Southern Charm & Second Chances

by Nancy Robards Thompson

  “Obviously, I never tasted it because you were supposed to be following the La Bula house recipe. But I did taste the batch from last night.”

  Her face fell. “And? Was there something wrong with it? I noticed that you cleaned your plate. You ate the entire thing. And you left your dish on the end of my table.”

  He had intended to wash it. He didn’t expect the staff to clean up after him. Not even the dishwashers. But he’d gotten busy and by the time he’d returned, the plate was gone.

  “It was delicious,” he conceded.

  “Then why are you bringing it up and acting as if I served you another slice of the Dead Sea cake?”

  He laughed. “No, don’t get me wrong. This wasn’t anything like the Dead Sea version. What I tasted last night was good, but it was...different.”

  “Different as compared to what?”

  “Different from the rum baba I am familiar with. The recipe I know has citrus overtones—both lemon and orange. Yours has something that’s fruity, but it’s not citrus. Actually, I couldn’t identify it.”

  “Apricot glaze.” She crossed her arms.

  He reached out and touched her.

  “Come on, don’t be defensive. We both promised to open our minds. All I’m asking is that you give your recipe a few tweaks this week while we’re working on the dessert menu.”

  “I’m not pretending to know everything that’s best,” Jane said, “but I do know my rum baba. It’s my grandmother’s recipe and it is one of the favorite items on the dessert menu. Actually, it’s one of the bestselling items on the menu, period. Why would you want to change a good thing? Especially when you’ve admitted pastry isn’t your wheelhouse.”

  “It’s not, but I know what I like.”

  She arched a brow at him and something hot and electric zipped between them.

  She looked away and took a drink of her beer.

  Liam cleared his throat. “You haven’t even tried my recipe. Will you at least try it?”

  She leaned back, resting her head against the wall. Her arm was flush against his. She didn’t move it, just sat there staring straight ahead.

  The skin-on-skin contact set his senses on high alert. A fire burned in his belly and the temperature in the small room seemed to increase a few degrees.

  She turned her head and looked at him. “Okay. In the spirit of being open-minded—not pretending like I know it all—I will try your recipe. In fact, I have an idea. What if I prepare both recipes for the soft opening at the end of next week and we let the people who attend vote on which one they like best?”

  Charles had been working on putting together a guest list for the soft run of their grand reopening. He was inviting friends and family of the staff, local dignitaries and as many of the Who’s Who of Savannah luminaries as he could round up on such short notice.

  Liam shrugged. When he did, his upper arm slid against hers. “Works for me. But it must be a blind tasting. I don’t want you prejudicing anyone. People like you. They don’t like me.”

  “What are you talking about? Women love you.” She drawled out the vowels in an exaggerated Southern accent.

  Ugh. He wasn’t going there.

  “I’m saying, the people around here know and love you and your grandmother. That would sway the vote.”

  She turned her body to face him and smiled at the idea. “Why, chef, I promise I will do everything in my power to make this fair.”

  He’d heard traces of her accent before, though he hadn’t realized it until now. Maybe it was the beer, but it her words were more relaxed.

  “In celebration of my being all open-minded, and giving your clearly inferior recipe a fair shake, I think we should make a wager,” she said.

  “See, there you go again with your wagers. I think you really are gambler, even if you don’t know it.”

  She playfully backhanded his leg. His thigh burned where she’d touched it.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, I’m sure,” she said. “This is just a friendly wager between friends. It shows how proudly I stand behind my rum baba. So, what do you think it should be?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Let me think about it.”

  She was still sitting facing him. The two of them locked gazes and simultaneously narrowed their eyes as if they were trying to come up with the solution to world peace.

  He was acutely aware of how her knee was touching his thigh.

  He wasn’t sure if she was simply comfortable or if she was buzzed enough to not notice the contact. She was almost finished with her second beer. Actually, it was her third, because she’d had at least part of one before he’d arrived, in addition to the two they’d shared since they’d been locked in. He’d done some damage to his second one, too. It had left him feeling looser and more relaxed than he’d been since he’d arrived in Savannah.

  “All right, gambler,” he said, “what are you willing to wager—in addition to risking your rum baba’s place on the Wila menu?”

  She laughed, throwing her head back. The crystalline sound of her voice warmed him from the inside out.

  “I don’t know. It’s not like we’d be competing for a trip to Paris.” She slurred her words. “I’ve never been to Paris. Isn’t it crazy that I’m a pastry chef and I’ve never been to Paris? I’ve always wanted to go. It’s one of my goals,” she sighed. “Someday.” Her words were wistful and she had a faraway look in her eyes.

  “What else is on your list of goals?” he asked.

  She looked up at the ceiling, as if recalling it in her mind. “Lots of things. I’ve only crossed off two things.” She leaned in closer and whispered in his ear, “Only two. Isn’t that lame?”

  “It’s better than none.” He turned his face toward her and her lips were only a breath away. Suddenly he was the awkward sixteen-year-old, nerd boy, hated by his father and bullied by the cool kids. “So, go to Paris and cross it off your list, too.”

