Gimme Some Sugar

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “I’m always hungry. What’ve we got?” He stood behind the wheel of the boat, maneuvering back upstream a bit. They’d managed to drift pretty far down into the eddy, and Autumn’s husband Chris would be right pissed if Jackson ran his boat aground, no matter how pretty the woman distracting him might be.

  Carly’s face lit up even further as she rummaged through the contents of the basket she’d moved to her lap. “Italian pasta salad, brick sandwiches, and oh! Amaretti for dessert.” She waved a cellophane bag of buttery-brown cookies with a flourish.

  “I’m sorry, did you say brick? As in, give me some mortar and I’ll build you a house, brick?” Jackson killed the engine, having gotten them far enough upstream that he could easily drift for a while without being in the way of passing watercraft.

  “Relax, I’m a chef, not a stonemason. The sandwiches are made with cold cuts—sopressata, pepperoni, and capo-colla, to be precise—but in order to fit all of that plus the Provolone, the roasted red peppers and the greens on there, I had to hollow out some of the bread and put bricks on the sandwiches overnight. The weight compresses the ingredients slowly, without mashing them to a pulp.”

  Jackson’s brow hiked up at the surprising heft of the sandwich she passed his way. “Jeez. This thing must weigh two pounds.” His taste buds joined his stomach in a jig of sweet anticipation.

  “Yours probably does,” Carly agreed, taking out another sandwich that was half the size of the one in his hand.

  He laughed. “My appetite precedes me, then?”

  “You’re the one who said you’re always hungry.” She laughed as she passed him a bottle of water. He sprawled comfortably next to her on the bench seat, leaning in to place a kiss on the apple of her sun-warmed cheek.

  “Thanks for feeding me. You didn’t have to.”

  Her hands skittered to a stop over the propped-open basket. “Just like you didn’t have to rearrange your schedule to take me fishing, you mean? Bringing lunch was really the least I could do.”

  Jackson wanted to answer her, but he was suddenly too busy contending with the explosion of spicy, smoky flavors having a party in his mouth. Each bite brought a slightly different combination of hearty richness from the meats and mild sweetness of the red peppers. He might not know the fancy names of the herbs she’d used to give it that final kick of over-the-top goodness with each swallow, but that wasn’t going to stop him from enjoying them to the hilt.

  “Wow.” The word was a muffled grunt more than anything else, and Jackson spent another minute eating before finally pausing to speak again. “The red pepper goes great with the cold cuts. Even the leafy stuff tastes really good.” He stopped to examine the layers of the sandwich in between bites, noting the different colors and textures in each component.

  “See, now you’re learning. It’s all about balance. All three meats are bold, but each in its own way. The sopressata’s smoky, the capocolla’s spicy, and the pepperoni’s a little of both. But then the veggies and herbs cool things down, while the balsamic and olive oil work their magic with a smooth bite. Plus it’s filling as hell, so I figured you’d like it. Even with the leafy stuff,” Carly laughed.

  The wheels of his brain kicked to a slow, steady turn as he thought of all the ingredients. “So you really think using local ingredients could make stuff like this even better? I mean, Pine Mountain’s not exactly known for its . . . well, anything, really.”

  But Carly shook her head as if to disagree. “Using local ingredients makes sense, and you’d be surprised what you can find, even in rural locations. Take your mother’s garden, for example. With a plot that size, I could go a long way toward making unique daily specials with ingredients I know are at the height of freshness. The only hard part is getting started. Well, that and getting funding.”

  Jackson paused, his sandwich halfway to his lips. “There’s a huge nursery and farm out in Bealetown, where my ma gets a lot of annuals and starter plants. It’s only about thirty minutes from here. If you wanted to start a garden, that’d be a great place to get seedlings.”

  He’d been to Brooks Farm countless times, hauling everything from flats of petunias to strawberry plants to the crepe myrtles lining the garden path for his mother. Jackson could find the place in his sleep. “I could take you if you want to check it out.”

