by Abby Gaines
He relieved her of her jacket, taking in the fitted lilac silk blouse over her slim skirt. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“But Martha’s such a homemaker.”
“You seem to think I’m entirely one-dimensional.”
“Aren’t you?”
His eyes went to her lips. “I definitely have at least two dimensions.”
“Let’s go cook,” Megan said quickly.
The kitchen hadn’t been updated in maybe fifty years, apart from the state-of-the-art oven and dishwasher and a coffee machine that might have been lifted from NASA. Travis pulled a pack of steak from the fridge. “Do you want to be head chef or sous-chef?” He threw her a black calico apron from a hook on the wall.
She tied the apron around her waist, saw the flare of interest in his eyes. “Don’t get excited,” she warned. “I don’t cook.”
“I guess that means I’m head chef.”
She rose to the challenge. “I’m sure I could manage steak.”
“A common misconception. Most people can’t cook steak to save themselves. You can be on chopping.”
“Why does that sound less important than whatever you’re going to do?”
He grinned. “Ease up on the global domination ambition, Megs, just for a couple of hours.” He rummaged in the fridge and passed her basil, garlic and—
“Anchovies?” She turned the jar in her hand. The tiny fish were packed in oil that had turned thick and cloudy in the fridge.
“We’re making a green salsa.”
“Doesn’t that come in jars at the supermarket?”
He made a cross with his fingers, a warding-off-evil sign.
Travis cooked as he did everything else, with an easy, relaxed mastery. After Megan finished chopping the salsa ingredients, she was promoted, as he put it, to topping and tailing the green beans.
She squinted at him as he brushed olive oil over the steaks. “I thought you’d consider this women’s work.”
“As soon as I con someone into marrying me, I’ll be in the living room watching TV while my wife slaves away out here.”
“Thought so,” she said sagely.
“Get back to those beans, woman.” He yelped, and dodged the sharp point of her knife. Megan turned back to work with a satisfied grin.
When the meal—steaks with green salsa, beans and fried potatoes—was ready, they sat in the small dining room to eat. Travis lit a tall, thin candle in a brass candlestick. He uncorked a bottle of cabernet sauvignon and poured two glasses of the ruby wine.
They clinked glasses. “Here’s to Martha Stewart,” Travis said.
Megan sliced into her perfectly medium rare steak. She popped it into her mouth and closed her eyes to savor the taste. “This is great. I should cook more often.”
“Find yourself a chauvinist husband, let him pressure you into giving up work, then you can cook as often as you want.”
She smiled.
“Will you stay at Merritt, Merritt & Finch if your father doesn’t give you his job?” Travis asked.
“Of course,” she said. “I couldn’t leave, I love that place.” She sipped her wine. “Let’s not talk work, Travis. That way, we can’t have any conflict of interest.”
He moved the candle aside, so there was nothing between them. “What do you want to talk about?”
Travis didn’t want to talk at all. He barely wanted to eat. Having Megan here in his house, at his table, was an assault on his senses. Who would have thought that cooking and eating a simple steak dinner could feel so…significant.
Maybe he was subconsciously trying to salvage something from that disastrous meeting with Jonah. To make it worth screwing up.
“I figured out why you jumped in to help me with Dad this afternoon,” she said.
He speared a piece of steak with his fork. “No, you didn’t.”
“You’re having problems with your own father. The other day it seemed he was expecting something of you that you weren’t delivering.”
“You’d be a pain to live with,” he observed. At the thought of living with Megan, he felt light-headed. He was drinking too fast.
She grinned. “Are my powers of perception dazzling you?”
“Scaring me,” he corrected. “Remind me never to go up against you in a divorce.”
She laughed. “You know about my problems with my dad, so tell me about yours.”
“On the other hand, if that’s your idea of logic, maybe I do stand a chance of beating you.” He took a cautious drink of wine.
“Unlikely,” she said. “Go on, tell me. I hate that you pity me.”
