So instead, he cast about for reasons why no one was actively looking for Venus yet. “You could be away on vacation. I found you in the water. Maybe you fell off a cruise ship. Or you were sailing your yacht and accidentally fell off that. If you were alone, nobody would know that you were missing.” He gave her an encouraging smile. “There are a lot of explanations why someone wouldn’t have filed a missing-person’s report on you.”
Kelsey got into the spirit of the thing. “Or maybe someone tried to kill you and they think they did,” she chimed in with enthusiasm.
“That does it,” Bryan announced as he sat down at the table. “No more crime-analysis shows for you, young lady.”
Kate placed her hand on top of her husband’s. “I don’t think you can put a cap on that imagination, honey,” she cautioned. She looked around the table. Only Kelsey had helped herself to a serving of lasagna. “Well, come on, I can’t be the only one who wants to sample this delicious-looking meal. Venus, take a seat. Help yourself to some dinner.” Her eyes narrowed slightly as she shifted her gaze to her son. “You, too, chef.”
Though he created things he loved, Trevor rarely felt the desire to partake of his creations. “I never eat what I cook.”
“Never?” Venus asked, surprised, as she slid a piece onto her plate.
“Well, hardly ever.”
Kelsey, sitting on the other side of Venus, leaned forward so she could see her brother. “That excuse won’t fly in court, Trev. So if you’re trying to poison us, better say so now.”
Shaking his head, he cut into the portion on Venus’s plate. As Kelsey watched, he picked up a forkful of the rich Italian fare, put it into his mouth and chewed. Finished, he placed the fork down beside his own empty plate. “Satisfied?”
Kate gestured toward the plate in the center of the table, heaped high with rectangular pieces of sin in melted cheese. “Eat a little more. Chefs are supposed to have some meat on their bones.”
Bryan raised his eyes from his plate, momentarily interrupting his own festival of enjoyment. “You’re making mother noises again, Kate.”
“Sorry, dear. Occupational habit. I’ll try to restrain myself, although technically,” she continued cheerfully, “no matter how old these two get, I’m still going to be their mother and thus, entitled to make mother noises.”
“Only on your birthday, and Christmas,” Kelsey requested firmly.
Kate eyed her skeptically. “How about Mother’s Day?”
“We’ll see,” Kelsey promised loftily, then added, “If you’ve been good.”
Kate shook her head and addressed the guest at her table. “And this,” she said in mock despair, “is what my daughter calls her best behavior.”
“Kelsey wouldn’t know ‘best behavior’ if it came up and bit her,” Trevor announced to the room at large.
“You should talk,” Kelsey jeered. “Mom told me all about what you and the others used to do when you were kids. Stopping escalators, knocking over mannequins, trying to drag Christmas trees through department stores by their branches.”
Listening, Venus’s eyes widened with amusement. “Really?”
He didn’t want to have to sit and listen to misadventures that had occurred twenty years ago. At least, not in front of Venus. “Kelsey has a tendency to make things up. It’s all part of her ‘creative’ background.”
“Mom, back me up here,” Kelsey requested.
“Yeah, Mom,” Trevor echoed pointedly.
Caught in the middle, Kate chose the diplomatic route. “Trevor and his brothers were…um…spirited,” she finally said.
Bryan joined in. “They nearly drove me out of my mind until I found Kate. Went through three housekeepers in a little more than a year.”
“That bad?” Venus asked, amused.
“The other women had no stamina,” was all that Trevor allowed himself to say.
“Navy SEALs wouldn’t have had enough stamina to last around you guys,” Bryan said glibly.
Kate leaned over toward Venus and said in a stage whisper, “My superhero cape is in the hall closet if you’d like to take a look at it later.”
“Lies, all lies,” Trevor declared, feigning indignation.
As she ate, Venus didn’t bother suppressing the smile that came to her lips. The warmth at the table was palpable. She had a feeling she wasn’t accustomed to such closeness.
