The Game Changer Read Online Free PDF

stereo until it was background noise. “What’s all this?” She swept her arm in an all-encompassing gesture as she went to stand on the opposite side of the kitchen island, directly across from Olivia.
    “Well…” Olivia said, grinning and brushing her hair out of her face with the back of her arm. “I’ve been cooking.”
    “Umm, I can see that, Liv,” Melody said, lifting the lid on a container and peering at its contents. “Are we having company? Like half of Bellevue or something?”
    Olivia laughed. “No. My eyes were hurting from all that reading, so I tried to think of something else to do. I turned on the TV, and Ina Garten was on the Food Network—she’s the Barefoot Contessa, you know who I’m talking about?”
    Melody simply nodded and watched as Olivia scooped up the carrots she’d been chopping and added them to a pan of onions that were sizzling on the stove.
    “Anyway, she’s amazing. I used to watch her sometimes while I was cooking dinner. I’ve always loved to cook, but it’s no fun cooking for just yourself, so when I was living alone I usually made quick dinners or grabbed something on my way home, right? So, she was making this mushroom lasagna that looked to-die-for, and I’ve been trying to think of meatless meals to mix things up. I don’t want to go completely vegetarian, but I’d like to have at least one or two meals each week without meat.”
    Olivia paused and studied Melody for a second. “You think I’ve completely lost it, don’t you?”
    “Not at all,” Melody replied, although her head was beginning to spin a little. She couldn’t imagine how Olivia had gone from watching Ina Garten on the Food Network to creating what looked like enough food to feed a third world country. “Meatless meals, excellent idea. Carry on.” She waved a hand at Olivia to continue as she went around the island in search of wine. She had the urge to drink something stronger, but it was only 4:30 in the afternoon.
    “Oh wait, try this,” Olivia said, pulling a bottle from the wine cooler. Melody got a glimpse inside the cooler, which usually had two or three bottles of fairly inexpensive wine, but was now full. She watched as Olivia uncorked the wine and poured out two glasses. “The guy at the wine store told me this was popular with girls our age because it’s sweet and fruity. He also recommended different wines to go with the different dishes I told him I was making.”
    “Let me guess, then he invited himself to sample some of those dishes?” Melody asked with a smirk, accepting a glass from Olivia. The wine glasses were new, too; these were the stemless kind she’d been eyeing for several months. How on earth did Olivia get so much done in one day?
    “Well, yeah.” Olivia giggled and moved back to the stove to stir the mixture of onions and carrots before tossing in some chopped celery Melody hadn’t noticed sitting on the counter. “He was really cute, too. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the mushroom lasagna. So I watched her make it, then I decided I’d like to give it a try—make it for dinner tonight as a surprise since we’ve had take-out every night this week.”
    Olivia bustled around the kitchen as she spoke, loading the dishwasher, then stirring the second pot on the stove and tasting the contents before adding a pinch of salt. “So I go to Metro, where I could never afford to shop before, and it’s like food heaven. There’s so much stuff there—a deli, a bakery, fresh seafood, plus all these exotic things I’d never seen in a regular grocery store before, you know? So I go to get the ingredients to make the lasagna, and I get all these other ideas for things I want to make. Sauces and soups and stews and casseroles—all the things I’ve seen on the Food Network or read about in magazines but never had the time to try. By the time I left there, I had a cartful of food. Oh, and that’s where I got the wine, too, at that little wine store they have near