On the way home, Rayne stopped at the corner market to pick up some things so she could make lasagna for Ada and Eric, then she swung by Sweet Happens because she hadn’t forgotten her promise to Savannah.
In the back of her mind was the happy thought that Chase would be stopping by, that he wanted to stop by rather than take the much easier route of simply leaving her phone at Zipped. It was a welcome boost that lifted the gloom she was feeling about work.
She walked into the shop and took a moment to savor the sweet smells of cakes baking. She could almost taste the sugar in the air.
“Hey, Rayne,” Crystal said as she came out of the back room carrying a tray of cupcakes. “I just finished frosting these babies. Strawberry with a hint of lime. Want to try one?”
She handed Rayne a spoon with a scoop of frosting, and when Rayne tasted it, she nearly moaned with pleasure. “This is amazing,” she said. “You are a true artist.”
Crystal laughed. “Yeah, well, at least these generate income.” She glanced at the far wall, and Rayne turned around to follow her gaze.
Hung on the wall were a series of framed watercolors of abstract flowers in vibrant fuchsia, hot pink, canary yellow, and tangerine. She’d never seen such brilliantly painted watercolors. They were energizing and oddly soothing at the same time.
“Are those yours?” Rayne asked, walking over to take a closer look.
“Yes. I thought maybe if I hung a few in here, I might generate some interest, maybe even make a sale or two.”
“They’re gorgeous,” Rayne said. “How long have you been doing this?”
“I started painting in high school. I was always doodling and sketching, but then I discovered watercolor and went to the art school at the Corcoran, where I had a fantastic teacher.” Crystal came out from behind the counter, wiping her flour-covered hands on her apron. “She taught me so much about color and just opening yourself up to life and whatever’s inside you, just letting that beauty out. I’ve been trying to get into a gallery, but it helps to have some sales first.”
Crystal joined her, and Rayne eyed the small, tasteful price tags, but at $300 apiece, she couldn’t afford to splurge on one.
“I dabble in photography, too,” Crystal said, “but watercolor’s my main thing. Though I did get tickets to the opening of Roger Thaw’s show the other night. I swear some of his photos of water are like paintings.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of him. In fact, we’ve used some of his photos on our website at work.”
“He’s got an amazing eye for photography.”
“He’s not bad looking either,” Rayne said with a grin.
Crystal blushed. “I am aware of that, but I actually asked someone to go with me. I told him it’s not a date, but I’m still hoping.”
“Oh?”
“We had a thing for awhile, but then he took off on an overseas assignment—his way of ending things when they got too hot to handle, in my opinion.”
“And were things that serious?” Rayne asked, following Crystal back to the counter.
Crystal smiled. “I like to think so.”
“Well, I hope it works out for you—with your paintings and the guy,” Rayne said, scanning the display case and trying to decide whether to take Savannah a chocolate-frosted cupcake or a strawberry one.
“I think Chase and I are a good match,” Crystal said. “I just have to get him to see it that way.”
Rayne’s heart jumped ahead a beat. “Chase?”
“Chase Allison, Colin’s brother. You know him, right—because of Savannah?”
Crystal turned to get a white bakery box from the shelf so Rayne had a moment to recover. “Sure. Of course.”
“So what can I get you?”
Rayne was still flustered, but she hid it by pretending to ponder her options. “Give me three of the strawberry cupcakes and three chocolates.”
Crystal boxed up the cupcakes, and Rayne handed her cash. Crystal was counting out change when her cell phone beeped. The sound made Rayne long for her own phone.
Crystal dug the phone out of her pocket to check the text message. “Yes!” she said. Then she looked up at Rayne, her eyes glowing with excitement. “Chase said yes. He’ll go to the opening with me.”
Chase walked up the steps to Rayne’s front porch around 7:00, wearing jeans and a short-sleeved, button-down cotton shirt he’d gotten in Bali. It was still light out, but it was overcast, and without the sun beating down, the heat felt slightly less oppressive. Chase knocked on the front door, and seconds later, Rayne pulled it open, a little out of breath. She had a dish towel in her hand and a streak of what looked like tomato sauce on her cheek.
“Hey!” she said.
“Hey.” He gestured toward her face. “You’ve got something...”
“Oh!” She scrubbed at her cheek with the dish towel and looked at him with a question in her eyes. Those smoky, smoldering eyes. Like a stormy sky. It made him wonder what sort of pent-up passion was hidden behind those eyes.
He realized he’d kept her waiting and said, “Yeah, all good now.”
A timer dinged somewhere inside the house, and she turned toward the sound then back to him. “Come in for a second. I’m in the middle of making lasagna. That’s why I’m such a mess.”
He wanted to tell her that she wasn’t a mess. In fact, he liked the slightly distracted, tousled look. It made him think about her in bed. But he kept his thoughts to himself and followed her into the kitchen. Rayne took the lid off a pot of noodles and stirred, then turned off the heat and reached for a rectangular glass dish.
“I didn’t know you were into cooking,” he said.
“I’m not really. I’d usually just as soon eat out. Probably because I didn’t get to do much of that when I was a kid. Thankfully, my mom is a fantastic cook. But every once in awhile I get the urge to make something.”
