by Kait Nolan
“What’s wrong?”
“You’re still talking.”
“Something upset you.”
She huffed out a breath. “What does that matter?”
“Call me old-fashioned, but when I take you to bed, I want your mind on me.”
“That’s the challenge and the point of being a distraction, Farmer Boy.” She shot for a flirtatious grin and missed by a mile.
Logan searched her face, skimming a thumb across her cheek. “If I’m supposed to distract you, it’d help if I knew what I was distracting you from.”
Her expression turned mulish, and he expected her to shove out of his grip and storm out. But her need, whatever it was, evidently outweighed her temper.
“I lost my star.”
He frowned, not understanding. Was this some piece of jewelry with sentimental attachment?
At his lack of comprehension, she huffed. “My Michelin star for Olympus.”
He didn’t know much about them other than it was a big freaking deal. “They can take them back?”
“Yes, they can.” She did pull away then, stalking past him toward the kitchen.
Logan trailed after her. “Is this what you meant when you said your career had imploded?”
“Oh, no, this is the icing on the shit sundae.” Her words were punctuated by the slam of cabinet doors.
She didn’t look at him, instead opening every cabinet and drawer, pulling things out from the fridge and pantry as she spilled out the whole, awful story. Logan said nothing. He had no idea what she was making, but he understood she needed to move, needed to cook in order to get through this. She was taking control in the only way she could.
“I was so fucking driven, Logan. I wanted to be successful in my field to prove something. To myself. To everybody where I came from. I needed to prove that I could be somebody. I was so hungry for that, and it drove me through the ranks fast. There was shit about all that I didn’t like, but the success…the success was worth enduring it. And once I had that—once I had my star and my James Beard award, I could’ve walked away. I did what I set out to do. I was something, someone, damn it.” The thunk of the knife as she chopped an onion echoed like machine-gun fire through the room.
He wanted to tell her that she was someone. That she always had been. But she wouldn’t believe it. This was how she’d defined herself for years.
“You got both those things, but you stayed in. Why?”
“Because of the money. Not that it’s massive compared to other fields, but it meant I could better provide for my father. I could finally get him out of the state facility he’d been in for years, into somewhere better, nicer. I was going to buy out the controlling shares of Olympus after that. But long-term care facilities are expensive. So expensive. So my five-year plan turned into more like fifteen. And it started to wear on me.”
He couldn’t even begin to imagine having to carry that burden from so young an age. Did she have any idea how strong she was to have lasted as long as she had? Anyone else would have long ago crumbled under the weight of it.
Athena paused to pound out some chicken breasts between two pieces of waxed paper with a cast iron skillet. “The fact is, I’ve been skating the edge of serious burnout for more than a year. I was at the edge, then Mom died, and I just shut down.”
“I’d think that’s a major part of the grief process. You lost a parent. That’s hard under the best of circumstances. And you weren’t expecting it. That made it worse. It takes time to get over that.”
“My field is competitive. There is no time for long recoveries. I was relying on my old recipes, unable to create anything new. Wondering if I was ever going to be able to do it again.”
Losing control of the one area she’d built her life and career around would’ve cut her off at the knees.
“What do you call what you’re doing right now?”
She glanced down at the chicken and vegetables and shrugged. “Therapy? Walking down memory lane? I don’t know.”
“You literally walked into my kitchen with zero idea of what I had to work with and have thrown together something that smells pretty fantastic in less time than other people would stare into the freezer wondering what’s for dinner.”
“It’s easy to work with farm-fresh ingredients.”
That she’d minimize her abilities irritated him. “This isn’t because of ingredients, Athena. You’re amazingly talented. And this is…I don’t know…the epitome of the whole farm-to-table movement.”
“Farm to table was just an economic reality for me growing up. We lived on what Dad could grow, so I was canning, drying, smoking, freezing, whatever from the time I was knee-high. It was practical, and I was fortunate enough to find it fun. But it’s not haute cuisine, not what I was trained to do. This is just…compulsion.”
It smelled a hell of a lot better than compulsion to him, and he didn’t really understand the difference between haute cuisine and farm-to-table cooking. He’d eaten at farm-to-table restaurants before, had contracts with a few of them. It was pretty high-end stuff compared to the standard bar and grill. Did she draw a line between the two because anything that close to the farm reminded her of the life that was ripped away?
Before he could ask, she picked up the thread of her story. “Anyway, when I started struggling creatively, Mari—that’s my backstabbing sous chef—helped me fill in the gaps, and I skated by. Part of me wonders if she was setting me up, even then.” She drizzled olive oil in the cast iron skillet. “Doesn’t matter. It’s over and done with now. And the truth of the matter is, no matter how much I hate how things went down, there’s relief in finally being free of the suffocating weight of expectation and the life I’ve had in Chicago.”
Athena braced her hands against the counter and, for the first time since she’d started, lifted her eyes to his. “I haven’t been able to admit that. Because it’s admitting that, in the end, I didn’t actually want the dream I thought I wanted, the dream I worked so damned hard to achieve. And that feels like failure.”
