Gabe’s affection and gratitude toward his brother and dad caught him right in the throat. The Riverview Inn with its cottages, stone-and-beam lodge and gazebo and walking trails and gardens had been his dream, the goal of his entire working life. But he never, ever would have been able to accomplish it without his family.
“Max, I know I don’t say it enough, but thank you. I—”
Max predictably held up a hand. “You can thank me by providing me with some decent chow. It’s not too much to ask.”
He took his sunglasses from the neck of his fleece and slid them on, looking dangerous, like the cop he’d been and not at all like the brother Gabe knew.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Max said, poised to leave. “Sheriff Ginley has got two more kids.”
“Can either of them cook?”
Max shrugged. “I think one of them got fired from McDonald’s.”
“Great, he can be our chef.”
“I don’t think Sheriff Ginley would smile upon a juvenile delinquent with such easy access to knives.”
The after-school work program for kids who got in trouble in Athens, the small town north of the inn, had been Max’s idea, but Gabe had to admit, the labor was handy, and he hoped they were doing some good for the kids. “They can help you with the grounds.”
“That’s what I figured.” Max smiled wickedly and left, his heavy-booted footsteps thudding through the nearly empty room.
Gabe sighed and let his head fall back. He stared up at the elaborate cedar joists in the ceiling, imagined them with the delicate white Christmas lights he planned on winding around them.
The ceiling would look like the night sky dotted with stars.
It had been one of Alice’s ideas.
He and Alice used to talk about opening a place out of the city. A place on a bluff. He’d talked about cottages and fireplaces and she’d talked about organic ingredients and local produce. They’d been a team then, she the chef, he the consummate host, producer and manager. He’d felt invincible in those early days with Alice by his side.
But then the problems came and Alice got more and more distant, more and more sad with every trip to the doctor, every failed effort that ended in blood and tears and—Well, he’d never felt so helpless in his life.
“Lunch, boys!” Dad called from the kitchen the way he had since their mom walked out on them more than thirty years ago.
Gabe smiled and stood.
Nothing to do but eat a cheese sandwich and get to work. His dream wasn’t going to build itself.
The hangover pounded behind Alice’s eyes. Her fingers shook, so she set down the knife before she diced up her finger along with the tomatoes.
“I’m taking a break,” she told Trudy, who worked across from her at the long stainless steel prep table.
Trudy’s black eyes were concerned. “That’s your second break since you’ve been here and it’s only three.”
“Smoker’s rights,” Alice croaked and grabbed a mug from the drying rack by the industrial washer and filled it with the swill Johnny O’s called coffee.
“You don’t smoke,” Trudy pointed out, trying to be helpful and failing miserably. “If Darnell comes back here, what am I supposed to tell him?”
“That he can fire me.” Alice slid her sunglasses from her coat hanging by the door and used her hips to push out into the bright afternoon.
Even with her dark glasses on, the sunshine felt like razor wire against her eyeballs, so after she collapsed onto the bench that had been set up by the dumpsters for staff, she just shut her eyes against the sun.
The hangover, the sleeplessness, this mindless menial job that paid her part of the mortgage, it all weighed her down like sandbags attached to her neck.
Tonight no drinking, she swore.
She couldn’t change the fact that she’d fallen from chef and owner of Zinnia’s to head line chef at one of the three Johnny O’s franchises in Albany. That damage was already done and she’d come to grips with it.
But she could control the drinking.
A small voice reminded her that she made that promise almost every night.
Sometimes she wanted to punch the small voice, but instead she breathed deep of the slightly putrid air and tried to get Zen about the whole situation. She took a sip of her coffee, and listened to the sound of traffic.
The parking lot was pretty empty, but soon the hungry folks of Albany would be getting off work and looking for a sunny patio and drink specials and a lot of them would head to Johnny O’s. The kitchen would be loud and on fire for about eight hours and in those eight hours, while arranging plates of pasta and fire-baked pizzas and grilling steaks and fish specials, she would forget all the reasons she had to drink.
Maybe she’d help the cleaning staff tonight. Work herself into a good exhaustion so she wouldn’t need the red wine to relax.
She tilted her face up to the sun and stretched out her feet, pleased with her plan.
A black truck, mud splattered and beat-up, pulled in to the lot and parked directly across from her. She thought about heading back inside, or at least opening the door and yelling to warn Trudy customers were arriving and the kitchen was on demand. But Trudy had been in the business as long as she had and could handle cooking for a truckload of guys.
But only one guy got out.
One guy, holding a droopy bouquet of yellow roses.
One guy, whose slow amble toward her was painfully, heartbreakingly familiar.
Coffee sloshed onto her pants, so she set the cup down on the bench and clenched her suddenly shaking hands together.
Spots swam in front of her eyes and her head felt light and full, like a balloon about to pop.
The man was tall and lean, so handsome still it made her heart hurt.
He stopped right in front of her and pushed his sunglasses up onto his head, displacing his dark blond hair. The sun was behind him and he seemed so big. She used to love his size, love how it made her feel small and safe. He’d wrap those strong arms around her and she felt protected from the world, from herself.
