The Offer She Couldn't Refuse

by Marie Ferrarella

  Jared couldn’t get rid of the bitter taste in his mouth. It overwhelmed everything, refusing to be cleansed by anything he drank or the mints he kept popping into his mouth one at a time. The taste was so bitter, he could hardly bring himself to swallow.

  He needed to go somewhere and clear his head so he could deal with the situation logically, facing it like so many equations spread out on a white sheet of ruled paper. Logic had always been his ally before.

  His ally wasn’t all that sure what to do confronted by the extraneous feelings that insisted on bouncing around within him. Feelings, and a sense of honor that refused to let him accept Winfield’s game plan.

  But even they were at odds with the loyalty he still felt toward a man who had taken him, wet behind the ears, and molded him into the successful man he was today.

  Jared sighed. It was one hell of a mess.

  Especially when he found himself desperately wanting to throw caution to the wind and tell Demi—no, warn Demi—about what Winfield was up to.

  But even that route wasn’t simple. He was part of Winfield, Inc. Part of the world she held suspect. If he told Demi about Winfield’s game plan, she might think he was just trying to set her up. At this point, if he risked everything, his entire future, to tell her the truth, it would cut him to shreds if he saw distrust in her eyes.

  He’d never been so damn confused before. Personally, professionally, in every damn sort of way, it felt as if his whole world had been upended. Needing to regroup, he went home.

  Theresa popped up like a jack-in-the-box set on a timer when he opened the front door. Her greeting was quick and sweet. Here, at least, he knew where he stood, Jared thought.

  Theresa hung on to his arm, skipping beside him, obviously excited that he’d kept his word. He’d come home to take her to the restaurant, just as he’d done every day now for more than two weeks.

  But her smile faded into a puzzled expression as she looked up at him, her small, sharp eyes studying his face. “You look sad, Daddy.”

  She was far too young to understand and far too innocent to be told that the world could be such an imperfect place at times. He ran his hand along her soft, silky hair.

  “I’m fine, honey. I’ve just got a lot on my mind, that’s all.”

  Theresa brightened, positive she had the perfect cure for whatever was wrong with her daddy. “Let’s go to see Demi. She’ll make you smile.” She began to tug him toward the door again.

  It was where he’d wanted to go all along. Not because it was his assignment, but because he just wanted to be there.

  Just like the regulars who frequented Aphrodite, he realized.

  He laughed at her eagerness. “You just want to go see Theo again.”

  She was too much like him to fib. “Yeah, that, too. Can we go, Daddy?” Her eyes were bright with anticipation. “Can we?”

  It was a game, his pretending to resist and think it over while she persisted in asking. But today he really didn’t feel like playing.

  “Sure, why not?” One way or the other, he wouldn’t be welcomed at the restaurant very soon. He might as well make the most of going there while he still could.

  Lacing his hand with Theresa’s, he called out to his housekeeper to let her know they were leaving and then walked out of the house.

  There was no deluding herself anymore.

  Demi knew the moment she saw Jared and Theresa walk through the entrance that she had been waiting for them to do exactly that all morning. Waiting and hoping, afraid that today would be the day that Jared would stop coming because he had found something better to do.

  Or because he’d finally taken to heart her refusal to sell the restaurant.

  That would mean that the only reason he’d been coming around was because of business. She’d believed that in the beginning, but now, for the most part, she’d talked herself out of it. Now, with her defenses almost completely lowered, she wanted to believe he was here because he wanted to be.

  Because he felt the same strange, wicked chemistry between them that she did.

  She prayed that it wasn’t all in her head and that she was just being a fool. That would be a very cruel reality to make her peace with.

  Demi glanced around. She was relieved that neither her mother nor the two waitresses, nor, thank goodness, her brother was in the dining area right now. There was no doubt in her mind that her expression when she saw Jared walk in gave her away no matter how hard she tried to keep a poker face in place.

  She’d never been that good at poker, anyway.

  Demi crossed to them before the door had a chance to close completely.

  “Hello, Theresa.” She bent down to receive the kiss she exacted as an entrance fee. Small, soft lips brushed lightly against her cheek. “Theo and Alex are waiting for you. Maybe you can actually get them to finish their game and start fresh again.”

  “I’ll try,” Theresa promised solemnly. In a blink, she was off to join her elderly playmates.

  Demi watched her for a second, a yearning filling her that she wasn’t ready to explore just yet.

  She turned toward Jared. “You’ve got a terrific little girl there. She makes Theo feel like a kid again.”

  He fell into step beside her as she walked to the booth that had become his whenever he came here. He noticed she had a Reserved sign on it that she discreetly folded and tucked away behind the menus she was holding. It made him smile.

  “It must be rough,” she commented, “raising a daughter all by yourself.”

  Rough wasn’t exactly the word he would have used. Confusing was more like it. There were times he felt like a man stuck in the middle of a maze.

  Not unlike, he realized, the way he felt right now.

  “It’s getting easier.” His mouth curved mockingly. “Or so I keep telling myself. Thank heavens her teen years are still far away.”