  “Really?” Carly’s eyes danced with fiery warmth, the excitement on her pretty face so obvious it all but reached out to pinch him. “If I could come up with a solid business plan and get my hands on the resources from somewhere that close by, I might just be able to get resort management to approve a garden on the premises. God, could you imagine how incredible it would be if I could get my hands on fresh produce like that every day?”

  Her hands fluttered to emphasize her excitement, and not even the sun overhead could hold a candle to the wide, bright smile parting her lips. “I mean, we’d still have to use our distributors, but not nearly as much, so it would cut costs on that end. Although start-up might be a problem. And I’d need quite a bit of space for a project like that. Still . . .”

  Her murmur tapered into a look of deep thought, as if she was so caught up in the ideas that she’d forgotten she was spinning them out loud.

  No two ways about it, Carly’s enthusiasm was catching. Jackson stared at her, fascinated, his thoughts pattering together in a steady stream of hell yes. He leaned in, brushing his hand across her knee to capture her attention.

  “There’s that field across from the west gate, adjacent to the side entrance of the restaurant. It’s got to be almost an acre of wasted space,” he said, estimating it in his mind’s eye. “It’s partially blocked from view by the grove between the resort and the west-side hiking trails, and the ski slopes and villas are all on the other end of the complex. You really couldn’t ask for a better place for an on-site garden. It’s even on the same side of the resort as the restaurant.”

  Carly chewed her bottom lip, a streak of uncertainty taking the edge off her smile. “Yeah, but even so, once you factor in a professional landscaper, a contracting company for the actual labor, and at least one full-time gardener to oversee maintenance, the price tag might be more than the resort is willing to consider. I’d need one hell of a business plan to convince them to do it, with the research to back it up. It would take months of trial and error before I found someone with the know-how to help me plan something like this.”

  She had a point. Jackson knew from experience that neither the knowledge or the execution came easy—or cheap. Shit, he’d helped his mother set up her garden from scratch, and it had been a labor of love, both physically and financially.

  Jackson sat up straight, his thoughts clicking against each other like dominoes being knocked down by the flick of a finger.

  “If research is all you need, then today just might be your lucky day.”

  Are you out of your ever-loving mind? This is the most insane thing you’ve ever done, bar-fucking-none!

  Jackson had to admit, his inner voice might have a point.

  When he’d blurted out the idea of hooking Carly up with his mother to talk about planning a garden, it had seemed benign enough. But then the genuine flush of excitement on her face morphed into full-on delight as they made their way back to the dock to put their plan into action, and he realized—too late—the gravity of what he’d done.

  He was taking the woman he was dating to meet his mother. On purpose.

  Okay, but they were going to talk about tomato cages and tillers, so how big a deal could it be? After all, garden planning was in a totally different hemisphere from wedding planning, and it wasn’t as if he and Carly had anything serious going. Plus, with everything she’d told him out on the lake not even three hours before, Jackson was pretty sure getting hitched was in the very basement of things going through her mind.

  Strangely, his inner voice didn’t argue.

  “Are you sure your mom won’t mind us dropping in on her like this?” The concern in Carly’s voice ca
rried over the breeze coming in through the wide-open windows of his truck, and his gut panged to life at the sound.

  “Knowing her, she’s probably in the garden right now anyway,” he replied. “She usually goes out to pick vegetables in the afternoon. It’s how we used to know what was for dinner.”

  Carly’s face, sun-kissed from spending the better part of the day on the boat, bent into a thoughtful smile. “Yeah, my grandmother used to do that too. You never knew what you were going to get,” she laughed. “But I can’t complain. She grew eggplants like nobody else, and eggplant Parmesan was the first thing I ever cooked all on my own.”

  “Let me guess. You were eight at the time.” Jackson watched the loose tendrils of hair blow around her face like a dark, riotous halo.

  “Eleven,” she corrected. “And let me guess. By the time you were ten, you’d already single-handedly designed and built the deck in your mother’s yard. Or did you build the house, too?”

