Fearless Love

by Meg Benjamin

  Which wouldn’t start. She sat staring at the dashboard for a few minutes, willing the engine to turn over and knowing that it wouldn’t. The gas gauge sat resolutely on E, reminding her that she hadn’t fulfilled her promise to herself to stop at the convenience store and get ten bucks worth of gas on her way back to work in the evening.

  Finally she climbed out, cursing quietly but thoroughly as she stomped down the drive to the road. It wasn’t a long walk to the farm. On the other hand, she’d been on her feet more or less constantly since early morning and she wasn’t sure she was up to even a short walk at the moment.

  “It doesn’t matter what you’re up to,” she muttered. “The only way you’re getting home is on foot.”

  The wind rustled through the spreading pecan trees alongside the road. Moonlight speared fitfully through the shadows of the leaves. Somewhere in one of the farm yards set back from the road a dog barked as she walked by.

  MG shivered, then told herself not to be silly. It was a country road without much traffic. She was undoubtedly a lot safer here than she would have been strolling down a sidewalk in Nashville at this time of night.

  Headlights appeared at the crest of a hill in front of her and she slowed down. Best to be cautious since the driver probably wouldn’t be able to see her too clearly—there were no street lights this far out in the country. Just as she stepped farther back onto the shoulder, she heard footsteps on the gravel behind her.

  She whirled, balling her hands in fists—as if she could actually do any damage to a mugger.

  “MG?” Somebody called softly.

  She stood still, trying to peer through the darkness. “Joe?”

  “Right.” He stepped closer so that she could see the outline of his body. Then the car’s headlights threw his figure into relief against the darkness. He wore a white T-shirt with his black chef’s pants, his shaved head gleaming.

  “I saw you going down the drive. Did you walk to work today?”

  She shook her head, then realized he probably couldn’t see her in the darkness. “I drove, but my car’s out of gas. It’s not that far to walk home.” Although it already felt like she’d been walking for ten miles or so.

  “You should have told me. I’d have given you a ride home. Or a ride to the gas station. Do you want to do that now?”

  “Not really.” She sighed. “I’m almost home and I’m sort of beat. I’ll walk over to the inn tomorrow morning, then get a ride to the gas station when I finish in the kitchen.”

  The moon broke through the shadows again and she saw his face. He didn’t look happy. “I’ll walk with you then.”

  She thought about refusing politely. But the idea of company on the dark road was suddenly very appealing. “Okay.”

  She turned and started back toward the farm. After a moment, he joined her, stepping between her and the road as if he were protecting her from oncoming traffic. Given that he was a lot more noticeable than she was, that seemed like a very good idea. She gave him plenty of space.

  “So how did the reception go?” he asked.

  “Fine, I guess. I mean, I’ve never done one before so I’m not exactly in a position to judge, but nobody yelled at anybody so I guess it was okay.”

  “Yelling?” She heard the amusement in his voice. “Someone yelling in my kitchen? We never yell. We’re a very even-tempered bunch.”

  She chuckled until she remembered that she’d been yelling herself yesterday. She’d spent most of her time today avoiding Fishhead, who moved around the kitchen with such a self-satisfied smirk that she wanted to smack him. Fortunately, she had enough on her task list to keep her too busy to look at him.

  A small but significant silence had developed as she thought about Fishhead and Fairley, her twin nemeses.

  “You ready to tell me what happened the other day?” Joe said quietly.

  She blew out a breath. “Honestly, I’d rather not. I don’t want to look like somebody who runs to the boss every time something happens. Could we just let it go?”

  “We could.” He took her hand briefly, guiding her around a large chunk of limestone at the side of the road. “On the other hand, I need to know what’s going on in my kitchen. I can’t be in there all the time. It bugs me when something happens and I don’t know the details.”

  “Why don’t you ask your sous chef?” She did her best to keep any trace of sarcasm out of her voice. “I thought he was supposed to be your rep in the kitchen when you aren’t there.”

