by Hope Ramsay
“So, one of my patients recommended the greens and spicy meatballs.”
“Not a fan of greens, particularly,” she said.
“No?”
She looked up from her menu. “Salty and bitter. Not my thing.” She paused a moment. “You know, I’m not seeing a lot of fusion here. It’s like you can get pulled pork or you can get pasta.”
“Yeah. And I’ll bet the pulled pork isn’t as good as at Annie’s Kitchen.”
“Now, there’s an idea. What if we have a party and get Annie to cater it?”
“Okay, but where?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a native. You are.”
“Well, there’s always the big room at Grace Church,” he offered.
“There’s a big room there?”
He nodded.
“Okay, maybe we should check it out. And I can talk to Annie about her catering menu.”
“So we’ve nixed this place?” he asked.
She examined the uninspiring decor. “It’s kind of pricy, don’t you think?”
“Maybe a little. But I’m glad we agree. So I’ll call and see about setting up a time to look at Grace Church’s event space.”
“Great.”
“Now, how about we try the wine? We can celebrate your amazing performance today at Howland House.”
She responded to his suggestion with a smile as bright as a klieg light. It illuminated the dark interior of the restaurant. His praise had pleased her. He made a note to compliment her whenever possible. She needed to have her confidence boosted for some reason he couldn’t fathom.
“Thanks, but my performance wasn’t that amazing,” she said.
“I was impressed. And besides, based on what Ashley said, your gig is going to lead to more opportunities, and that’s a good thing. So, red or white?”
Chapter Eleven
Ella yanked her gaze away from the man sitting across the table from her. What had happened to the infuriating Doctor D? In the blink of an eye, he’d morphed into a sweet, kind man filled with compliments for her violin playing.
They chatted about not much at all until the waiter returned and made a big show of pouring the wine. Dylan played along with the ritual like a man skilled in the selection of fine vintages. She tried to imagine Cody doing the same, but it was impossible. When the wine was poured, she chose one of the shrimp pasta dishes while Dylan chose the greens and meatballs, which sounded totally unappetizing.
When the waiter departed, Dylan lifted his glass. “To your performance,” he said, giving her the slightest smile. It crinkled up the corners of his eyes in a really sexy way.
Wait. What? Noticing the sexiness of his manly laugh lines was not allowed. Was it? No, it was not. And she needed to stop comparing him to Cody.
She raised her glass and took a big gulp to steady her nerves. “It’s pretty good wine,” she said. Boy, as a conversation starter that was pretty lame, but her tongue had suddenly tied itself into knots.
“You might want to slow down there,” he said when she took another gulp of the vino. His tone sounded judgmental, but then again, maybe he was simply settling into the role of the bigger, wiser brother, even though they were almost the same age.
“So, tell me about your mother,” he said.
She wasn’t entirely sure, but she got the feeling he’d been waiting to spring this question on her. He wasn’t nice. She needed to remember that. He was trying to break up Mom’s romance with his father. She had to be careful not to let him charm her into revealing too much or giving him ammunition.
She stared him down. “You’re relentless.”
“Yeah. I’ve been accused of that before. But, you know, I need to know the lay of the land. She’s going to become my stepmother.”
He gave the word a twist, as if he were talking about Cinderella’s wicked stepmom. Good grief, did that make her a wicked stepsister? Thank you, Disney, for forever making the whole step thing complicated and fraught with emotional overtones.
“What do you want me to say?” she said, taking yet another swig of wine. The alcohol infused her nervous system, calming her down.
“Whatever I need to know.”
She drummed her fingers on the checked tablecloth. “For what? To use against her?”
“Of course not.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. He was not being honest. And she was so disappointed.
“I don’t trust you.”
The little twitch turned into a smile. “Probably a wise move on your part,” he said.
Whoa. Wait. He was admitting everything. She honestly didn’t know what to think about him.
“But…” he said with a charming gleam in his deep blue eyes. “I am going to become her stepson. So, you know, information would be good to have.”
“That’s true,” she said. And he did have a good point. When Mom and Jim got married, Dylan would have to negotiate his way around Mom. Otherwise there would be family drama more or less continuously. She didn’t have to divulge deep family secrets to give him a few pointers on dealing with Mom.
She took another sip of wine and considered her words carefully. “Well, if there is one important thing to know about Mom, it’s that she can sometimes be very hard to please.”
“Well, that’s a problem, isn’t it?”
She cocked her head. “I’m not going to let you probe my relationship with my mother, Dylan.”
He leaned back a fraction. “Oh, of course not. But, you know, we’ve got a party to plan, and if she’s hard to please, that means we are up a creek without a paddle. She’s nixed the yacht club already. Are we going to have nothing but headaches?”
Well, he did have a point there, but Ella wasn’t going to cede it. Instead, she drained her wineglass and nudged it across the table. “More, please. The wine’s good.”
He gave her another look, which she filed under the heading of big-brothers-can-be-annoying, but he did refill the glass.
“So,” he said, “has she told you what she wants? Aside from not wanting the yacht club, that is. Which she told Dad instead of us.”
