Sugar and Spice: 3 Contemporary Romances

by Jenny Jacobs

  More tests didn’t sound good but Sadie didn’t say so and she didn’t ask him to explain what it meant. “I’m glad she got through okay.” There didn’t seem much to add to that, so she said, “Listen, I’m starving. I’ll get something to eat and meet you back here later.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, taking her hand and walking toward the elevator with her. “I have to eat, too, so we may as well go get something together.”

  She wasn’t being ridiculous, but she didn’t argue. “All right,” she said. She knew it was just his way of expressing himself and she didn’t mind. She didn’t mind.

  Aunt Gertrude had warned her that this day could come, and apparently it had.

  Chapter Six

  A few minutes later, Peter drew the car up to the curb near a narrow entrance canopy. Sadie saw the name of the restaurant printed on the canopy, faded gold on faded green. Petrucci’s. She’d never heard of it, but that didn’t mean anything. From the backseat of the car, she had the impression of an old and battered building.

  Frequenting hole-in-the-wall restaurants didn’t quite jibe with her impression of Jordan. Shouldn’t he be going to some hip new establishment where he could see and be seen by flashy women like his girlfriend Paula? Sadie had never met her or even learned the first thing about her, other than that brief exchange between Jordan and his mother yesterday, but she had her suspicions about what kind of person Jordan tended to be attracted to. Not someone exactly like his mother, vague and elegant and remote, but unreachable in another way, someone Jordan would never have to worry about the way he worried about Mrs. Matthews.

  Her gaze traveled to the buckling sidewalk near the entrance to the restaurant. If he didn’t tend toward hip venues, she’d expect something understated, elegant, and expensive — the kind of place he’d bring his mother. He wasn’t the kind of man who’d roll up his sleeves for some down-home barbecue. Then she glanced down at her jeans and rumpled cotton shirt, her scuffed ballet flats. Maybe she explained the hole-in-the-wall restaurant.

  Just like she could always find the right book for the right person, maybe he did that with food. The right restaurant for the right person. Although the whole matching thing worked better if you asked a few qualifying questions first, like What kind of food do you like? or What are you in the mood for? But he had a lot on his mind so she wasn’t going to criticize him too much just yet.

  She slid out of the car and then his palm was warm on the small of her back, guiding her to the entrance as if she might not have been able to make it on her own. He reached around and opened the door for her. Gran would have approved; Aunt Gertrude would have wondered if he thought she was too feeble to open the door on her own. Sadie hadn’t decided her opinion yet.

  She stepped into a small entrance foyer, dimly lit. In her experience, restaurants were only this dimly lit when the owner didn’t want you to look too closely at the food. Or the silverware.

  Jordan had his hand on her back again. Was that to keep her from turning around and heading back to the car?

  “Mr. Blaise!” Here came a tall, slender maitre d’. Also a bad sign. If the food were good, the employees should look like they ate it.

  At least the place smelled good. So there was that in its favor.

  “It has been too long since we’ve seen you!” the gaunt man gushed, his gaze taking in Sadie from the top of her not very recently brushed hair to the toes of her inexpensive flats. “And who is this lovely young lady?”

  Sadie hadn’t been a lovely young lady since Gramps had died and she felt immediately better about being here. Maybe the food wouldn’t be too bad.

  “This is Sadie Perkins,” Jordan said. Sadie waited for him to say something about their engagement, some indication of the relationship they were supposed to have, but he didn’t. She guessed he didn’t want everyone who knew him gossiping about his new fiancée. That might get back to his girlfriend and then who knew what would happen? He almost certainly hadn’t talked over the plan with Paula before launching it. He just wanted his mother to think he was engaged. The whole world didn’t need to know it.

  Then a dispiriting though occurred to her. Was he embarrassed by her? Regretting the impulse that had landed her here? She wasn’t his usual type, she knew. Well, that was fine. She didn’t want to be the kind of woman who would attract a man like him. But she sure as hell didn’t want to be considered an embarrassment to him — to anybody. She simmered a little but held her tongue.