Beneath the light tone, he sensed that she meant it. “Pity isn’t what I feel for you,” he said, then stopped. Because suddenly, he had no idea what he felt. In the candlelight, with fire crackling in the living room, attraction was the number one sentiment, if you could call it that. The vestiges of a smile curved her lips.
Probably just as well she didn’t want to settle down and have kids, it would be a waste of one hell of a brain. He pulled himself up. Say, what?
She touched his wrist. “Tell me, Travis.”
Had she ever touched him before? Touched him first? He could only assume not, because the flame that swept him like a brush fire took him totally by surprise.
Tightened his groin, loosened his lips.
“Mom and Dad have fallen out with some of their friends,” he said. “Over me.”
She stroked his wrist, coaxing him. “You broke their daughter’s heart?”
He struggled to breathe. “Girl couldn’t make apple pie worth a damn. She had to go.”
Megan murmured sympathetically. “It’s not easy being an old-fashioned guy.”
She had no idea how right she was. How his caveman instincts made him want to sweep the meal off the table and haul her across the surface. “Mom and Dad have lived in Jackson Creek all their lives. It’s one of those small towns with a huge community spirit. I couldn’t have gone to college if the whole place hadn’t been right behind me.”
Megan sat back; instantly he missed her touch. She lifted her wineglass to her lips but didn’t drink. “How do you mean?”
He cut a bean and added it to his fork with a piece of potato. “As you figured the other day, Mom and Dad never had much cash. There was no way they could afford for me to get a law degree, even with a student loan. When I was accepted for college, the town chipped in. They fund-raised, they donated, they sold everything that wasn’t nailed down on eBay to raise the cash.”
“Incredible.”
“It was an amazing gift,” he agreed. “I told folks I’d pay them back one day, but of course they didn’t want that. So a few years ago I set up a scholarship to do what they did for me—pay for a local kid to attend college each year.”
“That’s very decent,” she said.
The scholarship was barely a blip in his bank balance. Money wasn’t his problem.
“Did the town pay your brothers’ college fees, too?” she asked.
“Clay went into construction straight from high school, and built up a successful business. He’s doing college studies part-time now. Brent won a scholarship to Georgia State—these days he has his own consulting firm. The three of us are paying Gina’s fees at Duke.” Travis watched the flicker of shadows on her face in the candlelight. She would have always been destined to work in her dad’s firm; she’d never had to think about carving a place for herself.
She pushed a piece of potato around her plate, mopping up some of the steak juices. If she knew how proprietary he felt, watching her eat food he’d prepared for her, food they’d created together, she would freak out. He was struggling not to freak out himself; his fork was slippery in his palm.
“So, what’s the problem?” she asked.
“Everyone in Jackson Creek had faith in me to make it through college, to become an ace lawyer. My parents had double the faith of everyone put together.”
“Lucky. I wish my dad had that much faith in me.
”
He flipped his knife between his fingers. “It’s a two-edged sword. If you don’t live up to people’s expectations, they take it personally.”
She was smart, she cottoned on right away. “People don’t approve of you working for PPA?”
“It was only ever a temporary job,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows. “You’ve been there ten years.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Your division at PPA is aboveboard.” A statement, not a question.
Her belief in him warmed him through. “That’s the justification I’ve always used, but it’s not enough anymore. There’s a couple in Jackson Creek, Doug and Mary Laing, they own a supermarket. Three months back, a tourist from Atlanta slipped in their store and broke his hip. He’s suing them for a couple of mil.”
“PPA is representing the plaintiff,” Megan guessed.
“Yep. I didn’t know anything about it—speculative personal injury lawsuits are as common as coffee around PPA—until Dad told me. The Laings are good friends of my parents. Or they were.”
“Ouch.”
