by Kara Lennox
“I don’t really like spicy food,” he said, feeling boring all of a sudden.
“How about this?” Sara asked, pointing to an unpronounceable word on the menu. “It’s supposed to be like a shepherd’s pie.”
That didn’t sound so bad. “Okay.”
Sara smiled, pleased, and Reece suddenly realized he would eat just about anything-even goat-to get that smile.
“Spicy food is an acquired taste,” she said when the waiter had gone. “If you experiment, you’ll find things you like.”
“I might like it, but my ulcer wouldn’t.”
“Ulcer? You have an ulcer?”
“I did two years ago.” It was the most miserable experience of his entire life. “Don’t worry, it’s better now. But I try not to tempt fate by eating weird stuff.”
“Hmm. I’ll bet your ulcer had a lot more to do with your work than your diet.”
His doctor had shared that opinion, but he’d refused to believe it. “Not likely. I love my work.”
“You eat, drink and sleep your work,” she countered. “You always have your cell phone glued to your ear, or your nose against the screen of your laptop. You check your watch constantly.”
He shrugged. “Unfortunately, my department doesn’t run itself.”
Sara’s observations weren’t new to him. He knew he spent more time and energy on his work than was strictly healthy.
He’d thought everything was under control in his department when he’d left almost a month ago for what was supposed to be a two-week leave of absence.
But the job had escalated when ownership of the business came into dispute, and the eventual resolution involved a complex merger of interests among the Remington cousins and Cooper’s soon-to-be wife, Allie Bateman.
Problems had also cropped up at his regular job, problems only he could solve.
“Did I say something wrong?” Sara said. “You suddenly got this look on your face like you swallowed a bug.”
He shook off his dismal thoughts. Tonight, at least, he ought to be able to forget about his job. He forced a smile. “No, you didn’t say anything wrong. You’re right, I do work too hard. But that’s the nature of the beast.”
When their dinners arrived, Reece was pleasantly surprised. His shepherd’s pie was delicious, flavored with a delicate blend of seasonings that weren’t at all hot as he’d anticipated. He did pick out a few suspiciously unidentifiable purple things, but other than that it was fine.
He declined dessert, but Sara ordered a gooey pastry, and he thoroughly enjoyed watching her eat it. She did so with gusto, relishing every bite with her eyes closed.
After watching her lush lips close around the fork a few times, however, he started thinking about things he shouldn’t, and he had to force himself to look away.
“Let me pay it,” Sara said when the check arrived. “I’m the one who ate a lot.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He snatched the bill from her hand. “Dinner was my idea.” And he knew she didn’t have a lot of disposable income. Although her room and board were taken care of, her various temporary and part-time jobs couldn’t net all that much extra cash.
“Let me at least leave the tip.” She reached into her big straw bag and pulled out what could only be described as a money ball. She peeled a few ones from it and set them on the table, then dropped the rest back into her bag.
“You don’t have to-”
“It’s done.”
He didn’t want to argue with her, but it seemed less like a date if he let her pay even a small amount. Maybe that was her true purpose. Maybe she wanted to subtly let him know that just because they’d shared dinner, he shouldn’t have any expectations.
Of course he didn’t. Sara was as friendly as a puppy, but that didn’t mean she had any designs on-or interest in-his person.
When they returned to the B and B, they went immediately to the kitchen, where Reece got a taste of just how much work a gourmet breakfast required. Sara had made it look easy-almost effortless-in the past as she’d delivered plate after plate to the dining room. But Reece had never ventured into the kitchen during the preparations.
First Sara made up the dough for two loaves of bread.
“It’s quick bread,” she explained, “so it doesn’t require a lot of rising time.” She popped it into the oven, then went to work making up the batter for blueberry and cranberry muffins.
He remembered when he was a kid his mom had occasionally made muffins from a box, but this was altogether more complex, with lots of chopping and folding.
Sara let Reece chop nuts-for a few minutes, anyway.
“Good Lord, you’re going to lop off a finger using a knife that way!” She took the knife away from him. “Here, why don’t you whip some eggs for the frittata.”
“The fri-what?”
It turned out “frittata” was just a fancy name for eggs and fresh vegetables, bacon, cheese and spices. When the eggs were whipped, Sara put Reece to work grating cheese, a job he couldn’t mess up too badly except when he grated his knuckles.
She sliced fresh strawberries and added sugar. By now she was out of jobs he could do, so he just watched. Her hands were small, quick and clever. The knife moved so fast it was a blur. Most interesting was her face. As she worked, she wore an expression of such contentment and serenity he thought she looked like an angel.
A mischievous angel, maybe, with that halo of brown curls around her face and the smudge of flour on her cheek.
“The fruit is in case anyone wants cereal or oatmeal, which they usually don’t.”
“Oatmeal?”
She laughed. “Oh, now surely you can make oatmeal. You eat it every morning.”
He shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t cook. Nothing.”
She sighed. “Don’t offer oatmeal, then.”
When they were finally finished, it was close to midnight. They tidied up the kitchen and turned out the light.
The bulb popped just as Sara switched it off, and they were plunged into darkness.
