by Noelle Fox
He groaned. “Here it comes.”
“It’s not a bad idea to think about installing a more skilled medical person on the island.”
“You paying?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah, absolutely, and for a private masseur for each of us.”
“You know, I could use a personal bartender, too.” He rearranged one of the bed pillows so it sat more comfortably behind his head. “But yeah, you’re probably right. Especially if we’re going to have that big blowout Fourth of July party.”
Liz dropped her head into her hands. So help her, the man lived and breathed stubbornness. He probably figured she was vulnerable after the shock of his accident—though God forbid he knew exactly how deep that went—and had decided to press the advantage.
He should know her better than that. She’d come right back with the subject she most wanted to talk about, especially given how he felt about Connor Reed—for no reason she could figure. “I guess Grace and Connor are having dinner tonight.”
His face darkened. “How do you know that?”
“She told me.”
“What, you’re best girlfriends now?”
“Would that be a problem?”
He chuckled. “Nope.”
“I think they’d make a nice couple.”
“Staff members aren’t supposed to date guests.” Derek fussed with his pillow again. “And he’s not good enough for her.”
Liz smiled lazily. Gotcha Derek. He’d walked right into that one. “You sound like her father.”
His eyes shot to hers. Held.
Liz raised her eyebrows.
Derek narrowed his eyes.
Classic Mayer-Wakefield standoff.
Except this time the stakes were higher than their fights over policy procedure and finances. This was personal. This was about trust. Intimacy.
He cracked first. “Yeah, well, there’s a reason I sound that way.”
“Yes?” She had trouble looking calm and unaffected. This stubborn, difficult man was so dear to her, this admission would be huge and painful for him—and it would mean the world to her. “What is it?”
“I am.” He pressed his head back into the pillow, looking terrified. “I am her father.”
“Well.” She kept herself calm only with an effort. He’d let her in.
“Well?” Derek looked astounded. “That’s all you have to say? You’re not appalled? Surprised? No questions, no outrage? No shock?”
“I figured it out already.” Liz patted his shin. “She looks like you.”
“Is that right?” His face broke into a proud smile he immediately tried to repress. How silly they both were, hiding so much from each other. “She’s a right good-lookin’ filly, huh.”
“Oh gross.” Liz made a face like she’d eaten rotten fish. “Never say that again.”
He chuckled, looking happier and more relaxed than she’d seen him since…well, since that night. “Sorry, couldn’t resist.”
“Forgiven.” Liz folded her arms. “So you have a kid, huh? How did that happen? And I don’t mean the biology of it.”
He sobered quickly. “It’s not a pretty story.”
“I can take it. I’m tough.” She wrinkled her nose. “Which I suppose you’d say makes me a sturdy old mare.”
“Not touching that one.” He rubbed a hand across his chin. “I met Grace’s mother when I was young and stupid. She got pregnant so I did what I thought was the right thing and married her. Not surprisingly, it was the wrong thing. Eventually she met someone else, took Grace and ran. I tried to find them, then realized I’d just be setting up battles I couldn’t win, and that the one who’d suffer most from the fighting would be Grace.”
His voice thickened. He dropped his eyes. “So I let her go.”
Liz had to swallow hard in order to speak. “That’s a brutal decision. But I admire you. It was the right one.”
“I hope so. By now she’s old enough to make her own decisions about whether she wants me in her life, so I invited her here.”
“I see.” If you asked Liz, Grace had been old enough for quite a while.
“Actually, she’s been old enough for a while.”
Somehow Liz managed not to look smug. “Yeah, I noticed that.”
“It took getting sick to get me off my cowardly ass far enough to do something about it.”
“I wouldn’t be hard on yourself, Derek. Having Grace back in your life is a good silver lining to the cancer cloud. And you have plenty of time to get to know her.” She squeezed his leg again, needing the reassurance of his living body under her fingers maybe more than he needed the reassurance of her touch. “When are you going to tell her?”
“Yeah, uh…” Derek scratched his chin. “Not sure about that. I guess I figured the moment would just seem right at some point while she’s here.”
Men.
Liz leaned forward in her chair and squeezed his leg harder, turning her tender gesture into a stern warning. “Or maybe you just need to do it.”
Derek stopped scratching.
Met her eyes.
“Yeah.” He swallowed convulsively. “Maybe I just do.”
Chapter 9
Grace was staring at her menu across the table from Connor in the lodge’s pretty dining room. One wall was all windows overlooking the harbor—Connor had insisted she sit facing them—and she should be admiring the view. The subtle lighting, terra cotta tile floor, sleek wooden chairs, white tablecloths, blooms on every table—shouldn’t she be appreciating those, too? All she could think about was the same thing she thought about the entire time she and Connor were talking while she was recuperating in bed.
Connor had kissed her.
To put it mildly, this was not a distasteful memory.
All the attraction she’d felt all those years ago had come roaring back. Not only physical attraction, but also attraction to his energy and kindness, the trust that had led her to choose him as her first. It had entirely replaced the hurt, the anger, the common sense, the sanity, what the hell was she going to do?
Nothing. She was going to do absolutely nothing.
She nodded as if she’d won an argument with herself.