He smiled like a man who knew all the tastiest things about her.
That smile was his trademark. He could disarm an angry patron at four feet with the strength of his charming smile. He could woo frigid reviewers, disgruntled suppliers…his ex-wife.
“Hello, Alice.” He held out the roses but she couldn’t get her hands to lift and take them.
She left her shades on, so shattered by Gabe’s sudden appearance in front of her, as if the past five years hadn’t happened.
“Gabe.” Her voice croaked again and she nearly cringed.
He took a deep breath, in through his nose, no doubt hoping for a bit more welcome from her, some reaction other than the stoic front that was all she had these days.
His hand holding the roses fell back to his side.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. She sounded accusatory and mean, like a stranger who had never known him at all.
And she felt that way. It was why, in part, the marriage had ended. Despite the late-night talks, the dreams of building a business together, the sex that held them together longer than they should have been, in the end, when things got bad, they really never knew each other at all.
“I could ask you the same thing.” His eyes swept the bench, the back door to Johnny O’s. The Dumpsters.
Suddenly, the reality of her life hammered home like a nail in her coffin. She worked shifts at a chain restaurant and was hungover at three on a Friday afternoon.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen, she thought bitterly, hating herself with a vehemence she usually saved for her dark drunken hours.
“I work here,” she said, battling her embarrassment with the sharp tilt of her head.
He nodded and watched her, his blue eyes cataloging the differences the five years between them had made. And behind her sunglasses, she did the same.
Gabe Mitchell was still devilishly easy on the eyes.
&n
bsp; He’d always had her number. One sideways look from him, one tiny grin and she’d trip over her hormones to get into his arms. There was just something about the man and, she surmised after taking in his faded jeans and the black T-shirt with the rip at the collar, the work boots and his general all-around sexiness, there still was something about him.
But, she reminded herself, underneath that lovely candy coating beat one cold, cold heart. She’d learned it the hard way, and she still hadn’t recovered from the frost burn her five-year marriage had given her.
Call it fear of commitment, call it intimacy issues, whatever it was, Gabe had it bad. And watching him walk away from her and their marriage had nearly killed her.
“You look good,” Gabe said and it was such a lie, such an attempt to sweet-talk her, that she laughed. “You do,” he protested.
“Save the charm for someone else, Gabe.” Finally she pushed her shades up onto her head and looked her ex-husband in the eye. “I told you I never wanted to see you again.”
2
“And—” his smile seemed a little brittle around the edges “—I think we both know you didn’t mean it.”
She arched her eyebrows in response. Oh, she’d meant it all right.
“What do you want, Gabe?”
“A guy can’t visit an old friend?”
She laughed outright. At him. At them. At this stupid little dance.
“Gabe, we were never friends.” The lie slipped off her tongue easily. It was better to pretend they had never been friends than to dwell on those memories, to give in to the sudden swell of feelings his presence stirred in her belly. “What. Do. You. Want?”
He ran his fingers through his too-long hair and scowled at her, the fierce look that always warned her he was running out of patience.
Good, she thought, get mad and leave like you always do.
She scowled back. She’d never been overly gracious—she was too busy for that—but in her time with Gabe she’d learned to be polite.
But not anymore. There was no one in her life to be polite to, so she had no practice.
And she wasn’t about to apologize. Not to him.
“I need you,” he said and she fought to keep herself from choking on a sound of disbelief.
“Gabe Mitchell at my door, begging.” She shivered dramatically. “Hell is getting colder.”
“Alice.” He sighed. “This isn’t easy for me. You know that. But I need you. Bad.”
His low tone hit her in the stomach and snaked down to her sex, which bloomed in sudden heat. Too familiar, those words. Too reminiscent of those nights together, when they’d needed each other so much, good sense got burned to ash.
“I really can’t imagine why,” she said, crossing one leg over another, and her arms came across her chest, giving him every signal to stop, to say goodbye and walk away.
But he didn’t and she wondered what was truly at stake here. The Gabe she knew did not fight and he never begged.
“I built the inn,” he said softly. “The one we always talked about.”
It was a slap. A punch in her gut. Her eyes burned from the pain and shock of it. How dare he? He’d walked away with her pride, her self-respect, her dreams of a family and now this.
She wanted to scream, just tilt her head back and howl at the pain and injustice of it all.
The inn. The home they’d dreamed of. He’d built it while she worked shifts grilling grade B steak and making nachos.
She let out a slow breath, emptying her body of air, so maybe the shell she was would just blow away on the wind.
“Good for you,” she managed to say through frozen lips and got to her feet. “I need to go.”
He stopped her, not by touching her—good God wouldn’t that be a disaster—but by getting in her way with his oversize body.
“It’s gorgeous, Alice, you should see it. I named it the Riverview Inn and it’s right on a bluff with the Hudson snaking through the property. You can see the river from the dining room.”
A mean anger seeped into her, culled from her crappy job, her hangover, her ruined life…even from the Dumpster. She didn’t need to be reminded of how much she’d lost and she really didn’t need to be brought face-to-face with how well Gabe had done.