“Oh, hang it, that lightbulb burns out all the time,” Sara said, her voice coming to him soft and velvety in the dark, sending a pleasurable chill up his spine.
“I’ll change it tomorrow morning,” Reece said. “Let’s not worry about it now.”
“Yeah, but what happened to the lamp in the living room? It’s on a timer, and it always comes on at night.”
“I’ll check it tomorrow, too.” But for now he would enjoy the darkness. It seemed so…sexy.
“But I can’t see.”
“Hold on to me. I can see well enough.” As his eyes adjusted, he could make out the outlines of furniture and pictures on the wall.
She grabbed on to his arm. “What are you, a bat? It’s pitch-dark in here.”
“Men have better night vision than women. On average,” he added as they made their way slowly through the dining room to the living room. After hours of feeling like an idiot in the kitchen, Reece was pleased to be in charge of something, even if it was only navigating them through a dark house.
“Is that true?” she asked, sounding genuinely curious.
“I read it somewhere. It must be true.”
Halfway up the stairs, light from the upstairs landing illuminated the steps. But Sara didn’t let go of his arm. They’d created a bond, caring for Miss Greer, sharing the adventurous dinner, then working together in the kitchen. He felt close to her in a way he hadn’t felt close to a woman in a long time, and it was nice.
Very, very nice.
They paused in front of Reece’s bedroom door, and she still didn’t let him go. He grabbed the opportunity with both hands.
“Sara, I just want you to know that I admire the way you took care of Miss Greer and volunteered to handle things for her. Not everyone would be that generous.”
She smiled up at him. “Miss Greer has been kind to me. I know she’s a little bit gruff and abrupt, sometimes, but she really does love me like a granddaughter.
The B and B is my home, and we take care of each other.”
“What about your family?”
“My parents aren’t exactly the nurturing kind. They’re both military-spit ’n’ polish, no crying allowed, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. I don’t ask them for help and they don’t offer.”
“Where do they live?”
“At MacShane-you know, the army base about fifty miles inland?”
Reece nodded. He’d seen it on a map, but that was about it.
“I’m not a military brat in the usual sense, though,” she said. “They didn’t move around. Both of them spent almost their entire careers at MacShane. Don’t get me wrong, they’re good people and they were good parents. But I’m so different from them. They don’t get me and I don’t get them, but we love each other in our own ways.”
Reece understood growing up with less-than-warm-and-fuzzy parents. His were rigid, also, especially with him. Whatever nurturing instincts they had got used up on his older brother, Bret.
“I don’t exactly get you, either,” he said. “But I think you’re…unique.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Unique? Is that the best you can do, Reece Remington?”
All right, so sweet-talking women had never been his strong suit. He possessed other good qualities. Like kissing. He’d been told he was a very good kisser.
Before he could chicken out, he pulled off his glasses, slipped his arms around her and brought his mouth to hers.
Chapter Three
Sara sank into the kiss, which was like melted butter on a warm biscuit-better than she could have dreamed. His mouth was demanding but somehow gentle as he coaxed her lips open, one hand buried in the hair at the back of her neck, angling her head just how he wanted it.
He teased her upper lip with his tongue, then did the same with her lower lip. She entwined her arms around his neck, at first to draw closer, then to keep from sinking to the floor as her knees turned to jelly and she lost all feeling in her extremities.
The kiss seemed to go on forever as their tongues met and performed a mating dance. It was, hands down, the sexiest, most provocative kiss she’d ever experienced, and she loved it that he didn’t immediately press for more. He didn’t touch her breasts, he didn’t grind his pelvis into hers.
He just kissed her like it was the last kiss either of them would ever have. Oh, God, she hoped not.
Finally he pulled back and looked down at her, faintly amused. “Unique, and you have really soft lips.”
“O-okay, that’s better.”
“Go get some sleep. We have a busy day ahead of us.” He released her, brushing his lips against her forehead before disappearing into his room.
Huh. She wanted so badly to go in there with him. But he hadn’t invited her.
She headed for the attic stairs that led to her bedroom, but her legs refused to carry her up them, and she sank onto the second step and stared at Reece’s door.
Wow. That had been a surprise.
Maybe she should have forced him out of his comfort zone sooner. Certainly that Bulgarian restaurant hadn’t been a comfortable place for him. Neither had he felt at home in the B and B’s kitchen. He’d bungled around like…well, like a macho man in a kitchen.
She’d been surprised each time he’d risen to her challenges. He’d tried the slightly strange food. He’d allowed her to show him things in the kitchen.
And then he’d kissed her. Connection?
The only problem was, what was she going to do now? Had she started something she wasn’t prepared to finish?
She used to take romance lightly, easy come, easy go. If a relationship didn’t work out, she might be sad for a short time, but there were always new men to be found.
Recently, however, she’d been wondering whether she had a soul mate out there. Allie, who only a few weeks ago had been confirmedly single, had found love with Cooper Remington, and Sara had begun to feel left out.
But if she were to “settle down,” it would take a special kind of guy, one who was as adventurous as she was, who loved traveling and trying new things.
