Beauty and The Best (Once-Upon-A-Time Romance)

by Fennell, Judi

  “I am?” She pulled her gaze from his mouth, now drawn to his eyes. Warm and intense—just like her.

  “Yes.”

  He put the flour and measuring cup down in one fluid motion and took a step toward her, his gaze holding hers. Her heart started hammering as he reached out, and she stifled a moan as she waited for his embrace.

  She closed her eyes as he neared. There was just too much rioting through her body as his chest brushed her arm. She waited for the feel of his lips on hers, completely willing to overlook what surely was complete insanity since they worked—and lived—together, yet it was his hair she felt brushing her shoulder.

  Not exactly the image she had going.

  She opened her eyes—

  And wanted to die.

  He had his finger in the batter bowl behind her, scooping out the remains of batch number one.

  Thank God no one else was around to witness her humiliation. What was she thinking? As if someone like him would be interested in kissing someone like her; someone without a real name or family to call her own. Just because she came with no baggage whatsoever—no relatives, no nasty in-laws, no history, just her—didn’t mean his “you’re good” had anything to do with something other than cookies.

  “Want some?” said Cookie Monster, now back in her line of sight and holding out a finger full of cookie dough.

  She did want some. She really, really did. And she wanted it right off that finger he was waving in her face. Wanted it so badly she had to say no because if she gave in to the impulse of licking his finger, she’d rip apart at the seams.

  “Ah, come on. It’s good.” Wag, wag went the tempting digit.

  She was amazed at her inner strength, as he’d called it. Truly.

  She shook her head again and stepped back. “If we do this for every batch we are going to be some sick puppies.” She prayed the bravado hid the quaking of her knees. He didn’t need to know his chef was reading all sorts of innuendos into his words.

  Cookie dough. Imagine that.

  ***

  An hour and a half later, they were only halfway done. But Jolie? She was done. Over-cooked, over-heated, and way over-aroused. Todd was not only hot on the outside, he was completely sexy on the inside. Their little baking party had brought out all his childhood memories and he’d wanted to share.

  Normally, she’d love to hear those things. Birthday parties, camping trips, whatever. But seeing as how her nerves were still rattled by the near-miss of a kiss, not to mention the mortification of said near-miss, she tuned out the narrative and tuned in to him. Todd Best, the man.

  After all, it was in this very spot where she beheld the splendor that was Todd only yesterday. And traitorous Heart wanted to behold it again.

  But Brain put her foot down. (Could a brain do that?) They, her collective self, were finished with wandering thoughts and a roaring libido. All Naughty Girl desires were hereby shoved into the closet with Naughty Girl herself and Jolie was going to enjoy the rest of her time in the kitchen.

  As they finally finished cleaning up after the last batch, Todd removed his apron, treating her once again to the glorious sight of flexing pecs. “Thanks for doing this for the kids, Jolie.” He folded the apron and set it on the counter beside the sink.

  “Really, you don’t need to thank me.” She turned on the faucet.

  He turned it off. “I know. You’re a special person to do all of this, Jolie. The kids and I really appreciate it.”

  And then, joy of joys, wonder of wonders, whatever Hallmark expression of happiness she could conjure, he leaned over and pecked her cheek. Now, it was so small it could barely be called a peck. But she could call it that so she would. A peck. There. On her cheek. His lips on her skin and she was so not going to wash that cheek ever again.

  Somehow she managed to breathe out “You’re welcome” from her suddenly tight throat while he walked around her to the foyer. He could have walked over her and she wouldn’t have minded.

  The man just made her week.

  His thundering up the stairs to the second floor pulled her mind back to reality—

  No it didn’t. Who was she kidding? Her mind went right to the fantasy: an image of Todd’s long legs flexing as he took those stairs—maybe two at a time? Striding across the carpeting to his room, pulling his t-shirt over his head from the back the way guys could. Sloughing his shorts and boxers—nah, it was her fantasy and he was going commando—his shorts off as he hit the bathroom, kicking them perfectly into his hamper (again, it was her fantasy so no clothes on the bathroom floor), and stepping under a steaming shower.

