by Shirley Jump
He turned away from the door, and pushed the thoughts of the past from his head. It might have taken him ten years, but he was finally making a living at his dream job. Albeit, not the kind of money he’d made working with Carson, but not chump change, either. And he was happy.
Wasn’t he?
“What is all this stuff?” Vivian peered inside the bag. With just her and the sleeping baby in the house, the inn had never felt so intimate before. “It’s just a baby, right? Aren’t they supposed to be easy?”
Nick chuckled. “I may not know anything about kids, but one thing I’m sure of, is that babies are complicated. Not as complicated as women but close.”
Vivian parked a fist on her hip. “Women are complicated?”
He liked seeing this spark in her. This, Nick suspected, was the Vivian with her hair down. Unrestricted. Spontaneous. Intriguing. “Not all women.”
“Then what kind of women are you talking about?” Vivian arched a brow. A half smile played at the edge of her lips.
Damn, she was beautiful. Interesting. He moved closer to her. She was wearing a perfume that lured him in—dark, deep, sexy. Like a garden after the sunset. Ellie went on sleeping, and the house went on being quiet and a world of just the two of them. “Women like you. With your practical heels and your suit and your bun.”
“That’s how I dress for work. What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s very...businesslike. Why are you working so hard to hide that you’re beautiful?”
“You...” She swallowed. Her eyes widened, and the tough bravado dropped away. “You think I’m beautiful?”
“Oh come on, I can’t be the first man to say that to you.” Surely a woman like her had dozens of men lined up and eager for a chance to spend time with her. She was smart, confident and gorgeous. A trifecta.
“I... I don’t date much.” For the first time since he’d met her, Vivian looked embarrassed, unsure. “Nor do the men I work with ever say anything like that. Probably because I’m winning more cases than them, but still.”
He laughed. “I bet you’re a barracuda in court. I saw the battle strategy you had on the legal pad back there. Clearly, that’s your comfort zone.”
“It’s that obvious?” Her cheeks flushed.
“Yep. When Ellie was crying earlier, you looked like you’d rather have a stroke than pick her up.”
Vivian laughed. Damn, she had a nice laugh, too. Too bad she worked in the one field he gave a wide berth to. In his experience, lawyers had a tendency to argue and control, two things that never really worked well with Nick.
“I really don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to babies,” she said.
The soft admission made him forget all his reservations for a moment. She looked so beautiful right now, with her hair once again escaping the restraints of the pins, and the questions in her face. He knew what it was like to doubt yourself, to wonder if you were doing the right thing. And maybe it was just the kindred spirit he saw in her, or maybe it was something more, but Nick shifted closer to Vivian. “There,” he said. “Was that so hard?”
“Was what so hard?”
“Opening up. Letting that hyperconfident facade drop.” He smiled at her. “You really should do that more often.”
“Maybe...” Her gaze met his and held. “Maybe I will.”
Nick leaned closer, almost close enough to touch...and then Viv leaned in the rest of the way, bringing their lips together. Slow, easy, sweet, his lips meeting hers with a gentle pressure that begged her to let him in, let him know her. His hand reached up to cup the back of her head, to capture the stray brown locks that had escaped the bun. He kissed her, tenderly, leisurely—
And Viv started to cry.
Chapter Four
Vivian never betrayed weakness. Doing that meant certain death in the courtroom. She prided herself on keeping her emotions on a tight leash. It was part of what made her a formidable opponent. But the second she and Nick kissed it was like a dam had burst, and the tears that rarely showed in her eyes began falling.
This man—a total stranger—had seen a part of her that no one ever saw. The unsure, hesitant, out of her element Vivian, who had to ask for help. And despite that, he’d called her beautiful and been drawn to her enough for them to kiss.
She broke away from Nick and took several steps back. He was still six feet of tall, dark, handsome and tempting as hell. She swiped at her eyes, and tried to still her hammering heart with a deep breath. What is wrong with me?
There was nothing wrong with the kiss—that had been phenomenal. Tender, slow and easy, as if she was a dessert he wanted to savor. The scent of the food he’d been cooking—buttery and as warm and comforting as an early-fall day—lingered in the space between them. She had the most insane urge to put her head on his chest.
“I’m sorry,” she said, the words giving her a moment to center herself, bring her heart and mind back to the world of common sense. A world where she didn’t feel completely overwhelmed by a three-month-old and a dark-haired man with espresso eyes who called her beautiful. “I don’t normally cry.”
“I’m the one who should be apologizing. I thought...” He shook his head and managed to look both embarrassed and contrite at the same time. “Argh. I’m sorry.”
“No, no, it’s not that. I didn’t cry because we kissed. I cried because...” Because you saw a side of me I never let anyone see. Because you reminded me of what I’ve put to the side time and time again in my life. Because for a brief second, I was caught in a different world. She didn’t say any of that out loud. Instead, she resorted to a half-truth. “I’m stressed. I just...for the first time in my life, I don’t know what to do.”