Chapter Seven
A long, contented sigh escaped Kate’s lips. She braced her hands before her and leaned back a fraction of an inch.
“Well, if I don’t get up now to clear this table,” she predicted, “I might just wind up never being able to move again.”
Venus was on her feet instantly. “Here, let me help,” she offered. Beside her, Trevor rose, ready to join the effort, as well.
But Kate waved them both back down. “No, you’re a guest, and you—” she looked at Trevor “—you brought this heavenly fare into our house. You both get to sit this out. However, you and you—” she indicated first her daughter and then her husband “—you two can feel perfectly free to volunteer with the dinner dishes.”
Bryan cocked his head, as if getting in tune with his inner self. “Nope, don’t feel the need to volunteer at all. There’s not even a twinge.” He glanced at his daughter. “You feel anything, Kelsey?”
Kelsey shook her blond head adamantly from side to side. “Nope.”
“Let me rephrase that. You will feel perfectly free to volunteer. Both of you. Now,” Kate emphasized, when neither had made a move to get up.
“Just like in the army, they volunteer you,” Bryan said to his son with a shake of his head.
“Okay, soldier, march,” Kate instructed, playing along with the comparison. “You, too, Private Kelsey. Into the kitchen with both of you.” She glanced over her shoulder at the two remaining people seated at the table. “There’s a nice moon out tonight. Why don’t you two go out on the patio and enjoy it?”
“Could you be more transparent, Kate?” Bryan asked his wife, seeming amused as they walked into the kitchen.
Kate turned on the faucet and began to rinse the dishes off one by one, getting them ready for the dishwasher. “I wasn’t trying to be devious, I was trying to get you to leave the two of them alone.”
Kelsey set the plates she’d brought in on the counter. “Don’t get your hopes up, Mom. Trevor’s a workaholic, remember? And after that little stunt that Alicia pulled on him, I don’t think he’s going to be risking getting involved with anyone else for a long, long time.”
Kate grinned. “Your father was a so-called workaholic when I first met him. The Marlowe men are tough nuts to crack—but they do crack,” Kate promised. “All it takes is knowing just where to tap.”
In the other room, Venus was smiling as she looked at Trevor. “I think that your mother wants us to go outside.”
Embarrassed at Kate’s less than covert machinations, Trevor said sheepishly, “I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. She obviously cares about you. I was thinking, while gorging myself on the lasagna, that you could almost feel the love around the table. You’ve got a really nice family and you’re a very lucky man.”
As they made their way outside, he couldn’t disagree. He’d always known how lucky he was. “Yeah, I suppose I pretty much have it all. Great family I can always depend on and Kate’s Kitchen is doing better business than I ever dreamed.”
Venus was aware of the glaring omission in his litany of blessings. She tried to make her voice sound conversational as she asked, “Nobody significant in your life?”
He watched her for a long moment. Bits and pieces of thoughts floated through his head. He pushed them aside. “Not at the moment.”
Venus nodded. “Which would explain why your mother wanted us out here, moon-gazing.” Glancing at Trevor, she saw that he was looking at her and not up at the sky. “You’re not gazing up at the moon,” she pointed out softly.
“It’s just an orb of distant light,
” he told her. “I’d much rather look at something a little closer to home.”
If he wasn’t careful, he was going to kiss her again, Trevor thought. And most likely that would leave him open for a myriad of problems down the line. He couldn’t believe Venus didn’t have someone specific in her life. Someone who was perhaps, even now, moving heaven and earth searching for her. Someone who was going to break down the door at the least opportune time.
He reined in his thoughts again.
“I’d say ‘me, too,’ but I really don’t know for sure,” she told him honestly.
For just the evening, he could pretend that she was only the woman he’d rescued from a watery grave, that she knew who she was and that nothing ominous loomed in the background, nothing that would change the truth of this moment. Tomorrow was time enough for reality.
