The Chef's Cutie (The River Hill Series Book 5)

by Rebecca Norinne

  “Is Mia going to be okay? What can I do for her?” He slid the bacon over the drained pasta, then lashed the whole thing with the mixture of eggs and cream, reaching into his spice cabinet for nutmeg with his other hand. “Grab a plate, that cabinet over there.”

  “To be blunt, therapy.” Lizzie reached up and pulled down two plates, and he resolutely ignored the way it made her tank top stretch over those enticing curves.

  “You sound like my friend Noah. He dealt with some of his issues with therapy, and now he thinks everyone needs it.”

  She laughed. “He’s not wrong. Honestly, most people could use at least a little bit of therapy. It’s a healthy choice, you know?”

  “Do you have anyone you recommend? For Mia,” he added quickly.

  She shot him a shrewd glance. Of course she noticed the hasty qualification. “Yes. I’ll email you a list with my comments as soon as I’m at a computer, if that works.”

  He nodded. Everybody needed therapy, huh? Well, it might be true, but if he was going to see a therapist about his conflicted feelings about Isabel, and parenthood, and who knows what else, he’d find one on his own.

  He dished out two servings of pasta, twisting his wrist as he laid it on the plate so that the strands landed in a neat little nest. Just because he was cooking at home didn’t mean his food shouldn’t be pretty. Angelica laughed whenever he told her that in their sporadic cooking lessons, but he’d seen her serve up some lovely dishes at the dinner parties she liked to host at The Oakwell these days.

  “Here you go. Sit. Eat.” He pointed Lizzie firmly back toward the table.

  “I’m sitting, I’m eating!” she laughed as she fell into her seat. “Oh, my god, Max.” Her eyes nearly rolled backward in her head as she took her first bite. “This is incredible.”

  Smiling, he watched her shove the fork back into her mouth. This was why he loved to cook. It made people happy. And making Lizzie happy was … well, he wanted to do it again. And again, and again.

  Didn’t I tell you to stop? his conscience groused.

  Before he could find himself planning out all the dishes he wanted to cook for her, he changed the subject.

  “If it’s not too much trouble, I think I’ll take you up on that Wednesday babysitting,” he said.

  She grinned up at him, and sirens began blaring in his head as his brain fired off all of Lizzie’s greatest attributes . Great with Mia. Smart. Funny. Incredibly hot. This woman should be MINE.

  He ignored it all. Surely he could get through the next few months without jumping on Lizzie like a crazed, sex-starved animal. The custody declaration would be finalized shortly after Angelica’s wedding. He just had to get through—quickly, he tallied the days in his head—the holidays. Oh, god. He was so screwed.

  6

  Snap. “Hello, Earth to Elizabeth.”

  With a blink, Lizzie’s eyes focused in on Kate Zomer. Her boss was not happy.

  “I’m sorry; what?” Lost in her daydreams about a certain sexy Argentinian chef, she’d forgotten Kate was even standing there. In an effort to pretend she’d been working and not staring off into space wondering what Max’s lightly stubbled jaw would taste like if she licked it, she clacked her fingers against the keyboard of her laptop.

  The night she’d rushed to his house to console a distraught Mia, it had taken everything in her willpower not to launch herself out of her seat and lick off a drop of pasta sauce his napkin had missed while they’d eaten dinner together.

  “Did you hear a word I said?” Kate crossed her arms over her chest and tapped the toe of her shoe against the scuffed linoleum.

  Lizzie wracked her brain to try and piece the threads of the conversation together. The last thing she recalled hearing was something about mileage and expense reports.

  Aha! That was it.

  “Oh, I absolutely agree,” she answered, hoping to appease her persnickety boss. “You’re right; it’s no wonder caseworkers are quitting left and right. What’s next? We’ll have to buy our own computers?” Honestly, Lizzie wouldn’t be surprised if that was the next money-saving measure the county tried to impose on them. With the cost of gas nearing five dollars a gallon in the Bay Area due to the state-wide mandate that refineries produce cleaner gas with fewer emissions, her boss’s bosses in Sacramento were finding new and inventive ways to pinch pennies.