She sighed and dropped onto the sofa. Easier to do that than to look at Nick and wish he would kiss her again. Maybe she’d been working too much or maybe it had been the you’re beautiful, or the fact that she was so far out of her comfort zone with Ellie it might as well be another planet, but right now, Vivian felt as vulnerable as a fawn in an open meadow. That was not a place she liked to be. The walls she had erected decades ago crumbled a little, and everything inside her was trying to shore them up again, but it was like bracing against a tidal wave with a piece of cardboard.
Ellie had woken and was staring up at Vivian with that “do something, Aunt Viv” look. What could Vivian do? She was in such deep water that she was sure she’d drown and screw this up. Ellie needed a mother, not an aunt who was more comfortable with a deposition than a diaper. “I have a new client who is depending on me to go after this shoddy equipment manufacturer. I need to prepare for a potential trial, which means hours and hours and late nights and weekends of work. My apartment is in the middle of a total renovation. I don’t have room or time for a baby. But I don’t want to hire a stranger to watch Ellie, because...” She shook her head. Where were all these tears coming from? What was wrong with her?
Nick sat beside her. “Because what?” he asked, his voice soft, gentle. And another chink in those walls opened.
“Because Sammie and I spent our lives with strangers and we swore that when we grew up, we would never do that to our kids.” The words came out in a whisper, words that edged along the secrets Vivian had kept close to her heart all her life. The vulnerabilities she hid behind the suits and the heels and the attitude.
Her childhood had been spent moving from one house to another, as her mother got sober, fell off the wagon, got sober again, a hamster wheel of changes. Some foster homes had been great, others had bordered on nightmarish. There’d been people who had refused to feed her unless she finished an endless list of chores. Foster parents who believed a belt was the best means of communication. Families she loved and said goodbye to before she could spend more than a handful of weeks there, the happiness she’d had with them just a fleeting mirage. Living her life out of grocery sacks and someone’s worn, discard
ed luggage. Long before the roller coaster of foster care began, Vivian had taken one look at Sammie, so thin and scared and frail, and vowed to be the one person her little sister could depend on, the one person who would never leave her. It had taken a lot of fighting with the system and the rules, but Viv had done her best to keep her promise, until she’d graduated high school and gone on to college. She’d made the mistake of thinking Sammie would be okay once she was out on her own. Viv had been wrong.
Maybe it was being in this town again, in the same place where Viv had learned to roller skate and where she’d found out she hated beets but loved pancakes for dinner on Thursday nights that had her emotions running high.
“Then don’t do it. Don’t hire a stranger.”
She glanced at Nick. “What are you talking about? I have to do my job, and I can’t just leave Ellie home alone with the cabinet installers. Yes, they’re strangers, but there’s a day care at the office. It’s not like she’s going to be alone.”
“Stay here tonight. Let me help you.”
Let me help you. Four words that Vivian had never before admitted she needed to hear. She glanced at her niece, at the pile of baby things that could have been a pile of books written in Greek for all she knew about them, and then back at Nick. “What time is dinner?”
* * *
Nick had made a lot of meals in his lifetime. So many, he’d lost count a long time ago. There was something about being in the kitchen, measuring and stirring and tasting, that centered him. As soon as he started cooking the rest of the world dropped away. Every single time.
Until he’d invited Vivian to stay for dinner, in his space, at his table. She wasn’t even in the kitchen right now—she’d kept the baby in the living room to feed the baby some formula—which meant Nick should have been able to concentrate on the artichoke and tomato sauce.
Instead, as the chicken cooked in the braising liquid of wine and broth, he found himself listening to the sounds of Vivian talking to the baby in the other room. Her soft voice, nearly a whisper, captivated him. His mind kept straying from the recipe—memorized because he had made the dish a thousand times—so much that he ended up searching the internet for the ingredients list and forgetting what he had just searched a minute later.
She distracted him. And that couldn’t be a good thing.
“Smells good.”
He damned near cut his thumb off when he swiveled at the sound of her voice. Vivian was standing in the doorway, with the baby back in the basket. When he’d peeked in earlier, he saw that she hadn’t held Ellie to feed her; instead she’d sat beside the basket with the bottle. He vaguely knew that babies had to burp after they ate, but how to make that happen...he had no idea. And clearly neither did she. Given the amount of “yucks” he’d heard as she changed Ellie’s diaper, she was clueless with that as he was, too. He got the feeling that Vivian was about as comfortable with a baby as she would be with a hand grenade. Not that he was much more of a parental figure, so he had no room to talk. “Thanks. It was one of my grandmother’s recipes.”
Yeah, all cool, no betraying the little hiccup in his chest just then.
Vivian came into the kitchen and gestured toward the maple table. “Mind if I work a little and watch you cook?”
“Sure.” He rarely had company in the kitchen because when the inn was fully booked, both Della and Mavis were busy with the guests and general housekeeping. When the inn was empty, there was no one around to check in on him while he cooked. And the last time he’d had a beautiful woman in his kitchen—
Well, it had been a while.
His ex-girlfriend Ariel hadn’t come to his place that often, and he hadn’t offered to cook for her more than a handful of times. After a busy day at the office, it was easier just to stop at a restaurant, grab a bite, then go back to her place for a few hours. He rarely slept over, and Ariel had rarely invited him. Now that he thought about it, their relationship had seemed to be more one of convenience than anything else. No fireworks, no surprises, nothing but moving from one expected step to the next.