He wanted now. It was all any of them really ever had. “Say it anyway,” he encouraged.
Her eyes raised to his. “Me, too.”
It took a great deal of effort not to sweep her into his arms when she looked at him like that. “Does it feel right? Does saying the words feel right?” he pressed.
Venus paused for a moment, thinking. “Well, it doesn’t feel wrong.”
Trevor laughed. “Close enough for now.” And then he decided to spread the net a little further. “Nothing coming back to you at all?” he questioned, concerned. “Not even a glimmer all day?”
It frustrated her that her head was still so very empty, that there was nothing to reflect on, nothing to remember that was older than twenty-four hours. Venus lifted a shoulder and then let it drop.
“There’ve been a couple of flashes, fireflies dashing across my brain,” she described, “gone before I can catch them to make anything out of them.” She sighed, a wave of anxiety washing over her. Venus pressed her lips together as she turned toward him. “What if I never get my memory back?”
“You will.”
He sounded so certain. As certain as she wasn’t. “But what if I don’t?” she reiterated.
He wasn’t accustomed to pessimism. Kate had raised all of them to be optimists, even in the most dire situations. “Then we will handle that when the time comes.”
He made it sound so distant, as if giving up hope was something that was rarely done. She liked that about him, she discovered. “And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime,” he said, brushing a strand of hair away from her face, “just enjoy the Marlowe hospitality.”
She couldn’t enjoy herself if she felt she was being a parasite. “I can’t just live off your parents, Trevor. It’s not right.”
“Mom likes helping people and Dad likes seeing Mom happy. From where I’m sitting, there is no problem.”
Venus sighed, tucking her hands into the pockets of the sweater Kate had lent her. They had wandered into the middle of the yard, to the fountain that Bryan had given Kate as a tenth-anniversary present. She found the sound of the rushing water soothing.
“I feel like the man who came to dinner.” The moment she said the words, her head jerked up and she immediately looked at him, awed and hopeful. “I remembered something,” she exclaimed just as Trevor said, “You remembered something.”
“What does that mean?” she asked, elated with this bit of information.
The explanation was rather simple. “That either you’re the reincarnation of a theater critic or once upon a time, you were an English major at some college. There’s no other reason for you to even be acquainted with a play that old.”
If that was true about her, it had to be true about him, as well. “Which are you?” she asked.
She was sharp, he thought, pleased. “I minored in English for a little while until I finally admitted out loud that what I really wanted to do was putter around in the kitchen.”
“That was some excellent puttering you brought over tonight,” she interjected, then said, “I guess I know food, too.”
“You’ve probably eaten once or twice in your life,” he speculated, his eyes smiling at her. She was rather adorable, he couldn’t help noticing.
“Wise guy.” She laughed. Impulsively, she dipped her hands into the fountain, cupped them and then splashed the water in Trevor’s direction.
Caught off guard, Trevor cried out in surprise. Surprise turned to active revenge as he reciprocated. Within several seconds, they were both wet, both laughing. And then the laughter slowly died away, giving way to something else. The chemistry that had been hiding in plain sight all evening took center stage.
Before he knew it, Trevor pulled her into his arms. The next moment, he lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her. Kissing her as if he’d been deprived of oxygen for the last hour and she was his first breath of fresh air.
She tasted sweeter than any dessert he’d ever been inspired to create. He could see himself getting addicted to this, to her, with very little effort.
But the attraction would ultimately lead to a whole lot of trouble, he tried to caution himself, tried to steel himself off from free-falling down the canyon. But he refused to succumb to reality.
He hadn’t a clue who she really was. Falling for her, even in a minor way, would completely shake up his well-ordered, moderately uptight world.
Survival mode kicked in belatedly. Trevor forced himself to draw back.
“Sorry.” The apology was mumbled and less than halfhearted. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Last I noticed, there were two of us in that kiss.” Though she didn’t want to, she understood the part that Trevor wasn’t saying. That she could, without knowing it, be betraying a husband just by kissing him.