  His laughter filled the truck. “We didn’t even live here when I was ten, smartass.”

  Carly’s sardonic grin slipped, her forehead creasing into a little V over the bridge of her nose. “You weren’t born in Pine Mountain?”

  Shit. Shit. Jackson swallowed hard, all traces of laughter swallowed up by the rush of wind coming in through the open windows. “No. I was born in Harrisburg. It’s west of Philadelphia.” The vague memory of a small, cramped row house flickered through his mind, like a movie being run on one of those ancient reel-to-reel projectors.

  “I’m sorry, I just assumed you’d always lived here.” Carly’s voice matched her surprised expression, but Jackson didn’t move his gaze from the windshield.

  “We didn’t come to Pine Mountain until I was eleven.” Well, they hadn’t moved so much as escaped, but he really wasn’t in the mood for semantics.

  “Oh,” Carly murmured. She was probably waiting for him to talk about it, but there wasn’t anything he could say that would change things. Talking about it now was useless, and taking a trip down memory lane was as far from his wish-list as you could get.

  “Parts of when I was a kid were a little . . . rough. I’d rather not talk about it.” It was as much as he’d ever volunteered about his childhood trauma to anybody, but even the one-liner sounded heavy in his ears. Jackson braced for the questions she was surely working up anyway, the ones he’d have to evade because he sure as hell didn’t have the answers to them, and everything he did know, he wasn’t about to share.

  Except Carly didn’t say anything else. The silence between them stretched out, and the tension churning through him lost its steam. He pulled off the main road, navigating the narrow lane leading back to his mother’s house as he’d done a million times before, trying to think of something to say. Hell, Carly probably thought he was a jerk of epic proportions for tight-lipping it after she’d been so open about her own past, but nobody wanted to know the details behind those years he’d stuffed into the dark corners of his memory. Truly, he’d give anything to be able to forget them himself.

  “Okay.”

  The single word made his head snap up, and he stared at her in disbelief. “What?”

  Carly lifted her sunglasses to measure him with an unassuming stare. “Look, remember what you said earlier, about helping me out while I was going through all of this stuff with Travis?”

  Jackson nodded dumbly, and she continued. “Well, just because I felt like talking about it doesn’t mean everybody works that way. So if I can return the favor and help you out by not talking about things, then that’s what I’ll do.”

  Holy. Shit. For a second, Jackson thought he might be in love with her, until he realized he didn’t do that kind of thing.

  “So you don’t care that I don’t want to talk about it?”

  “If you did want to talk about it, would you tell me?” Her eyes flashed in the bright sunlight pouring in through the window, like whiskey in the bottom of a crystal glass.

  “Yeah.” The answer startled the hell out of him, but it was true. Carly was a no-bones-about-it kind of girl. If he was going to blab about his past, she wouldn’t give him a bunch of psychobabble crap. She’d be a good listener, in theory. In practice, he was sure he wouldn’t find out, but still. If he was going to go that route, he couldn’t think of anyone better to do it with.

  The edges of her lips kicked into a smile, more kind than seductive, but it stirred a warmth in him all the same.

  “Then no. I don’t care. If you change your mind, you’ll tell me.”

  Funny thing was, as he sat there all dumbfounded and amazed and slightly turned on, Jackson knew she was right.

  Chapter Eighteen

  As Carly followed Jackson along the winding path through the crepe myrtles, her brain spun like a blender going full-tilt. She’d always dreamed of a project like building an on-site garden, but the lack of resources to actually make it happen—not to mention the massive premiums on what little real estate was available in the city—made it nothing more than a pipe dream. While using local resources to supply restaurants with everything from produce to protein was increasing in popularity, most places had to set a realistic radius in order to make it work. Sure, produce from one hundred miles away was fresh. But if she could get it from a hundred feet away? It would be priceless.

  “So there are three plots out here, right? Are they all the same size?” Carly’s brain whirred along, ticking off lists of vegetables in silent, rapid-fire succession.