  Okay, it was eighty-eight degrees out, he’d been sweating, and the last thing he was likely to do was take a hot shower, but, again, it was her fantasy and if she wanted lots of smoky steam surrounding his cut muscles and angled planes, she’d opt for the steaming shower.

  And suddenly it was more than a little hot in the kitchen. She ran her wrists under a cool stream of water, then leaned back against the counter.

  She really had to get her hormones under control. She should start dating more.

  More. Ha. More like, start over. Chucky had been years ago and it’d been so long since her last date she could barely remember it. Steve Somebody. Steve with the slobber lips and cow tongue and ewww, it was just not a good memory.

  So she ran through the pitiful short list of guys who’d be date-worthy and every one of them came up short next to Todd. And not necessarily literally, though, yeah, a few of them were on the small side.

  No, she meant on the masculine side. The I-really-want-to-get-to-know-them scale. Heck, Todd had proven himself capable of fidelity and deep love, he helped out little kids, was kind to older people, baked cookies with his mom, and teased his sister-in-law. Add to that the packaging, the chivalry, and the way he made her feel, and she was pretty sure no one else of her acquaintance could measure up.

  Which was so not a good thing.

  Because this guy, this symbol of manly almost-perfection, had one huge, glaring, fatal flaw.

  He was still in love with his wife.

  And what, even if he didn’t have that huge, glaring, fatal flaw, made her think he’d ever be interested in looking her way?

  And why did she care?

  Because—

  ...

  She did.

  Whoa.

  Jolie’s knees gave way so she braced her hands on the counter. She couldn’t care. She couldn’t. Not any more than she’d care about, say, a lost puppy or child. It had to be all about helping him find his way, getting him to live again. It couldn’t be anything more.

  She wouldn’t let it be.

  She’d cared about someone once—her mom—and where did that get her? Alone, destitute, hungry, more than a little scared and, oh yeah, alone. Lonely, by herself. Left.

  And that from a woman who was supposed to love her. Therefore, she could not allow herself to care about someone who had no genetic predisposition to care about her, no burning reason to want to care about her. That’d be just plain emotional suicide. And she was so much smarter than that.

  Keep saying that, mocked Naughty Girl, and you might start to believe it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Todd showed up half-naked the next morning.

  Again.

  At least it was the upper half, as his swim trunks were dripping a good portion of the pool on the kitchen floor and he had a towel wrapped around his waist. Not that that did much, seeing as how his gloriously tanned expanse of chest and stomach were on display, but the towel did cover his knees.

  When had she ever noticed knees before?

  “Good morning,” said the man.

  “Hi.” One-Word Jolie this morning, obviously.

  “Since we’re going to be slaving over hot ovens today why don’t we do cereal for breakfast?”

  “I’ve already made scones.” Wow. Four words. Mouth must have decided to cooperate today.

  “Oh. Okay. But Wheaties wo
uld have sufficed.”

  Of course, breakfast of champions. He’d been hers with Luigi Scumbucket.

  “Well, it is my job.” Not to mention a way to justify the room upstairs. And, yeah, maybe, just maybe, it had something to do with yesterday’s revelation that she wasn’t going to give any importance to. “Um, do you want to shower first?”

  “Nah. Might as well keep the cool from the pool since the temperature’s going to be up in the kitchen. Maybe I’ll hop outside for a dip whenever it’s too hot in here.”

  Back to hearing double-entendres where surely none existed, Jolie nodded, grabbed the scones and poached pears in a raspberry sauce, and plunked them, and her butt, down at the island, o.j. between them.

  “So, how is this going to work, Organizational Jolie?”

  He had the best smile. All white teeth and twinkling green eyes and those laugh lines that crinkled in such an enticing way. She had to work really hard to keep the sigh from her voice as she laid out her baking battle plan.