  “I am so pleased to meet you, Ms. Perkins,” the gaunt man said. “I am the owner of this establishment. My name is Giuseppe O’Toole.”

  At her expression, he grinned, and the grin transformed his face. All the lines seemed to fall into place and instead of gaunt and melancholy, he seemed happy and welcoming. “My mother, bless her soul, is the Petrucci after which this establishment is named. She taught me how to cook.”

  “Ah.” So he was not the maitre d’, or at least not only the maitre d’, but also the owner. And, apparently, the cook. She eyed his gaunt frame. She was still not entirely convinced about the food.

  “Yes. There really is no such thing as Irish cuisine, so I could not very well open an Irish restaurant,” he said with a wink for Jordan that hinted at a private joke between them. “If you will follow me, I have a lovely table tucked away, perfect for the two of you.”

  Tucked away? Sadie brushed her hands over her jeans. Was she that unpresentable? Without thinking, she brought her hand to her hair in a universal gesture of female distress.

  Giuseppe must have caught the movement and interpreted it correctly because he added smoothly, “A cozy corner where you will not be interrupted.”

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” Jordan said, as if the remark had been directed at him. Did he naturally assume he was the center of everything? Or had he already forgotten she was there, as he had the previous day?

  Sadie sighed and followed Giuseppe through the shadowy dining room to the lovely tucked away table. Some of the tables they passed were occupied, the people seated at them speaking in low, intimate voices, but most were empty, owing either to the time — late for lunch, early for dinner — or the cuisine. Sadie really wanted to know which it was, preferably before she took her first bite.

  The table Giuseppe brought them to was located in an alcove that had probably been a broom closet in a previous incarnation. She’d gone on a date once with a businessman (never again, thank goodness) who had complained about everything from the location of the table to the failings of the menu to the taste of the food when it was delivered to the table. But Jordan said nothing, just glanced around and sat down.

  She took the chair Giuseppe held out for her and watched as he leaned over to light the candle in the center of the small table. Not a Chianti bottle, like the Italian restaurants she was accustomed to, but an actual crystal candleholder. Instead of a cheerful red-and-white checked cloth, the table was draped with dazzling white damask. She kept her elbows off and let Giuseppe unfurl the cloth napkin and place it on her lap. The well-set table didn’t quite mesh with the run-down exterior or the otherwise plainly furnished dining room they were seated in.

  She wondered if a menu would appear but wasn’t surprised when Jordan and Giuseppe had a solemn conversation about the meal without asking Sadie what she wanted. Maybe she’d fake a food allergy when dinner came, to educate Jordan on the dangers of making assumptions. Her stomach growled, reminding her that she was too hungry to pull off such a ruse. Another time, maybe. She’d almost certainly have plenty of opportunity to educate Jordan on the dangers of making assumptions.

  “Very good,” Giuseppe finally said, withdrawing without producing a menu or a wine list, giving Sadie a warm smile before he turned away. Giuseppe liked her. Maybe she’d have a romance with him. Every adventure, even this one, needed a romance. She glanced at Jordan, who was studying the mai
n dining room with an intense expression on his face. He wasn’t going to romance her, even if she did like the way he kissed and wouldn’t mind hugging him again anytime. So if there was romance to be had, she was going to have to look for it elsewhere.

  The waiter appeared, not Giuseppe but a reassuringly rotund young man named Antonio, who looked like he enjoyed each and every meal he ate. He was carrying a platter of fresh bread and a dish of olive oil, which was the best thing she’d seen all day. He placed it on the table, then poured glasses of wine before leaving a carafe with them.

  “It’s a Lombardy red,” Jordan explained when she took a sip.

  “Northern Italian,” she said. On slow days at the shop, sometimes she read cookbooks. She immediately revised her expectations of the meal. She pulled off a chunk of bread from the loaf Antonio had left on the table and took a bite. Still warm from the oven, the outside crisp, the inside soft. Yummy. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. Breakfast had been a cup of coffee in the hotel room and she’d missed lunch entirely. She snagged another piece of bread.