  “Yup. Fifteen by twelve. And then there are the two raised beds with blueberries and sugar snap peas and a few other things, depending on my mother’s mood each season.” Jackson grinned expectantly over the broad expanse of his shoulder, and Carly’s lips popped open in surprise.

  “There are two other beds?” How on earth had she missed those?

  Jackson’s grin turned wicked. “Over on the opposite side of the shed.”

  Well, that explained why she hadn’t seen them last time. Her cheeks prickled, but the laugh swirling in her belly refused to stay put. “I see. So those are over by the fence, then?”

  The memory of thickly climbing clematis unfurled in Carly’s mind, like a lush canvas of sapphire and pink blooms floating on a dark green sea, and she forced herself to use it to blot out the image of Jackson pushing her against the shed, kissing her until she’d forgotten she had knees. As pretty as the climbing vines were in her mind’s eye, it was no easy task.

  “Mmm hmm. They’re side by side, a lot closer together than the three bigger plots.” He pulled back a low branch, moving aside to usher her into the clearing. God, the space was just as gorgeous as it had been the first time, all verdant leaves and soft, inviting textures, and the fresh scent of foliage and sun-warmed earth hung in the air like a whispered suggestion.

  “What was your mother in the mood for this season, besides berries and peas?” Carly’s curiosity perked, and she swung her head toward the fence line for a peek.

  “Why don’t you ask her?” Jackson jutted his chin toward the shed, pausing for just a second before cutting a path through the emerald-colored grass on the perimeter of the garden. A tall, thin woman wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat stood in profile at the entryway to the shed, reaching up to take something off one of the shelves tucked inside.

  “Hey, Ma. You still having trouble with the doors on that thing?” There was a tinge of something odd in Jackson’s voice that Carly couldn’t quite place, but then it was gone, replaced by his easygoing smile as he closed the space between them and bent to hug his mother hello.

  “Oh! What a nice surprise.” The expression on her gently-lined face, right down to the sudden glimmer in her cornflower-blue eyes, clearly showed her pleasure at the impromptu visit. “You didn’t tell me you were coming by,” his mother tsked without chagrin. Her gaze halted on Carly, but the happiness in her eyes didn’t budge. “And with a guest, no less.”

  “That’s me. Full of surprises.” The genuine affection they had for each other was
as obvious as the grass under Carly’s feet, and her gut did a roll-and-twist maneuver that ended in a dull ache right beneath her ribs.

  Jackson cleared his throat and continued. “Right. So this is Carly. She’s the head chef at La Dolce Vita. You know, down at the resort.”

  A knowing smile bloomed on the older woman’s face. “I’m familiar with the resort, Jackson.”

  He nodded with a sheepish grin, but took the subtle jibe in stride. “Carly, this is my quick-witted mother, Catherine Carter.”

  A smile twitched at the corners of Carly’s lips. Her father used to tease her the exact same way. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Carter.” Carly extended a hand, but Catherine bypassed it and surprised her with a warm, quick hug.

  “You, too, sweetheart. But call me Catherine.” She took a step back and arched a pale brow at her son. “So what brings the two of you out my way this afternoon? Surely you have better things to do than sit around in the garden with your old mother.”

  Jackson glossed over her wry comment with charm so honest and genuine, it seemed as much a part of him as the color of his hair. “As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what we came out here to do.” He gestured to Carly, who took his lead and ran with it.

  “I’ve been putting together some ideas for a project related to my work at the restaurant, and if you don’t mind, I’d love to talk to you about your garden.”

  She launched into a condensed version of the plan that had been flying through her mind for the last couple of hours, enthusiasm infusing her words even though she put some effort into trying to seem neutral. Carly could feel Jackson’s eyes on her as she told his mother about her philosophy on food and what she ultimately wanted to do at the resort, and her ideas spilled out of her mouth on wave after wave of pure excitement. She hadn’t been this truly energized over a project since she’d started at Gracie’s, and the renewed enthusiasm guided her words out into the open, fragrant air of the garden.