“Doug and Mary did as much as anyone to get me into college. They don’t have a bad bone in their bodies. But the PPA associate on the case went digging for dirt. He found out that forty years ago Doug deserted from the army in Vietnam. Now it’s all over town and the Laings are humiliated.”
“So the people who scrimped and saved to send you to college feel as if their generosity is being thrown back in their faces,” Megan summarized, with all the finesse she’d employ in a courtroom.
He put it more bluntly. “Folks think I’ve lost my integrity.”
Her forehead creased. “Them saying it doesn’t make it true.” But she wasn’t disagreeing, either.
He appreciated that she didn’t rush to reassure him. “My parents raised me to put family first, to use my talents to serve my clients as best I can and to live with integrity,” he said. “I bought into that not because I was brainwashed, but because I could see it worked. Mom and Dad are still blissfully happy together after nearly forty years, they have more integrity than anyone I know. The only thing that ever caused friction between them was occasional money worries. I wanted what they had, minus the financial difficulties. A job at a good firm…”
“And a happy family at home,” she completed.
“That was the dream. Instead, my financial security is starting to feel like blood money, and I’m no nearer the home-and-hearth thing than I was when I started.” The candle flame wavered as he exhaled, then steadied. “I’ve always known it, but until the Laings, it hasn’t been urgent enough to do anything about. Now, people I care about are suffering. And my parents can’t hold their heads up around town. I have to make some changes.”
Megan wiped her mouth with her napkin, and immediately he focused on her lips. “I’ve seen you with your father, I’ve seen you with kids. It seems to me, you have plenty of integrity.”
“Thanks.” He just about gagged on the word. She wouldn’t say that if she knew why they were involved in the Hoskins case together.
“Why did you join PPA in the first place?” she asked.
Travis hadn’t discussed that old business in years. He took a sip of wine and let the mellow warmth spread through him. “You could say I was repaying a debt. Kyle Prescott saved my life.”
CHAPTER TEN
THE FACT THAT TRAVIS WAS sitting across the dinner table from her, demonstrably alive and well, did nothing to stop Megan’s visceral reaction to the news that at one point his life had needed saving.
Somehow, she managed to set down her knife and fork, as if they were talking about nothing more important than the court schedule. “How exactly—” breathe “—did Kyle save your life?”
“We were students, out on a bender, and I was the designated driver,” he said. “It was my turn, that’s all. We were driving back to the dorm, a truck crossed the centerline and pushed the car off the road into a culvert. A damned deep one. The truck driver had fallen asleep. He was later found guilty of manslaughter.”
His wooden tone didn’t begin to conceal the horror he must have gone through that night. Megan’s stomach roiled.
“Kyle didn’t have his seat belt on—he was in the back and he was thrown clear,” Travis continued. “That guy has the luck of the devil. He landed on a pile of clippings, instead of hitting his head on the concrete.” He swirled the wine in his glass, stared into it. “Steve, the guy in the passenger seat—I hadn’t met him before that night—died instantly. Another guy in the back managed to crawl out. I was trapped, unconscious and bleeding heavily.”
“And Kyle helped you?”
“I’d swear he was drunk as a skunk, but somehow he dragged me out of there, made a tourniquet to stop the bleeding and called nine-one-one. I stopped breathing at one point, the paramedics told me later, and Kyle gave me mouth-to-mouth.”
Megan’s salsa threatened to make a reappearance. “That’s…impressive,” she managed to say.
He patted her hand. “Kyle is an odd guy. Reckless and driven and selfish, yet he has this rescuer complex at the unlikeliest moments. Before the accident, I barely knew him. Afterward, I was proud to count him as a friend.”
“I imagine he’s the kind of guy who wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of that.”
He opened his mouth as if to defend Prescott. Then he shrugged. “I guess. Kyle got fired from his first job for falsifying his time sheets, so he set up his own firm with Jim Palmer. They took the cases no one else wanted and they were both accomplished lawyers—they grew like crazy. When Kyle’s parents died, he fell apart. He asked me to come in and help. I was working in Dallas back then, but I didn’t hesitate.”
