“They say if your business isn’t growing, it’s failing, so I’ll keep doing whatever that means, but I don’t want to grow so big that I lose all control over quality and management. Obviously, I’m very hands-on at this location because it’s the first and the biggest, but I visit every restaurant at least four times a year. So I don’t want to get big enough where I can’t do that anymore.”
“Do you like traveling?”
“Yeah, and honestly, I can’t imagine my life without it at this point,” he answered. “I grew up on the road because of football and I like seeing new places. As we’ve talked about, I’d ultimately like to settle in San Antonio, but if I had to be there all the time I’d lose my mind.”
“Same.” Parker smiled. It was how she felt about being at home for too long, as well.
Then he met her eyes, his very serious, almost tentative, which was novel because his confidence was big enough to circle the earth on a loop. “Parker, maybe this isn’t my business. Fuck, I know it’s not my business. But what happened with your mom?”
Parker shifted in her chair. The trick to being a successful adult was to not think about her mom too much, so these kinds of questions were like picking at a Band-Aid covering an open wound.
“You don’t have to answer,” he followed up at her silence, “but I feel like all my shit is just out there and I don’t know anything about you. Except your coffee order.”
He paused again, then held her gaze. “And I want to know more.”
She would have made a joke and kept it light if he hadn’t said the last, but she wanted to go deeper with Hugh.
“She didn’t leave until I was fourteen. And I’ve actually talked to her several times over the years,” Parker admitted, though she’d never told her father as much. It would have only hurt him more. “She lives in Florida working as an assistant for a real estate developer. She’s remarried to said real estate developer. I think she’s living her best life, to be honest with you. I forgive her for leaving, but I don’t know that I need to have a close relationship with her at this point in my life.”
Talking about it made her feel unworthy all over again, same as the day her mom had left. People who mattered still had moms. If Parker had been at all important to her, she could have visited over the years, but she’d chosen not to. Not that Parker would have seen her anyway, but still. Some token trying would have been the least a mother could do.
Hugh’s face was a careful blank mask. “She ever tell you why she left?”
Parker blew out a breath, the old insecurities from that time seeping out from under the door she’d closed them behind all those years ago.
“Yeah, it was a lot of excuses, but mostly that she hadn’t loved my dad in a long time and wanted a new life. My grandmother lived in Florida then, so she had family there. In her defense, she waited until I was in high school and could take care of myself. I don’t hate her, but I missed her when she left and that kind of pain doesn’t just go away. I can be glad that she’s happy, but mourn that she was a shitty mom to me.”
Hugh reached over the desk and grabbed her hand, pulling her up until she was walking to his chair. Arranging her so she was in his lap, he met her eyes. “So you’re afraid to leave your dad like she did,” he guessed.
Parker nodded, squirming on his lap because she wasn’t a child. She didn’t need to be in his arms to talk about her mom, but hated that she liked it. He settled a big paw on her knee, stilling her.
She sighed and answered him. “I know how it feels, so I know it has to be ten times worse for him.” Also, it wasn’t was if her mom had even asked her to go with her to Florida, which only reinforced the fact that she must have been a pretty unremarkable child. Certainly not special enough to catch the heart of a football star millionaire entrepreneur. Her dad was the only person who gave a shit if she was gone or in Chicago and that meant everything to her, so she’d enjoy the time she had with Hugh, but knew how it all would end.
Hugh’s mouth softened as well as his gaze and she had to remind herself of that fact once again. He was not for her.
“She’s an idiot,” he declared loudly, as if that was the whole story.
“You don’t have to do that,” Parker told him. “I’m over it. Honestly.”
“Yeah, I do, because it’s the truth. Any person who doesn’t want to know you, your mom or a random person on the street, is an idiot. Even though your coffee choice is shit and you made me the laughingstock of the barbecue world, you’re pretty awesome.”
Parker shook her head. “Thanks, Hugh. But I worry more about Dad. He’s fine, but I know his heart is still broken.”
She saw pieces of her dad in Hugh. Not that Hugh was pining for his ex the way her dad was, but that he hadn’t moved on with his life since the breakup. It was as if they’d both had a plan and when it hadn’t gone their way, they’d just shut down that part of their lives.
“I like you, Parker Jones,” Hugh said, giving her a gentle kiss on the forehead. “You’re a good egg.”
She raised an eyebrow, needing to lighten the mood. “Are you sure you’re not a seventy-year-old man? Maybe recite me a parable next?”
“Not yet,” he said, waggling his own eyebrows, the slit one making her knees sweat as usual.
“Just do your work,” she ordered, pointing to the desk at large and trying to get off his lap.
He let her go, but slowly until their entwined fingers were their last contact, and she returned to her seat.
Then he proceeded to pull out a couple of oversize manila files and placed them in front of her on the desk. “This is what’s on my agenda today.”
She flipped open a couple of the files and saw a bunch of typed-out sample menus, art boards and summary descriptions for, not Blue Smoke, but several different kinds of restaurants.
