Spooning Daisy

by Maggie McConnell

  “So, it’ll make up for your cabin?”

  “In spades”—she stopped—“I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. It’s hard to lose everything and start over. But isn’t there a saying about losing everything to gain everything?”

  Daisy was pretty sure that Biblical reference didn’t refer to breakups or getting ripped off by Myron Porter, but she merely shrugged and finished her sandwich.

  “So when do the guests arrive?” Daisy asked.

  “There’s a party of four coming next week, but we’ll have a full lodge the week after for pretty much the rest of the summer and into the fall. You have a few days to finalize your menu and make a list of what you want from Anchorage. I’ll set up a meeting with the kitchen help tomorrow morning . . . about ten?”

  “Sure.”

  “You remember that we’re open to the public for dinner?”

  Which accounted for the forty leather chairs in the dining room. And she also remembered that breakfast was served to the guests, but lunches had a limited, set menu and were usually “to go” for whatever excursions the guests had selected. The middle of the day was Daisy’s downtime.

  “This Sunday night we have a dress rehearsal for the locals—invitation only—and we always have a full dining room. But since it’s free, no one ever complains if things aren’t quite perfect. It’ll give you a chance to work out the kinks.”

  “Kinks?”

  “Well, you are in Otter Bite. And the boss likes to hire residents whenever possible . . .”

  “Yeah . . . ?”

  “When you add in the cleaning staff and the groundskeepers and the kitchen help and the waitstaff and the deckhands, we’re the largest single employer in Otter Bite.”

  “Yeah . . . ?”

  “The boss is very proud of that,” Rita said, taking the dishes to the sink.

  “Okay.”

  “Kinks come with the territory.”

  A slight twitch of an auburn brow was Daisy’s only response. “So when do I meet the boss?”

  “Right now,” a voice growled from behind.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Daisy ignored the pounding in her heart and on her cabin door; she snatched her blouses and khakis from their hangers and stuffed them into her suitcase.

  Her life had become a free-for-all, where everything was unfair or, by Machiavellian standards, fair—and nothing made sense and she seemed to be continually battling bad luck. But now wasn’t the time for thinking. She had a plane to catch. Or a boat. Hell, she’d hitch a ride with an otter if she had to.

  “Daisy—”

  She jumped at the sight of Max, every hunky inch of him, standing in the bedroom doorway. “Get out!” she demanded, shooting her arm in his direction.

  “I own this cabin.”

  Her eyes blazed. “Well, you don’t own me.”

  “Actually” crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe—“I sorta do.”

  Daisy sputtered air. “In your dreams!”

  “We have a contract—”

  “Sue me.”

  “I will.”

  Daisy paused, envisioning herself in front of a judge and explaining about the perfume on the pillow. “Why would you even want me here?” she asked, disbelieving the hope she had for his answer.

  “I don’t—”

  She swallowed her hope and set her jaw.

  “—Unfortunately, I don’t have time to find another cook.”

  “Chef!”

  “Whatever,” Max spat back. “The point is, I need a chef and you need a job.”

  “Don’t tell me what I need.”

  “A four-star chef doesn’t come to Otter Bite, Alaska, unless she needs a job.”

  “I needed a change of scenery,” she countered. “But instead it’s just the same old view.”

  Daisy’s opinion of him was obvious, but the reasons behind the ice still had him guessing. He paused and softened his approach. “We’ll hardly see each other.”

  “Hardly is still too much.”

  Max frowned and leaned into the room. “What is your problem?”

  “My problem? My problem? You’re my problem.”

  “Yeah, I gathered that from your note.”

  “So that’s it.” She stepped toward him. “You can’t stand that I left you.”

  Max came off the doorframe and threw up his arms. “Like I care enough to care.”

  Daisy shook her finger at him. “You may not care, but you care.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  But Daisy wasn’t about to explain the obvious to the obtuse. “Why didn’t you tell me you owned this lodge? And who is M. K. Endall? And why is he on your brochures?”

