by Fiona Lowe
He shook his head hard. “I want a home-cooked meal.”
Her stomach plummeted to her feet. She was a good lawyer but she didn’t cook. Feeling out of her depth, she tried to cover. “I’m doing your laundry and helping you with your...” The image of his golden skin slick with water dried her mouth.
“Showering?”
“Yes,” she said, hating the way he managed to raise one brow and make her feel like a silly, inexperienced schoolgirl, although that wasn’t too far from the truth. “I don’t want to have to cook and clean as well. After all, it’s my house. Surely I get some say.”
Oh, God, now she sounded like a disgruntled wife and she girded herself for his expected comeback that she’d put him in this situation.
An unexpected conciliatory look crossed his face. “How about we make an omelet together and I’ll do as much as I can? As for cleaning up, we can pretty much throw everything into the dishwasher.”
“An omelet?” She knew she sounded like an echo but it came out before she could stop it. She had no clue how to cook an omelet.
“Yeah, I saw eggs in the fridge.”
She sighed and decided to confess. “I know how to boil an egg,” she said with a slightly embarrassed shrug as they walked back inside, “but I’ve never made an omelet.”
“I lived on them when I was working on the mines in Western Australia. I’m happy to tell you what to do and I’m sure a state-of-the-art kitchen like yours will have an omelet pan which will make it even easier.”
“You need a special pan?”
He laughed at her incredulousness. “I gather you’re not a foodie.”
She’d never been able to understand the fascination people had for food, television cooking shows or collecting cookbooks. Food was fuel. She needed it to ease hunger pangs and sometimes she was known to eat it when she wasn’t hungry to ease other pangs, but that tended to be foods filled with salt or sugar or fat, none of which was ever gourmet.
“I can make coffee, fry eggs and bacon, and everything else I can buy,” she said. “Chinese, pizza, burgers, burritos, whatever. My loft apartment in Chicago doesn’t have an oven.”
A horrified expression crossed his face as they entered the kitchen and she couldn’t stifle her laugh. “You’re a biker. Surely you don’t cook?”
“Of course I cook,” he said as if she’d just insulted him. “Do you think I’d be in this shape if I’d eaten takeaway crap for the last two hundred and eighty days?”
She assumed takeaway was Australian for takeout and she’d seen the evidence that his body was indeed in good shape. Gloriously beautiful shape. God, he even had a six-pack while all she could offer up was a muffin top.
Two hundred and eighty days? The fact-loving part of her brain cut through her momentary lust fest and she did a quick calculation. She came up with a figure she didn’t trust. “You can’t have been traveling for nine months?”
He pushed up from the open cupboard clutching a gleaming silver pan, which was thinner and smaller than the average frying pan. “I can and I have,” he said, putting the pan down on the stove and getting out the eggs. “Do you have anything green like a capsicum?”
He must have seen her confused look. “Sorry, I think you call them bell peppers. Or maybe you have shallots? Scallions? Green onions? Lettuce even?”
She stared at him, stunned. “How can you not work for nine months?”
He closed the fridge with a sigh. “I’ll take that as a no to anything green. The moment we’ve eaten this omelet, we’re going shopping and fruit and vegetables top the list.”
“Nine months without working?” she repeated, trying to get her head around the enormous amount of time. The idea was not only a foreign concept to her, it was anathema.
“You’re sounding like a cracked record.”
“If I took that amount of time off it would be career suicide.”
“I doubt that.”
“Oh, no, it would be.” She thought about her lack of a job and how ideally she needed to be employed again within the month to hold her standing. The longer she was out of corporate law, the harder it would be to get back in. “Do you have a career?”
He rolled his eyes as if a career wasn’t important. “Right now I’m a hungry engineer. You start dicing this onion and the bacon and I’ll tell you about my road trip.”
An engineer. The news surprised her. She’d assumed he’d have a trade qualification of some sort like her dad.
“Amy?”
“Sorry.” She started opening cupboards and drawers, looking for the cutting boards.
“You really don’t cook much do you?”
Caught in his bewildered stare, she laughed, thankful that her confession was coming in handy to hide the fact she had no idea about the layout of the kitchen. “Well, this is a vacation house.”
He nodded as if he understood. “And you probably have a cook. How come she isn’t here with you now?”
Fortunately she had her head in a cupboard and he couldn’t see the flush she felt blasting across her face. “This trip was a spur-of-the-moment decision. She’ll be here at Thanksgiving though.”
Who knew you could learn to lie so easily and so quickly, her conscience admonished her.
He’s here for a short time and then he’s gone for good, so what does it matter?
She stood up, brandishing the cutting board and then she located the knife block. “You’re telling me about your road trip.”
“I shipped Red—”
“Your motorcycle?”
“My 1950s vintage bike.” He sounded very proud of this fact. “I shipped her to Chile and then we headed south, crisscrossing in out and out of Argentina and through the Andes. By the end of the first month I’d forgotten what blacktop was.” He smiled, the memories clear in his eyes. “I learned fast how to keep both me and Red going in thin air with my lungs and her engine clogged with dust.”