“You’re going to open another chain?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know yet. I was thinking about it. These are some of the concepts I’ve been pitched by either fellow investors or sought out from renowned chefs who don’t necessarily have the capital to start restaurants on their own. What do you think of them?”
Leaning back into her seat, Parker leafed through the packets as Hugh did his own typing on the computer. By the time she’d reached the end of the stack, she wasn’t sure how much time had gone by.
Hugh quirked an eyebrow when she finally looked up.
“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” she told him honestly. Some of the food would be good for a small to medium city, but nothing was going to make a splash in the food world. She wouldn’t make a special trip to a city to go to any of those places for Gastronomic, at any rate.
Instead of being irritated, Hugh looked amused. “What would you do if given carte blanche to create your own restaurant?”
She shook her head at him. “Nooope,” she drawled, “you’re not gonna get me that way.”
“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” he said, those laugh lines around his eyes already so endearing. “But that’s what those people in that folder were told to do, dream big and go for what they wanted. I don’t know what the difference is if it’s your idea in that folder, too.”
It sounded good, she had to admit. She’d love to think of a concept from start to finish and then see it all come together. But she was sleeping with Hugh, which meant that anything less than being an equal partner in a venture like that wouldn’t feel right.
But then the idea took hold, her mind unable to let it go. If she got a loan maybe she could invest as a full partner, which was different from being on Hugh’s payroll. But then what if it failed and she still had to support her dad? It was too risky.
“The difference is that I don’t want to be your employee,” she told him. “We’re involved.”
Hugh opened his mouth to speak, but then changed his mind.
“I hear
you,” he eventually said. “The way I see it, though, is that you’ve already told me you don’t want to date long-distance so once you leave, what’s the problem with throwing some ideas around with me? Apparently we won’t be involved at that point.”
Parker wasn’t an idiot. She heard the underlying frustration in his words, but she also didn’t like being backed into a corner. She’d given him reasonable explanations for not wanting to do either thing. No matter how great Hugh was, and he was extremely special to her, there was no way it was going to happen. His life and her life might as well be on two separate planets. Her parents had been together forever and her mom had still cut out for a simpler life. Was Hugh, a millionaire football star and entrepreneur who didn’t know what expensive was, really going to stick around for her complicated one? Odds were extremely doubtful.
One of the reasons they got along so well was because they had fun together. But that was only her part-time life. While she was on the road, she got to be the free and easy Parker who only had her great job and awesome food to worry about, but in Chicago it was different. Real life was there. And honestly, not to be trite, she kind of needed everything in Vegas to stay in Vegas.
“The problem is that I don’t want to and I actually don’t need a reason,” she told him, giving him a speaking glance, which had a corner of his mouth lifting in wry amusement.
“You’re killing me, Jones, but damned if I don’t like the way I’m going out.”
Parker gave the folder once last glance before meeting his eyes. “And just think, I still have over a week to go.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“SO YOU GOT into restaurants because of your dad?” Parker asked, her pink lips forming words that Hugh was not paying any attention to. They’d been doing this profile thing all week and while he liked having her around most days, he was getting antsy. Only a couple more days and she was gone from his life forever. He didn’t know what he was going to do about that when the time came, but the eventuality was driving him nuts.
“Why don’t you stay at my place until you leave?” he asked, ignoring her question. “You’re barely at the hotel anyway and it’ll be easier to finish the profile. Plus, I’ll even let you use one of my cars so you can check out restaurants during the day for work.”
Parker stared at him. “How is that an answer to my question?”
“I’ve answered the question before,” he complained, irritation rising that she was avoiding the question he posed that it had been damned difficult for him to ask. He didn’t even bring women to his house period, let alone ask them to basically live there. “A friend from the league invested in a bunch of restaurants and he was living easy. But my dad mentioned that I could capitalize on my Texas upbringing and start a barbecue place and so here I am.”
He pinned her with his gaze again, gnawing on the inside of his cheek because he was nervous. The last time he’d lived with someone it had ended in him walking in on her screwing somebody else.
“Answer my question,” he demanded, raising his eyebrow in a way that used to scare the shit out of rookies.
Parker hesitated and he braced himself for her refusal, but instead she nodded.
His head dropped forward in surprise, the breath he was holding rushing out. “Really?” he asked, his voice nearly squeaking like a teenager’s.
“Yeah,” she said, shrugging. “I need to do my own laundry. The hotel dyed my favorite white shirt pink. Also, I’m sick of wearing flip-flops in the shower.”
“Someone does my laundry, too,” he admitted. “But go to town on your own if it makes you feel better, and no flip-flops needed.”
He stood up from his desk, the chair making a clatter as it fell backward in his haste. “Let’s go get your stuff now, then. It’s almost eleven and you don’t want to pay for another whole day in the hotel.”
Looking at him from under her eyelashes, she shook her head as he hastily righted his chair. “Are you okay?”