She bustled around the kitchen getting sauce, cheese, and sautéed meat and veggies together.
“Whatever you’re doing, it smells delicious,” he said.
“This is my go-to recipe when I need something for a sick friend.”
He suddenly remembered the text message. “Ada?”
She looked up at him in surprise. “How did you know?”
He was embarrassed and tried to hide it by digging her cell phone out of his pocket. “I happened to be picking up your phone when a text message came in. I wasn’t spying, honest!”
She wiped her hands on the towel, took the phone from him, and punched in her password.
“That thing has been going off the entire time I had it,” he said. “You must have forty-seven text messages by now.”
“Seventeen,” she said with a smile. “Mostly from Ada’s son saying—” Rayne paused as she skimmed through the messages— “he was taking her to the hospital. She’s got a mild case of pneumonia. Not life-threatening but serious enough for someone her age.”
She set the phone down and started layering cheese and noodles and all the fillings into the large pan and another smaller one. “He got hold of me at work today and told me he’s bringing her home this evening. He’s going to stay with her for a few days until she’s feeling better. Hence, the lasagna.”
Chase watched her, savoring the smells of home cooking and trying to remember the last time he’d had a meal made by his mother, not Maria. He ate out at restaurants so often that sharing a home-cooked meal was starting to sound like the sexiest date ever.
Someone knocked on the door, and Rayne went to answer it. While he was waiting, he noticed a box on the counter with the distinctive brown and teal Sweet Happens logo on it and felt a twinge of something like guilt. Colin accused Chase of being a player because he rarely stayed with any woman for long. But however brief his flings, he was a one-woman man once things go
t underway. Seeing Crystal’s logo made him feel like he was cheating. And though he wasn’t sure who he was supposed to be cheating on, it wasn’t a feeling he liked.
Rayne came back a few minutes later with a covered casserole dish. “The woman next door wants me to take this to Ada’s house when I go,” she explained as she set the dish on the counter.
“Do you do this a lot—take care of your neighbors?” Chase asked.
Rayne put the final layer of sauce and noodles in the pans. “I don’t know if it’s a lot, just whenever it’s needed I guess.”
Chase scooped up a leftover slice of zucchini and popped it in his mouth. “When I was growing up, we knew our neighbors, but in a formal sort of way. Never well enough to bake them lasagna when they were sick.”
“Maybe it’s my upbringing,” she said. “We always lived in these out-of-the-way, off-the-grid places, and everyone had to look out for each other. Self-reliance only goes so far.”
“I’m a big fan of self-reliance.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” she said under her breath, and he was pretty sure she hadn’t meant him to hear. But he couldn’t help grinning. So she’d noticed him?
Then he was distracted by the curve of her hips in her cutoff jean shorts and her lean, tanned legs as she bent forward to slide the pan into the oven. She closed the oven door, twisted the dial on a timer shaped like a ladybug, and turned to face him.
“It’s too hot—wait, why are you smiling? Do I have something on my face again?” She swiped at her cheek with a dish towel.
“No! You look great,” Chase said. He’d said it dozens of times to attractive women, and it usually netted him a smile and a flirtatious response. His grin faded, though, as Rayne gazed at him without saying anything.
“I was about to say it’s too hot in here with the oven on,” she finally said, “so I was going to sit on the porch while this bakes. Do you want to hang out for a while?”
“Sure,” he said, relieved that she’d asked. Her look had been a little frosty, and it made him wonder what Colin might have told her about him.
One night last spring shortly after Chase had met her, he and Rayne had a little too much to drink and ended up snuggled together in a back booth at Zipped—until Colin and Savannah swept her away. Rayne hadn’t been unfriendly after that, but she’d never mentioned it and never let him get that close again. Colin asked Chase to back off right after, and he assumed Savannah had given Rayne a similar warning.
Chase had gone on a photo assignment days later, and it helped him forget about her—for awhile at least. But he still thought about that night and how good it had felt to have her curled up next to him and how comfortable and unguarded she’d been with him.
Rayne was taking a pitcher out of the fridge. “Want some iced tea?” she asked. “I’ll warn you that I make it pretty sweet.”
“What about spicy?” he asked with a grin.
She laughed, and he was pleased to see that she remembered their conversation the night before. “I haven’t figured out how to do that with tea.”
She grabbed two glasses from the cupboard, poured the tea over ice, added some lemon slices, and handed him a glass. Then she grabbed the ladybug timer and her phone and led him out to the front porch. She sat down on the glider and he sat in the wicker chair.
He sipped the tea. She wasn’t kidding about making it sweet, but the tea was strong and the lemon helped counter the sweetness. “So how are things at work?” he asked. “Have you given any more thought to that fundraising idea?”
Rayne pressed the glass of tea to her cheek, which was bright red from the heat of the kitchen. “I have,” she said. “I’m not sure I can pull it off without our fundraising person, and we’re having trouble getting the landlord to even talk to us about selling, but I was thinking we could do some sort of silent auction. Only what would we auction off?”
The answer came to him immediately. “What about photos and paintings of endangered animals and places?”