“Well, I hate to say I told you so, but I did. I told you she would hate the yacht club.”
“So what would she like?”
Ella shrugged. “I have no clue. Something informal though. But that’s just a gut feeling. She wants us to figure it out.”
“So she can find fault with what we do? Seems a bit passive-aggressive, actually.”
Ella blew out a breath that stirred her too-long bangs. “Your words, not mine.”
“Which means they’re true. She is passive-aggressive.”
Ella took another sip of wine, letting the buzz fill her head. She was drinking too much too fast, especially since she had a sordid relationship with booze of any kind. But getting buzzed seemed a lot easier than trying to deal with Doctor Determined-to-Diss-Her-Mother. In fact, the buzz was calming after a day filled with too many highs and lows. Where the hell was her middle ground, anyway? She was tired of living on a roller coaster.
“Are they?” he asked again, prodding her.
Okay, he’d asked for it. She stared him straight in the eye. “It’s not that she’s passive-aggressive. It’s more that she’s a perfectionist. And it’s hard to meet her expectations. She doesn’t mince words. When she’s not happy with your performance, she tells you straight-up.”
“Performance? Is that how you feel around her, like you have to perform?”
Ella’s face heated. Had she just exposed another crack in her brittle armor? “No,” she said. “That’s not what I meant. You simply don’t understand.”
“Try me. I’m listening.”
He was, but to what effect? So she said nothing and took another swig of wine.
“I get it. You still don’t trust me.”
“Of course I don’t. Why should I? But you know what? My issues with Mom are unique because we both play the violin. And she’s a brilliant musician. She should have gone to Juilliar
d, but she got knocked up and had me instead. So, when I turned out to have a talent for the fiddle, I was expected to become a vehicle for her lost ambitions. I was supposed to live out the dream she screwed up. Only problem was, I wasn’t down with her plans.
“So yeah, my life for a long time growing up was graded by the quality of my performances. It wasn’t easy, and I resented it. So I ran away to join the Grand Ole Opry because I knew it would drive Mom crazy. In retrospect, it was a dumb move on my part because Cody was never going to get me to the Grand Ole Opry, and I failed to realize that for way too long. Bottom line: I should have listened to my mother. It’s a lesson I’m not likely to ever forget.”
She paused for a moment to drain her glass a second time. She held it out for him to refill, and he obliged.
* * *
Dylan should have cut Ella off after her first glass of wine. The woman didn’t know how to hold her booze and obviously hadn’t learned that wine was to be sipped, not gulped.
On the other hand, once the alcohol had kicked in, she had opened up. Although he wasn’t exactly happy about the secrets she’d shared. She certainly hadn’t painted a flattering picture of her mother. Was Dad going to end up in a relationship where he was criticized and judged every minute? It unsettled Dylan.
And now he had to deal with a slightly wasted future stepsister. If Dad ever learned about this, Dylan would be subjected to yet another woodshed talk. That would be three in almost as many days.
The McMillan women were wreaking havoc on the Killough men. Dylan was in deep trouble with Dad, and Dad was blinded by sexual attraction, an affliction Dylan could entirely understand because Ella resembled her mother, and she was adorably sexy now that she was toasted. Feeling this way about an inebriated woman who was about to become his stepsister wasn’t exactly one of his finer moments though.
He guided her out to the parking lot, intent on driving her home and seeing her safely to bed with a glass of water and a couple of acetaminophen. But she had other ideas.
“Ooooh, lookit, the sunset.” She’d gotten halfway across the parking lot before veering away from his car and heading toward Harbor Drive. “We should take a walk on the boardwalk.”
She put her head down and raced off in the direction of the crosswalk without paying attention to the traffic lights. He sprinted after her and caught her right before she darted into the street.
He took her by the hand, intent on pulling her back to the car. But she tugged him in the opposite direction. “Come on. Don’t be so dull. Let’s walk.”
“When the light changes,” he said, giving her a ruthless yank as a car whizzed by.
She let go of a girlie gasp and turned toward him, weaving a little. “You just saved my life,” she said in a boozy whisper. “Thanks.”
“It was nothing.”
She turned away just as the light changed and then dragged him out into the street. He could have stopped her, but maybe a walk down the boardwalk would clear her head. He checked his watch: Only eight o’clock and the sun was just sinking toward the horizon.
The evening was warm, and the sun painted the sky with pink and magenta, while the lights along the boardwalk came on, one by one. They strolled northwest toward the public pier, where Rafferty’s Raw Bar presided over a lively spring break crowd. A band had set up on the patio and started to play as they approached. He didn’t recognize the loud music, but then, he’d never been musical.
“Cover band,” she said, stopping and leaning on the railing as she listened.
“Are they any good?”
She cocked her head. “You don’t know?”
“I’ve got a tin ear,” he said.
She blinked. “So that means your opinion of my fiddling has to be taken with a grain of salt.”
He was an idiot. He’d just undone all his earlier compliments, which had been completely sincere. “I liked your music.”
“And them?” She pointed over her shoulder with her thumb.