She had to admit, Reece didn’t strike her as the least bit adventurous. He was ultraserious, a buttoned-down CPA who loved to talk about risk management and long-term projections.
Her projections usually didn’t extend past what she planned to have for lunch that day.
And yet…he was so delicious. Not only that, but he was a good guy. He hadn’t balked-not really-when she’d volunteered him to handle the B and B finances while Miss Greer took care of her health. Delicious men came and went, but ones with character-they were a bit more rare.
Maybe she ought to decide what she wanted from Reece before she did something crazy.
SARA WAS UP before light the next day, but when she reached the kitchen, she found Reece already there, pondering the workings of the coffeemaker. She liked seeing him there. His very male presence balanced all the Victorian froufrou.
“You already changed the lightbulbs?” she asked, instead of saying good morning.
He jumped. “Oh. Yeah.” He looked everywhere but at her.
He was probably regretting last night’s moment of weakness. Fine. If that was how he wanted to play it, she could pretend it never happened. “I’ll get the coffee ready. You can preheat the upper oven to three hundred ten degrees, and the lower one to four twenty-five.”
“Okay.”
That took him all of twenty seconds. When he was done, he intently watched her make coffee, as if committing every step to memory. His attention, so focused, gave her a delicate shiver.
“Are you cold?” he asked. “I opened the window when I came down because it seemed stuffy, but I can close it.”
“No, the fresh air is nice.” She chuckled. “I’m surprised you were able to get the window open at all. Miss Greer has a phobia about fresh air. Even in the dead of summer, she’s sure everyone will catch their death of cold if there’s a draft.”
“Well, Miss Greer isn’t here, and what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
Sara’s heart thudded hard as she chanced a look over her shoulder at Reece. His brown eyes sparkled with mischief. Was he trying to tell her something else? Did he know that she’d been holding back a bit because he was a guest, and hitting on guests was frowned upon?
Now that Reece was sort of part of the management, did that change everything?
She looked away quickly, wondering if it was too late to undo last night’s kiss. For the first time in her life, she was a bit scared of getting involved on any level with a man, and she wasn’t quite sure why. Would she get out unscathed if she and Reece got carried away with this attraction thing?
He was just so different from the guys she usually went for, and she felt she didn’t know the rules anymore.
“Why don’t you set the table?” she suggested brightly. “Linens are in the buffet, dishes in the china cabinet. Set six place settings.”
“What about me?” he asked. “Don’t I get to eat?”
“You’re the hired help now. We eat in the kitchen.”
“I don’t see how I can be hired help if I’m not getting paid,” he pointed out good-naturedly, though he moved to the dining room to follow directions.
She pushed the coffeemaker’s on button as she realized what he said was perfectly true. She was getting free room and board, but no one had promised Reece a similar deal for helping out.
She poked her head through the doorway. “You’re absolutely right. But I’m sure Miss Greer doesn’t expect you to pay full price for staying here when you’re running the place.”
Reece shook his head as he took out a floral tablecloth and laid it over the huge mahogany dining table. “I was only kidding. I don’t need to be paid. I don’t mind helping out, and it gives me something to do.”
“Don’t you have to work on the accounting for Remington Charters?” Sara asked.
“Well, yeah, but that’s not exactly a full-time job.”
&
nbsp; “I thought you’d be done with all that by now.” She helped him straighten the cloth, then dug out coordinating place mats while he grabbed a stack of plates from the china cabinet.
“I have a few more things to set up, then I have to train Allie and Cooper how to use the program.”
“Train Allie, you mean,” she said. “Cooper doesn’t have the patience for dealing with numbers.”
Reece looked at her quizzically. “That’s true, but how did you know that?”
“Duh. You guys lived here for more than a week before Cooper and Max found their own places. I observed you. I watched conversations. I can tell you a lot about your cousins.”
Reece crossed his arms. “You eavesdropped?”
“Absolutely not.” She hoped she wasn’t blushing. Maybe she’d listened to Reece more than was strictly accidental because of her fascination with him. “Hired help is often invisible. People talk as if I’m not there, though I make no effort to sneak around. Sometimes I can’t help overhearing.”
“You weren’t invisible to me.”
“Ha. When you have your nose in your laptop with some accounting program, you wouldn’t notice an atomic blast going off in the next room. I used to vacuum right under your chair and you never twitched.”
“I did notice,” he insisted. “I noticed lots of things about you.”
“Like what?”
“Like some guy named Ike from Santa Fe called you at least three times a day on your cell phone. You didn’t want to encourage him, but you didn’t want to hurt his feelings, either.”
She blinked in surprise. “Now who’s eavesdropping?”
“Sometimes I couldn’t help overhearing,” he said, echoing exactly what she’d just said to him.
Gracious. He wasn’t nearly as oblivious as she’d guessed. Here she thought she hadn’t even registered on his radar, and he’d been listening to her conversations.
“What else do you know about Cooper?” he asked.
“Aren’t you more curious as to how much I know about you?”
He looked away. “I don’t give off that many clues.”
“You’re thirty-four years old. You’re the youngest of two brothers, your brother is named Bret, and he dumps a lot of work on you.”