“Then you should probably come clean with who you are and do something about that review you wrote.”
But if I come clean about who I am, she won’t talk to me again. I want her to keep talking to me. Let her see that I’m a nice guy. “I will tell her, but not tonight. Tonight she needs my help. Hell, you’re the one who suggested we come here for dinner.”
“If you’re helping her because you think her restaurant deserves a second chance, come back here several more times to eat pierogi. Then eat crow by telling Chicago you were wrong. If you’re helping her because you want to get in her pants, I don’t want to be your friend anymore.”
“The two things aren’t related. And I’ll tell her,” Dan said, unable to hide his wince at the pleading whine in his voice. Babka’s review and his desire to get into Tilly’s pants were unconnected, though he could no longer pretend that fixing her sink was a silent apology for the photograph.
If he were being honest with himself, Tilly had handled her destroyed restaurant as well as anyone could have, though the oversalted food was inexcusable and unexplainable. He’d written the review while angry at his messed-up family. When he’d excused his actions to his mother by saying her birthday dinner had been ruined, she’d been appalled.
As for Tilly’s pants...
“Most women I want to have sex with,” Mike continued, “at least those I want to see naked more than once, know my last name before we fall into bed. Does she even know yours? Maybe start by being honest about that.”
Dan held up his hands to stop whatever Mike was going to say next. “Let me help her with her restaurant so that when I finally do tell her, she’s not as angry with me and I have a chance at her pants.”
This entire sorry episode would be easier if that was all he wanted. He could keep lying, take her clothes off and disappear from her life after a roll in the hay. The greater problem was that he wanted to be with her before and after the pants came off. As a goal, it was hard to reconcile with his current predicament. Continuing to lie worked as a short-term strategy. He had no long-term strategy, and the more time he spent with Tilly, the more he needed one—at least, longer term than it would take to fix her plumbing.
“Are you sure you’re not being some poor little rich kid with a chance to piss off his father by dating a blue-haired woman with an interest in locally sourced food?”
“Hey!” Dan drew back, insulted. “You’re supposed to be my friend, and this is what you think of me?”
“Dan, at heart, you are a good person and I don’t think you would intentionally hurt anyone. But you make stupid decisions in reaction to your old man and I’ve known you to want something just because it will piss him off. Your sister is slaving away, running a company your father will never let her have. You won’t touch it, even though he’d hand it over to you in a heartbeat.”
Dan Sr. had cited Hugh Hefner’s decision to pass over his daughter—who was running the company—in favor of his infant son as his inspiration. Hurricane-force winds whipped through Wisconsin when Dan Sr. started talking about the importance of heritage passed from father to son to grandson, etc. As if Meier Dairy was the crown of England and Dan Sr. was Henry VIII—though even the English had been better off with their queen.
Dan didn’t believe his father really wanted him to run the company; he just wanted Dan within reach of his manipulations. Living in Chicago, Dan could delete emails and refuse to answer the phone. He would move farther away, but that would leave Beth in the lurch when she needed to escape.
Mike wasn’t done with his lecture. “You began a career as a journalist after your father said writing was the most wasteful way a person could spend their time. And, while you don’t draw on your trust fund for your everyday expenses, you do make a point of making sure your father knows when you’ve done something he would consider a waste of money, time or his gene pool. And it’s no secret how he feels about the movement towards locally sourced food.”
Dan Sr. had no love for family farms or small businesses. He valued mass production over craft, efficiency over care, and he wasn’t shy about saying so. Television interviews led to public relations disasters for Meier Dairy because professional interviewers weren’t so easily manipulated into following Dan Sr. neatly down his self-righteous path. The more Dan Sr. felt his platform slipping away, the more manic he became, leaving Dan’s sister working behind the scenes to smooth over the “Meier message.” Meier family relations gave a whole new meaning to “the big cheese.”
In another life, Dan Sr. would have tried to become a cult leader.
Dan sighed. “You’re right. My dad would hate this restaurant. He would scoff at every mention of the local farms supplying her produce, farmer’s cheese and meats. He would also think Tilly got exactly the review she deserved, because mistakes are not to be tolerated and God helps those who help themselves. And by that he means playing fair is for chumps and dirty play is part of life. But that’s not the reason I’m doing any of this.”
Dan didn’t want Tilly because he couldn’t or shouldn’t have her. When he made decisions to piss off his father, his inner teenager jumped up and down, egging him on. When he looked at Tilly, his inner teenager was strangely silent, as if he knew she was out of his league.
Instead of his inner teenager reacting to Tilly, Dan found his inner retired old man waving his arms at the chance of visiting the grandkids he could have with a passionate, warm woman who already knew how to dye her hair blue.
Quickly followed by astonishment when he realized he was the kind of weirdo who thought about grandkids when he’d only interacted with the woman twice. Three times, if he considered the review currently ruining her career.
Mike gave Dan a long, hard stare before nodding once in understanding. “I’m going to hold you to this.”
“I know.”
“When you get back in the kitchen, ask them to pack up my dinner and I’ll take it home. There’s a Sox game on tonight.”