“Like I said—” she didn’t spare the sarcasm “—bully for you. I’ll tell all my friends.” She ducked by him.
“I need a chef, Alice.”
She stopped midstride, snagged for a second on a splinter of hope. Of joy.
Then she jerked herself free and laughed, but refused to meet his earnest blue eyes. Was this real? Was this some kind of trick? A lie? Were the few remaining friends in her life setting up some elaborate intervention?
“Me? Oh, man, you must be in some dire straits if you are coming to me—”
“I am. I am desperate. And—” he inclined his head to the Dumpster, the plaza parking lot “—from the look of things…so are you.”
The bravado and sunglasses didn’t work. He saw right through her and it fueled her bitter anger.
“I’m fine,” she said, stubbornly clinging to her illusions. “I need to get back to work.”
“I want to talk to you about this, Alice. It’s a win-win for both of us.”
“Ah, Gabe Mitchell of the silver tongue. Everything is a win-win until it all goes to shit. No.” She shook her head, suddenly desperate to get away from him and his magnetic force that always spun her in circles. “I won’t be your chef.”
She walked around him, careful not to get too close, not to touch him, or smell him, or feel the heat from his arm.
“I know where you live, Alice,” he said, going for a joke, trying to be charming. “Look, I just want to talk. If you decide after we talk that it’s not for you, fine. That’s totally fine. But maybe you know someone—”
“I don’t.”
“Alice.” He sighed that sigh that weighed on her, that, during their marriage, had filled the distance between them and pushed them further apart. The sigh that said, “Don’t be difficult.”
“I don’t,” she insisted. “I don’t know anyone who would want to live out there.”
“Except you?” Gabe said.
“Not anymore,” she lied. “My break is over. I have to go.”
“I want to talk. Can I meet you at home?” He caught himself. “At your house?”
Painful sympathy leaped in her. He’d loved their house, had craved a home, some place solid to retreat to at the end of the day. He’d finished the basement and hung pictures and shelves and repaired the bad plumbing like a man in love. And in the divorce he’d given it to her, shoved the lovely Tudor away like a friend who’d betrayed him.
“The locks are changed,” she said.
“I’m sure they are, but I’ll bet you a drive out to the inn that you still keep the key under that ceramic frog you bought in Mexico.” He smiled, that crooked half grin. Charm and bonhomie oozing off him and she wanted to tell him no matter how well he thought he knew her, he didn’t.
But the key was under the frog.
“Suit yourself, Gabe,” she told him. “But my answer won’t change.”
“Alice—”
He held out the roses and she ignored them. She hit the door and didn’t look back. She could feel him, the touch of his gaze even through the steel door, through her clothes, through her skin right to the heart of her.
Nope, she shook her head. Not again. Not ever again with that man. She’d worked too hard to forget the past. She’d worked too hard to stop the pain, to cauterize the wounds he’d left in her.
There was nothing he could say that would convince her. Nothing.
“Well,” Gabe said, tossing the bouquet into the Dumpster. “That went well.”
He shook off the strange sensation in his stomach, brought on by the begging he’d had to do just to get her to listen to him.
Dad would be proud, he thought and the thought actually made him feel better.
He still couldn
’t manage to wrap his head around the fact that she worked at Johnny O’s. Last he’d heard, her restaurant, Zinnia or Begonia or something, had gotten a high Zagat rating and someone had approached her about doing a cookbook.
He looked at the neon lights of the cookie-cutter restaurant she’d escaped into and smiled.
This had to bode well for him. She must be dying to get out of this place. He just had to figure out what kind of offer would make her see things his way.
First things first, he’d stop by the house, take stock of her kitchen, run for groceries and have some food waiting for her. Tomato soup and grilled-cheese on sourdough bread, her favorite. Followed up by mint Oreos—another favorite. Maybe he’d get the Beaujolais she loved, set up some candles…
A seduction. He smiled thinking about it, even when something primitive leaped in his gut. It was weird, but he’d set up a sexless chef seduction of his ex-wife.
Whatever it took.
He headed to his truck, climbed in and on autopilot wound his way through Albany to the lower east side. By rote he turned left on Mulberry, right on Pape and pulled in to the driveway of 312.
He took a deep breath, bracing himself.
Empty houses with dark windows disturbed him, ruffled those memories of being a boy and wondering if, when he went downstairs, she would finally be there. If this morning, after all the others, would be the one when the kitchen would be warm, the lights on, the smell of coffee and bacon in the air, and Mom would be sitting at the table. She’d tell him it all had been a mistake and she wouldn’t be leaving, ever again.
Stupid, he told himself. Ancient history. Like my marriage. It’s just a house. It’s not mine anymore.
Finally he looked up at the two-story Tudor—with its big backyard—where they’d planned to start their family. The magnolia tree out front was in full bloom, carpeting the lawn in thick creamy pink and white petals.
Her herb garden looked a little overrun with chives and she must have finally decided that perennials weren’t worth the hassle. Otherwise the house looked amazing.
Wedding At the Riverview Inn Page 2