She’d admitted it to him. And maybe this was really why she’d come here tonight. Not because of the chemistry, not because she really needed distraction, but because she needed the catharsis of sharing this vulnerability with someone safe, someone who wouldn’t judge her, someone who wasn’t part of the history that had made her who she was.
Logan wanted to be that safe space for her. It was why he’d so readily agreed to friendship. He knew building that foundation first was what she needed. But he hadn’t anticipated what earning her trust would mean to him. Other than seeing his farm come to fruition, nothing he’d worked for since he left grad school had felt as gratifying.
Recognizing her trust for the gift it was, he wanted to give her something back, to soothe this hurt however he could. “It’s not failure if the dream changes. You think I always wanted to be a farmer?”
She laid the chicken breasts into the spitting, popping oil. “To be honest, I hadn’t given it a lot of thought. Which makes me a self-centered bitch.”
“No it doesn’t. We haven’t had that kind of relationship where we talk about much of the personal.” But he hoped, with this conversation, that was changing.
“What did you want to be?”
“Well, there’s what I wanted to be and what my parents expected me to be. My dad is an attorney. My grandfather was a judge. I was expected to go into the law. Maybe politics.”
Athena’s brows arched. “You, a politician?”
“It’d be a miserable existence, that’s for damned sure. I was pre-law. Double majored in psych and political science. And when it came time to apply to law school, I applied to grad school instead.”
“In what?”
He hesitated, but there was no hiding the truth. “Psychology.”
Her shoulders went stiff.
Logan pretended not to notice. “My parents were pissed. But they got over it. I’d have an advanced degree, after all. They had visions of me g
oing on to get my PhD, being Dr. Logan Maxwell. For a little while, I bought into that, but by the time I got through the coursework and into my master’s thesis, I knew that wasn’t going to make me happy either. So I bailed the last year of my master’s program and didn’t graduate. Instead, I bought this place.”
His answer seemed to mollify her. She flipped the chicken and added the vegetables she’d sautéed back to the pan before sliding the whole thing into the oven and setting a timer. “How did you afford it on a grad student’s income?”
“I had a trust fund from my mother’s parents. I poured every last cent of it into this place, which my parents considered just the latest in a long line of mistakes.” He skirted around the island to join her by the stove. “You talk about wanting to prove yourself. I get that. We’ve all got something to prove. I’ve got to prove I can make this farm a success, to show my parents that bailing in the last year of grad school wasn’t a mistake, that walking away from the life they wanted for me wasn’t a mistake.”
“Does it make you happy?” It wasn’t a question he’d expected from her.
“Yeah. Every backbreaking minute of it.”
“Then it wasn’t a mistake.” Her instant acceptance of his choice was balm to a wound he hadn’t let himself think about.
He curved a hand around her waist and pulled her closer. “Did Olympus make you happy?”
“Not for a long time.”
“Then no matter how things concluded, walking away was the right choice. You’ll figure out the next step.”
“I wish I felt more confident about that. I wish Mom were still alive. Nobody ever understood how to deal with me better than Joan.” She laid a hand against his chest and frowned. “Although, you seem to be managing better than anybody else, just now. I don’t quite know what to do with that.”
“Enjoy it?” he suggested.
Her lips curved a little. “That was why I came over here, after all.”
This time he met her halfway when she lifted to him. Instead of the temper and grief, he tasted something softer in her kiss. An unexpected vulnerability that made him want to give her tenderness instead of heat. She wasn’t a woman used to softness, wasn’t someone who sought it out. He understood she didn’t trust it. But she needed it, whether she knew it or not.
So he took his sweet time, lingering over her lips, savoring the flavor of her as she opened to him, let him go deeper. Layer by layer, he coaxed his way past her defenses, until she wrapped around him, warm and pliant, the tension she’d brought lost beneath sensation. This was a different kind of release, one he hoped was more profound and lasting than the fast, mindless one she’d come for. It was another level of trust, one that rocked him to his core and made him realize that nothing with this woman could be simple or casual after this. Not for him. And he didn’t want it to be.
At the sound of the oven timer, he eased back. “Do you need to get that?”
She reached out without looking and swatted at the panel until the buzzing shut up. The dazed look in her eyes made him want to grin.
“You’re really good at that.”
“You did ask for distraction.”
“So I did.” On a sigh, she stepped back from him, grabbing a potholder to remove the skillet from the oven. “You didn’t ask for dinner.”
He hadn’t asked for any of this, and still he wanted. But not yet. He’d meant what he said about when he took her to his bed. She wasn’t ready for that yet.
“No, but a smart man knows better than to turn it down. What are we having?”
“Code Dash and Stash!” Ari sailed into the kitchen with all the energy of one of Logan’s border collies.
Athena glanced up from the notepad of recipe scraps she’d been working on for the past twenty minutes. “A code what?”
“Code Dash and Stash. We got a call that our couple from Oregon caught an earlier flight. They’re going to be here within the hour.”
“Don’t we have a policy of no check-ins before three?”
“Yeah but we try to work with folks when we can. Dad went over to the spa to see if there’s room to book them for some treatments or something to buy more time, but we need to check Redwood to see if we can’t go ahead and get it turned. C’mon. We can divide and conquer.”
