by Roni Loren
Wes froze in her periphery. “What?”
“Kincaid here runs a food blog on the side,” Marco said happily. “She said she and Rebecca would volunteer to give you some feedback on your dishes today.”
“Wait, what?” Rebecca shot Kincaid a look.
Kincaid smiled and shrugged in an oops-style apology. “Well, we just got to talking. You know how that goes. And it came up that Wes is going to be catering Marco’s charity event. Marco said he didn’t know what good he’d be at picking out the menu because Wes is cooking fancy vegetarian stuff, and that’s not his thing. So I told him about my blog, and well, you said you were free this afternoon, right?”
Rebecca didn’t know if she was successfully concealing the what-the-hell look on her face, but she definitely couldn’t keep it out of her tone. “I said I was free to go to a movie with you.”
“Well, now we can have some food before and help out a good cause,” Kincaid said happily.
“This charity’s the one that helps pay for the care of strays like our friend in there,” Marco added.
Oh, great. Rebecca grimaced inwardly. So a guilt trip on top of it. All because Marco probably wanted more time to flirt with Kincaid.
Wes’s horrified expression was not well concealed. “Marco, I really wasn’t planning to cook for a crowd and—”
“Oh, come on. It’s not a crowd. Two more people isn’t a big deal.”
Wes glanced at Rebecca and, for the first time, they were on the same side of the courtroom. She was about to list all the reasons why she could not spend the afternoon there and was hoping Wes would have more reasons of his own to add to the argument. But Marco cleared his throat, and Wes looked back to his brother. Something silent but effective must’ve passed between them. Because after a moment, Wes closed his eyes and shook his head. “Fine. The more the merrier.”
What? Rebecca’s mouth opened to protest, but she couldn’t get the words out before everyone else chimed in.
“Great,” Marco said.
Kincaid clapped her hands together. “Yay.”
Wes simply sighed. “Food needs to go up and into the fridge, or no one’s going to have anything to eat.”
Rebecca walked over to Kincaid while Marco helped Wes with the groceries, and she leaned close to her friend’s ear. “I’m going to kill you in your sleep. Slowly.”
Kincaid smirked. “No, you should be thanking me. I’m doing this as much for you as for me. You weren’t lying when you said your Good Samaritan was hot. Woo, boy.”
“Which completely doesn’t matter because he figured out who I am, and now he hates me.” Rebecca huffed. “I’m not feeling so fond of him either.”
“Oh, I doubt he hates you. Who could hate you?” Kincaid patted Rebecca’s arm. “Come on. It’ll only be an hour or so. Maybe y’all can talk it out. And it’s for a good cause.”
“What? Your love life?”
Kincaid bit her lip. “Well, the doc is super adorable. And smart. I love buttoned-up, brainy guys. They are usually full of surprises behind closed doors.”
Rebecca grunted.
“But if you need me to figure a way out…”
Rebecca glanced at Kincaid’s hopeful face and couldn’t bring herself to tell her to cancel. “You are going to owe me so big for this. Like, huge.”
“You’re the best.” She grinned and grabbed Rebecca’s hand. “Come on. Let’s go and let hot, angry guy cook for us.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes. That was how long it took for Marco and Kincaid to abandon Rebecca and Wes in the kitchen under the auspices of Let me show you the view from Marco and Does this building have original details? from Kincaid.
Kincaid had motioned at Rebecca as she slipped out of the kitchen, some invented sign language that probably meant Talk it out with the hot chef but looked more like a drunken game of naughty charades.
Rebecca had promptly flipped her off.
But now here she was. Alone with Wes again.
Wes stood behind the large island, black bandanna keeping his hair back, gray T-shirt putting all that colorful arm ink on display, and forearms flexing as he sliced and diced an onion with practiced precision. If not for the simmering annoyance, it would’ve been a nice show to watch from her spot sitting on a stool on the other side of the counter. But he hadn’t said a word to her since they’d gotten into the condo. Just chop, chop, chop and irritated grunts.