  Kate’s eyes narrowed as she bent forward to inspect Lizzie’s face more closely. “Are you on drugs, Elizabeth?”

  “What? No!” Lizzie pushed back from her desk, causing her chair to roll backward and crash into the bookshelf behind her with a thud. “Why would you think that?”

  “You’ve been distracted for weeks, and every time I’ve walked past your desk today, you’re staring off in a stupor. I know marijuana is legal in California, but let me remind you—”

  “I assure you, I am not on drugs,” Lizzie blurted before her boss could threaten to fire her for something she hadn’t done. Ever. “I’ve just …” She blew out a breath and ran a hand through her hair. “I’ve just had a lot on my mind is all,” she finished lamely.

  Kate let out an unsatisfied sounding harrumph. “If you say so.”

  She nodded. “I do say so. I’ve never done drugs.”

  At the next desk over, her co-worker Maggie chuckled under her breath and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “You really don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “What was that, Margaret?” Kate barked as she turned to face her other employee.

  Maggie glanced up from her computer, her eyes wide with feigned ignorance. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “I heard you mumble something.” Kate’s accusatory glare bounced between Maggie and Lizzie, her dark burgundy lips flattened into a scowl and her bushy eyebrows pinched into a frown.

  Lizzie generally tried not to think unkindly about other women, but with her tight perm and exaggerated makeup, Kate Zomer could double as a character in a movie or TV show set in the eighties. The outdated clothes she wore simply added to the overall effect. Supposedly, she was only forty-five, but she looked and acted like a woman approaching her sixties. Her sartorial choices baffled Lizzie. And her management style left a lot to be desired. Unwieldy mileage reports weren’t the only thing that had caused several of her coworkers to leave.

  “Sorry,” Maggie said with a lift of her shoulders as her gaze dropped back down to her computer. “Wasn’t me.”

  Kate stared at Maggie for a few protracted seconds before eventually turning her attention back to Lizzie, ruby-clawed finger pointed at her for emphasis. “I expect to have those reports on my desk by tomorrow morning.”

  Lizzie gulped. What reports? Her eyes quickly darted to her computer to scan her inbox for an email she might have missed. Unfortunately, there was nothing there about a report she was supposed to be working on. She swallowed again. Shit. There really was no excuse for not knowing what Kate was talking about. There was a man-sized hole in her memory, and the blame fell squarely on her inappropriate fascination with Max Vergaras.

  Actually, this thing with him had passed the ‘fascination’ phase several weeks ago, morphing into a full-blown obsession. One she really needed to nip in the bud.

  Except … that wasn’t necessarily easy, since she saw him every Wednesday when she babysat Mia. Which you volunteered to do, her conscience reminded her helpfully. And sure, her lustful thoughts probably weren’t helped by the way her pulse spiked when he walked in the door late at night and greeted her in a low, gravelly whisper lest he wake his young ward sleeping upstairs.

  And then there were the near-daily text messages to one another. Lizzie was ashamed to admit it, but they’d turned a little flirty lately. Although, now that she thought about it, Max was a chef. Maybe yesterday he really had been talking about an actual sausage and not his—NO, she thought, pushing that dirty image aside. They’d never stepped over the lines of impropriety, and they never could.

  But that didn’t mean she hadn
’t fantasized about it … oh, just about a million and one times. Especially at night. When she was naked.

  And now she was craving sausage for dinner.

  “Elizabeth?” Kate pressed, breaking into her wayward thoughts.

  Again.

  “Um, yes. The report …” she trailed off, wondering if she should just admit that she had no earthly idea what her boss was talking about.

  “—I’m just double checking the numbers now,” Maggie interjected with a wink in Lizzie’s direction. “We’ll have it on your desk by noon tomorrow.”

  “I said I need it in the morning,” Kate snapped.