  And then they were off, dropping fifteen dollops of dough on each of four baking sheets in twelve and a half minutes, then switching them out with the new ones and cooling the finished product. No time for worrisome hormone dances whatsoever.

  By lunchtime, they were more than halfway through the dough but had run out of cooling rack space.

  “Let’s do something simple for lunch,” Todd suggested.

  “I prepped ingredients for a honey mustard chicken salad while you were swimming this morning. I just need to throw that together.”

  “Okay, but no little curlicue things.”

  “You don’t like my curlicues?” And, here, she’d worked so hard to try to impress him.

  “I like them very much. But you don’t need any extra work. Matter of fact—” He grabbed the bags of pre-cut veggies from the fridge. “I’ll do the salad, you do that thing you do with the iced tea, and I’ll meet you at the pool.”

  “Yes sir, boss.” She mock-saluted him, then she took ice from the freezer and gathered up the iced tea and other lunch paraphernalia. He awarded her cheekiness with a smile.

  If she forgot how gorgeous and funny and sweet he was, she could have a good time without all those “what if” thoughts intruding.

  Too late.

  Jolie sighed. Maybe she should just take the iced tea out by the pool and fling herself into the deep end. If she hadn’t done so already.

  God, she needed to get her emotions under control. She had to stop—

  Wait. Emotions?

  She couldn’t have emotions for him. Couldn’t really be feeling something like this. Something real. Something emotional. No, this feeling had to be hormones. Okay, so, sure, she had a crush on him, but rational people did not go from celebrity crushes to emotions in such a short amount of time.

  She was reading way too much into this… whatever. This attraction. This constant thinking about him. It had to be the temperature, both in the kitchen and out here, frying her brain.

  Yes, that was it. Just overactive imagination combined with proximity and the fact that, hello? He was gorgeous and sexy, and liked to play knight chivalric, and she hadn’t been on the receiving end of that hat trick in like… well… never.

  A shiver ran down her back that had nothing to do with the breeze that was trying its hardest to cool her heated skin, but she refused to acknowledge it. This whole thing was just hormones. Lack of dating. Compassion because she really did feel for him, what he’d been going through. It could have nothing whatsoever to do with emotions or she’d have a whole lot more at risk than just this job and the down payment on her pastry shop.

  “Hey there, bathing beauty,” said the man of her thoughts, sliding through the sliders at a most inopportune moment. “Lunch is served.”

  “Tell me why you need me here again?” she asked, choosing the seat across the table from him, hoping, this time, it’d be only their knees that would touch—those knees she’d noticed earlier below the towel he’d left somewhere in the house. “You seem to do perfectly fine on your own when it comes to food.”

  Todd sat down with a slash of pain across his face, and studiously turned his attention to serving the salad so much that she was almost sorry she’d asked. She was intimately acquainted with that avoidance tactic.

  He took a deep breath and set the tongs down. “There was a time when food was the least of my problems. I’d just lost Trista, my wife—” as if she didn’t know who Trista was—“and I felt absolutely nothing. Not hunger, not worry, not even pain. I felt… nothing.”

  He looked at her then, the pain in his eyes softening when she nodded. She’d been there. Been where it was so bad you had to be numb to survive.

  He lifted a forkful of salad, staring at the endive and cranberry covered in sweet honey mustard dressing. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t get out of bed, I didn’t shower, didn’t eat. Mike let me go for about three days and then barged in and took over.” He shrugged, taking that first brave bite. “I needed it, though I hated him at the time. I hated that he made me face life. Face the fact that Trista was gone and my life wasn’t ever going to be the same.”

  She wanted to cry from the sadness in his eyes.

  “I hated him for a while. Him and Barbara. They moved me out of my home, got me up and around, and then the guy moved into my office. I didn’t really care that the place was going to go under and my thought was, if I didn’t care, why should he? Just let it go. Let it all go.” He was back to staring at the endive again.

  “But now you’re doing better.”