“Did you get to Tierra del Fuego?” she asked, remembering her seventh-grade project on the archipelago off South America’s southernmost tip.
He expertly cracked eggs single-handedly into a bowl. “I did. I left Red there for fourteen days and headed farther south to the Antarctic.”
Amazement spun through her. “What was it like?”
“There’s a bit of ice and a lot of wildlife,” he said with typical Aussie understatement. “Oh, and wind.”
She was fascinated. “Did you see penguins?”
“Emperor, Adélie, chinstrap, gentoo, macaroni and rockhoppers. I thought women could multitask.”
“We can,” she said, slightly taken aback at the abrupt change of topic.
He shot her a grin that lit up his face. “Then start dicing that onion you’re holding or I’ll stop answering questions.”
She peeled the onion. “Are you always this grumpy when you’re hungry?”
One brow rose. “Aren’t you?”
She couldn’t argue that and her knife sliced through the layers of onion, the first vapors immediately stinging her eyes. “I’ve never met anyone who’s been to Antarctica. It’s like the last frontier. So where did you go after that?”
“I headed north. Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Peru, the Galápagos Islands—”
“Oh, the blue-footed ducks,” she said, smiling at the thought. “I’ve always wanted to see them.”
“Yeah, and they’re crazy to look at. You seem to know a bit about South American wildlife.”
“Not really. Only what I’ve picked up after years of watching wildlife documentaries with my dad.” She was suddenly struck by a thought. “With your vintage bike, were you trying to replicate The Motorcycle Diaries?”
His shoulders tensed. “���Che’ Guevara rode a 1939 Norton, not a Harley.”
She laughe
d. “What? Just because the bikes are different that means you’re not doing the same trip?”
He shot her a look that seemed to combine pity at her lack of motorcycle knowledge along with something else that was a lot less clear.
Not that she could see anything much through her now-stinging eyes. She blinked rapidly but it wasn’t enough to stop the burn and she squeezed them shut tightly against the onion tears. “Argh, this is why I don’t cook.”
Ben laughed and passed her some tissues. “You need a whizzer.”
She mopped her eyes, which she knew would now be rimmed bright red. Such an attractive look.
It doesn’t matter. You’re not trying to impress him, remember?
“What’s a whizzer?”
“A kitchen appliance that dices and chops and purees.”
He held out a slab of butter and she cut where he indicated. He flicked it into the pan and then turned on the stove, watching the melting butter. “Okay, so now you sauté the onion.”
She did as she was instructed and ten minutes later she was sitting at the large, wooden table, sighing as she tasted the light, fluffy and slightly golden omelet. “How can something this simple taste so good?”
Ben laughed as if she was clueless. “Fresh ingredients and you’re eating it straight out of the pan. Oh, and butter.” He winked at her. “Butter makes everything taste better.”
She smiled at him, utterly intrigued by this seemingly macho, leather-wearing, bike-riding Australian engineer who knew his way around a kitchen and was fussy about food.
In her mind none of those things went together. Who blew off years of study and hard work at college to ride a motorcycle? No one she knew.
You’ve seen him naked. He doesn’t even have a tattoo. How can he be a biker without a tattoo?
The thought rocked her and it instantly begged the question: Exactly who was Ben Armytage?
Chapter Seven
Ben was suitably impressed by the range of locally grown organic vegetables at Whitetail Market and Video. “Look at how glossy those zucchini are?” he said to Amy who was pushing the cart. “When I see fresh vegetables stacked like this, I always think they look sexy.”
“That’s an oxymoron,” Amy said, her cheeks instantly blushing pink as she stumbled and clipped his ankles with the cart.
“Ouch.”
“Sorry,” she said, not looking sorry at all. Her curls bounced indignantly around her face and her intriguing gray eyes flashed. “You enjoy making me flustered, don’t you?”
He did, and she made it too easy, which fascinated him. The women he knew were confident in their own skin and they weren’t backward in coming forward when it came to men. They took what they wanted. Perhaps female engineers needed to be self-assured to survive in a very male-dominated industry. He thought about some of the off-color jokes the construction workers still cracked despite workplace education. Amy wouldn’t last an hour in that environment—she’d self-combust from blushing in about three minutes flat. Obviously the law was a much more rarified atmosphere.
Lexie, on the other hand, had thrived. One day she’d marched up to him on-site, yellow hard hat on her head and red dust rising from her booted heels, demanding a date. She’d been the one to initiate sex at the end of their first date, although in retrospect, that hadn’t been quite the gift he’d thought it was at the time.
He shoved the unwanted memory away and focused on Amy who looked pretty when she blushed. “I’m just trying to put some color into your pale cheeks.”
“Oh, gee, thanks.” Her red lips pouted.
He instantly remembered the soft, warm touch of them against his own. His body reacted with an increasingly familiar surge of heat. “Actually, I was being serious about the vegetables looking sexy. Look at the brightness of the colors. The orange of the carrots, the yellow of the squash, the red of the tomatoes, the purple of the eggplants, the cream of the cauliflowers—it’s nature’s palate. Can’t you feel it calling to you and saying, ratatouille?”