“I’m just sick of being in the office,” he told her, which was true. Usually he went out for more meetings, but he’d pushed everything back so he could spend time with her, and he was getting really damn sick of these four generic white walls. “We can stop at Blue Smoke on the way home. Which place were you going to review tonight?”
“I’m reviewing a place for lunch,” she reminded him. “That’s why I’m here earlier than usual.”
“Good,” he said, clapping his hands together. “I’ll go, too.”
He’d tried to bully her into letting him come on more of her review trips, but she’d argued that she didn’t want the service to be influenced by his celebrity presence, blah blah, excuses excuses. But they only had a few days left and he was man enough to admit that he wanted to be with her.
“Let’s just get my stuff first, okay?” she suggested, probably sensing his agitation.
He nodded, ushering her out of his office with a hand on the ass he was coming to think of as his.
When he squeezed it, she turned on a dime, her hands on her hips. Just as she was about to lay him out, he took her mouth. And shit, it felt good to kiss her. Within seconds her lips were pliant against his and her arms were around his neck. He let her go, sighing as he touched his forehead to hers.
“We have to stop,” he grunted, the words more to stop himself from going any further than to explain it to her, “gotta check you out.”
He could feel her nod against him and then he pushed her out the office door, following closely behind her so he could smell the citrus scent that had a Pavlovian effect on his dick.
“Did I get you a little too hard?” he asked her once they were in his car and on their way to the Strip.
Shaking her head, she started typing something on her phone.
“What are you doing?” he prodded.
“Emailing my boss to tell her I’m checking out and to cut you a check for the amount we would have paid the hotel since you probably can’t take my work credit card.”
He swiped the phone straight from her hands and put it in his pocket where she couldn’t reach it. “No fucking way are you paying to stay at my house.”
“There’s no way I’m not turning in a bill for an entire week of lodging and explaining to my boss that I instead decided to shack up with a restaurant owner I met while technically on the clock,” she shot back, glaring at him.
“She’ll know that’s what you were doing anyway if you ask them to send the check to me!”
“I was planning on giving her your business address and saying that you offered me one of your empty rental units,” she explained.
He took in a deep breath through his nose to calm his shit down. Paying for her stay at his house made their time together transactional, as if it was just business, and it pissed him the fuck off. Every single other interaction he had with women since Amanda had been just that. But from the article, to the competition, to the profile, all of it had been personal with Parker.
But they didn’t have much time left and he wasn’t going to argue with her. He handed her phone back. “Fine,” he bit off, “have it your way.”
Within seconds she was typing away and his fists closed around the steering wheel, his knuckles whitening.
Pulling up to the hotel, he was pretty much back together. She was staying at his house; that was enough. With any luck, he could get her to spend entire days in bed with him that ended with neither of them able to walk.
Hugh helped her pack up her belongings, which didn’t take long, and then they were off to lunch at Marrakech, a Moroccan restaurant, for Parker’s review. He’d never actually been there before so he was looking forward to it. It ended up being an exercise in torture because it was basically watching Parker eat, which always made him hard as a rock. He picked at his meatball tagine even though it was delicious and watched as she took two to three bites of five different dishes.
She nodded. “Decent.”
They finished up lunch and returned to the car. “Do you want to go back to my office to write your review or back to my house?”
“I thought you wanted to swing by Blue Smoke,” she reminded him.
“Right,” he muttered, for some reason now annoyed with the prospect. It was already four o’clock so the dinner crowd would be on its way. A good time to check in to make sure everything was running smoothly. Not that it usually didn’t run smoothly, but it was his job and he normally enjoyed it. But now it just seemed like something to take away from his time with Parker. Which she, on the other hand, seemed to have no problem with.
He didn’t like this feeling at all. The unfamiliar desperation that was settling in even as he tried to bat it back. Pulling into the parking lot of his restaurant, he turned to her. “I’ve got a small office in the back you can use to write your review while I circulate,” he told her.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling at him in that way that suggested she was grateful to him for being thoughtful. It damn near ripped him apart every time. The fact that no one had done shit for either of them was the problem, and every little nugget of caring was lapped up like they were starving. He knew the feeling all too well, hated that she did, too, but liked that he made her happy. It made him feel less on an island.
He spent the next hour traveling from table to table chitchatting to people like he normally did, except he wasn’t into it as usual, his mind on getting back to Parker. When he finally made a full circuit through the whole dining room and checked in with his chef, back from sick leave and ready to go, he went to collect her.
“Finished?” she asked, smiling up at him. Today her hair was in a ponytail and she wore a pair of jean capris with holes in the knees and a black T-shirt with embroidered silver stars. The outfit was not at all suggestive, but the shirt was fitted in all the right places and the jeans embraced her ass like a hug, drawing attention to that tight waist. He stretched his fingers out in an effort not to grab hold of her.
Sin City Seduction Page 13
