The Chef's Choice

by Kristin Hardy

  Her mouth went dry. He watched her with the same intensity as when he was at work, creating, but now it was all focused on her.

  “Why didn’t you make a scene with that diner tonight?” she asked. Abruptly, it seemed vital to know. “He was obnoxious. Why didn’t you kick him out? It’s what you would have done in New York.”

  Damon moved his shoulders. “This isn’t New York.”

  “Is that why you don’t party all night anymore?”

  He reached out to tuck her hair behind her ear. “I can think of other things I’d rather do.”

  His fingers lingered against her cheek and Cady felt a flip in her stomach. It was only a light touch and yet she was trembling.

  Nerves, anticipation, confusion.

  “Why are you here?” she managed.

  “To cook.” He traced his fingers down the side of her throat. “That’s what I do.”

  “You can do that anywhere.”

  “I’d rather do it here.”

  Cady moistened her lips, never taking her eyes from his. “I don’t know what to think about you.”

  “Do you have to?”

  It was imperative, somehow. But his hand was slipping back to curve around her neck, leaving a trail of heat that turned all her muscles liquid. She was sinking into lassitude and heat and wanting.

  And wanting.

  “I need to know,” she murmured as he bent his head to hers. “I need…”

  “What?” he whispered.

  And then his mouth was on hers.

  They had no business kissing out here in the parking lot where anyone could see them; Cady knew it but she couldn’t make it matter. It wasn’t the time, it wasn’t the place, but the whole notion of right time and right place didn’t seem important anymore. They could have been in a million different places at a million different times and still all she would have been able to register would be the heat of his mouth on hers.

  He had a reputation as a volatile genius, as an unapologetic player. She’d never expected gentleness from him. Yet it was gentleness he gave; sweet, persuasive caresses that undermined her defenses and left her helpless to do anything but sink into the warmth and the pleasure.

  And as she did, he took her deeper.

  His mouth was soft on hers, his hands spread across her back to pull her to him. As he’d tempted her with his food, shown her a pleasure she’d never known she could experience, so he tempted her with his mouth. He teased her lips into parting, fastened his over hers as though they could give each other breath, sustenance.

  But the taste of him, oh, the taste of him was far more addictive than anything he’d ever fed her, complex and intense and somehow wild. It was a flavor she could never forget. It was a taste she could never get enough of. More, she thought, and didn’t know whether she meant the taste or the man.

  Or both.

  With a sound of impatience, she wound her fingers up into his hair and let her head fall back.

  Damon could feel her, taut in his arms, could smell that apple-cinnamon scent. And he kissed his way across her cheek and down her throat, searching for the source of it.

  He was a man who knew all about the appetite but there was no explanation for the desperate hunger he felt, and no answer to it. He tasted her skin, found himself maddened by the barrier of her clothing. The want for her drummed through him relentlessly.

  Then he felt her shiver and it weakened him more than any fist in the gut could. She styled herself as tough, savvy, no-nonsense, but here she was, trembling in his arms, her pulse beating frantically under his lips.

  He’d been with dozens of women but it had never been like this. Cady, the things he was feeling, made any memories of any woman he’d ever known meaningless. The whispery little sigh of pleasure she gave made him tighten. He remembered how she’d looked when he’d fed her, that almost orgiastic expression of pleasure on her face. All he wanted was to give her more, take her further, slowly, while he was watching.

  And go over the edge with her, together.

  Desire burned away at his self-control. “I want you,” he muttered.

  I want you. Cady heard the words, felt Damon slipping his hands under her jacket, running them down her body and, oh, it felt delicious.

  I want you. His mouth was back on hers, doing those wonderful, magical, mind-bending things and for a moment she melted against him, wanting only to glory in the feel of his hands but—

  I want you. That meant sex and getting naked and nothing that had ever been any good for her. The thought made the dizzy pleasure dissolve away to reality. And then she was breaking the kiss, sucking in gulps of the cool night air.