“Uh, not so much. They’re too loud. They’re likely to damage your hearing.”
She nodded and turned. “Yup. The drummer’s pretty good. The rest of them are ordinary.” Then she giggled. “Listen to me passing judgment like Mom.” She turned again and leaned back against the rail. “They’re doing okay, aren’t they? They got a gig, right? That’s all that counts. I mean, the grunge bands of Seattle weren’t paragons of musicianship, but they made a lot of money in their day.”
She slurred the words “paragon of musicianship.” But he was impressed by her ability to even attempt a three-dollar phrase like that. He was willing to bet that her lips were numb.
“Now you’re frowning,” she said.
“Am I?”
“Most definitely. Are you looking down on me because I listened to grunge music?”
“No. I’m looking down at you because I’m six foot three.”
She rolled her eyes in an adorable fashion, and a wave of lust crashed over him. What the hell was wrong with him? He needed to pull her away from this place and get her back to the inn, where she belonged.
But she eluded him again, turning and jogging down the boardwalk. “Come on, let’s see if the gelato place is open,” she said over her shoulder.
She was a danger moving that fast and unsteadily. He charged after her. “Slow down,” he said, taking her hand just as they rounded the corner by the public pier. Sure enough, Cherry on Top, the ice cream place, was mobbed. At least twenty people were standing in line.
“Oh, goodie, let’s get some. I love the mint chocolate chip,” she said, hurrying to the end of the line.
“How can you be hungry?” he asked.
“Are you going to give me a lecture about pasta and carbs?”
“No, but we should really—”
“You know, Doctor Disdainful,” she said, poking him in the chest with her index finger, “you should learn the golden rule.”
“What?” Her finger was as sharp as an arrow. His chest burned where it pressed against his sternum.
“You spend a lot of time telling folks not to be grumpy. You’re pretty grumpy yourself. Honestly, you could give Mom a run for the money when it comes to your frown-of-death technique.” She rose on tiptoes, the action bringing her breasts perilously close to his chest. He flinched away but not before she managed to snag his tie.
“Hold still, silly. I’m setting you free.”
“What? Stop.”
“Stand still. You look like a jerk walking down the boardwalk all buttoned up like that.”
She might be tipsy, but the woman sure knew how to undo a bow tie, not to mention the collar button. But when she went after the button below that one, he put his hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her away.
“That’s enough,” he said, letting go. The bones in her shoulders were tiny and fragile under his palms. Why hadn’t he stopped her after the second glass of wine?
She was never going to forgive him for this. Tomorrow, he was going to get an earful about how he should have stopped refilling her glass over and over again. But right now Ella leaned forward, putting her palms against his chest. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It isn’t nearly enough.”
And then she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.
He took a step back, and she followed. He tried not to return the kiss, but he was a human male and she tasted exactly like the Sangiovese, all berries and plums and fruit, overlaid with her sandalwood scent and something darker and more complicated. For the first time in his life he understood the lyrics from that old country song about kisses sweeter than wine.
He stopped moving and let the kiss unfold, losing himself in it for a moment as he tangled his hand in her wild, untamed hair.
Oh yeah, he could enjoy this for a while.
Or not.
Damn.
He took her by the shoulders again and pushed her away. “That’s it,” he said in his most stern voice. “I’m taking you home.”
�
�Really?” Her unsteady gaze was full of promise. Dammit. She’d gotten the wrong idea when he’d said “home.”
“Yes, I am taking you home to the inn. Where I’m going to make sure you go to bed with a couple of acetaminophen for the headache you’re going to have tomorrow morning.”
Chapter Twelve
Some vengeful god, maybe Thor with his hammer, was using Ella’s head as an anvil when she awakened at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. She cracked her eyes in the predawn gloom only to see the empty glass of water and the bottle of Tylenol on the bedstand.
And then the memories flooded in.
What had she been thinking?
Had she been thinking at all?
She rolled over, and her skull threatened to split open and spill her brains all over the pillow. She took a bunch of deep breaths as nausea roiled in her stomach.
What an idiot.
Beyond her closed door, Jackie thumped down the hall and into the bathroom. Boy, he was up early. Oh, wait. Today was Sunday.
Palm Sunday. A day of obligation. And Howland House still served breakfast on Sundays, even if the service consisted of a simple help-yourself buffet that would end by 9:30 a.m.
Out in the hallway, Ashley quietly knocked on the bathroom door. “Jackie, don’t take too long. Ella needs to use the room.”
Right. She dragged herself up, but the room was still spinning fifteen minutes later when she stepped out of the shower, making her stomach uneasy. The scent of biscuits and bacon didn’t help when she finally made it to the kitchen.
But before Ella could say one word, Ashley turned away from the stove and said, “Here, eat this.” She pushed a bowl of oatmeal across the island’s sleek quartz countertop.
“I don’t—”
“Eat it. There’s no way you’ll make it to fellowship hour without something in your stomach.”
Ella took a seat on one of the counter stools and stared down at the oatmeal. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Honey, you have nothing to be sorry about.”