“Do you need any help?” she asked for lack of anything else to say.
“Can you help me murder my brother?”
“I was thinking we could get rid of them both in one go. How far is the drop from the balcony?” Rebecca tapped her chin. “We could make it look like an accident. I know someone who could defend us.”
Wes smirked.
The little break in the wall helped her relax some. “Why’d you give in anyway? I was about to get us out of it. I had a whole argument prepared. There were bullet points. Closing statements. We could’ve saved ourselves this lovely moment.”
He frowned and dumped the onions into one of the prep bowls. “Yeah, but you didn’t see the look on my brother’s face.” He pushed a basket of strawberries and a paring knife toward her. “Can lawyers hull strawberries?”
“Sure.” She took the berries and stole one of his empty prep bowls. “So what kind of look was that?”
“The don’t-ruin-this-for-me look. The remember-all-the-times-I’ve-helped-you-out look. That look.”
“That’s a lot for a look to say.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t hard to get the point. He’s always working and doesn’t get to go out and meet women. He likes your friend, and she seems to like him for whatever reason”—he shrugged and grabbed a bell pepper from the stack of vegetables—“so I’m hanging out with my ex-wife’s lawyer and taking one for the team.”
She wrinkled her nose.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing. I’m just having a high school flashback.” Thankfully not the kind she’d had Friday night, but one that was unpleasant enough in its own right.
“How’s that?”
She concentrated on cutting the stem off a strawberry. “I had a friend whose parents would only let her go on group dates. So I always got dragged out with her and had to be the date of her boyfriend’s best friend, who pretty much reminded me every ten minutes that he was there as a favor and was taking one for the team by hanging out with me. It was super awesome for my fifteen-year-old ego.”
“Ouch. What an idiot.”
“Yeah, I should’ve just told her to leave me out of it and sneak out like everyone else.”
“No, I meant him. What a douche.”
“Oh. Yeah. He was.” But even as she said it, she felt a pang of guilt in her gut. Craig hadn’t made it through prom night. So douche or not, she felt guilty talking bad about the dead. “We were just in a doomed-to-fail setup. Popular jock and high-strung goody-goody were not a wise combination. Two different planets and all that. He probably thought I was an insufferable Miss Priss.”
His lip curled. “Were you?”
She lifted her hand and held her index finger and thumb an inch apart. “Maybe a little. I wasn’t…not. When they brought weed to date night, I couldn’t just say no and let them do their thing. I gave everyone a lecture about how long it stays in your system and how having something on your record could ruin your college chances.”
He cringed. “Ahh, you were that girl. We had one of those at my school, too.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded. “Laney Becker. And she thought I was a douche.”
“Were you?”
He lifted his fingers, repeating her motion back to her but widening the gap further.
“Nice.”
“I probably would’ve done better if I’d been friends with someone lik
e her. I could’ve used a girl telling me not to blow off class and get high. Or doing a lot of other things I shouldn’t have been doing back then.” He tossed more chopped veggies into a bowl. “And I’m sorry about the ‘taking one for the team’ comment. I didn’t mean it that way. This is just…a screwed-up situation. I’m willing to call a temporary let’s-forget-we-have-history truce for today.”
“I’m on board with that.”
“Good.” He frowned down at her chopped berries. “Hold up. That’s not how to hull.”
She looked down at the berry in her hand. She’d cut off the top. The stem was gone. She didn’t see any problem. “What’s wrong?”
He set down his knife and stepped around the island. “You’re wasting a big part of the berry that way. Here.” He held out his hand for the paring knife, and she handed it over. He shifted until he was right next to her and held the fruit in front of her. “The woody part is just under the leaves. That’s what you’re after.”
He poked the tip of the knife right beneath the leaves and then made a circle around the stem. He popped out the stem and only a little piece of the berry, leaving much more of the fruit intact.