  “He is. And I already asked him. He gave me his version.”

  MG’s shoulders tightened. Chances were good Fairley’s version wasn’t going to have much good to say about her. “What did he tell you?”

  “He said you and Dietz had a problem. I’m trying to find out what that problem was.”

  She was on the verge of telling him. He sounded so reasonable—a man who wanted to know what was wrong so that he could do something about it.

  And she could already hear what Darcy would say if she gave in. You went to the chef? What’s the matter? You couldn’t stand up to the asshole on your own?

  “I can’t,” she said softly. “I just can’t tell you. I’m sorry.”

  He was silent for a moment, then he sighed. “Okay. It was worth a shot. So what are you doing down here anyway?”

  “Doing?” She frowned at him in the darkness. “You mean besides working for you and feeding the chickens?”

  “No, I mean how did you happen to end up in Konigsburg, Texas, living on a chicken farm?”

  Joe swore he could feel her stiffening from three feet away. He’d known a lot of people who didn’t like talking about their backgrounds, and at least some of them were screwed up beyond all redemption. MG Carmody gave no evidence of being any more or less neurotic than the next person. Of course, the next person at the moment happened to be him, and he wasn’t exactly a model of mental health himself.

  Which made her great reluctance to talk about herself particularly intriguing. “Did I say something wrong?”

  She blew out a breath. “No. It’s just not very interesting. I came down here because my grandpa got sick and needed someone to take care of him.”

  “Where were you before that?”

  “Tennessee.”

  “Doing what?”

  Long pause. “Writing.”

  Writing. Well that covered a lot of ground. “Writing about what?”

  “Oh, you know. Love, death, the usual. There’s my driveway.” She picked up her pace slightly.

  Joe matched it. “So you wrote fiction? Novels? Or maybe journalism. I guess you could say that deals with love and death too.”

  “No. I just… I wrote, you know? So where were you before you came to Konigsburg?” She sounded a little desperate.

  “Oh here and there,” he said easily. “I was in New York, then New Orleans for a while. Then I moved to Texas, worked in Austin and Dallas, got the job with Resorts Consolidated.” He felt a little guilty all of a sudden. There were parts of his life he didn’t like talking about either. Who was he to expect her to give him all the details? “Did you grow up around here?”

  She seemed to relax slightly. “No, my mom lived in New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. I grew up there, but I came here to visit every summer. I helped my grandpa with his chickens.”

  “Do your parents still live there?”

  “My mom does. My dad took off when I was little. I don’t know where he is now.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well, I never really knew him. My mom took her maiden name back, and I did too—I’m a Carmody more than anything else. My mom’s a tough broad. She brought me up on her own. I never felt like we were missing much.”

  “I’m sorry about that too.” He slowed down slightly, hoping she would too.

  She stopped, looking back at him. “So where are you from?”

  He let himself grin. The yard light near the chicken house made it easier to see her face at least. “Aw, darlin�
�, can’t you tell?” he drawled, letting his accent deepen. “Baton Rouge.”

  She grinned back. “I guess it is sort of obvious, now that you mention it. Did you grow up there?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Lived there until I went off to learn how to cook. Only it turned out my mama’d already showed me how to do most of that.”

  “Big family?”

  He shrugged. “Big enough. I’ve got five brothers and sisters and a shitload of cousins. All of us lived in the same neighborhood.”

  “So what did you learn in culinary school?” She turned back toward the front porch, but at least she was walking more slowly now.

  “How to cook for a restaurant, which is sort of different from how to cook. Also how to survive in a restaurant, which is more important.” He almost hadn’t done that, of course, but he’d managed to pull it together in the end.

  She turned to face him at the foot of her front steps. “Do you like it here?”

  He paused. He wasn’t sure anyone had ever asked him that before. “Yeah. Overall, I like it a lot. How about you?”

