She continued to gape at him and he couldn’t help wondering why this news seemed almost catastrophic to her.
“We were ready for a change, weren’t we?”
For the first time, she seemed to register Ethan’s presence. He saw her gaze move rapidly from the boy to him and then back to the boy again, lingering on Ethan’s blue eyes and curls and the wide mouth he knew they shared.
“We.”
He hadn’t meant to tell her like this. A completely unaccustomed—and unearned—guilt made him squirm. He had every right to protect his son, he reminded himself. “This is my son. Ethan, this is my friend Alex McKnight.”
“Alex is typically a boy’s name. I have a friend named Alex at school and he’s a boy.”
“Yes, but sometimes it’s short for Alexandra,” Sam answered.
“Oh. Okay. I’m very pleased to meet you, Alexandra. I think I like your dog.”
She hadn’t stopped looking at his son since becoming aware of him.
“Thanks.” Her voice sounded thready and she had to clear it before she spoke again. “I like him, too, except when he wanders off. But he’s not really my dog. I’m just watching him until we can find his owner.”
She smiled at the boy and Sam suddenly remembered she had several nieces and nephews. Of course she would be comfortable with children.
“Would you mind if I played with him? I would very much like to throw a stick and see if he’ll bring it back.”
“He’ll be in heaven. He’s a retriever. That’s kind of what they do. We’ve been playing fetch all afternoon. You should be able to find some tennis balls over by the back door.”
“Even better! A spherical object will be easier to throw.”
“That was my theory, too.”
His son and the woman he was fiercely attracted to smiled at each other in perfect accord and Ethan headed off, the dog at his heels, to find a tennis ball.
Alexandra turned back to him and her smile dropped away like that spherical object falling out of the sky. “A son. You are a man of mystery.”
He shrugged. “I like to keep a woman guessing.”
“I can see maybe keeping your favorite color a secret but this seems like pretty important information to withhold. You didn’t say a word.”
“I’m a little cautious about mentioning Ethan to people when I first meet them,” he admitted. “It probably comes from being in the military but I tend to be overprotective about sharing my personal life, especially about my family.”
“An understatement.”
He felt guilty, for reasons he couldn’t have explained. He hadn’t done anything wrong but the way she was looking between him and Ethan made him feel otherwise.
“I guess I should have mentioned him but I didn’t quite know how. I’ll admit I’m a little rusty about this. I haven’t dated since my wife died, in part because Ethan tends to get...attached very easily.”
A trait he and his son apparently shared. He had a feeling he was becoming very attached indeed to this woman with the blond curls and big green eyes.
“Nothing wrong with a little caution. Since we both decided we’re not really dating, it shouldn’t be an issue with us.”
“There is that.” He didn’t want to think about that so he quickly changed the subject. “I like your house. I’ll admit, it’s not quite what I would have imagined for you.”
“Why not?”
They both watched the boy and the dog play in the yard but he noticed she kept a safe distance from him, almost as if she didn’t trust herself to come too close.
“I don’t know. I guess I would have imagined you in some kind of modern apartment somewhere. This is homey.”
“I like it. I bought it for the kitchen.”
“You must enjoy living by the creek.”
“I’m not here that often, but yeah.”
“What you need is a big comfortable chair right there on the back patio so you can unwind out here with the sound of the water. While your dog plays in the grass, of course.”
She snorted and wiped the back of her hand against a smudge on her cheek, which only served to leave more dirt trailing there. “I don’t have a dog, only a temporary houseguest. And I’m opening a restaurant in a few weeks, in case you forgot, so I don’t plan to do much unwinding for a while.”
“All the more reason why you need a sanctuary.”
* * *
“THE KITCHEN is my sanctuary.”
Alex could barely string together a coherent thought but she managed to answer honestly enough.
She called him a man of mystery. Ha. He was a ghost, a shadow, an enigma. They had spent several hours together, at least, and had engaged in two very passionate, very intimate embraces.
Not once, in all that time, had he happened to mention two important facts about himself—that he had a son and that he and said son were contemplating a permanent move to Hope’s Crossing.
And not just any neighborhood. Her neighborhood—her freaking sanctuary—with his son, for heaven’s sake.
Obviously, he hadn’t considered her someone important enough that he was willing to share those vital details of himself. That shouldn’t hurt. She knew it shouldn’t but she still couldn’t seem to help the little spasm under her breastbone.
Why should he tell her? They had spent a few pleasurable hours together and kissed exactly twice. He was building her kitchen. That was the sum total of their relationship.
None of this would be an issue if she hadn’t been shortsighted enough to invite him to play pool that first night. If she had just looked at him as a really gorgeous guy who was doing good work on her restaurant kitchen and left it at that, she wouldn’t be standing here in her backyard feeling stunned and stupid and, yes, hurt.
What a disaster.
She was still mulling how she could handle this major wrinkle when Jill Sellers peered over her back fence.
“There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere. I knew you couldn’t have left because your truck was still parked out front but I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out where you’d gone until I heard voices over here.”
