* * *
The next morning, I sat, absently drumming my fingers on the table in the hotel’s conference room while the board of directors blew up around me.
“What kind of asinine, hippy-trippy idea are you suggesting?”
“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”
“It’s a recipe for a money pit.”
I let them all spout off, and slowly the sound retreated until they were all staring at me, some with shock, some with puzzlement, some with condescension. These were men and women I had known most of my life, my father’s contemporaries, people he had worked with and trusted, and now they eyed me, the young chairman trying to prove himself, with varying degrees of suspicion. Corbin and I exchanged glances.
“We’re not talking about giving up on the principles that got us here. Castleton is synonymous with quality in the restaurant business,” Corbin began. “We’ve got the pizza parlor chain, the low country seafood restaurants along the coast, the steak houses throughout the Southeast and spreading into the Midwest. This is just a different avenue, an expansion into a new area that will draw a new generation.”
“It’s not a step away from tradition,” I cut in. “It’s really a return to tradition: restaurants using locally sourced produce and livestock.”
“It’s too labor intensive to be profitable,” George Whitman Sr. piped up.
“Not really, sir, not if we’re willing to develop seasonal menus and be flexible when there are supply issues. There would be a learning curve, of course, and we’re planning to start small to be fiscally responsible. In fact, Corbin has a spot handpicked for a test run.”
Corbin took his cue and ran with it. “We’re looking at Charlottesville. It’s a university town, large enough to support a new restaurant, yet small enough to have that cozy atmosphere.
“In addition, central Virginia has varied agriculture already in place. We’ll have sources for apples, grapes, berries, poultry, dairy, beef . . .”
“And,” I added, “it’s close enough to our headquarters in Alexandria to manage efficiently.”
“A farm-to-table eatery.” Mr. Whitman shook his head. “I never thought I’d see the day we went in for a fad.”
“We won’t be calling it farm-to-table. The term has been overused and used incorrectly to the point it has no meaning anymore. What we’ll offer is simply good, local eats.”
“Maybe that should be the slogan,” Corbin joked.
“If we end up opening additional restaurants, we’ll use the readily available sources in those new locations. This won’t be a chain serving the same food everywhere. The restaurant will build a brand on adapting the food to the locale, so it will both support and reflect the community it serves. It’s a great idea with minimal financial risk for a conglomerate like Castleton.”
There was a murmur of ascension spreading around the table now. It was almost too easy.
“Do you know what you’re going to call it? And who’s going to head up the first location?” asked Whitman Sr.
“Corbin here is going to be the guinea pig.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “So, I let him pick the name.”
Corbin beamed from ear to ear, his enthusiasm contagious. “It will be my pleasure to welcome you all next summer to . . . Seasons.”
Winter
I wound my way down the curvy two-lane highway, light snow swirling around my windshield. Why Corbin rented a house in this God-forsaken nowhere was beyond me. We could afford a nice place in Charlottesville. So how did he end up in some little Podunk called Alton?
It had snowed a couple of inches in the night. Usually, the mountain protected this area of the state from bad storms, but this late winter squall had burst through, leaving a light, pristine covering over the ground. It looked like a Christmas card.
I was about five miles from town when I hit a patch of ice hidden under the snow. It took ahold of my Lexus SUV, slung me around in a one-eighty, and landed me in a ditch across the road, facing the opposite way. After a couple of deep breaths to get my heart rate back down, I put the vehicle in low gear and tried to ease my way out of the grass and back on the road. The wheels only spun, digging into the soft ground. Swearing a blue streak, I wrenched open the door and got out to look. I was good and stuck, and my left rear tire was flat as a pancake. I’d just pulled out my phone to call Corbin and look for a towing place that might be open on a Saturday morning when a pick-up truck pulled up beside me.
“Hey, mister, you okay?”
I whipped my head around at the voice, eerily familiar, and stared straight into lovely brown eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”
She recognized me too, I could tell, but her smile grew chilly.
“I remember you. Lynley, right? We met in DC last fall. You were at that convention with the dresses and . . .” I gestured with my hands, toward my head, where a bonnet would go.