  Max paused, the typo on his brochures long forgotten, but not the 50 percent discount he’d gotten for the error. Besides, the brochures, the website—they were red herrings he barely paid attention to.

  Daisy cocked her head at Max’s silence as the answer to the puzzle revealed itself. “M. K. Endall. M. Kendall. Max Kendall.” A head cock the other direction. “Why the subterfuge?”

  “You always see the worst, don’t you?”

  A lifted brow challenged his contention.

  “It was a typo, for Chrissakes. And no big deal since my repeat guests know who I am and new guests don’t care.”

  “And you got a discount, of course. Is that why you haven’t bothered to update it?”

  Max rankled at the insinuation that he was cheap. It was just another variation of the Midori-and-rum argument. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a job here? Why’d you hide that information?”

  Daisy jerked back. “I didn’t hide it!”

  “Your note doesn’t count,” he said, remembering Daisy’s instructions on where to send the $53. “And, by the way, I owe you zip! You should pay me for putting up with you. You are so boring, the way you go on about napkins. And don’t get me started on your weird sheet phobia.”

  “It’s not a phobia!” Daisy reined herself in. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you. In fact, I’m not.” She turned and made an exaggerated show of packing.

  “That’s what I thought. You never told me you had a job here.”

  Daisy spun toward him. “I did too!”

  “Where the hell was I?”

  She held out her arms as if beseeching heavenly help. “Sitting across the dinner table from me!”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  Daisy rolled her head from shoulder to shoulder. “Fabulous. And I suppose you also don’t remember agreeing to drive me to Valdez so I could catch the ferry to Otter Bite.”

  Max did remember something about Otter Bite, but he was pretty sure that was about the time the Chanel blonde had been seducing a breadstick. Uh-oh, Max thought, keeping his thoughts far from his face. Could Daisy know? But how?

  “Sorry,” Max said, allowing her no satisfaction.

  Daisy planted her hands on her hips. “Why the hell do you think I let you share my cabin?” Making her point, she stepped toward him.“I traded my cabin for a ride. You agreed. We had a deal. Why else would I give you the bed?”

  “How else were you going to get me into your bed? And as I recall. . .”

  Her eyes exploded into green fire. Something between a scream and a howl escaped her as she went for his throat.

  Max took advantage of her attack, snatching her wrists and locking them behind her as he corralled her in his arms. Then he did what he did best.

  Daisy was unprepared for his lips and she was torn between what she wanted and self-preservation. She shared his kiss only long enough to collect her senses before pulling free of his grasp.

  Eyes locked, there was barely space between them for Daisy to breathe; when she did, his scent filled her lungs. Her heart pounded through every inch of her and she feared she might very well explode. She wanted him and she hated that she wanted him. She had to break the spell—

  The sting of her palm against his cheek jo
lted Max’s senses. His mouth tightened and his eyes blazed as he grabbed her wrist, warding off a second strike.

  But Daisy was satisfied by her single slap. Against lyin’ cheaters everywhere, she thought. “That,” she snarled, her eyes locked on his, “is for her perfume on my pillow.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Find another cook,” Max snarled to Rita as he stomped with his one good leg through the kitchen and into the bar.

  Rita looked up from the list she was making; Max hop-sprinted by her like a whipped pup. “Hey,” she called, leaving her stool and chasing after him.

  Max was already pouring his favorite scotch into a rocks glass when Rita caught up with him in the dark bar. She clicked on the ceiling cams and rose light dusted the polished wood.

  “Shouldn’t you be using your crutches?”

  “Don’t start.”

  “It’s too soon for you to be stomping around.”

  “I mean it.”

  “So what’s this find another cook crap?” she asked, grudgingly changing the subject. “It took me three months to find Daisy, and let me tell you, we lucked out. Thank God for that cheatin’ ass of a fiancé—”

  Max took a hearty swallow of Glenfiddich and grimaced at the burn.