Jill blinked big blue eyes at her. “Oh, hello, Alex. I didn’t notice you there.”
Nothing new there. Alex was used to being invisible to Jill and her tight circle of friends. Most people moved past their high school cliques once they picked up their diploma from the principal at graduation but Jill and a few of her friends still seemed to delight in thinking they ran the town.
“I forgot you lived in this neighborhood,” Jill went on.
Despite hard lobbying to the contrary, Alex had used a fairly new real estate agent, which apparently still irked Jill.
“Yes. I was just about to tell Sam some of the downsides of the area,” Alex said. “You know. The deer that come down in the winter and eat all the shrubs, the high water table we can have in bad runoff years because of the creek, the hikers wandering along the Currant Creek Valley trail.”
“Hold on. Don’t tell him that!” Jill beamed her thousand-megawatt smile, all jocular charm, but it couldn’t quite outshine the edge in her voice. “You know those are minor little details, Al. I was just looking for him to tell him I have some great news and some really great news.”
“Great,” Sam said, his voice dry, but Jill didn’t appear to notice.
“It is. The seller is so excited about your offer, what with this soft market and all the work that needs to be done to the place. Nobody else has looked at the property in weeks and Bob and his wife are anxious to move it so they can make an offer on a condo in Arizona. He’s given preliminary approval to your offer!”
“That is great news.”
“Even better, when I told Buzz, his agent, that you were looking for a place to live sooner rather than later, he seemed to think the sellers would be willing to sweeten the deal and offer a short-term lease while you all work out the details. You could move in tomorrow if you wanted!”
And there went the neighborhood.<
br />
Alex gripped the trowel she hadn’t realized she still held, wishing she could dig a big keep-out sign on her front yard. She didn’t want him here, living just a tennis ball’s throw away. She would consider anywhere in Hope’s Crossing too close but right here in Currant Creek Valley was unthinkable.
“I don’t need to move quite that quickly,” Sam was saying. “Ethan still has another month of school in Denver and will be staying with my brother and his wife until then.”
That explained what he did with the boy while he was here finishing kitchens and taking midnight walks and kissing her until she couldn’t think straight.
“Well, if you change your mind, we just have to say the word to Buzz and he’ll set the wheels in motion. It’s a cash offer and you don’t have to wait for bank approval, only the inspection and the title search, so that will speed things up considerably.”
At that moment, Ethan laughed at something the dog had done. Sam turned his attention to his son, a softness to his features she hadn’t seen there before.
“Good. The sooner the better. We have our work cut out for us, making the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom usable. If we can move quickly, Ethan and I can work on it during the weekends when he comes up.”
“We have so many details to hash out.” Jill gave a faux apologetic look to Alex. “Maybe we should work through some of these issues back at the office where we don’t have quite so many...distractions.”
She gestured to the boy and the dog but Sam’s gaze didn’t leave Alex. “We wouldn’t want any distractions, would we?” he murmured.
She had used that very word the night before, she remembered.
His very obvious implication that she could disturb his concentration wasn’t lost on Jill. Her mouth tightened for just an instant before that fake smile stretched wider. “Shall we go back to my office then?”
Sam glanced at the complicated-looking watch he wore and swore suddenly. “I’m sorry. This is going to have to wait. I’m afraid I lost track of time and I’m supposed to be somewhere in about twenty minutes.”
“Now?” Jill blinked at him.
“Yeah. Come on, Eth. We’ve got to go.”
“What about the offer?” she pressed.
“You can handle it. I already told you my terms. What else do you need to know?”
Alex hadn’t seen Jill this frustrated since their senior prom, when her date—who had ended up as her first husband—had ignored her and spent the night sneaking beers with his friends behind the old community center building.
“I guess I have your cell number. I can call you if I encounter any problems.”
“You do that. Thanks a million.” He gave her a wave then turned to Alex. “I’ll see you later, neighbor.”
Before she could think of a way to block him, he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, surrounding her with his heat and that distinctive scent of his soap—bergamot and cedar leaf and something citrusy that tugged an instant response out of her.
Drat the man! It was completely unfair of him to shake up her world like this now, when she had so many other plates spinning.
She smiled weakly. “See you.”
He walked away holding his son’s hand, and Alex wanted to cry. Or at least throw a few dirt clods at him for being so damn irresistible.
“He’s really a lovely man,” Jill said. “And that boy is completely adorable.”
“Isn’t he?” Alex smiled tightly.
“I think he’ll be a wonderful addition to the town, don’t you? Who knows? I might even hire him to do some work at my house.”
“I didn’t realize you were remodeling. Didn’t you just move into a new house a few years ago? Right before your second husband left town, wasn’t it?”
Alex regretted the dig as soon as she said it. Apparently she was still as bitchy as she had once been in high school in retaliation against Jill and her vicious cronies.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
Jill didn’t seem offended, for once. “Honey, I was glad that loser left. Without the extremely generous alimony my attorney insisted on, I wouldn’t be able to stay in that beautiful new house. I think I might have just enough of that bastard’s money set aside to add some new built-ins to my home office.”