  “You’ll ruin your appetite,” Jordan said. He might look like a pirate, but a pirate wouldn’t be worried about her appetite. Next time she had an adventure she was going to do it with someone who wanted to be with her and didn’t mind if she ate all the bread. She gave him a brilliant smile that said she’d heard him and took another bite.

  It felt very juvenile but also very satisfying. Her enjoyment of the experience only dimmed slightly when she realized he wasn’t paying attention, exactly. He was acting and speaking from rote, not from any real sense of interaction.

  Well, that was fine. What kind of interaction would the two of them have anyway?

  Then her compassion kicked her. He was probably preoccupied with concern for his mother. What kind of jerk was she for getting steamed over his distraction? It was perfectly natural that he would be.

  Antonio came around again, this time bearing a cheese dish that looked like a fondue, made, he pointed out, with white truffles. Sadie looked doubtfully at the dish. She’d never had truffles before. Weren’t truffles a kind of fungus? (That was the drawback to having a mind filled with inconsequential details; you remembered them at inconvenient times.) She wasn’t sure she could stomach that. But Jordan raised a brow at her so she supposed she owed the meal at least a small sample.

  She shrugged and put a little on her plate. She just wouldn’t think about its origin. It couldn’t be any worse than mushrooms, could it? She took a tentative bite. Yummy, in fact. Another bite. Definitely better than mushrooms. So far the food was delicious. Apparently Jordan was more interested in good food than in ambience. Not what she would have guessed. He seemed like the kind of man who appreciated a meal only to the extent to which he could close a deal over it.

  She took a sip of her wine, a pleasant counterpoint to the cheese dish. She wasn’t by any means a wine connoisseur but she could tell this one was good. She looked around the room. The other diners seemed to be mostly couples, and they tended to stare into one another’s eyes and not notice their food, even though it was amazingly good. Maybe there was an ambience here and she was just missing it.

  “You bring all your dates here?” she asked, then wondered why (a) she was trying to have a conversation with him and (b) why she was asking that particular question. She wasn’t his date. She was his employee.

  “No.”

  Okay, so it wasn’t the most brilliant conversational gambit ever, but you’d think she was trying to torture top-secret information out of him. “They know your name,” she pointed out. “You must come here a lot.”

  “I do,” he admitted.

  She waited for more, like the food is good or my office is around the corner but it wasn’t forthcoming. Was she going to have to sit through the meal in complete silence? Because if he couldn’t be bothered to have a conversation with her, then next time she was eating with Peter.

  “And you eat here all the time because?” she prompted.

  He hesitated and for a minute, she thought he was going to ignore her question, and if he did she was going to go wait in the car. Sharing a meal with her couldn’t be that hard, could it? Plenty of people, including other men in full possession of their faculties, had managed to suffer through it somehow. Finally he said, “I’m an investor.”

  Sadie glanced up from her plate. If she brought the thumbscrews with her next time, he might even be persuaded to tell her where he lived. “I thought you owned a biomedical company.”

  “I do.” Now he smiled with genuine warmth. It figured, she thought. Money and business made him smile. She’d dated a man like that once, only she hadn’t realized it at first. Thank goodness she’d discovered it about Jordan before she could start feeling attached. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive,” he pointed out.

  She took another sip of wine to fortify herself. Of course, the one subject he was willing to talk about was the one subject that made her want to stick this fork in her heart to get it over with. Still, he’d made an effort, so she supposed she had to as well. “What made you invest in this place?”

  “Giuseppe was having financial difficulties and the restaurant would have closed.”

  “So you rode to the rescue?” She couldn’t help the incredulous tone; Jordan did not seem anything like a knight errant. Pirates didn’t rescue people in trouble. So she doubted he’d done it from the kindness of his heart. Businesspeople didn’t make investments that way.