  She clucked her tongue.

  “It’s not just a matter of going and crossing it off the list.” She made a check mark in the air. “Been there, done that. I want to go and learn the all the secrets of all the great chef pâtissier parisien.”

  Her French pronunciation was remarkably good for someone whose words were losing their sharp edges and blurring.

  “Have you been?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Of course you have. See, I can’t go to Paris until I pay off my student loan from culinary school.” She picked at the label on the beer bottle and murmured under her breath, “I’m going to be thirty and I’m still paying off student debt.” He didn’t think she was talking to him until she said, “How long did it take you to get out of debt from school?”

  He licked his numb lips so he wouldn’t slur, too. “I didn’t go to culinary school. I’m self-taught.”

  She shoved his arm. “Get out! Bad-boy chef, Liam Wright, is self-taught? How did I not know this about you? Though I should’ve. You’re way too cool for school.”

  He laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Bad-boy chef, Liam Wright?” If she only knew. “Is that what you think of me?”

  “Honey, that’s what everyone thinks of you.” The Southern accent that he suspected she consciously controlled was fully slipping now.

  In the way, way back of his mind, the part that was shrouded by the beer and the buzz from sitting so close to her, he knew he should be using this time to talk to her about her ideas for the dessert menu. Not about Paris and goals and about why she thought he was a bad boy.

  It was front and center in his mind that he’d like to show her that this bad boy wanted to do a lot of things right now, and talking wasn’t one of them.

  “So, what else don’t I know about you?” she asked as she stood. “Where’d you grow up?”

  He watched her walk over to the b
everage cooler and pull out two more beers.

  “Brooklyn.”

  “Brothers and sisters?” she asked.

  “Only child.”

  “I’m one of three. I can’t imagine being an only child. Was it lonely?”

  “Sometimes. I guess. I don’t know.”

  “Are your parents still in New York?”

  “Dad is. He’s a cop.”

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “She...um...died when I was fifteen.”

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry.”

  She handed him a beer.

  “Yeah, me, too. Cancer. It sucks.”

  “I know. Lost my dad to it when I was young.”

  “You grew up in Savannah.”

  “I did. Lived here my entire life until I moved to New York to go to school and work. But we know how that ended.”

  She gave him a pointed look as she sat next to him.

  When she’d settled in, she rested her head on his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry about your mom.”

  “Me, too. I’m sorry about your dad.”

  “Yeah. It’s sad,” she said. “Let’s not talk about it.”

  “Okay.”

  They sat there like that for a while, her head on his shoulder. The beverage cooler ticked. He could smell her shampoo—the floral notes made him want to lean in closer and breathe in deeper.

  Suddenly she sat up and turned to him.

  “I know!” she said. “If my rum cake wins, you have to take me to Paris.”

  He laughed. “And if I win?”

  “You don’t have to take me to Paris.”

  He chortled. “You’re drunk. In what world is that fair?”

  She licked her lips and pointed an unsteady finger at him. “It’s sorta your fault that I haven’t been there yet. If you hadn’t fired me, I’d still be in New York. I wouldn’t have spent three months looking for a job, running up debt. It set me back. So, you can take me to Paris to make up for it.”

  Her words were sobering. It stood to reason that losing a job could set a person back, but he’d never thought about it from this perspective. He’d never personalized it and thought about how rash actions could have a devastating effect on someone’s life.

  It was the alcohol talking—in both of their cases. Her spilling her guts and him feeling bad. But alcohol tended to draw the truth closer to the surface.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Oooh, don’t feel bad.” She reached up and stroked his cheek, ran a finger over his lips. The next thing he knew Jane was leaning in and kissing him.

  His nerve endings sizzled like live wires under his skin.

  And then the whole world disappeared as he pulled her tighter, staking his claim—an unspoken admission of all the things he hadn’t allowed himself to think about until now, pouring out in this wordless confession of everything he wanted.

  He wanted her.

  He wanted her lips—they tasted like hops from the beer, with a hint of chocolate and cinnamon and maybe rum, with just the right amount of salt. Or maybe that was just his imagination, what he’d imagined she’d taste like.

  The entire time he’d been in Savannah, since the day he’d seen her sitting in the dining room, his subconscious had craved her kiss.

  The logical rational that once had ruled him didn’t apply here. Not anymore. Reason shifted and spanned the gap of self-protection until he was thoroughly lost in the taste and feel of her.

  Thank God for broken door handles and dreams of Paris and bets about who could make the best damn Dead Sea cake. He wanted to take her to Paris, and to kiss her by the Seine, and to make love to her and wake up with her in his bed. He wanted her. The fact that he was her boss didn’t matter.

  Except...it did.

  The rude, intrusive reality check slammed that fact into focus.

  Chapter Five

  Oh, God. What had she done?

  She’d kissed Liam. That’s what she’d done.

  The beer was responsible for her indiscretion... No. She was responsible for her indiscretion. The beer was responsible for her headache.