Spurred by the girl’s sense of urgency, Athena pushed to her feet and followed her upstairs to the designated guest room. “What are you even doing home this early?”
“Half day at school. I propose we finish up with this, then you teach me to make something amazing as a snack, and we watch some Great British Bake Off.”
“Sounds like you’ve mapped out the whole afternoon.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve got plans. Cooking lessons. Some GBBO to soften you up, put you in a good mood. Then I’m totally going to quiz you about Logan.”
Athena shot her niece the side eye. “Doesn’t it defeat the purpose if you warn me you’re going to quiz me about Logan?”
“Nah. I figure it gives you time to resign yourself.”
Ari shoved open the door to Redwood. The bed had already been stripped, and the scent of lemon verbena indicated the bathroom had already been cleaned, so they just needed to reassemble.
“There’s nothing to resign myself to. There’s nothing going on with me and Logan.”
Ari pivoted and pursed her lips, one brow arched. “Please.”
Her absolute certainty had a snort of laughter bubbling up in Athena’s chest. “You keep thinking that cupcake. I’m gonna get fresh linens.”
The girl had a soft, gooshy, romantic heart. It was sweet, really. When you weren’t the target of her interrogations. But Athena could hardly answer questions when she didn’t know what was going on with him herself. Despite her intentions the other night, she hadn’t slept with him. She’d expected a few hours of naked distraction, and she’d gotten conversation instead. But that kiss…
She clutched the stack of sheets to her chest as she remembered the feel of his mouth on hers. It hadn’t been all the tongues and teeth and heat she’d expected. That she’d been prepared for. It was what she’d thought she wanted. His kiss had been slow and patient, as if he had all the time in the world to just savor the taste of her. It had been unexpected and oddly devastating, leaving her more off-balance than she’d ever been with him.
They’d ended up sharing the meal she’d compulsively made and talking for hours. She felt better for it. More settled than she had since this whole toxic mess began. This was more than the shallow flirtation they’d shared last summer. This was the beginnings of legitimate friendship. Even as she’d been trying to wrap her brain around that, he’d nudged her out the door toward home, somehow doing it without making her feel rejected, despite the lack of a follow-up kiss.
In the days since, she’d considered that, like his dogs, he was herding her where he wanted her, which was…where? Toward something more than friends or naked distraction. Athena didn’t know how she felt about that. She wanted to be pissed off about it. That was her default reaction to anything she didn’t understand. But Logan Maxwell intrigued her. And if his intention had been to make sure she obsessed about that kiss, well…mission accomplished.
“Got the sheets.”
“Bathroom’s set to rights, and I got all the samples put out,” Ari announced.
Together, they stretched the fitted sheet across the mattress.
Athena wished her life wasn’t in such chaos right now. Or that Logan hadn’t changed things between them. If he’d still just been her wedding hookup, she could’ve just bounced into his bed for some stress relief. No harm, no foul. But that wasn’t what he wanted. In truth, she wasn’t sure it was what she wanted either. And that was unexpected. She hadn’t come home with any intention of starting anything. Her sole purpose had been to lick her wounds and make a plan for what came next. But right now, the only certainty was that she wanted to spend more time with him.
Ari smirked. “You’re thinking about him.”
&
nbsp; “I’m thinking about asparagus.”
The girl made a disgusted face. “Asparagus?”
“It’s in season right now, and I’ve been pondering some new ways to fix it.” Which wasn’t a lie. That’s what she’d been working on downstairs.
“If you’re making that face over a vegetable, you’ve got issues, woman.”
Athena laughed. “Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it, kid.”
They finished up the room and headed downstairs. Just in time, it seemed. She could hear Kennedy and Flynn greeting new guests as she descended.
“—Misfit Inn. We’re so pleased you’re here!”
“Can I just take your bag there?”
Athena’s mind had already turned back to her recipes, when she spotted a familiar blond head in the foyer. “Sean?”
From where he stood by the open front door, Sean Bracelyn grinned, his teeth flashing white against the cinnamon scruff covering his cheeks. “How’s my favorite goddess of the kitchen?”
Under other circumstances, she’d have been racing down the stairs and throwing herself at her old classmate for a massive hug. But that was Before. By now he was bound to know about her disgrace. Was there anybody in the cooking community who hadn’t heard about it?
Apparently not content to wait for a reply, Sean strode over and picked her straight off her feet for a huge hug. “Damn, it’s good to see you. It’s been, what? Two years?”
Athena’s bruised heart stumbled at his enthusiasm. Disgrace or no, Sean wasn’t going to hold it against her. She mustered up a return embrace, pitifully happy to see a friend. “At least.”
Arm slung comfortably around her shoulders, he turned back to the woman he’d come in with. She could’ve been a runway model, with perfect skin and all that glossy brown hair. A fitting match for Sean’s golden boy looks.
Taking in Sean’s besotted expression as he looked at her, Athena could only smirk. “This must be the mermaid.”
He beamed and crossed over to kiss the woman’s hand. “Damned straight.”
The woman flashed a bemused smile. “You told her about that?”