“Yes, that’s me. And you’re Mr. Darcy.”
She remembered! I’d certainly not forgotten her, with her silky voice and her eyes sparkling as she championed Jane Austen over a glass of chardonnay. I smiled at the memory. “Guilty. You live around here?”
“You’ve got your wheels dug in my property.”
I just stared at her.
“My farm borders the highway all along here.”
“Your farm?” I glanced around, but being winter, there were no livestock or crops to be seen. An orchard of trees dotted the background landscape, and a greenhouse stood over to the right.
“My stepfather’s farm, originally, but Jane and I are part owners now.”
“Ah.” I leaned my arms on the open passenger window and gave the woman in the truck cab a second look. She was pretty—surrounded by the outdoors—in a way that didn’t show up in a hotel lobby bar. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, and the sweater and toboggan suited her better than the prim business wear she wore the first time I saw her. I waited for her to look back at me, and then I tried my most charming smile on her. “Interesting coincidence, running into you again.”
“Isn’t it just?” She sat back, arms folded, a little frown on her face. Fairly adorable. How come I hadn’t noticed this when we met?
“Don’t suppose you know someone who could pull me out of here, do you?”
She leaned forward, her left hand resting on the wheel and looked beyond me at the Lexus, considering. Finally, she shrugged. “Yeah, hop in.”
“I can just call if you’re busy.” I lifted the phone in my hand. “What’s the number?”
“Hop in. It’s just down the road a piece. And, he may not answer the office phone on a Saturday.”
“But he’ll give me a tow on a Saturday?”
She sighed, resigned. “If I go with you and ask him, he will.”
We drove about two miles and pulled off the highway to the right. Lynley parked in front of a shabby, white, cement block building with a big, glass garage door. An old Sunoco gas sign leaned up against the front of the building, and various bits of vehicle carnage were scattered over what passed for a parking lot. A tall, heavyset man in coveralls and sporting a red and black watch cap with ear flaps was polishing the door’s glass with a squeegee. He dropped it in a bucket and jogged over to the driver’s side as Lynley rolled down her window.
“Hey, Lynley. What are you doing here?” He spoke fast and his voice was a little breathless, like he’d just run a lot farther than the twenty feet from the garage to the truck. Or maybe he was just excited to see her. His eyes were all bright and glassy.
“Need a tow, Tommy. Can you help me out?”
“Sure, but your truck looks fine to me. I mean, for as old as it is. I wish you’d let me talk to my uncle over in Kent about a new one, like mine. It’s . . .”
“I’m not the one who needs the tow.”
“Oh. Who is it, then?”
Lynley jerked her head toward me, and the man ducked and squinted into the truck cab. He gave her a woeful look. “Didn’t know you had company, Lynley.�
��
“Not that it’s your business, Tommy Collins, but he’s not my company. I found him a couple miles back on the side of the road. Can you help him or not?”
“You picked up a stranger? I don’t think that’s a very good idea. Don’t you watch the news? Just the other week, I saw on Facebook where some gal—”
“Tom!” Her voice rose and sharpened. “He’s not a stranger. I met him in DC last fall. Liam Darcy, this is Tom Collins.”
I nodded curtly. I couldn’t help but notice this Tom talked more to Lynley’s chest than her face. Not that she was on display in her black turtle neck, but that didn’t seem to deter him. “I think it will need a new tire as well. If you could just tow it to the local Lexus dealer?”
“Ain’t no Lexus dealer in Alton, buddy.” He laughed, a guffaw worthy of ten Appalachian mountain men. “I could probably repair it for ya, though.” He glanced around at the vehicle parts strewn about the property. “Or find something that would get you on your way.”
“Um, a repair would be great, thanks. Just need to get it to a dealer.”
“Yeah, so you said.”
There was an awkward silence that Lynley filled. “Well. Ok, Tom, just follow us back, and I’ll let the two of you sort it out. I’ve got to get to the bank before it closes.” She rolled up the window, just barely missing the poor fellow’s nose, and did a U-turn into the road.