  The horrifying reality of what she’d done was the reason for her sick stomach.

  How could she have been so stupid?

  Jane brushed the last uncurled section of her brown hair before wrapping it around her curling iron. She grimaced at herself in the mirror, although her hair was behaving today.

  At least something was going right.

  She’d leaned in and kissed Liam.

  He’d kissed her back—at first. Then, the next thing she knew, he’d pulled away and was determined to free them from the pantry. He’d said it was his fault that they were locked in the pantry and he would get them out. He had. He’d found an old set of cutlery stashed on one of the shelves and had used a table knife to pry the pins out of the hinges and remove the door, freeing them.

  If necessity was the mother of invention, then desperation was the force that had propelled Liam to get them out of the pantry. It had been clear that he hadn’t wanted to spend another moment in there with her.

  As she’d cleaned up her workstation, Liam had apologized and promised it would never happen again. Since he’d left the pantry door leaning against the wall, his meaning was clear: their kiss had been a mistake.

  If that’s how he felt, she didn’t intend to spend her only day off this week agonizing over it.

  As she finished putting on her makeup, she decided she would go downstairs and bake the bread she’d started last night at the restaurant but ended up bringing home. By the time they had gotten out of the pantry, it had been too late to fire up the oven.

  As if things hadn’t been hot enough in the kitchen.

  She blinked away the thought—even though she could still feel the phantom tingle of his lips on hers.

  The bread—think about the bread, not the kiss.

  The extra leavening time had added a new twist to the recipe: the twelve-hour rise. Maybe it would turn out to be one of those happy accidents that made the recipe.

  The kiss certainly would never be considered a happy accident. At least the bread gave her hope of something good coming from last night. Suddenly she remembered their bet and their talk about Liam opening his mind and being more patient about new mistakes.

  They’d also talked about family. He was an only child who had lost his mom at a tender age. He wasn’t quite a child, but he wasn’t yet a man. Maybe the loss had created his hard edges?

  Sad as it was, it was interesting to glimpse a more vulnerable facet of this complicated man.

  She did her best to shake off thoughts of Liam, smoothing her red sundress over her hips and giving herself a once-over in the closet door mirror. She had a standing dinner date with her grandmother, sisters and mother on Monday evenings. Since Jane had Sunday off this week, they’d moved the weekly family meal up a day and decided to have Sunday brunch instead.

  When Jane had gotten home, she’d found a note tacked to the door of her bungalow. In the missive, Gigi told her about the change of plans and mentioned that she had a surprise for Jane.

  Gigi’s “surprises” could be anything from a blind date that she’d arranged for Jane to a croquette recipe she’d decided to try out on the family.

  Today, Jane was decidedly hoping for croquettes rather than another croaking frog of a failed fix-up. It had been a while since Gigi had tried to match her up with someone. Jane hoped Gigi wasn’t breaking her streak today.

  She gave herself one last glance in the mirror, turning first to the left and then to the right. She always tried to look nice for the family meals. Invariably she ended up interacting with the guests or a neighbor would pop in for a quick hello. Dressing up made her feel good. After wearing a uniform of chef’s coat and baggy cotton pants five or six da
ys a week, it was fun to reconnect with her feminine side. She enjoyed doing her hair and experimenting with different makeup looks. Today, she’d taken the time to paint her fingernails a cherry red that complimented her dress and pedicure.

  Since she had to be at the restaurant so early in the mornings during the work week to start the bread and finalize the daily dessert menu, she rarely had time to bother with extras like makeup and nail polish. Besides, she always kept her fingernails clean, short and unadorned since she had her hands in food every day. There was no place for fussy nail polish in the kitchen. She’d remove her fingernail polish before bed tonight. But her toes were another story. A pedicure was one of the ways she liked to pamper herself after being on her feet all week. Plus, the pedi lasted all week. Even if she was the only one who knew her toes were painted, it was her secret that underneath her high-top tennies, her feet looked pretty.

  After sliding on a pair of wedge sandals, which showcased her cherry-red toes, she grabbed the warm beer bread off the kitchen counter and left her bungalow.

  She made her way down the shrub-lined pebble path, careful to stay on the larger stepping-stones so she wouldn’t step wrong and turn her ankle. As much as she loved pretty heels, her job didn’t allow her much practice wearing them since her feet were usually encased in comfy, closed-toed, lace-ups. Ugly shoes were part of her uniform, a hazard of the job that she didn’t allow herself to dwell on. She passed the flower garden with its moss-stained angel statue and gurgling fountain and stepped onto the patio area behind the inn.

  She had to hand it to her mom, Gigi and Ellie. No matter how much the main building needed repairs or how engrossed Ellie was in the art classes, the women made sure the garden and patio areas were blooming and inviting. They always switched out the flowers to reflect various holidays and made the most of the seasons with tasteful decorations. Often, the Forsyth Galloway Inn was included in Savannah garden tours. Gigi always said it was worth it because it was better publicity than they could buy.