She gave him a long look as if she thought he’d taken more than just a hit to the shoulder. “Ah, no,” she said, a resigned tone in her voice. “But I have a strong feeling I’m about to learn all about it.”
He grinned. “There’s nothing like ratatouille with fresh, crusty bread and a hearty Cabernet Sauvignon.”
“If you say so.”
“I do, and you’ll find out when you cook it.”
“You do remember that I struggle to boil water?”
It was the first time since he’d met her that she’d cracked a joke mocking herself. He liked it because it reminded him of the Aussie self-deprecating humor. Perhaps there was a chance after all that they might get along during this enforced time together.
She started walking toward the checkout, hips swinging. He silently groaned as he remembered his unobstructed view of her sweet ass the night he’d arrived. How plump and curvy and alabaster-white it was, just like a Ruben painting. She shouldn’t be hiding it behind those god-awful sweatpants. Did she even know how sexy she was when she walked?
She spun around and planted a hand on her hip. “Come on, hurry up. We’ve got a list a mile long and at this rate, we’re never going to get everything done. You still have to do your shoulder exercises.”
Right then, he remembered every reason why they were never going to get along.
* * *
Mondays at the Northern Lights Boutique were quiet from a customer point of view but busy in every other way. Although Melissa dusted and vacuumed the store every trading day, she did a thorough clean on Mondays. It was also the time she did her stock audit and perused the catalogs. Right now, she was ordering wedding gowns for spring weddings.
She had three brides who’d chosen to take appointments with her after their initial Whitetail tour. She and Nicole always conducted the tours, which included champagne, a carriage ride and the opportunity to try on a gown or as many as the bride wished. Melissa had come up with that idea right from the start, but it had been Erin Davis who’d suggested she buy a camera and take a photo of the prospective bride in a gown. The idea was that when the bride-to-be got home, she’d gaze at the photo with fond memories and not only choose Whitetail as her wedding venue but also order the gown through Melissa. She’d had some success with this but, as she’d told Amy, she wanted more.
Her phone rang. “Northern Lights Boutique.”
“Hi, Melissa, it’s Janey Holzworth.”
“Janey, hi.” She flicked open her large, alphabetized wedding notebook at H. Annette was making her dress and just last week, the bride-to-be had approved the second toile. The wedding was six months away in early spring and Annette was planning to stitch the gown during the long, cold Wisconsin winter. “How can I help?”
“I’ve just found out I’m pregnant, which is so exciting but we’re moving the wedding forward so I can still look like a bride.”
Melissa heard her cell phone beeping wildly with the tune she’d assigned to Nicole. Obviously Janey had called her first.
“Congratulations,” Melissa said, trying not to skip a beat despite her gut plummeting and her brain going into overdrive. “So when are you getting married?”
“Three weeks from Saturday.”
Nooooooooo. Annette was away for the entire month. “Janey, your gown isn’t even made.”
“I know but Annette has the pattern and the material so I was hoping she could throw it together for me.”
Throw it together? A wedding gown wasn’t a summer dress with two side seams and not much else. Melissa wanted to bang her head hard on her desk. She loved working with brides but sometimes they were clueless.
“I’m sorry, Janey, but Annette’s not available.”
“Oh, I never thought that would be a problem. I guess I could try and find someo
ne else...”
“No,” Melissa said resolutely, thinking about the hours of work she and Annette had already put in to this project only to lose it all at the very last minute. “There’s someone else in town who might be able to do it.” Crossing her fingers, she said, “I’ll call her now and see if she can squeeze you in but you’ll need to work around her schedule for fittings.”
“No problem. Thanks, Melissa, you’re amazing.”
No, she wasn’t. She was just desperate not to lose money on this wedding. “I’ll call you by seven tonight.”
Janey rang off and Melissa immediately phoned Amy but the call went direct to her voice mail. She left a message and tried to return to her ordering but she couldn’t focus. What if Amy couldn’t help? What then?
After taping a sign on the door that read, Back at 10:30, she checked she had her cell, grabbed her purse and headed out the door to find Nicole. On her way to Affairs with Hair, she passed the town hall and was surprised to hear the sound of a piano floating out through an open window. Although the beautiful Richardsonian Romanesque building gave the impression of greatness, the town had never quite grown to match the vision of its Swedish founders. The town hall certainly wasn’t used for recitals. In fact, the old grand piano had been moved out of the main room and into a smaller one years ago and Melissa couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard someone play it. She was surprised it was even in tune, but going by the beautiful music, it was very much on pitch.
Curious, she walked inside and stopped abruptly at the first doorway. Scott Knapp, the bartender, sat behind the glossy black piano, his face a study in intense concentration. His entire body moved as those long, graceful fingers raced up and down the keys.
She watched mesmerized as the music seemed to flow from him. The beautifully poetic sounds washed over her, sounding almost sad and just as a lump formed in her throat, the music changed into a strident, jangling, discordant noise. It stopped abruptly.
He pressed the bridge of his glasses upward, adjusting them on his nose and then his clear and direct gaze landed on her. “Melissa?”