  “They’ll come faster than you think. My mother claims I was a handful.” Since business was still light, she took a seat beside him. She could easily see the front door from where she sat—if she didn’t keep looking at his eyes.

  A handful. He bet she was. “And the difference between then and now is—?”

  She’d never liked being teased before. The warmth that traveled through her was something new. “Very funny. I’m much more subdued and conscientious now than I was then.”

  Jared didn’t bother trying not to laugh. “More subdued? As compared to what? A rampaging panther? The Road Runner?”

  She wasn’t quite sure if she liked the images he was raising. She certainly had never seen herself that way. “Is that how you think of me?”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “I try very hard not to think of you, Demi.”

  “Oh.” She supposed she had that coming. That’s what she got for letting herself daydream.

  He raised her chin with the crook of his finger until their eyes met again. “Unfortunately, I’m not succeeding very well. Or maybe at all.”

  How did he make her understand without taking too great a risk himself? He’d been vulnerable once and had nothing but scars to show for it. No, he amended, that wasn’t true. He had Theresa. The risk had been worth it.

  Maybe it would be this time, too.

  Her smile curled deep in her belly before it wound its way to her lips. “Oh.”

  He wanted to kiss the smile from her lips until he absorbed it all himself. “Yeah, ‘oh.‘”

  Tucking his admission next to her heart, she looked at him more closely. He looked worn. Something was bothering him. “You look tired, Jared. Are you feeling all right?”

  It looked as if he couldn’t sneak anything by the women in his life, he mused. He gave her the same excuse he’d given Theresa. “Just got a lot on my mind.”

  Common sense told her to leave it alone, but she’d never strictly been ruled by brain cells. “Anything I can help with? Other than the obvious, which you already know the answer to.”

  That was as close as they had come
to talking about the restaurant these last few days. And it was closer than he wanted to be right now. It was part of the problem. His problem, not hers.

  Jared shook his head. “No, this is something I’m going to have to work out for myself.”

  Demi knew that whatever was bothering him involved her in one way or another. He didn’t look as if he was up to a debate, and neither was she. For now, she left it alone. The only thing she could do was pass on the same bit of advice Theo had once given her.

  She leaned in closer to Jared, so close that she could feel his breath on her cheek. So close that she desperately wanted to kiss him instead of talk. Had to be that hot Greek blood Theo was always promising her would someday erupt.

  Talk about timing.

  “Despite who you work for, you’re a good man, Jared. Just follow your heart and your conscience and you can’t go wrong.”

  She might think it was that easy, but he wasn’t all that sure it was a safe bet. He might have a conscience, but it was beginning to look as if Winfield didn’t. It wasn’t an easy thing to remind himself that he was still collecting a paycheck from the company.

  “What is it you have against Winfield, anyway?” The question was born of desperation. Maybe if he could turn her around, he could salvage all the pieces and no one would get hurt.

  She didn’t want to argue with him, but she would if he began to defend the man.

  “I see him as this giant eating machine, swallowing up everything that gets in his way.” Demi wanted Jared to understand her position. More than that, she wanted to win him over to it. “I don’t care if Winfield owns a restaurant chain, but there should be room for the independent restaurant, too. Aphrodite is too different to be part of something else.” Demi searched his face, looking for the honesty she’d come to expect from him. “You can’t tell me if his brand was stamped on Aphrodite that he would run it the way my family has all these years.”

  “There’d be more of a profit.” He knew he wasn’t answering her question.

  “Exactly.” Demi paused. She didn’t want him to think she was pontificating. There were very down-to-earth reasons for the way she felt. “Don’t misunderstand—I think money is a wonderful thing, but it isn’t a deity unto itself. Money is only as good as what it can accomplish. We own the restaurant, which should translate on some ledger to a nice amount of money. What we choose to do, what we’ve always chosen to do, is instead of pocketing that money, once in a while, if someone is hungry; we feed them. And when they have money, they’ll pay.”

  He knew all about her generosity. Or her stupidity, as Winfield had put it. “Like that banquet you booked a month ago? The Ferregamoes?” he reminded her when she said nothing.

  She looked at him sharply. She didn’t like the idea of someone spying on her, going through her records. Even him. “How did you know about that?”

  “Research,” he answered mildly. “They gave you a down payment and then managed to get you to do the banquet on good faith.”

  Was that her imagination, or was he sneering at the term? Had she initially been right about him after all? Oh, God, she hoped not.

  Demi dismissed the whole story with a wave of her hand. “It wasn’t that big a deal and Ma went to school with Gina Ferregamoe’s mother.”

  “Which doesn’t entitle her to play on your sympathies.”

  Didn’t he have a heart after all? “It was a wedding reception.”

  “Right. A wedding, not a charity benefit.”

  Though she hardly knew the people involved, she took umbrage on their behalf. Family celebrations were very, very important to her.

  “It wasn’t charity,” she insisted. “They’ll pay.”

  In his experience, people hardly ever lived up to the faith people placed in them. “Maybe.”

  Her eyes narrowed as indignation darkened them. “They’ll pay.”

  The argument Jared felt they were on the cusp of was postponed only because Antoinette chose that moment to come looking for Demi.