  The nerves were back.

  What she was doing? she wondered, resting her forehead against his chest. He was used to women who knew what they were about, who weren’t the least bit self-conscious, who knew all the ways to please a man. As to her, what little experience she’d had only reinforced one thing—that she hadn’t a clue how to do it right. At least she didn’t think so. She’d never been able to ask, in part because it was the one area in which her nerve failed her, and in part because she’d never gotten a chance for round two with either of the men she’d slept with.

  It never occurred to her that the fault might not have been her own.

  Damon slipped his fingers down to raise her chin. “What’s wrong?”

  “I just need to think.” She moved away, because the heat of his body felt way too good and if she didn’t watch it, she’d find herself browsing on his mouth again and begging for the feel of his hands. “I’m not…I don’t date a lot. I don’t know how it works, this hopping in and out of bed stuff. I’m not wired that way.” And she was in over her head and feeling horribly self-conscious.

  “I wasn’t thinking too much about the hopping out part,” he said.

  “You know what I mean. I’m not one of these hip club chicks. I’ve never even been to Manhattan.”

  “I don’t give a damn. You’re who I want.”

  “Now, maybe.”

  He closed his eyes briefly. “More than you can possibly imagine.”

  “I’m not playing games with you. I just need to figure out what I’m doing.” This was a first. Her body was screaming for more and she, the physical one, was worried about her head.

  Or her heart.

  She knew he wanted her, she’d felt the indisputable evidence. But what did that mean to him? Once, she would have been certain she’d known—and run like hell the other way. In the past two weeks, though, she’d seen an entirely different person. Did she trust that? Or did she trust all the stories she’d heard in the media? Who was he really? And could she risk herself to find out?

  Damon walked a few feet away, hands on his hips. Somewhere out in the dark, a night creature rustled. It wasn’t any louder than the sound of Cady’s heartbeat in her ears.

  Shaking his head, Damon turned back to her. “Look, if you need time, you need time. I’m not going to lie and tell you that all I wanted from you tonight was talk. I want a lot more, and I think you do, too. But I can wait until you’re sure.” He looked at her a moment.

  Cady hesitated. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to—”

  “I know. It’s okay.” He opened the door of her truck, watched her as she slid in. “Be careful driving home.”

  Her eyes were troubled. “I will.” She started her engine and rolled down the window.

  Damon rested his hands on the door. “You know, I’ve barely got today figured out. I don’t know about tomorrow any more than you do. But I do know that you don’t find this just anywhere. When you find a gift, you don’t walk away from it. So take your time and figure things out. I’ll be here.”

  He leaned in to brush a kiss over her lips. And stood there, watching her as she drove off into the night.

  Chapter Nine

  “Hello? Anyone home?” Cady walked in the door of her parents’ house, on the back side of the Compass Rose property. The slate-blue Cape Cod had bee
n built by her grandfather Malcolm right after he’d taken over the inn. It had allowed his family—and her own—to be immediately accessible to the inn without actually living in it. And every time she thought of the alternative of growing up on the other side of the wall from milling guests, Cady mentally blessed him.

  “Hi, honey. What are you doing here?” Amanda walked through the doorway from the kitchen, rubbing on hand lotion.

  “Breakfast.” Cady raised up a bakery bag.

  “I smell cinnamon rolls.”

  “And I smell coffee. Wanna trade?” Cady headed into the kitchen, glancing over her shoulder to her mother. “I came by to see how Dad was feeling.”

  “He got a good night’s sleep last night, thanks to you.”

  Nice to know someone had, Cady thought wryly. “Is he feeling any better?”

  “A little, maybe. He’s over at the main house.”

  “Mom, it’s six in the morning. What’s he doing over there this early?”

  “You know him. He feels guilty that he took off yesterday afternoon. I’m glad he did, though. He’s been looking really run-down.” Amanda poured coffee for her daughter and set it on the breakfast bar.