  Maggie slid her chair back from her desk and crossed her arms over her chest as she lifted her right eyebrow high. “And I said you’d have it by lunch time. You can’t dump something like this on us at the end of the day and expect to have it back by the morning. Especially when you’ve known about this meeting for three weeks.”

  Ah, that report. She, Maggie, and another caseworker named Lorenzo had been piloting a new program for at-risk teens, and were due to share their findings with the department brass on Monday. Or rather, Kate was. They’d done all the work, but now their boss was going to get the credit for it.

  Lizzie breathed out a frustrated sigh as she double-clicked on a folder on her desktop. Oh well, she thought, as the spreadsheet filled her screen. No use dwelling on it. Unless she was willing to peruse the job listings Maggie forwarded her every Monday, this was just how it was going to be, she reminded herself as she pulled all the information together for Maggie and uploaded it to their shared drive. She rubbed her temples and started counting down the minutes until she could leave.

  Lizzie looked up from the book she was reading as the front door crept slowly open and Max made his way inside the house.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he whispered, toeing off his shoes and hanging his jacket next to hers on the hooks lining the wall in his foyer. “One of the steam wells sprung a leak and it took me forever to find it. Couldn’t get a rep from the company out during a weeknight dinner rush either, so I had to learn some emergency plumbing. Thank god for YouTube.” He rolled his eyes.

  Her gaze flicked to the wooden clock hanging over the fireplace to check the time, and then she set her book to the side and stretched her arms into the air, her back popping with relief. “No worries, I’ve just been catching up on some reading. Mia’s been asleep for a couple of hours.” She pushed to her feet, the quick upward motion causing a stab of pain directly in the center of her forehead. She screwed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose in an effort to quell the nausea that accompanied her worsening headache.

  When the pounding abated, she opened her eyes to find Max standing directly in front of her, worry written on his face. “Are you okay?” He reached out to cup her forearm in his large, warm palm.

  She nodded, the motion making her slightly dizzy. “Yeah, just a migraine I’ve been fighting since this afternoon.”

  He led her back to the sofa and gently eased her down onto its cushions. “You should have said something when you picked Mia up. I could have found someone else to watch her if you’re not feeling well.” She cast him a dubious look. “Okay, you’re right. I couldn't have. But one night at the restaurant isn’t going to kill her. We’ve done it before.”

  “It’s eleven o’clock, Max. Her bedtime is eight, and she needs her sleep. She has that big geography test tomorrow.”

  “Shit. I could have sworn that was on Friday.” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair, causing the thick, wavy strands to stick up at odd angles. This close, she could see his hair was generally in a shambles. He must have been doing that all night. “I thought I was getting better at keeping her schedule straight.”

  Without conscious thought, she set her hand on his knee and squeezed. “It’s okay. I quizzed her before she took her shower and she’s going to rock it. That kid knows her state capitols better than most adults.”

  Max’s eyes darted down to where Lizzie’s hand rested, and then back up, his pupils dilated. “You’re amazing, you know that?”

  A comforting warmth settled over her, and with it, her headache lessened. It’d been so long since a man had looked at her that way that she’d almost forgotten what it felt like. She’d been so careful around Max these past few weeks, but with her defenses low from the tough day at work and her ensuing headache, she allowed herself a quiet moment to bask in his overt appreciation.

  “Thank you,” she said, sliding her hand from his knee and linking her fingers in her lap. “But Mia’s the amazing one. And I know you sometimes question yourself, but she’s lucky to have you. She’s really thriving.”

  His eyes locked onto hers for several long seconds. In the distance, Lizzie could hear the ticking of the clock, but her attention was fixed on the handsome man sitting next to her, the heat of his body mingling with her own. She knew she should look away—move away—but his gaze was hypnotic, his proximity magnetic. Those dark amber irises held her firmly in his thrall as he murmured, “And who takes care of you?”

  At his insinuation, her heart clanged against her breastbone, a runaway train heading straight for disaster. One she needed to stave off if she knew what was good for them. “Max …” she whispered, even as her body swayed toward him. “We can’t.”