  “—or we’d be stuck with some hash-slinger. Just wait ’til you taste her cooking. Her mango chutney is to die for.”

  Max slammed his empty glass on the gleaming cherry bar. “Mango chutney! Mango chutney? Men don’t eat mango chutney! Men eat raw meat smothered in A-1. What the hell were you thinking? Mango chutney!”

  “Just because you haven’t changed your eating habits for twenty years—”

  “Hey!” Max poured another two fingers of scotch. “Just the other day I had strudel for breakfast.”

  “Well, excuuuuse me. I had no idea you were capable of such derring-do.”

  Glass in hand, he stopped it midway to his mouth. “Derring-do?”

  “It was the March sixth word on my word-a-day calendar. It’s the only one I haven’t used yet. Opportunity for derring-do doesn’t come around much in Otter Bite.”

  “No,” Max said, slugging down his last round of scotch.

  Rita opened her mouth, but words failed to follow. She narrowed her eyes on Max’s left cheek.

  He caught her focus and offered his right profile instead.

  She softened. “Did you really fire Daisy?”

  Max stared vacantly into the room. “She quit.”

  “Wow. She’s got no job, no place to live, no place to go, had her car stolen . . . and she actually quit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Man, you musta really done a number on her.”

  “I did not do a number on her.”

  “Yeah, that would explain her gold-medal dash outta the kitchen when she saw you.”

  Shaking his head at an argument he couldn’t win, Max grabbed the scotch bottle by its neck—leaving the glass—and moved to a table.

  “You gonna tell me about it?”

  “She’s certifiable.”

  Rita leaned on the bar. “Daisy doesn’t seem nuts. She’s just going through a tough time. That can make anyone erratic.”

  “Erratic would be an improvement.”

  Rita earnestly asked, “Why are you being so hard on her?”

  “You just don’t know her like I know her.”

  “Duuuh.”

  He shot her an unappreciative glance. “She has a turtle.”

  “I know.”

  “But did you know she’s been lugging around that turtle for like twenty years?”

  “Hmmm.”

  “The turtle’s name is Elizabeth. Elizabeth,” he added incredulously.

  “As compared with Napoleon?”

  A longer, harder look.

  “You wanna tell me what’s really bugging you?”

  Max drank from the bottle, then answered. “If you must know, Daisy is the reason I’m in this brace.”

  Rita searched her memory. “Daisy is the garage-sale woman?” She stifled a laugh, but couldn’t stop a smile. “The one who put you in the hospital? What’re the odds?”

  “Apparently very good.”

  Rita came around the bar and joined Max at his table. “Look . . . we both know your knee was just an accident waiting to happen. You’ve been putting off this operation for as long as I’ve known you. I’m not so sure this isn’t a blessing in disguise.”

  “Daisy Moon is not a blessing, she’s an albatross.”

  “You know what my grandmother Lupine always said—”

  Max looked up from staring at the bottle label, dreading Alutiiq wisdom.

  “‘—ducunt volentem fata, nolentum trahunt.’”

  Max wasn’t an expert in Native languages, but that wasn’t one of them. “Your grandmother spoke Latin?”

  “And why is that so hard to believe?”

  “Sorry.”

  “She learned it from the Anglican missionaries who came from Kodiak a while back. Didn’t care for English much, but thought Latin was a hoot.”

  Max could just imagine the old Alutiiq, clothed in her traditional cotton kuspuk, sitting in her barabara in the glow of an oil lamp . . . reading Seneca.

  “Want the translation?”

  “No.”

  “But it’s so perfect for your situation.”

  “First of all, it has nothing to do with this situation. And second, your grandmother isn’t the only one who can quote Seneca.”

  Rita bunched thick brows. “What’s Seneca?”

  “Who, not what, and he’s a first-century Roman statesman from whom your grandmother borrowed her pearls of wisdom.”

  Rita mulled that over, then said, “We’re really going to be up shit creek if Daisy leaves.”