“Is that guy’s name really Tom Collins?” I asked.
“Yep. Well actually, no, not really. It’s a nickname. His real name is Elwood Wayne, but his mama thought he was tiny when he was born. So, she called him Tom Thumb, and the ‘Tom’ stuck.”
“And no one thought to tell her she’d named her son after a mixed drink?”
“Apparently not.” Her lips twitched.
“Tell me about your farm.”
She glanced over, that little frown returning. “What?”
“Farming is my business, indirectly.”
“But you . . .”
“There’s my car.” I pointed as she drove past it. She made another U-turn and pulled onto the shoulder.
“Here you go.” She stopped the truck and looked straight ahead. I tried in vain to think of some conversation that would keep her there—or an opening so I could get her phone number.
“Thank you for your help. Maybe I could call you. Take you out to dinner or something. To thank you.”
“You already said thank you. Don’t worry about it.” She looked at her watch.
“Sure, okay.” What was wrong with this woman? Mr. Darcy was trying to find a way to ask her out, and she looked at her watch like she had a million places to be instead. “Here’s my number, in case you change your mind.” I pulled a pen out of my jacket pocket and wrote my cell on the back of one of my cards. She just looked at it, stunned. Well, she ought to have been stunned; I never give women my cell phone number. I got out of the truck and started toward my vehicle. Tom Collins had just pulled up and was looking at the tire and shaking his head. On impulse, I turned back toward Lynley, but the truck was pulling onto the road.
I didn’t even know her last name.
* * *
When I finally got to Corbin’s, I was exhausted. Not physically—all I did was wait around an hour and a half for Tom Collins to repair my tire. But mentally, the constant dribble of inanity that came from his mouth just about did me in. I decided his name, although ridiculous, was nothing compared to the man himself. First, he boasted about his truck for at least twenty minutes. Who cares about a truck? I have three of them. A truck is a tool, a utensil, like . . . a fork or a hammer. Hey, I like a sweet ride as much as the next man, but I’ve never understood the fascination with transportation that occupies some people’s attention.
But the worst part was listening to him talk about Lynley. She was smart. She was hot. Every guy in town wanted to date her. He himself had asked her out and was convinced that the third time would do the trick, now that it was winter and she wasn’t so busy. She’d be foolish not to date him, he said. He was a successful businessman, with a brand-new truck, after all, which he threatened to show me after he fixed my tire. He went on to tell me how Lynley’s biological clock was ticking; he’d heard all about it during that lady psychologist’s show on satellite radio. His new truck had XM radio, free for the first three months. His uncle really set him up right.
Yeah. Exhausting.
Plus, the tire and Tom Collins debacle put me so far behind that I had to stay through the weekend until Monday, when I could get to Charlottesville’s Lexus service department. Instead of a Saturday jaunt to check in with Corbin on the restaurant, I ended up spending the weekend in Podunk Alton.
Not that seeing Corbin was a chore. He made his own fun wherever he went, which was one of the reasons we’d become friends in the first place.
He opened the door of his rental house on Broadway with a great big grin.
“You made it!”
“Finally.”
“Come on in. I was just on my way out the door to pick up pizza and beer.”
“I might go with you. I need to pick up a razor and a toothbrush, too. Looks like I’ll be around until Monday. I can’t find a decent hotel anywhere in this town. Can I bunk here?”
“Absolutely. Lost weekend in Alton! Take a load off—I’ll get your stuff while I’m out.”
“That would be much appreciated.” I sat on his couch with a sigh, thankful to finally have some quiet.
“Be right back.”
Which, for Corbin, meant a couple of hours at least.
“Make yourself at home,” he called as the door slammed behind him.
“Don’t mind if I do,” I muttered, swinging my legs around and propping my head on a couch pillow.
I breathed deep and closed my eyes.
But sleep wouldn’t come. The insides of my eyelids were painted with brown eyes and curls under a toboggan—and a light and pleasing figure. The soundtrack of my solitude was Tom Collins’s voice repeating, “She’s really smart. She’s hot.”