If Alex knew Jill, she intended to get more out of Sam than some new cabinetry. She considered warning him that Jill could be, er, predatory, but decided he was a big boy. He could probably take care of himself. Maybe he liked slick, polished real estate agents better than frazzled, smart-mouthed chefs.
It wasn’t her business what he did, who he saw, where he lived. He had made that crystal clear by his echoing, cavernous silence.
CHAPTER NINE
“LESS THAN A WEEK before the restaurant opens. You’ve got to be going crazy making sure everything is ready. Are you certain there’s nothing I can do to help you?”
She smiled at Claire for her ever-ready willingness to help. She loved her friend dearly, even when she tried a little too hard.
“You’re doing it. I needed the distraction of some company and I needed taste testers. This is the perfect combination. Thanks so much for coming over on short notice.”
“Sign me up for taste testing and distracting anytime,” Maura piped in, smiling at Henry, who currently sat on Alex’s lap chortling away at Leo, who watched him out of careful eyes as the baby banged a wooden spoon on a plastic bowl Alex had sacrificed for the cause.
Maura seemed a different person than she had been a year ago, when she had been tangled up in grief and pain, closed off to all of them.
Married nearly a year and mother to the very adorable Henry, she glowed with happiness, and Alex couldn’t be happier for her. Her sister deserved to find joy again after the hell of losing a child.
“Are your nerves completely shot?” Mary Ella asked. “This is something you’ve wanted for so long and it’s almost here.”
Panic fluttered in her stomach with barbed wings. “You could say that. If I blow it, who knows when another chance like this might come along, right?”
“But you’re not going to blow it,” Claire insisted. “Everything will go perfectly. You’ll see.”
She wasn’t so sure about that. Every time she turned around, she remembered something else she needed to do before the Friday night.
The past three weeks had been a whirlwind of preparation, trying to make sure every detail was perfect. She had worked her last day at the resort restaurant more than a week ago and spent every waking moment since devoting all her energies to Brazen.
“You’re all coming, right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Claire said firmly. “We already have reservations and are planning to drive over with Evie and Brodie. We better get a fantastic table, since we’re sitting with the owner.”
Those barbed wings flapped harder. She would not screw this up. She could do this. One of the first things she learned in culinary school had been that a good chef had confidence in herself and the unique gifts she had to offer.
She knew her food was good, but all the minutia was killing her.
It didn’t help that her two sous-chefs were engaged in a pissing contest that was beginning to affect morale among the rest of the crew. She had a meeting with both of them later to go over final details and she planned to rattle their cages a little, remind them she was in charge and refused to keep either of them on staff if they couldn’t figure out how to bury their differences and get along.
Should be a pleasant evening, all in all.
“You know I’ll be there,” Mary Ella declared. “Both Harry and I are eagerly anticipating it.”
“I’m coming,” Maura said. “Jack will even be there. He’s flying in from Singapore and should be home Friday afternoon. Should be just enough time to shower and shave.”
“He’s coming home just for my restaurant opening, I assume.”
Maura laughed. “I’m sure that was right at the top of his list while he was scheduling his trip date
s.”
Maura’s husband always had several international projects spinning. Alex had been inclined to dislike the guy for abandoning her pregnant sister more than twenty years ago but Jack had managed to achieve what none of the rest of them did, help Maura see that her life could go on again.
“Who’s watching this adorable guy?” She nuzzled Henry’s warm, sweet-smelling neck. His giggle just about drowned out the little pang in her heart at what might once have been.
“Macy. She insists she’s fourteen and plenty old enough.”
How could Claire’s daughter be fourteen already? She had vivid memories of holding her just like this, giving her raspberries on her neck and changing her diaper, and now she was becoming a young lady.
The world moved on and she just stayed the same.
Not true, she corrected herself. Look at all she had done in those fourteen years. She was happy. Not every woman needed one of these little munchkins to feel complete. She loved being an aunt and was damn good at it. That was enough for her.
“So what do you think?” She gestured to the plates she had prepared for the women. That was the reason she was holding Henry, so his mother, grandmother and Auntie Claire could devote their full attention to the pumpkin risotto.
“I like it,” Claire declared. “It’s got an almost smoky flavor.”
She waited for Maura and Mary Ella and didn’t miss the quick look they exchanged.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s not my favorite thing you’ve ever cooked,” Maura said honestly.
“Mom?”
“I have to agree. It needs something. I can’t quite figure out what.”
That panic fluttered faster, stronger. Brazen would be a disaster. No one in town would ever be able to look her in the eye again.
She forced herself to breathe. Confidence. So she made one dish that didn’t resonate. So what? They had all raved about the apple-pear salad, the roasted artichokes and the pan-seared turkey cutlets. She hadn’t even been planning to add the pumpkin risotto to the menu.
“Okay. That’s fine,” she said. “I’ll table that one and work on it a little more. Thanks for the input.”
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