  Exhaustion laced his sigh. “We’ll find another cook.”

  “Chef.”

  Max glanced at her.

  “Maybe if you talk to Daisy, ask her nicely, apologize—”

  “Shouldn’t you be trying to find another chef?” His eyes warned her against further suggestion.

  “Fine,” Rita said, pushing back her chair. “I’ll stock up on A-1.”

  He shook his head at Rita’s dramatics and reached for the bottle.

  At the door, she turned to Max. “I was wrong. You didn’t do a number on Daisy; Daisy did a number on you.”

  Max stared at her. Hard. “You know who pays your salary?”

  “Yeah,” Rita answered before her exit. “The same guy sharing his afternoon with Glenfiddich.”

  It wasn’t a flattering portrait Rita painted, and although Max disdained her assessment, it nonetheless gave him pause. He pushed the bottle away.

  Had Daisy done a number on him?

  He rubbed his cheek where her palm had struck. Maybe he could add assault back into his lawsuit. “And while I’m at it, why don’t I just throw in the kitchen sink?” he quipped to no one.

  How had his life become so messy? It had been over a decade since anything, let alone a woman, had catapulted him to the nearest scotch bottle.

  But Daisy Moon was no woman. Daisy Moon was his albatross. His bad penny. The siren calling him to the rocks. His bug light. Zap, zap, zap!

  Daisy Moon was his nemesis. And to think it all began so innocently at a garage sale. So much for chivalry.

  Amazingly, even as his mother was pushing them together, Daisy had already been hired as the new coo—chef—at his lodge. It was as if Fate had a backup plan. If, of course, you believed in Fate, which he didn’t, in spite of what Seneca claimed.

  However, Max did believe in facing down his enemy. If you ran from one bully, you’d have to deal with a bigger bully next time around. And there were all sorts of bullies just waiting to lay a guy flat.

  “But not today.” Fists clenched, Max rose from his chair. “Today I strike a blow against conniving women everywhere!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Daisy was propelled backward into the refrigerator by the tornado of Ma
x’s entry, by the energy whirling around him, threatening everything in his path; then she quaked, along with the walls, at the slamming front door.

  “You used me!”

  Daisy gasped. Not at the accusation, which barely registered, but at the power behind it.

  Max moved toward her like a menacing lion . . . with a hurt paw. “I may have gotten a little on the side with Inga—”

  A little on the side with Inga? Okay, that registered.

  “—but you, you used me for my money!”

  “I nev—”

  “And when you didn’t need me, you dumped me like last week’s salmon!”

  “I most certainly did not!”

  “Then how come as soon as you got money and a credit card, you left?”

  “How’d you know—”

  “Purser Smith stopped by your cabin while you were having drinks with Keller.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh?”

  “I mean . . . so what?”

  “So what?” Max asked incredulously. “Well, it’s an interesting coincidence.”

  The wheels in her brain raced as she tried to mount a defense. “For your information, I wasn’t even going to tell you about the money and credit card.”

  Max jerked back at her confession. “Really.”

  Okay, that sounded bad. “What I mean is, I didn’t want to tell you about the money because . . .” She paused, knowing that the truth would give away her feelings.

  “Because?”

  “Because . . . if you knew I had money, there’d be no reason for you . . . to drive me to Valdez . . .”

  “So?”

  The seconds ticked and then her brain clicked on. “If you wouldn’t drive me, that means I’d have to fly . . . and I really hate small planes.”

  “But somehow you overcame that.”

  Finding indignation, Daisy trembled with it. “You had another woman in MY BED!”

  “What a crock. You’re just looking for an excuse. And if I recall,” Max began, suddenly recalling, “didn’t you say I was free to have side deals?”

  Daisy had said that. But... “That was before. But once you and I . . . after we . . .”

  Max smirked. “You can do it, but you can’t say it. Sex. We had sex. You and me. And it was damn good.”