Except…why? Why do nothing? She was grown up, he was grown up, they were both single…
Get a grip.
Her feelings were too suspiciously obsessive to trust, her condition too vulnerable. She’d lost her restaurant only last month, and today she’d learned new and confusing stories about the father she’d never known, and had a pretty impressively dangerous accident.
“Grace?”
“Huh?” She snapped to attention and realized she’d been ignoring Connor. “Sorry. Did you ask me something?”
“What are you thinking of having?”
“Oh…” She scanned the choices hastily, since for all that staring, she hadn’t been reading a thing. Another sign that she wasn’t in her right mind. Usually she couldn’t wait to find out what the chef had been thinking, what choices he’d made, how he’d organized the offerings, how he described the dishes, what flavors he’d invented with what combinations of ingredients… “What are you having?”
Blatant stall for time.
“Not sure yet.” He cocked his head. “You doing okay?”
He must have mistaken her hormonal meltdown for brain damage from the accident. Better than the truth. “I’m fine. Just thinking about…something.”
Connor nodded sympathetically. “You’ve had a hell of a day.”
“Yes.” That worked. Let him think she was worrying about her father, or her harrowing brush with death. Anything but that she was trying to keep herself from imagining him naked, with her hands roaming all over his—
She forced herself to read the menu coherently. It was decently interesting. Lots of native Alaskan ingredients: fish, berries, root vegetables. Some of the combinations piqued her interest. Salmon with rhubarb sauce? An appetizer of sea plantain, radishes and duck egg? Seductively weird. How co
uld she resist?
She placed her order, taken aback when Connor asked for a salad and a mushroom burger, handing the menu back to the rather sullen—not well trained!—waitress, a young woman with one of those silver bars spanning the top of her ear. None of those on Grace’s turf. Too many people found anything but earlobe piercings distinctly unappetizing, which was the last emotion you wanted to invoke in a place selling food.
“Are you not an adventurous eater or just not in the mood today?” she asked.
Connor folded his hands on the table. “I am generally adventurous. It’s just the fancy food here isn’t…”
She glared teasingly. “You just let me hang, didn’t you.”
“No, it’s not bad, it’s…” He gestured toward her. “You’re the pro, I’ll let you decide.”
“Deal.” She found herself gazing at him lingeringly and dropped her eyes, relieved when the waitress brought their Sauvignon Blanc and she could tell herself that if this was her beverage list, she’d add a couple of sparkling wines by the glass, and several bottles of good rosés.
Connor raised his glass. “Here’s to calmer days for the rest of your vacation.”
“That would be nice.” Grace smiled and drank. A nice crisp wine from New Zealand. Why not more from the Pacific Northwest? Oregon or Washington? With so much local food, she’d think it only natural to stay close to home with the wines too.
Not her restaurant. She should be concentrating on her dinner companion in some other far less dangerous context than how warm and lovely his mouth had felt against hers.
“So, Connor, we’ve had a couple of pretty intense discussions in the past few days, but I haven’t gotten the chance to ask you the obvious catch-up questions.”
“Like?”
Why did you kiss me?
Argh! Grace forced her thoughts back into line. “Like how long have you worked at Northern Lights? What did you do before that? Catch me up on the years since we were farm kids in Colorado.”
“All right.” He took a sip of his wine and leaned forward. She had to fight not to lean the rest of the way toward him. “I finished my degree in environmental studies at University of Colorado Boulder. I wasn’t a brilliant student, but I got through it. After that, I had no plans, really. I backpacked around, worked wherever I landed until I got bored. I ended up here five years ago. I wasn’t planning to stay this long, but never found a good reason to leave.”
Grace discovered she was frozen. That was his life plan? Do whatever he felt like whenever he felt like it? “Did you start here in the job you have now?”
“No, no.” He smiled and shook his head. Even that was sexy. “I washed dishes, I cleaned rooms, I helped Sofia and Luke with boat maintenance. Then the job opened up for a hike leader. Derek wasn’t convinced, but I told him he could fire me whenever he wanted. I guess he hasn’t wanted to yet.”
Grace nodded, taken aback at the depth of her disappointment. She was about seven hundred steps ahead of herself investing in him this heavily, given that she’d been here less than a week and had never given a conscious thought to starting a relationship with him.
So why was she reacting like this?
Because he’d kissed her so softly and sweetly, as if she were his long-sleeping princess.
Grace nearly spit out her wine. Long-sleeping princess? Good God. She was sounding like her mother. “How long do you think you’ll stay on Polaris?”
“That’s easy.” Connor gave her a devilish grin. “Until I want to leave.”
“Ah.” She forced a smile. Wake up, Princess. He was a dreamer. Not a guy who would ever settle down. “That makes sense.”
“What about you? You were at the Culinary Institute of America when I knew you. I assume you graduated…”
“I did. Then I got a job at a restaurant in Saratoga Springs, Au Bon Gout. I worked up to be the chef’s number two. A friend from school who’d concentrated on the business end at CIA came to me with the idea of opening our own place. He raised the capital and we opened A Touch of Grace in Glen Falls, had an amazing run for a while, then tanked.”