“See.” He held the strawberry in his palm, the sweet scent of the ripe fruit wafting up to her. “Lots more berry, and you also don’t lose the shape of the fruit that way.”
“Oh.” She tried to focus on what he was showing her and not on the fact that he was so close and she could feel his body heat against her arm. Her hormones apparently had no qualms about this man. They remembered what his lips tasted like and were ready to ignore everything she knew about him. Stupid, misguided hormones.
“Now, you try.” He dropped a berry in her hands and gave her the knife again.
She rolled her lips together, concentrating, and poked the knife into the spot he’d shown her. She made a little circle, not quite as quick or precise as he’d been, which irritated the perfectionist in her, but she managed to get the stem out. “Like that?”
“Exactly,” he said, flashing a brief smile. “See. Not a hopeless student.”
“I’m sure your real students would run circles around me.”
“Some would,” he admitted. “But we haven’t gotten to hulling berries yet. The shoestring budget for the cooking program doesn’t exactly allow for fresh berries. Even frozen would be a stretch.”
She frowned. “Is it a state-funded program?”
“No, donor- and community-funded, and the cooking program is in a rebuilding phase. It was inactive for years, but they hired me to try to get it up and running again. There’s not a lot of money to work with since it wasn’t part of the original budget, and we’re in a poorer neighborhood so the parents can’t really help. But I’m working with the kids on some fund-raising ideas so we can get some new equipment and better ingredients, and maybe do a special project or trip during the summer.”
“That’s got to make it tough to teach how you want.”
He shrugged. “I grew up on a shoestring budget, so I can make a meal out of almost anything. But the equipment thing is a pain. We’re down to one oven that saw its best days in 1985.” He set down his knife. “But enough work talk. Your reward for learning how to properly hull is that you can be the first to try this recipe.”
He went to the fridge. Her gaze followed him, and she absolutely did not notice how his T-shirt rode up at the back waistband of his jeans when he leaned inside to get something. Nope, didn’t see the strip of tanned skin either. Not at all.
Ugh. Next she’d be humming the song “Hot for Teacher.” She shifted her focus back to the berry in her hand. “So what are you making with them?”
He spun around, a small container in his hands. “This.”
He walked back to her and plucked the strawberry out of her fingers. “I made the filling ahead of time so it’d be good and cold. For the party, I’ll pipe it in with a pastry bag and make it look fancy, but you’ll still get the flavor this way.” He dipped a spoon into the fluffy mixture inside the container and then stuffed it into the strawberry. “Try that.”
She took the strawberry from him, eyeing the creamy concoction, which looked to have tiny chocolate chips mixed in. She took a bite, the juice of the strawberry running down her hand, and then sighed when the flavors hit her mouth. Tart and sweet and creamy and rich. Decadent.
“Good God, that’s good,” she said, mouth still full.
He smirked, all confidence and sex appeal. “Right?”
The rest of the filling tried to escape the berry, but she quickly caught it with her other hand and licked it off her finger.
When she glanced up, finger still in her mouth, she found him watching her, something dangerous flickering in his gaze, something that made the back of her neck heat. She quickly lowered her hand to the counter. “That’s amazing. What is it?”
“Chocolate-chip cheesecake filling.”
“Ah, I should’ve known,” she said, grabbing a napkin and cleaning her fingers. “All the naughty things.”
He lifted a brow. “Naughty things?”
She cleared her throat. “You know. All the things people who want to fit into their pants aren’t allowed to eat. No wonder it’s good.”
“Not true. It’s vegan,” he said, closing the container and popping it back in the fridge. “This event is animal-product-free. But the fact that you can’t tell gives me the information I need.”
“Wow, really?” she asked, genuinely surprised.
He went back to his cutting board. “Yep. It has cashew cream and dark chocolate, so no dairy. And there’s a little lemon juice, which gives you that tartness you’d get from cream cheese. So really, not forbidden at all. Though I take issue with calling any food naughty.”