She studied his face. “And you’re still there.”
“Kyle wasn’t the only one to benefit from the deal. I have free rein in the property division and it’s a strong business. I might even make more money than you do.”
“I admire your loyalty,” she said. “But what happens now?” She toyed with a piece of wax that had fallen from the candle. “Will you look for a new job?”
He sat back. “I’d like to join a blue-chip firm.”
“Oh,” she said doubtfully.
“Exactly,” he agreed. “Ex-PPA partners aren’t high on the list of desirable employees. Atlanta has some of the stuffiest law firms in the country. If you can’t trace your lineage back to the Confederacy…”
“Some of them are more evenhanded,” she said. “Look at my dad. Even being his daughter isn’t enough to win me any favors.” She rolled the piece of wax between her fingers. His story explained his edginess, the tension she’d sensed at the sandwich bar. Nothing to do with her, or Theo—she was ashamed of her suspicions. “There must be some way for you to get into a more reputable firm.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said roughly. “I have it in hand.”
She poured water from the jug on the table into her glass, then his. “I hope you get what you want, Travis. You deserve it.”
“I thought we agreed not to talk about work.”
She sipped her water. “Okay, let’s talk about Christmas. Will you spend it with your family?”
“Of course. It’s a protracted event at our place. The festivities always kick off with the town’s Christmas social on the last Saturday in November—that’s this weekend. Then there’s the traditional wild boar hunt. There aren’t any wild boars around, but it gives people an excuse to go thundering through the woods before they buy a pig from the butcher and roast it on a spit. Then we have cake-and-eggnog night at church. By the time the twenty-fifth rolls around, we’re too tired to move.”
She laughed. “It sounds quaint.”
“That’s probably the right word. I guess a Merritt family Christmas is a little more sophisticated.”
“We start with the firm’s party, which is next week.”
“That’s business,” he objected.
“It’s a big night for all of u
s, including Sabrina, who’s never worked at Merritt, Merritt & Finch. We’re pretty busy with corporate entertaining, right up until the office closes for the holiday. We go to some family friends, the Warringtons, for Christmas dinner.”
“Lucky, judging by your culinary abilities.”
“My sister Sabrina is a Cordon Bleu cook.” She drained her wineglass. “Which reminds me, I need to pick up the brûlée torch I ordered her for Christmas. I haven’t even started my shopping.”
“You have a lot on your mind.” Travis gathered up the plates. “How’s your promotion-by-coffee strategy going?”
“Stealthily,” she admitted.
“Do you really think your dad cares what you drink?”
“You’ll know from any jury trial how the least significant things can substantially alter someone’s perception,” she said. “In Dad’s view, serious players drink espresso. I’m creating the right impression.” She followed him to the kitchen, where he switched on the coffee machine.
“So you’re still afraid of lattes?”
She pulled a face.
“Espresso, then?” He scooped grounds into the filter basket.
“I don’t exactly like it, but I crave it,” she confessed. “I don’t know what I like anymore.” She took two mugs from the hooks on the wall. “Do you have any tea? Hot tea?”
When Travis had made the drinks, they took them to the living room, and sat on the couch. Megan clasped her mug in both hands and sipped at it. “This isn’t too bad. I wonder what Dad thinks about tea drinkers.”
“Beats me why he can’t just see what an asset he has in you,” Travis said.
Her insides melted like snow in a spring thaw. “Thanks.”
He set his cup down on the coffee table, next to the Christmas wreath in the center. He untwisted a sprig of plastic mistletoe.
“Travis,” Megan warned, as he held it over her head.
“It’s a tradition, and I’m a traditional kind of guy.” He took her cup, put it on the table.
“Prehistoric, you mean.” But she didn’t move away. “That thing isn’t even real.”
“This is real,” he said, and lowered his lips to hers.