  “You know, you guys do have staff. You could let them do some of the work for a change.”

  Amanda shook her head. “There’s always some sort of crisis they don’t know how to handle. You know how it is.”

  “I know how Dad is.” Cady opened the bakery bag. “He thinks he’s some kind of a machine that never gets sick and never needs to rest.”

  “He knows he’s not.” Amanda leaned against the counter to look across at her daughter.

  “Then why does he want to run himself into the ground? He needs to start taking care of himself.”

  “He does what he thinks he needs to do.”

  “Sometimes I think you guys don’t own the inn, the inn owns you.” Cady dumped several heaping spoonfuls of sugar in her coffee and stirred.

  “You’re going to rot your teeth if you keep that up,” Amanda said mildly.

  “I brush them all the time.” Cady took a bite of her cinnamon roll and followed it with a swallow of coffee. “I’m self-insured. Can’t afford to have my premiums go up.”

  “And you’re a small business owner, so you should know the business always owns you.”

  “Yeah, but my business doesn’t require me to work around the clock.” She stopped. “I worry about you guys. You don’t have any backup so you just never take a rest.”

  Amanda turned to stare out the kitchen window at the inn, and Grace Harbor beyond. “That’s nothing new. It’s pretty much been that way since your grandfather retired. Before that, we had four of us to share the load. Everybody got days off. Since then…”

  And Cady felt the familiar wash of guilt. “Mom, I’m sorry. I wish I could do more.”

  “Do more? You already do plenty.” Amanda turned back to her. “Anyway, it’s not your responsibility. It’s not the responsibility of any of you kids. I mean, we would’ve been thrilled if any of you had wanted to run the inn, but you have your own lives to lead. We understand that.”

  “And you have your lives to lead, too. You used to talk about travel, seeing Europe and Asia.”

  “I watch the Travel Channel,” Amanda said with a half smile.

  “Maybe you should do more.” Cady hesitated. “Maybe it’s time for you guys to retire.”

  “You mean sell off.”

  “We’re having Dad’s sixtieth birthday party in two weeks,” she said carefully. “I think maybe it’s time.”

  “This inn has been in your father’s family for almost a hundred years. It would break his heart to sell it.”

  “But, Mom, who’s going to run it? Not Max. Certainly not Walker. I love the inn as much as you do. I just hate to see it turn into a millstone around your neck.” The hellish part was, Cady knew the answer. She just didn’t know if she could live with it. When it came to family, though, you did what you had to do. She took a deep breath. “You know, I’ve been thinking. Maybe I could—”

  “No, honey.” Amanda cut her off. “You do a beautiful job with the grounds, but there’s no way you could run this place, if that’s what you’re thinking. You’d be miserable. And, well, as much as I love you, you’d be miserable at it. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Cady returned grumpily.

  Amanda came around the counter to hug her. “It was sweet of you to offer and I know what it cost. Don’t worry. We’ll figure something out.” She turned to study Cady’s cinnamon roll. “You know, my hips don’t need one of those but my mouth just might.”

  Cady passed her a napkin. “You ask me, guilt is a waste of time.”

  “I had no idea I had such a wise daughter. Your mama must have raised you right.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Thanks again for helping your father with the furniture and pitching in at the restaurant.” Amanda perched on one of the kitchen stools. “How did everything go, by the way? What did you think of Damon in action?”

  He kisses better than any man I’ve ever laid lips on.

  “He’s good,” Cady said aloud. “His food’s amazing. He keeps the kitchen running smooth as silk.”

  Too bad the same couldn’t be said for her pulse when she was around him.

  “Roman really seems to like him,” Amanda said.

  “Well, Roman ought to know.” Cady set her coffee mug down and took a deep breath. “As much as I hate to admit it, I think I might have been wrong about him.”

  Amanda blinked. “You’re not coming down with your father’s cold, are you? You’re looking a little puny, now that I think about it.”