* * *
KAREN’S BLOND HAIR BOUNCED as she nodded over the minimal instructions Tilly left. Every employee knew what he or she was supposed to do. If the restaurant was busier, they would miss her, but with few people in the dining room, she could be gone for hours and it would be fine. Her management professor at Culinary had told her the sign of a good manager was one with nothing to manage and, if that was true, she was the best manager ever. Having experienced, dedicated employees helped.
But if she didn’t get business soon, even her most loyal employees would leave her. No waitstaff could afford to work in an empty restaurant. Normally, it was the kitchen staff who got the shaft in hourly compensation, especially when waiters were walking away with hundreds of dollars in tips after a busy Saturday. In a slow restaurant, the kitchen staff had a solid wage while the waitstaff was working for nonexistent tips. She would be facing a strike soon.
She closed and rubbed her eyes. The problems plaguing her were unfixable, at least right now. Now she needed to focus on her pot sink, which she could fix. Or hoped Dan could fix. So long as it got fixed, she didn’t care if Julia Child rose from the dead with a tool belt and her pants dropping plumber-style over her zombie butt. She needed that sink to drain.
With a short prayer that there wouldn’t be any problems while she was gone, Tilly left through the delivery entrance and climbed into a waiting green Subaru with her bag of spare clothes. Dan had already spread towels over the passenger seat.
She turned to face Dan as he drove out of the alley and onto the street. “Are you sure you don’t mind?” She hated imposing on people. She’d gotten this far in her life on her own, and accepting help, even such a small thing, was hard.
“I am definitely sure. You make me want to play the white knight.” He smiled at her and all her objections flew out the open car window.
They turned off Milwaukee and down a few streets before parking in front of a row of town houses. He led her into the corner town house. In the dark, it was hard for her to see any detail
beyond that it was a modern glass-and-steel structure.
“I didn’t expect a wreath and pots of flowers.” The flowers and wreath were very feminine. Did he have a girlfriend? No, he’d asked her out on a date. Had he just broken up with someone? This was all none of her business. She was here to shower and get her sink fixed.
“Those are from my sister. They were housewarming presents when I bought this place a couple of years ago.”
“I’m impressed the flowers are still alive. I didn’t picture you as much of a green thumb.”
Dan chuckled as he unlocked the door. “I’m not—killed them the first year. It pissed off my sister, Beth, enough that she hired a high school kid to water them and replant the pots every year.”
Entering the house, Tilly was struck by a decorating scheme she decided to call modern male messy. All the walls were painted white and the only warmth came from some dark wooden furniture. There were no pictures on the wall and no pillows, just debris scattered around. By the front door was a pile of shoes, and a matching pile of mail sat unopened on a table. “It’s a little stark, except for the mess.”
His smile was sheepish. “I would’ve cleaned up if I’d known I was having company. I spend most of my time in the kitchen or my office. The other rooms came with the kitchen and office.”
“We should trade houses, then. My kitchen, office, bedroom, living room and dining room are all the same thing. You take my apartment and I’ll paint your walls.”
Dan laughed and gestured up the stairs. “The guest bathroom is upstairs and to your right. Towels are under the sink. I’ll get my tools and wait by the front door.”
Tilly walked up the stairs, a little embarrassed she was getting ready to shower in a strange man’s house. But she was desperate to rinse the nasty water off. It had dried and the remnants of whatever had been in the sink were beginning to get sticky.
Gross.
She shuddered. Grease traps, clogged toilets and foul sink water were part of the job, but she didn’t have to like them.
She found the bathroom, also with white walls. Thick lavender towels were where Dan said they would be. She smiled at their fluffy softness and absurdly girlie color as she undressed. The towels must be from his sister, who was probably also responsible for the dish of potpourri on the back of the toilet.
Turning on the water, she stepped into the shower and let it beat down on her shoulders. The water was hot, and after she toweled off and stepped into her clean clothes, Tilly felt as if she could conquer the world. Amazing what a shower could do for a girl.
She was clean and Dan was going to fix her pot sink. Life was great. She even found a hair dryer and quickly dried her hair so she wouldn’t get her kerchief wet.
Come on, world, I’m ready for anything.
Dan was waiting by the front door when she came down the stairs, a large toolbox in his hand. He was dressed in a pair of old cargo shorts and an olive T-shirt, and she could see he had an athletic shape, with strong arms, powerful legs and a muscled chest. Tilly didn’t need any imagination to picture the flat stomach or the ridges of muscle hidden under his clothing.
She stopped on the stairs and swallowed. Dan looked like a page out of a man-of-the-month calendar—large, masculine and ready to come to a woman’s aid.
Is he going to kiss me again?
Hell, I’m a modern woman. Am I going to kiss him?
The thought of another kiss—and the possibility of more—made her feel as if she were standing in front of the hot stove on the sauté line in July in Miami.
She was staring, openly, blatantly staring. How embarrassing. For all she knew, she was drooling, too. It would be the perfect story to tell Renia—a gorgeous man agreed to help her repair her sink and she rewarded him with drool. She shut her gaping mouth and searched her brain for something clever.
“You look better than my plumber.” Not clever at all. Didn’t cover up the drooling. Shoot.