  “I haven’t been here long enough to have an opinion.” She paused. “Except that’s not exactly true because I lived here at Grandpa’s every summer for seven or eight years.”

  “Not the same, though, is it,” he said slowly.

  “No, it’s not exactly.” She sat down on her top step, staring up at him. “But in a weird way, it is. I mean, my grandpa was sort of an old style farmer. He’d go to town maybe once a week, if that, just to go to the HEB supermarket. He never went to a restaurant or a movie. He didn’t drink. He had a television set from the Stone Age. I think he even felt bad about buying food at HEB. He thought he should be able to grow everything he needed himself.”

  “What about your grandma?”

  She shook her head. “She died a few years ago. Cancer.”

  “No other relatives around?”

  She shrugged. “Well, there’s Grandpa’s sister, my Great-Aunt Nedda. She’s into real estate. But she and Grandpa weren’t close. We hardly ever saw her.”

  He sat down beside her on the step. “So why are things not that different?”

  She sighed. “Because I still don’t go into town that often. Hell, I don’t even take the time to put gas in my car. Between the chickens and the Rose, I’m a real drone.”

  He leaned back, resting his elbows on the step behind him. “Chef’s hours are a bitch. It’s a wonder any of us have any home life at all.”

  “You don’t get out either?” She raised a faintly disbelieving eyebrow.

  “I don’t get out as much as I used to, but I make it into town occasionally.” Actually living in the country had been a safety measure for him. It wasn’t as easy to wander out to another restaurant or bar for a drink or five to let the adrenaline wear off. “We got Sunday and Monday off, you know.”

  She nodded slowly. “I know. I’m looking forward to it.”

  He watched her for another moment, her face pale in the moonlight. She seemed to be deliberately looking away from him. He turned and looked up at the star-filled sky. “Ever been to the Faro Tavern in town?”

  She shook her head, still not looking at him. “As I recall, that was one of the places my grandpa wouldn’t even walk by. He didn’t exactly call it a den of iniquity, but I think that’s because iniquity wasn’t part of his vocabulary.”

  “It’s changed a lot since then.” He turned to watch her again. “New management a while ago. Guy named Tom Ames. His wife runs a first-class coffee place next door.”

  Her lips edged up into a faint smile. “That is a change. The old Faro wouldn’t have had any coffee on the premises.”

  “Want to go there for dinner Sunday night?”

  She licked her lips, still not looking at him. “Would that cause any…problems in the kitchen? I mean, I don’t want Darcy…or anybody…to think…” Her voice died away. He had a feeling if they’d been in daylight her face would have been bright pink.

  Joe knew he shouldn’t grin, but he couldn’t help it. “Darlin’, nobody in the kitchen will care. Hell, nobody in the kitchen will even know, unless you tell them. I’m sure as hell not going to bring it up. And I’ve never seen any of them in the Faro.” Now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen any of them in town period. He found himself wondering just where Leo and Jorge were doing their drinking these days.

  She raised an eyebrow, turning toward him for the first time. “Because it’s not supposed to be mentioned?”

  “Because I don’t talk about my private life in the kitchen. I’m not one of those chefs who takes everybody out drinking after we finish service so he can talk about his exploits.”

  Once upon a time, of course, he’d done just that. Once upon a time he’d actually been famous for doing just that. But then the drinking had morphed into other things, cocaine chiefly. And it had started screwing with his life in major ways. And then it had started screwing with his cooking.

  And then he’d been out of a job and scrambling.

  Now he gave MG his most earnest look. Look at me. Believe me. It’ll be okay.

  “So we go to the Faro and drink?”

  He grinned again—at least he’d gotten her to move this far. “No, we go to the Faro and eat. And maybe dance, if they’ve got a band. I don’t know what they’ve got going right now, but sometimes they have a group.”

  He couldn’t exactly define the expression that drifted across her face just then. Anticipation maybe. Or anxiety. Or maybe both. “Or we could go someplace like Brenner’s,” he said quickly. “They’re good. We’re better, but they’re good.”