  She wasn’t coming down with her father’s cold, but she was very worried that she was starting to come down with something else. “I’m fine.” Cady brushed the concern aside. “I just didn’t sleep so well last night.”

  “Why not? After a night on your feet waiting tables, I would’ve thought you would have slept like a rock.”

  If rocks tossed and turned and spent the whole night thinking of a man with a hypnotic gaze and a mouth that was pure magic, sure.

  Cady finished the last of her sweet roll and licked her fingers. “You know, I should probably get going. I’ll drop one of these off with Dad on my way out.” She kissed her mother on the cheek. “I’ll see you later.”

  He’d said he’d give her time, Damon thought as he strode through the farmers’ market. God help him, he’d promised it.

  And he hadn’t gotten a decent night’s sleep since.

  Over a week had passed, a week during which he hadn’t seen her or spoken to her. The time should’ve gone by in a snap. After all, he was working more than sixteen hours a day. Somehow, though, that still left time to miss her.

  It was ironic. He’d been with beautiful women, women who knew every trick in the book, women who’d turned seduction into a vocation. And yet it was thoughts of Cady, her scent, the feel of her breath on his skin, that sent need grinding through him. The other women had come to him freely, and often. Yet Cady was the one he waited for.

  “What’s with the sour face?”

  Damon glanced up to find himself before a table of tomatoes, and Pete Tebeau grinning at him. “Hey, Pete. Nothing’s up, just thinking.”

  “I’d hate to be the person you’re thinking about.”

  If you only knew, my man. “You got my ramps?”

  The last of the season, more than likely. After Damon’s first buy, Gus had turned into an enthusiastic supplier, boxing them for Pete to sell, not just to the Sextant, but to half the chefs in Portland. The restaurant community didn’t know what it owed him, Damon thought sardonically.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Pete said, “the wife keeps asking me to get your recipe for the lobster salad from when we were at your place. She can’t stop talking about it.”

  “Sure. It’s easy, as long as you’ve got fresh lobsters.”

  Pete grinned. “You kidding? This is M
aine. They show up at the caucuses.”

  “How about some paper?”

  Pete dug around by his cash box and unearthed a sheet.

  “How was your anniversary?” Damon asked, calculating quantities in his head and writing swiftly. “Was your wife surprised?”

  “Overwhelmed, more like. I didn’t recognize half of what you fed us but it’s the best food I’ve ever eaten. She hasn’t stopped talking about it since.” He squinted. “My mom always said that the best way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, but I’m starting to wonder if it doesn’t work the other way, too. Maybe I should learn how to cook.”

  And all Damon could think about was the look on Cady’s face when he’d put the croustillant in her mouth. Absolute pleasure, no reservations.

  The way he wanted her to feel when he touched her.

  “If you’ve made it to your twenty-fifth anniversary, I think you’ve probably already taken care of the heart part, my man,” he said aloud, and handed Pete the sheet. “Here’s the recipe. And if you decide you want to learn how to cook her something yourself, just ask.”

  The burly vendor winked. “How about one of them aphrodisiacs? Could you give me a recipe for one of them?”

  Damon snorted. “Yeah, sure, I’ll get right back to you on that one.”

  It was too bad aphrodisiacs were just a myth, he thought as he drove down I-95 toward Grace Harbor. Then again, if he tried to feed Cady oysters, he was pretty confident she would run screaming the other way, which was a little bit counter to the desired outcome. Of course, it wasn’t about aphrodisiacs anyway. If he wanted to seduce her, he had no doubt she’d be seduced. He could see it in her eyes, feel it in the way she trembled against him. But what would they have then? Only regrets, on both sides.

  He needed her to come to him willingly. He needed her trust. He knew he’d changed, he knew he was different than he’d been a decade, or even a few years, before. But somehow, he needed her to believe it.

  “I don’t know what to think about you,” she’d said. In some strange way it was as though, if he could convince her, it would be proof that the change was real.