I sat up, found the TV remote, flipped through a few channels, and stopped at some random ball game. I went to the kitchen, found a Diet Coke (blah, when had Corbin started drinking that swill?) and some Fritos and nacho dip, and plopped back down on the sofa.
I glanced around for a coaster, because my mama raised me right, but all I found was a Sports Illustrated magazine to set my drink on. I moved it over, and the book resting underneath caught my eye.
Pride and Prejudice.
“What the hell?” The weird coincidences kept piling up. Why was Corbin reading the story of Mr. Darcy?
“What the hell . . .” I repeated and opened the book to the first page.
“It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
I snorted, thinking that was exactly the sort of sentiment I expected from the vaunted Jane Austen, and exactly what I’d remembered from high school English. I kept reading. And muted the ball game.
“. . . Mr. Bingley might like you best of the party.” I grinned. So, Mr. Bennet was a snarky bastard; I hadn’t remembered that. I appreciated snark, although I wasn’t particularly gifted with it myself. I kept reading.
“You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.”
A bark of laughter escaped me; the sound of mirth echoing into the quiet.
By the time Corbin returned, the Diet Coke was warm, the chips were almost gone, and I was at Mr. Bingley’s house. In the middle of Chapter 10, I silently confessed I’d been entertained, and was now half in love with Elizabeth Bennet myself, damn it.
“Got pizza, got beer. Got toothbrush and razor.”
“Corbin,” I asked, holding up the book, “I’m curious—why the sudden interest in Jane?”
“Jane? Well, I…uh.” He squinted at the book in my hand. �
��Oh, right. Jane. Austen.”
“What other Jane would I be talking about?”
“I don’t know.” He shuffled past me into the kitchen and put his bags on the counter.
I followed him. “Maybe a blue-eyed blonde Jane who wears Regency bonnets and gives conference presentations about men’s underwear?”
“Funny you should mention her.” A stupid grin swept over his face. “I ran into that Jane recently.”
“She lives here.”
“She does. How did you know that?”
“The brown-eyed, possibly wicked, stepsister happened to drive by right after I blew out my tire.”
“You saw Lynley today?”
“She got me the tow truck, right after she informed me my Lexus was digging a muddy rut in her field.”
“That’s Lynley for you, spicy on the outside but sweet underneath.”
“Maybe. Besides, I thought Jane was more your type.”
“She is.”
“So, you have a thing?”
“I do. Except I don’t think it’s just a thing.”
“Corbin…” I sighed, shaking my head. “How many times have we been through this? Remember when we opened the restaurant in Savannah?”
“Yeah.”
“What was her name?”
“Melanie.”
“And then in Jacksonville, there was…”
“Rhiannon.”
I crossed my arms and gave him my best censure-provoking look.
“I know. I happen to like Southern girls. Nothing wrong with that.”
“No.”
“But this one is different.” He squirmed a little under my paternal glare. “I would like to talk to you about her farm and . . .” His phone rang, and he fished it out of his pocket, checked the number. “Go get cleaned up,” he said over his shoulder, “’cause we’ve got company coming.” He answered the call and walked away. “Hey there.” His voice softened into this annoying, gooey coo.
I grabbed my razor and toothbrush and stalked off to the guest room.
* * *
They arrived just as the sun was setting over the mountain to the west—the angelic Jane and the fascinating Lynley. In a scoop neck sweater thingy and short skirt and boots, she managed to look sexy yet classy at the same time. She drank craft beer with more ladylike sophistication than some women had drinking the finest champagne. I kept expecting low rent opinions or boring conversation from this farm girl, yet she surprised me at every turn. A double major at Virginia Tech in ag and computer science, she had returned to her stepfather’s farm after graduation and tried to bring the operation into the twenty-first century. Along with Jane, who did the bookkeeping—in addition to running her own CPA firm—the sisters had first expanded the farm by remodeling the aging greenhouse and selling cut flowers to regional florists.
The Darcy Monologues: A romance anthology of Pride and Prejudice short stories in Mr. Darcy's own words Page 50