  She shook he head. “No, the Faro sounds fine. Sounds like my kind of place, in fact.”

  “Well, then, sounds like it’s settled to me.”

  “It’s not—I mean I still haven’t…” she subsided into confusion again.

  He leaned over quickly, placing his index finger under her chin, lifting her face so that she was looking at him. “Say, ‘Thanks, Joe, I’d love to go to dinner with you at the Faro on Sunday’.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, then the corners of her mouth edged up again. “Thanks, Joe, I’d love to go to dinner with you at the Faro on Sunday.”

  “There you go.” He leaned forward, almost without thinking about it and pressed his lips against hers.

  He felt her stiffen against him and started to pull back, but then her lips softened. She tilted her head slightly, changing the angle of the kiss so that he slid deeper. He brought one hand up, cupping the back of her head lightly. Her lips opened wider beneath his, teeth against teeth, his tongue rasping against the sudden warmth of her mouth.

  Heat spread through his body—he hardened almost instantly. His other hand dropped to her waist, to the slight indentation of her hip bone. He slid his fingers beneath the soft fabric of her shirt, feeling the warmth of the smooth skin underneath. Heat raced through him again, and he growled deep in his throat.

  What the hell? MG Carmody was a nice-looking woman, sure enough, but he hadn’t expected anything to happen between them this quickly. Time to tone it down a notch.

  He started to pull back, amazed at the reluctance he felt. Somewhere at the back of his mind alarm bells were sounding. Danger, danger, Will Robinson!

  MG moved away almost as slowly as he had, her fingers pressed against her lips, her eyes wide in the shadows.

  He waited for her to say something, even if that something was Get the hell off my front steps. After a moment longer, he managed a half smile of his own. “You know, I’ve kissed a lot of women in my time. Some of them let me know they liked it. Some of them let me know they didn’t. A couple of them even socked me. But you’re the first one who’s ever had absolutely nothing to say about it one way or the other.”

  She blinked at him. “I’m…trying to figure out what I want to say about it.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  She shook her head, still with that slightly dazed loo
k. “Not bad. Not at all. Just…sort of unexpected.”

  He rubbed a hand across his chin. “Yeah. I wasn’t exactly expecting it either.”

  She gave him a faint smile. “So what happens now?”

  We go inside your house and explore the possibilities. He bit down hard on that particular thought. Hell, he hadn’t been this randy in years. And it hadn’t been that long since he’d been with a woman, had it?

  Had it? He suddenly realized it had been a while. Jesus, since when had he let his work swallow his life again?

  “Joe?” She was beginning to look a little anxious.

  Probably time to move on before he said something amazingly stupid that would kill his chances from here until doomsday. He pushed himself to his feet, smiling down at her. “Now we go have dinner at the Faro. And see what develops. Deal?”

  She pushed herself up beside him. “Sounds good to me. Thanks for walking me home.” Her quick smile was probably meant to be a goodbye.

  He caught her hand in his and brought it to his lips. The smooth skin of her fingers was warm, soft, smelling faintly of almonds. He ran his tongue lightly along her index finger, then raised his head, smiling. “Night, MG.”

  “Good night.” Her voice sounded slightly breathy.

  He walked back up the drive toward the road, turning once at the top. She still stood on her front steps, watching him in the darkness.

  Chapter Eight

  MG stared at the contents of her closet in dismay. Why hadn’t she put any more thought into what clothes she wanted to take to Texas before she gave her leftovers to the Goodwill in Nashville? All she could see in front of her were the work clothes she wore at the Rose and her performance clothes, with nothing in between that would be appropriate for an evening out with Joe LeBlanc.

  If she hadn’t been saving every cent to pay off Aunt Nedda and keep herself fed, she might have considered going into town and buying something. But she couldn’t bring herself to indulge in that particular extravagance just yet.