  His tongue darted out to lick a quick path over his lush bottom lip. “I know,” he said. “Trust me; I know. But you feel it too, right? I’m not just imagining this.”

  She shook her head slowly back and forth as his palm found her waist, the heat of his touch nearly burning her to ash. “You’re not imagining it. I feel it too. So, so much.” Her voice broke on that last word. It had been two years since she’d been touched by a man, and her body craved the connection like it craved its next breath. His fingers inching their way up her spine were everything she needed … and everything she couldn’t have. Abruptly, she scooted out of his grasp. “If we’d met under different circumstances …”

  He moved back then too, clearing his throat as he went. “Right. Of course. What was I thinking?” His face dropped forward and he stared at the rug at his feet, visibly guilty.

  Lizzie knew how hard he’d taken Isabel’s death, and all the ways he still struggled with stepping into the role of parent for Mia. For weeks, she’d watched him devote everything he had to raising his sweet niece, and he took every tiny setback personally. More than once, in their quiet conversations after Mia had gone to bed, he’d confessed to feeling like a complete and utter failure—a notion she’d been quick to try and dispel. But the defeated look on his face right now was the same one she’d seen when he’d told her he worried he was doing more harm than good.

  And so, despite the warning bells sounding in her head, she stood and moved closer, setting her hand on his shoulder. His head sprung up, his eyes searching hers, begging for … something she couldn’t name. Or rather, something she could name, but knew it was wiser not to.

  “You were thinking … ” she trailed off. She knew what she wanted to say, but knew just as well these feelings had her walking a professional tightrope with no safety net below her. If she messed up and did something that could jeopardize her career—or worse, the stability this small family unit had managed to carve out for themselves in the face of tragedy—she’d never forgive herself.

  So rather than giving voice to the words in her heart, she let her unfinished sentence lie. Instead, she said, “You’re doing a great job with Mia. Truly. It’s late, and we just got carried away. It happens.” It didn’t—not ever—but it felt like the right thing to say in the moment, a way to let him off the hook for his guilt.

  For several long seconds he gazed up at her, his face flashing through a bevy of emotions: confusion, understanding, frustration, and then acceptance. “I know what you’re doing, Lizzie.”

  “You do?” She swallowed deeply. Hell, she barely knew what she was doing.

  “I do. And I appreciate it.” He leaned back
against the cushions, his body suddenly sapped of energy as his palms rested on either side of his thighs.

  Lizzie stared down at him, giving herself a torturous minute to imagine taking a step forward, placing her knees on the couch, and then straddling his strong, tired body. A quick moment to imagine putting her palms to his cheek and kissing away all his doubt and worry. A brief second to imagine him wrapping his arms around her waist and taking control of the kiss, laying her out on the couch and taking control of … everything.

  But that was all it could be between them. Imaginary. So instead she took a step backward, and then another, and another until she was in the foyer reaching for her coat and purse. “Goodnight, Max,” she said as she pulled open the door and walked out into the chilly November night.

  “Goodbye,” she whispered again as she pulled her car down the long drive and into the darkness of wine country at midnight.

  7

  Lizzie wasn’t answering his texts. Max had held off a few days, trying to give them both some space. But he couldn’t resist for long, so he’d texted her about Mia’s latest homework project. Unfortunately, she hadn’t answered.

  Nor had she responded to the one about his latest menu addition—a kale salad with a pear vinaigrette. She’d once mentioned pears were her favorite fruit. And he was in way over his head if he was adding all her favorites to his menu, but he’d texted her about it anyway.

  He’d also called her office line during the day, but her voice mail message had informed him she was out of the office, which didn’t surprise him. With the number of home visits she did for her clients, she was out more often than she was in. Her cell went straight to voicemail, too. He left a couple of casual messages, as though he were just checking in with her about Mia, all the while trying to ignore the tension ratcheting through his body.

  Had he really screwed things up that badly? She wanted him as much as he wanted her; she’d as much as said so. But they both knew they couldn’t act on it—not in the position they were in.