“You look better than my plumber, too.” He smiled the confident smile he always had ready, the one where it looked as though he was so sure he was saying the right thing and would get the results he wanted. It worked, sucker that she was.
She blushed. Her whole body was hot, and not from the shower. She needed to have her head examined. Surely she should be able to look at a man without conjuring up images of him without his shirt on.
He checked his watch, apparently unaffected by the lust coating every muscle of her body in a glaze of longing. “You’re not due back for another ten minutes. We’ll have you back to Babka with time to spare.”
Dan offered his hand and Tilly took it. The contact tingled through her whole body and she wondered if Dan would want to date a woman who worked every Friday and Saturday night and most holidays.
Just thinking about the possibility he might understand made the shadows cast by the streetlights fade. Past failures were not an excuse not to try; they were simply a lesson in being more careful, even if reminding herself to take care didn’t lessen the bounce in her step.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DAN SPENT THE quiet car ride back to Babka wondering what Tilly’s blue hair looked like wet. Was it a deeper blue or did it keep its bright character? While he had gathered his tools, he’d tortured himself imagining her in the shower, then soothed his nerves by promising himself he’d at least know what her hair looked like wet. Instead, she’d put her hair under her white bandanna again and he was left to continue to ponder the hair question, which sent his mind back to how she looked in the shower.
Her damp chef’s pants had been nicely revealing. He now knew that her butt was firm and round, her legs nicely shaped. And that she wore white underwear with red polka dots.
When she walked down the stairs, it had taken all of his self-control not to drop the toolbox and kiss her. He’d already kissed her twice under less-than-perfect circumstances. He wasn’t aiming for three poorly timed kisses out of three. He could wait until he’d begun to make things right. But he could no longer pretend he could avoid her and everything would be fine. He needed a new plan.
His inner geriatric did cartwheels over the woman sitting next to him in the car and his inner teenager was plotting how to engineer physical contact, any physical contact. His inner teenager was horny and not interested in any move that didn’t get him to at least second base. Mike would be disappointed by all the voices in Dan’s head. Even Dan’s inner geriatric was telling him not to come clean yet, but to wait until Tilly was ready to forgive him.
Fixing the sink would be a good first step.
“How do you know how to fix a sink?” For a moment, Dan wondered if Tilly could read his mind. How terrible it would be if she could.
“My father has peculiar ideas about things, including what a ‘real man’ knows. A real man can do his own home repairs. Not that he actually does his own home repairs,” Dan scoffed, “but he made sure I learned. I also know how to milk a cow, even though the last person in my family to run a dairy was my grandfather.”
His father had also taught him people got punished for their mistakes and would have said the pot sink and the cat fiasco were Tilly’s punishment for her failings. Dan thought he had abandoned all the judgmental tendencies he had inherited from his father and only ever wrote reviews he could justify without pejorative clichés. What did that mean about his review of Babka? His dinner had been terrible, but with Tilly sitting next to him in the car, he wanted to go back in time. To go to Babka on a different night, where there wouldn’t be a cat and dog, or oversalted food.
“I’m glad he taught you, even if he doesn’t do repairs himself. Maybe I should send him a free dinner, too.”
At the approving look Tilly had given him earlier, Dan would be forever grateful his old man made sure he had basic plumbing skills. He didn’t need a free dinner. Her eyes were filled with enough heat to ignite a building, not to mention what they did to the fit of his shorts. The lust in Tilly’s eyes did nothing to discourage his mind from wander
ing over her body as she sat in his passenger seat.
“I don’t think he’d appreciate Babka.”
“He doesn’t like Polish food?”
“He’s suspicious of the locavore trend in food.”
“Oh.”
A car pulled out of the first spot in front of the restaurant and he pulled into the space easily.
“Do you always get princess parking?” she asked.
“Princess parking?”
“A spot right in front of where you want it to be. The closest one that’s not the handicap spot.”
“I prefer the term ‘rock star parking,’ but yes, I guess so. Why?”
“Do you always get everything you want?”
“Usually.” A strange turn of the conversation.
“What do you want tonight?”
His mind flashed to the scene he’d created of her in his shower, water running over her naked body. That image was quickly replaced with the betrayed look that would be on her face the moment she found out he was The Eater, and his lust calmed a bit. “To fix your sink and get dinner.”
“Oh.” Her voice rang with disappointment. “We’d best get started, then.”
Dan got out of his car and followed Tilly around to the back of the restaurant and through the service entrance. Pots and pans had piled up at the pot sink, though the dishwasher was running the smaller ones through the dish machine. Someone had attempted to mop up most of the worst of the mess on the floor. With the pipe broken and the drain clogged, it was hard to make much of a dent in the chunky dishwater surrounding the three metal sinks. He gave Tilly back her toolbox, set his own on the chair in its place, sat down and got to work.
* * *
TILLY WATCHED DAN plop down in the water and take her restaurant into his hands. She hoped he knew what he was doing. If not, the plumber would have to come anyway. At least she had seen his strong, muscular legs in those shorts, even if all he wanted to do was fix her sink. He didn’t notice she’d turned to jelly at the sight of him in a T-shirt with a toolbox.
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