He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “A few sentences. A lot of emotions.”
“Yes.” Warmth spread through her that had less to do with the wine than she wanted. He understood. Maybe not completely, but he got it.
“What will you do after you leave here?”
“Get right back into business.” Grace watched the waitress approach with relief. For some reason she was uncomfortable talking about her next move. She did have more grief to get through after the collapse of A Touch of Grace, but also now that she’d tasted what it was like to have her own little empire, it was hard to summon the necessary hunger and passion to work for someone else again.
“Here are your appetizers. The plantain, radish and egg for you…” The waitress plunked a dish in front of Grace. Easy, girl. “And the salad for you, Connor. Anything else I can get you two right now?”
“No, thanks. This looks fine.” Grace stared down at her appetizer. Actually, it looked a little sad. On one quadrant of the plate, tied with a scallion in a neat bundle was the sea plantain, a grassy looking plant also called goose tongue because the leaves resembled…guess what? On another quadrant, slices of radishes sitting in a slightly tired lettuce leaf. Finishing the dish, a duck egg that had been baked in a tiny ramekin and sprinkled with black pepper.
Hmm.
Grace would have sautéed the radishes with butter and chives, maybe a splash of lemon or vinegar, then mixed them with blanched sea plantain in a mound on the plate. The duck egg, she would have poached and put on top of the vegetables so the flavors could meld. Then maybe sprinkle of Aleppo pepper, and a slice of French bread on the side, toasted and spread with—
“Something wrong?”
Grace jerked up her head. “No, no. Just fantasizing.”
Connor’s grin spread slowly, eyes sparking mischief. “Well.”
She blushed. She couldn’t help it. “I mean about the food. Professionally speaking.”
“Too bad.”
Grace narrowed her eyes. “You’re flirting.”
“Yes. So?”
“So why did you kiss me?”
He looked startled. She couldn’t believe she’d said it either. Maybe the wine had bolstered her courage, though she’d barely had a quarter of the glass.
Now that the question was out there, however, she was glad she’d asked. Let him know she wasn’t a simpering female who’d go wherever he led.
“I kissed you because I wanted to.”
She pretended disapproval. “No impulse control.”
“When I need to, I have plenty. I’m thinking you need less.”
“Still flirting.” She tried for indignation, but found herself smiling at him, and then, having started, not wanting to stop. It was as if she was seeing him all over again for the first time. He was so handsome. Boyish but definitely a man. Long-lashed gray eyes and thick short chocolate brown hair that refused to stand down. A slight and very sexy cleft in his chin.
Tonight she’d was enjoying herself outside of a kitchen more than she could remember in a long, long time. The defining feature of her career was its all-consuming nature, something she generally thrived on.
But this leisure to enjoy a quiet evening with the prospect of many more quiet evenings ahead, was really nice. She didn’t realize how much she’d missed living at a slower pace.
During their main courses—her salmon came with a rhubarb and orange jam that needed considerable more depth of flavor and a whole lot less sugar, and the side of snow peas needed a minute shorter cooking time and more salt—they chatted easily, reminiscing about their summer on the farm and the people they’d known. Then their talk turned to movies, books, favorite foods, travel…as they’d discovered in Colorado, they had a lot in common, except how to live life. She was driven. He drifted.
Sometime later—most of the dining room had emptied—they were sharing a
crème brulée, which could use a compote of local berries to spruce it up, when Derek appeared at their table looking back to normal except for a slight abrasion on his forehead where he’d bumped into Luke’s boat.
Earlier, when Derek had stopped by to visit Grace in her recuperation room, he’d still been pale and slightly unsteady. It was unexpectedly warming to see him fully recovered.
“You feeling okay, Grace?”
“Oh yes.” She beamed at him, admittedly giddy from the wine and Connor’s attention. “How about you? You look great.”
“Same.” He gave Connor a rather cold nod, then turned a distinctly softer gaze back to Grace. “How’s your dinner tasting?”
“Okay.” She tried to speak with enthusiasm, but her professional integrity wouldn’t quite let her.
“Ah.” Derek looked pleased that she’d all but insulted his chef. “Not sure I told you, but Jacques is leaving us soon.”
“Jacques?” She liked Derek, and she appreciated the things he’d shared about her father, but right now, rather childishly, she wanted him to go away.
“Our chef.” He pulled at his right ear. “You want to work here?”
Grace gaped at him. He didn’t appear to be joking, but he couldn’t possibly be serious. “I…well… I’m not really—”
“Think about it. Job’s yours if you want it.”
She glanced at Connor who dropped his jaw in exaggerated shock. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
Grace laughed nervously, at a loss how to respond. “Without references? Without any kind of trial run or knowledge of my style?”
“Nah.” He dismissed professional protocol with a contemptuous wave. “I don’t need that stuff.”
He didn’t need that stuff. She could only stare up at him.
“Come see me in the morning, Grace.” He pulled at his ear again. Coughed into his hand. “I, uh, I have something else to discuss with you as well.”
“Okay.” She had no idea what that might be.
“Have a good evening, glad you are doing better.” He turned abruptly and left the dining room.
Grace waited until he was safely out of earshot. “Is it me or was that really weird?”