Venus glanced down at her hand. That faint line on the ring finger was still there. But that didn’t mean it had been created by a wedding band. Maybe the line had been created by a friendship ring or a family heirloom passed down to her. She couldn’t remember.
But if she had a husband, or someone to give her a friendship ring or a family that went along with the heirloom ring, where the hell were they? Why weren’t they looking for her? Why hadn’t there been anything on the police blotter about a missing twenty-something-year-old?
My God, she realized, she didn’t even know how old she was.
Restless, wanting answers, Venus tried to plumb the depths of her soul. Her frustration increased when nothing came. There were no depths to rummage through. For now, what you saw was what you got and it definitely didn’t please her.
With a sigh, Venus looked at him. “Shouldn’t I have a job or something?”
He considered her question for a moment. “You probably do.”
Venus shook her head. “No, I mean…as Venus.” She rolled the name he’d given her around on her tongue. It wasn’t entirely displeasing or foreign to her. Did that mean he’d accidentally stumbled onto her name? Or was she just getting used to it? Questions, so many questions, and not a single answer. “So that I could begin paying my own way,” she explained.
He was about to tell her again that it wasn’t necessary. That she needed to focus on finding out who she was before she could find a job, but he changed his mind. An idea came to him, born out of need and the thought that perhaps this way, he would be able to keep an eye on her. This would allow him to be around in case she needed him.
“How are you when it comes to salads?” he asked, watching her reaction.
She didn’t understand. “You mean when it comes to eating them?”
“No.” He wondered if she was going to be insulted. Something about her made him think she was a child of privilege. “I mean when it comes to making them.”
“I don’t know. But it can’t be that hard, can it?”
He thought of the girl from the temp agency who’d been sent out today. The girl whose time card he signed as he’d told her that he’d found someone else to fill the position. It was a bold-faced lie. However, even if they had to cut salads out of the menu, there was no way he would allow the temp to continue working for him. He simply
couldn’t afford to lose that many dishes each day. She didn’t seem interested in improving, only in sampling the different foods.
“You wouldn’t think so, would you?” he commented dryly.
“What exactly do you have in mind?”
He stated it simply. “I need a salad girl at my restaurant.”
She saw through him immediately—or thought she did. “This is charity, isn’t it?” Intuition told her that she didn’t care for charity, at least when it came to being on the receiving end. However, the word charity struck a very distant chord before it faded completely away again.
“No, this is on the level,” he assured her. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. “You can ask my parents. I told them that I’d lost my regular salad girl yesterday and that the temp agency I called sent me the salad girl from hell.”
Venus laughed. “I didn’t know they had salads in hell.”
“Only on days like Thanksgiving,” he deadpanned, “in place of the turkey.”
The grin on her lips spread to her eyes. He could have sworn he saw laughter in them. And it was infectious. “So, you’re saying they celebrate Thanksgiving in hell?”
“No, they feel the lack of it,” he told her solemnly, struggling to keep a straight face, “because there’s nothing to feel thankful for.”
“Except the salad,” she teased.
He shook his head, negating her words. “Even that’s bad, with rancid lettuce.”
“You have rancid lettuce?” The question came from behind them. When he turned to look, Trevor saw that Kelsey was there, standing in the shadows.
“No, and what are you doing out here?” he demanded, crossing to her. “Why aren’t you in the kitchen, helping Mom?”
Kelsey bristled slightly at what she perceived to be a veiled reprimand. “It doesn’t take that long to load the dishwasher if you’re eating takeout.”
Takeout. Trevor hadn’t thought of the food he’d brought over as common takeout, but he supposed his sister was right. Not that he would ever willingly tell her that.
He gestured toward Venus. “Kelsey, meet my new salad girl.”
[Kate's Boys 02] - The Bride With No Name Page 7