someone.
She froze. So the assassins had found her, even here at the recovery clinic, half a world away from the palace and its intrigues. They were back to finish last night’s botched job.
She knew the falling oven hood in the kitchen had been no accident, any more than the other “mishaps” back in San Montinaro. Through the thin silk of her Dolce & Gabbana skirt, she felt human flesh: bony and death-cold.
“You could watch where you’re going, Your Highness.”
False alarm. Regina unclamped her hand from the bucket and turned to give a polite smile to the sour-faced woman who spoke. Regina recognized her from the clinic’s orientation meeting last Friday-a former child actress, addicted to cocaine. She’d been one of TV’s Partridge Bunch or Diff’rent Spoons or something. The poor dear did look like a spoon, her skeletal body supporting a moon-shaped face that must have been adorable at age eight.
“Sorry. I’m still a bit clumsy with this.” Regina nodded at her cast, the result of last night’s “accident” that had left her with several shattered bones in her foot-and come so close to smashing her skull.
“It’s not your foot that’s a menace.” The Spoon gave a venomous glance at Regina’s ample derriere as she stomped into a stall.
Regina was used to the venom. Her newly matronly figure made some people feel it was their right, even their duty, to treat her with contempt. Last month’s Italian tabloid photos-taken by a hidden camera while she tried on an awful spandex thing in the dressing room at the House of Porfirio-probably fueled the girl’s scorn. The pictures had already been pirated into the U.S., in spite of the lawsuits. When she’d arrived at LAX last Friday, she’d caught sight of a tabloid headline touting: “Secret Pix! Prince Max Sues over Heartbreaking Photos of Porky Princess.”
So much for escaping to safe obscurity in California. Still, the Recovery Clinic at Rancho Esperanza, much lower profile than nearby Betty Ford, seemed a fairly good place to wait for the paparazzi to settle down, although she could have done without the chores and insufficient meals. But, as Max pointed out, any lingering bad press could be put off with hints at a bit of fashionable substance abuse.
She hummed and fantasized about her favorite California foods as her unfed stomach growled in low counterpoint to the murmur of the clinic’s New Age Muzak: Shrimp Louis, Cobb salad, Double Rainbow chocolate ice cream. Oh, yes, chocolate. What was that Shakespeare thing her mother used to quote?
“If music be the food of love; play on.”
If Mr. Shakespeare had spent more time with women, he would have known the food of love is not music but chocolate.
The promise of that sweet, soul-satisfying reward gave her the will to keep on. The nice London hairdresser with the heroin problem had promised to risk dire consequences to sneak her a Cadbury’s after group therapy. She’d confessed her craving to him last night when he caught her hobbling back from the infirmary, too late for dinner. Nigel, his name was. A sweet man. He’d loved her since her first Vogue layout in the ’70s, he said.
Bless him. Gay men were such a comfort.
“I can’t deal with this. What have you done in here?” The Spoon banged her way out of the stall, her voice a grating mix of childishness and condescension. “Your Highness, the toilet water is pink!”
“I thought I’d let the cleanser soak in a while. The ring on that bowl was a bit stubborn. But please. No titles. Call me Regina.”
Even in such a heavily guarded facility, the wrong person might overhear a random “Your Highness” and drop a lucrative tip to the media.
“Addiction knows no class boundaries dear.” Regina gave what she hoped looked like a warm smile.
“Whatever,” said the Spoon. “But I cannot throw up into a bowl of toxic chemicals!” She disappeared into a different stall with the clang of a metal door.
Regina gave the bowl another scrub and pulled the chain of the old-fashioned toilet tank to flush. The ring hadn’t faded. She would have to ask Titiana about toilet rings when she got home. Titiana knew about things like that. Regina felt lucky to be blessed with a head chef who was also a wise and trusted friend. Her only friend, really. Life in a country with only as many inhabitants as Rodeo Drive during a good sale at Gucci made gossip the primary national sport.
Gossip, yes, and intrigue-but not murder. So why were these things happening? As the shrinks kept reminding her, she was one of the most beloved women in the world-the ordinary American girl whose fairytale wedding to the fashion-designer monarch of the tiny Alpine kingdom of San Montinaro had defined the fantasies of every pre-pubescent girl on the planet. Even after twenty years and forty extra pounds, the public loved her.
And if Max wanted to be rid of her, he had only to say so. Divorce had always been legal in San Montinaro, a country so conservative it still followed the laws of ancient Rome rather than those of the Vatican.
She had dreamed of him last night-at his most handsome, in all his princely regalia: Prince Maximus Saxi-Cadenti, as he had looked when she married him.
When she had almost loved him.
In the dream, he had fed her noodle pudding, the sweet Hungarian dessert her father used to make-but somehow the food never reached her mouth. She watched Max’s silver spoon come toward her, tempting, luring, smiling at her with the seductive curve of a noodle nestled in glistening apricot sauce. But when it reached her mouth, she tasted nothing-nothing but air, empty and noodle-less.
She had waked to gnawing pains in her stomach.
But now her knees were causing more pain than the hunger. She needed something softer to kneel on. Spotting a newspaper stuffed in a trash basket, she retrieved several sections and smoothed them out to use as a cushion. But she stopped as a photograph caught her eye.
It couldn’t be.
Holding her breath, she stared at the slim, elegant, African American woman in the picture.
It was.
Cady. A thin, beautiful Cady. Her foster siste