Well, until he received the totally unexpected, blindsiding news about Jason. But looking back now, after the anger had dissipated, his strongest emotion was a whole lot of relief that he hadn’t created a messy, legal mistake by marrying her. With his parents, he’d seen firsthand what an unhappy marriage looked like—the chill in every conversation, the tight lips, the great pains to avoid physical contact. Not what Nick wanted for his future at all.
Which reminded him yet again that lawyer Vivian wasn’t someone for him to consider for anything beyond dinner tonight. She’d already told him in no uncertain terms that she placed a high priority on her career. Like his parents, her job consumed her life. Hours and hours of work, weeks and weeks of preparation. The kind of single-minded workaholic tendencies Nick steered clear of, especially when associated with a law degree.
Vivian sat down at the table, with Ellie in her basket on the seat beside her. As if to prove his thoughts true, Vivian set the almost empty bottle on the table, then pulled out her enormous black leather planner and her laptop. For a long time, there was only the sound of her fingers on the keyboard and the soft coos of the baby.
After a while, Vivian sat back, stretched and glanced over at Nick. “So, how’s the chicken coming along?”
He shrugged. “Since I’m making it for two after buying ingredients for one, I added some fresh linguini I made yesterday.” He scooped a ladleful of starchy pasta water out of the pot, then stirred it into the artichoke sauce, which began to thicken, velvety and rich.
“You make your own pasta? I can barely boil water.”
He picked up the pasta pot and crossed to the sink to drain it, then set the cooked pasta aside. “It’s not that hard. It’s almost...therapeutic to make pasta and bread. All that kneading is very zen.”
Now it was her turn to laugh. “If there’s one thing I could use, it’s a little zen.”
She did seem very uptight, as if she was held together with steel wires. That had been him, two months ago, when he was working with Carson and hating his job. “Growing up as the child of two lawyers, I know that lawyering is stressful. My parents operated on short fuses, still do. My brother Grady runs his own company, and my other brother and I used to provide tech support. None of us went into the family business, so my dad thinks we’re all failures, except Grady because he has a lot of zeros in his paycheck. I thought my job was stressful, but Grady’s was ten times worse. He was a working advertisement for avoiding that kind of thing.”
He hadn’t strung together that many words at one time in weeks. What was wrong with him? Pouring out his life story to a woman—a lawyer—who he barely knew? In his experience, nothing warm and fuzzy ever came out of a lawyer.
“And now you’re cooking?”
The lilt on the end of her voice made it sound like she thought he’d taken a step down the career ladder. And yes, he had in terms of salary and benefits, but his days were far less tense and most mornings, he rolled out of bed, his mind whirring with menus and ingredients and purpose instead of dread and tension. “It’s where I’m happy. I think.”
“You think?”
He used metal tongs to toss the pasta and sauce together. A quick taste, and then a dash of salt, and the meal was done. He grabbed two white plates out of the cabinet and set a fat twirl of pasta in the center, topped it with slices of chicken and a smattering of vegetables, then added sliced homemade bread on the side.
All to avoid answering that question of whether he was happy or not. The answer was complicated, and Nick didn’t feel like explaining anything complicated right now.
“Dinner is served.” He laid the plate before her with a little flourish, then handed her a rolled napkin with silverware tucked inside. “I can carry the baby upstairs, if you want to eat in your room again.”
A part of him hoped she’d
say yes, and leave him to his kitchen and his solitude. And another crazy part hoped she stayed and ate with him.
“Oh, well, I wasn’t planning to eat in my room. I know I did before, but that was so I could visit with my sister, which really meant working a lot while she napped.” Vivian frowned, then the placid face was back, erasing any emotion. “If it’s okay, I’d like to stay here. I could use some company. I so rarely have any while I eat, and it’s been a hell of a day.”
Nick didn’t eat with the guests. He’d grown to prefer his meals alone, or occasionally taken with Della or Mavis. He’d flick on the television in his room and let some mindless sitcom or movie he’d seen a hundred times fill the silence. That way he could mope and stew, and not have to answer any questions about why he was or wasn’t happy. Or dwell on why he was still avoiding his grandmother’s last request.
“Uh, yeah, sure.” He grabbed the second plate and sat down across from Vivian. The baby had fallen back asleep, which was both good and bad. Good because sleeping baby equaled some peace and quiet, and bad, because sleeping baby meant there was no distraction between them.
Vivian dug in, swirling thick pieces of linguine onto her fork, along with saucy chunks of chicken and vegetables. As soon as she took the first bite, she smiled. “Oh my God, that’s incredible,” she said, the words coming out with a groan that sent Nick’s mind down a path far from the kitchen.
“Uh, you have a little...” He reached toward her, then pulled back, with a reminder to himself that he wasn’t supposed to be the guests’ personal groomer. Even if said guest was beautiful and tasted like that first cup of coffee of the day. A little sweet, a little dark and a lot addicting.