She gazed at him intently, but he wasn’t sure whether she was actually seeing him or thinking about what he’d said. He gazed right back at her, glad to have the chance to openly watch her.
“An art auction? That is...an excellent idea!” she finally said. “I would just need to find enough really great stuff from some high-profile artists. And donors with lots of money to spend. Plus, we could reach out beyond the conservation community to people who support the arts. Maybe also tap the local art scene.”
Her excitement was contagious—and she was damn sexy when she got fired up about something—so Chase didn’t even pause to think about it before he said, “I could help with all those things.”
She gazed at him again, but this time he was sure she was seeing him. A smile lit up her face, which he felt in his chest. Damn, this woman was good.
“You could? That would be awesome.” She smiled at him and he would have sworn she was blushing, but it was hard to tell because her face was already flushed from the heat. She suddenly busied herself by tapping some notes into her phone.
“Maybe you could help me come up with a list of artists and then contact some of them...?” she said.
“Sure thing,” Chase said with a smile. “Starting with myself, if that’s OK.”
“Of course!” Rayne said. “I’ve never seen your photos, but I’m sure they’d be perfect.”
Part of him was thinking that this event would be a good opportunity to network for some new contacts and assignments. But another part of him was thinking that it would be a great excuse to spend time with her.
“I also know a lot of donor types, through my family,” he said. “My mom is a wheeler-dealer in those circles. She could probably fill your event singlehandedly.”
“I like her already,” Rayne said with a smile. “I’m so glad you stopped by. I’m so glad I left my phone at Zipped last night! I’m going to put together a plan this weekend and then I’ll talk to Jeremy—my boss—first thing Monday.”
Chase was smiling back at her and thinking now would be a good time to ask her to go for a drink when the screen door opened and Savannah stepped out onto the porch in shorts and a T-shirt, her long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“Chase and I just came up with the best idea for saving CACC!” Rayne said.
Savannah looked at Chase, and he felt a chill. “Oh yeah?” she said.
“We’re going to have a fancy event and auction off a bunch of photographs and paintings of animals and places that are threatened by climate change. Between my contacts and Chase’s, we should be able to raise enough for a down payment on the house, assuming we can get Vincent to sell.”
Savannah turned toward Rayne. “That’s a terrific idea,” she said. “Let me know what I can do to help.”
“You know I will!” Rayne said. “Oh, and I’m making a small pan of lasagna for you.”
“Aw, you take such good care of me!” Savannah said.
As far as Chase was concerned, the mood had been broken. “I need to go,” he said. “But give me your number and I’ll text you about scheduling a time to talk about this fundraiser.”
Rayne gave him her number, and he keyed it into his phone.
“Thanks again!” she said. She picked up the empty iced tea glasses and went inside just as the ladybug timer dinged. Savannah started to follow but turned with her hand on the screen door and glared at Chase.
“Don’t even think about making her one of your conquests,” she said and let the door bang shut behind her.
Chapter 5
Rayne walked into the kitchen buzzing with excitement over the prospect of saving CACC—and doing it with Chase’s help. As friends, she reminded herself as she pulled the lasagna pans out of the oven.
When Savannah walked in, Rayne said, “It will ne
ed to cool for a few minutes, but I’ll have a piece for you in no time.”
“Thanks,” Savannah said, popping open the Sweet Happens box to peer inside. “What was Chase doing here?”
Rayne felt a little prickle of irritation, but she brushed it away. “He found my phone. I left it at Zipped the other night.”
“Oh, that’s excellent news!” Savannah said, closing the box and turning to face Rayne. “It was nice of him to bring it over, but, Rayney, maybe he’s not the best person to work with on your fundraising idea. I mean, you know how...unpredictable he can be.”
Rayne took a deep, calming breath. “I know that you’re just looking out for me,” she said. “But trust me, I’ve learned my lesson about getting involved with men who play around. And I’m feeling very grown up about this.”
Savannah eyed her suspiciously. “What does that mean?” she asked.
“It means that I really need his help with this thing, and even though he’s sexy as hell and I love hanging out with him, I can still have a professional relationship—maybe even a friendship—with him. Just like I do with Jeremy.”
“Jeremy’s a little different,” Savannah said. “He’s your boss. You don’t run into him at bars, and he doesn’t show up at your house on a Friday night.”
Rayne sighed. “Yeah. And that’s a pity.” They both laughed.
Rayne cut out a square of lasagna, put it on a plate with a fork, and handed it to Savannah. She took a bite and gave Rayne a thumbs-up.
“Besides, Chase is dating Crystal,” Rayne said. “And I wouldn’t want to mess that up for her.”
Savannah had a mouthful of lasagna and had to chew and swallow before she could say, “Really? Colin told me that was over months ago.”
“She asked him out, and he said yes, so I guess it’s on again. She’s an artist—did you know that? Watercolors mostly, and they are stunning.” Rayne stopped. “I’m going to ask her to donate a painting for the auction. It would be awesome exposure for her. She’s been trying to make a name for herself and get into a gallery.”
The Pursuit (Capitol Love Series Book 2) Page 4