She started working on the strawberries again. “Why’s that?”
He glanced up at her. “There aren’t that many things in life that are pure pleasure. Think about it. The list is short—food, sleep, sex. They’re meant to be enjoyed. Why ruin it with all that guilt?”
The comment shoved her mind into a different place, back to what she knew about him. She pressed her lips together and forced herself to concentrate on the hulling. “Right. Guilt clearly isn’t your thing.”
He made a sound of contempt in the back of his throat.
She glanced up. “What?”
“Nothing.” A smug smile touched his lips as he ran his knife through another pepper. “You can’t help yourself. I can feel the judgment rolling off you in waves. You’ve got me all boxed up in the asshole category. It’s as if high school me had just offered you weed and you’re ready to lecture me.”
She set down her knife. “Well, what do you expect, Wes? I was in that courtroom. I can’t un-know that stuff. You did shitty things. And it…pisses me off.”
“You’re angry?” His eyes narrowed as he considered her. “I get judging me, but why get pissed? What I did got you a victory. You won. What’s it matter to you now?”
She stared at him and then deflated. He was right. Why should she care? The case was done. Her client was satisfied. Yet anger simmered hot. “We’re supposed to be pretending we don’t know each other.”
“It’s not working, so we might as well get it all out there.”
She stuck out her chin. “Fine. It irritates me because I wanted to like you. You came to my rescue Friday night. You were funny and nice. Someone that I could see—”
“Getting drunk and kissing?” he asked, not hiding the sarcasm.
“Being friends with,” she said tartly. “But it’s ruined because you’re also someone who cheated on his wife and acted like a jerk in court. Someone whose word can’t be trusted. And I’m mad that you had to be that person.”
His expression darkened. “Because your friends have to be perfect?”
“I didn’t say—”
“I’m the one
who has the right to be angry. You helped someone steal things from me that I can never get back. I made you money. You should be thanking me. But no, you’re mad at me because I don’t fit into the image I’m supposed to. You can’t neatly tuck me into the villain box because I helped you the other night. And you can’t let yourself like me either because you’re only allowed to like people who have a flawless record and who have always done the right thing, like you.”
Her throat went tight at that. “Don’t act like you know me because I told you one high school story.”
He lifted a brow. “So you haven’t always done the right thing?”
A fist of tension gathered in her chest, old panic pushing at her nerve endings. “No.”
He leaned close, putting his lips right next to her ear. “I don’t believe you. I bet your dates have to bring a résumé and a background check with them before you let them hold your hand.”
“Screw you. You know nothing about me.”
He rose to full height again, his thighs almost close enough to bump her knees, and met her gaze. “You don’t know me either, Rebecca. And you’re too locked up in your fortress of self-righteousness to take the time to ask me the whole story or see the person in front of you. You have some photos and the word of a woman who hated me. How would you fare in court if all anyone got to hear about you was your worst mistake? How would you look if you were distilled down to that one thing?”
Her stomach plummeted at that.
“What would your sentence be?” he challenged. “Because I’m still paying for mine every damn day.”
She closed her eyes, trying to breathe through the wash of anxiety that flooded her, the familiar cold dread of that what-if. What if people knew? What if the truth about what she’d done in high school came out? What if…
“My sentence would be worse,” she said softly, the admission slipping out without her permission.
“Worse?” He scoffed. “The divorce ruined me. Restaurant I dreamed of all my life? Gone before I could open it. My credit? Blown. My credibility? Shattered. And as a bonus I picked up a fun drinking problem I had to deal with because getting wasted felt a whole lot better than realizing I had nothing left, that I’d climbed to the top of the mountain only to be pushed off the summit before I even got to snap a damn picture.” His jaw flexed. “I’ll be the first to admit that I was a shitty husband and had no business being married. But I didn’t deserve to lose everything, and I don’t deserve your judgment.”