  Barely nodding at Jared, she turned immediately to Demi. “We have a problem. Mrs. Leyton says that they cannot send us the shipment of vegetables we ordered until they see some money.”

  Demi passed her hand over her forehead, feeling a major headache coming on. “They get their check the first of the month, same as everyone.”

  Antoinette pressed her lips together. “You were short the last time,” she reminded her.

  “I explained all that to them.” Things were tight right now. Mrs. Leyton had said she understood. Had even empathized, recalling her own early days when she and her husband had first gone into the supplier business. Demi rose. “I’ll talk to her,” she told her mother.

  Jared followed in her wake. “How much do you need?” he asked.

  Demi swung around. Oh, no, it wasn’t going to be like that. “I don’t need your money and I don’t need to be in debt to your boss, either.”

  He tried not to take offense at her tone, and at the wary look that had come into her eyes. After three weeks, they were suddenly at square one again. ”This would be strictly me.”

  That didn’t change anything. “And the answer is strictly no. I was running Aphrodite before you waltzed in, Panetta, and I’ll be running it when you waltz out again, so keep your checkbook in your pants.” With that, she closed the office door on him.

  Jared shoved his hands deep into his pockets. He felt as if he’d just been shut out of more than a crammed office.

  “She does better alone.”

  He turned, startled. He’d forgotten Antoinette was behind him.

  “Business-wise, she does better alone,” she clarified. The last thing in the world she wanted was for this man to walk away from her daughter. “I know she won’t tell you this, but she does appreciate the offer. Demetria is very stubborn.”

  “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

  Antoinette smiled at his comment. “She likes to do things her way or not at all. No one has ever taught her about the word surrender.”

  He didn’t want Demi to surrender. That would change her and he liked her the way she was. But there had to be some give-and-take here. “How about compromise?”

  Antoinette considered that for a moment. “You could try.” Taking him by the hand, she led him to the worktable where she deftly picked up a serving of a custard-filled pastry, kataife, and placed it on a handy plate. She held it before him like a prize, one hand still on his wrist. “Come, why don’t you try this? It’s fresh. She may be in there a long time. Demetria does not stop talking until the other side says yes.”

  He had absolutely no trouble believing that.

  Jared was just taking a second bite of a dessert that he thought in all honesty deserved the term “out of this world” when he saw Demi walking into the dining room. He stopped eating. She went straight to her mother. “We have vegetables.”

  Antoinette rose from her seat beside Jared. “How?”

  Pleased with averting a disaster, Demi forgot that she didn’t want to talk about this in front of Jared. “I told Mrs. Leyton the full amount of the check would be on her desk tomorrow morning.”

  Antoinette’s skepticism grew. “How?”

  Demi shrugged, annoyed at having her back to the wall. “I have a little saved. Enough to cover that and to carry us for a while with the Leytons and the butcher.” She saw the question in her mother’s eyes. “Mr. Schmidt called, too. Seems everyone suddenly wants their money.”

  Antoinette didn’t love the restaurant the way Demi did. Unlike Demi, she hadn’t been born to it. Her first concern was her family and the toll this would take on her daughter. “Demetria, perhaps you had better listen to Jared and think about—”

  Demi cut her short. “I’ll listen to anything Jared has to say, as long as it doesn’t have the words Winfield or sell in it.”

  He studied the dessert in front of him, a kernel of an idea forming in his mind. “How about the word party?”

  They didn’t have the banqu
et room booked this weekend. The extra money would be more than welcomed. “Now that I like.”

  “Okay.” He looked up. “I’d like to have a party here.”

  She was instantly deflated. Didn’t he get it yet? She didn’t want to be in debt to him in any manner, shape or form, even if Winfield didn’t figure into it, which she had more than a passing suspicion that he did. “I won’t take charity.”

  Jared was starting to get annoyed. He was only trying to help her. “Oh, so it’s okay to give it, but you won’t accept it—is that it?”

  She fisted her hands on her hips. “Jared, I already told you—”

  He saw the distressed look on Antoinette’s face and collected himself.

  “Yes, you told me, but this is legitimate. You ask the little chess shark over there.” He nodded toward his daughter. “She knows. I was going to have a party catered at my house this Saturday. I’ve decided to move it here.”

  She wasn’t buying it. “And just when did you make this monumental decision?”

  “Just now.”

  “Aha.” It just proved her point. “Charity.”

  “No, kataife,” he corrected, pushing the plate forward. “Your mother just served me something fresh out of the oven, which is the closest thing to heaven next to your lips I’ve ever sampled.”

  The comment brought a huge smile to Antoinette’s face. “I will leave you two to your talking.”

  She moved away, doubting that either one of them even noticed. It didn’t matter. Things appeared to be progressing just fine.

  9

  Demi waited until her mother was out of earshot. She didn’t feel up to being attacked on two flanks at the same time.

  Keeping her voice low, she said, “I told you, I don’t want any favors from you. I’ll find a way to pay everyone back—including the bank.” She saw no point in pretending that he didn’t know about the bank loan. He’d obviously made it his business to know about everything involving Aphrodite.