  With a soft smile on his face and an even softer look in his eyes, he faced her. “Yeah. I’m doing much better now. I don’t need someone in to cook for me. I’m perfectly capable of doing so. I just hadn’t realized it until we had dinner the other night.”

  Way to go, Jols. Questioned yourself out of a job. Brilliant.

  “But I still want you to stay,” he said.

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. I do. It’s nice having you around and I figure you can use the job. Not to mention the place to stay.”

  “Hey, I do just fine on my own. I can find another place to stay. I don’t need your charity.” She stood up, not sure if she was too proud or angry or humiliated.

  Or hurt beyond words.

  She’d thought… Oh what did it matter what she’d thought? This was just like every other time. Every other place.

  God, how could she have let herself think—hope—

  “Jolie, wait.” Todd touched her arm. “Please. Sit. That didn’t come out right.”

  Her wobbly knees weren’t giving her much choice. Nor was the fact that she could barely breathe with the pain in her chest, so she sank into the chair, her back ramrod. “What?”

  “I like being around you and that’s not something I’ve felt in a very long time. Two years to be exact. I haven’t liked being around anyone, including my brother, yet here you are, and I find myself glad to have a chance to chat, glad to have you here to share my meals. I like having someone else in the house with me.” His hand flexed on her arm and she stared at it. Her skin knew it was there, but Brain was just now processing that information. “Plus, you’re an amazing cook. I’d appreciate it if you’d stay. Keep me company. And make all the curlicues you want. Please?”

  She was such a sucker for please. Not to mention, being needed. By him.

  “Well, put like that, I guess I have to.”

  “Thank you.”

  There went that smile again, melting her composure like candle wax that had had a flame on it for too long. She was even more of a sucker for thank you.

  “And the kids thank you,” he said.

  She shook her head. “No way. You don’t get to bring the kids into this. I’d finish the cookies and do your picnic even without the begging.”

  “I know you would. And that’s why I like you so much, Jolie Gardener.” Then he gave her a little arm rub, à la “Way to go, Sport.”

  That’d
be her, Good Sport Jolie.

  ***

  “So,” Todd said when they were once more dropping cookie dough dollops onto trays, “how’d you learn to cook if you moved around a lot?”

  Now there was a nice way of putting it. Moved around a lot. Made her sound like an Army brat instead of a homeless one.

  “I lived with the Carlesons for an entire school year and Mrs. Carleson was a stay-at-home mom.” Jolie pulled up another baking sheet. “I think she just really liked trying to make things nice for those of us who didn’t have such a great lot in life. There were three of us staying with them in addition to her four kids. Her husband traveled on business a lot. I think he was some big-wig in a computer company. Anyway, she’d always have freshly-baked cookies or brownies for us when we got home from school.”

  Todd started on his second tray. “That must have been nice. I loved when my mom made brownies.”

  Okay, she’d add brownies to her list of To-Dos.

  “It was.” She opened the top oven for her two trays then the bottom one for Todd’s. “One rainy weekend, her husband was away, her kids were off on some church outing, and the three of us were there with her. One of the kids asked if she could teach her to bake and we all jumped on the bandwagon.”

  Actually, the “her” had been her. So desperate for something—anything—normal in her life. Toll House cookies had fit the bill.

  “She sounds like a nice woman.” Todd handed her the second tray and she set the oven timer.

  “She was. Still is, I guess.”

  “So what happened? Why couldn’t you stay there longer?”

  The very same question she’d asked herself all those years ago. “Her husband got transferred so we did, too.” She shrugged as if it weren’t a big deal, but yeah, it’d been a big deal. Big. Huge. She’d cried herself into dehydration the day she’d found out.

  “Do you ever keep in touch with the people you met?”

  “No.” She brushed some cookie dough crumbs from the edge of the counter into her palm. “What’s the point? We never knew how long we had at a house, how long we wanted to stay or were wanted to stay, so what was the point of getting attached?”