  “I like the food,” he said.

  Just then, Antonio appeared with their entrees. “Pumpkin ravioli,” he announced, beaming. She’d never had that before but after the cheese dish, she was game to try anything. She picked up her fork. A tiny taste told her that a larger bite would not be amiss.

  She waited until the waiter had withdrawn, then said to Jordan, “That’s it? You liked the food?”

  “It’s good food,” he said. Then he shrugged and added, “And I was pretty sure the restaurant could be profitable with some small changes in operations.”

  Of course. A businessman couldn’t invest in anything without meddling. Sadie shuddered and applied herself to her meal. The conversation was not one that was going to improve her appetite any.

  The ravioli was flavorful and filling, the kind of thing she’d never make in her own kitchen, but if she lived here, she’d make Petrucci’s a regular stop. Although of course, it was probably more expensive than she was accustomed to spending for dinner in Cedar Valley. As long as she was pretending, she could pretend that she’d have plenty of money for dinners out if she lived in New York.

  “What?” Jordan demanded.

  She met his fierce gaze and tried to figure out what he was mad about. Then she realized he’d noticed her reaction to his comment about small changes in operations. He couldn’t be bothered to ask what she wanted for dinner, he hadn’t even looked at the ring she’d picked out, and he’d never asked — or even noticed — the first thing about her, but he could overreact to her unstated response. How could that response be the only thing the man had noticed about her so far? It was beyond aggravating. Still, she wasn’t going to let the aggravation show.

  She shrugged, emulating him, smiled sweetly and said, “People are always trying to tell me how to make the bookstore more profitable. And it could be more profitable if I wanted it to resemble a soulless corporation. Which I don’t.” She ate more bread to keep her mouth occupied so she would stop talking. She had a lot more she could say on the subject, most of which she felt sure Jordan wasn’t interested in hearing.

  His fierce gaze turned into a glare. “Does this place look like a soulless corporation?” he demanded.

  “No.”

  “Then give me some credit for knowing what I’m doing.”

  She gave him a startled look. Obviously, she had just trodden on a tender spot. “I didn
’t mean it that way,” she said. “I was just talking about my personal experience with a soulless bean-counter. Or two.”

  The fierce glare eased somewhat, though he stabbed at his ravioli with more force than was absolutely warranted. “I thought you worked at the bookstore as a sales clerk.”

  “Nope.” See? He hadn’t even noticed that. He was impossible. Something she should remember. “Sadie Rose Perkins, sole proprietor.” She extended her hand across the table, giving him a cheeky grin that disappeared from her face the moment his hand touched hers. There was that damned tingle again. Firm, warm hand and a tingle. If he was a soulless bean-counter, and she was very afraid he was, he shouldn’t be so warm and vibrant.

  Hastily, she withdrew her hand and turned her attention back to her plate. They finished the meal in silence, which she had the very good sense not to try to break again. Finally, she pushed her plate away with a sigh of happy repletion. He wiped his lips with the cloth napkin, then put it aside, asking, “Would you like some coffee? Espresso?”

  She shook her head. “No, thanks. You said you wanted to see your mother again this evening. We should probably do that before it gets too late.”

  He nodded and signaled the waiter, then paid the check with cash.

  “They don’t comp your meals?” she asked with a smile. “What a way to treat their angel.”

  “We can’t very well stay profitable by giving away the food.”

  Of course. And the payment in cash was so the restaurant wouldn’t have to pay the merchant fee for charging the meal to his platinum card. She knew all about those fees because she had to pay them at the store. Such as the one she’d had to pay for the credit card transaction he’d made there. But “Good point” was all she said.

  He got to his feet and took her hand again but this time she was ready for it and the warmth of his skin against hers didn’t startle her. Still, she had to steady herself against the spark that raced through her, and reminded herself that she wasn’t really his fiancée or his girlfriend. She wasn’t even his date. But wow, being his employee required the kind of vigilance she wasn’t accustomed to keeping.