Chapter Seven
I t was past nine in the evening before Chloe, energy waning, finally felt she was close to being ready to plate. She just needed to get her biscuits in the oven.
“You haven’t lit the candle.”
OMG. Rustin had to stop. For hours he’d stood in her small kitchen issuing orders in that sexy voice. He took up too much oxygen and her focus. He was like a darn magnet, and her quivering attention was the metal.
“I don’t see why I need to light a lemon-scented candle,” she objected. “For the dinner table, I can understand, but…” She wiped her forearm over her face, her hands sticky with chunks of dough. Flour was in her hair. This was her third attempt at the dough.
And she’d thought the shopping excursion with Rustin this afternoon—he’d taken her to Harris Teeter out of town instead of Food Lion, which was closer and where she usually shopped for her simple needs—was rough. They’d been in the store nearly ninety minutes and had filled two baskets with what Rustin had deemed kitchen essentials. Chloe was still trying to ignore that she’d dropped more on groceries in one afternoon excursion than she’d spent the last two months. And she’d ignored several texts from Jessica, Sarah and Meghan asking if she needed help.
Why had she put all her trust in Rustin and not her cousins?
“Did you massage the dough with the rosemary-infused oil?”
“No, I like butter better,” Chloe asserted. She had to make at least one stand.
“You agreed to follow the recipe exactly.”
“Don’t you dare say you need to walk before you can run again ,” she warned, trying to scrape dough off her hands again. “Grandma Millie musta said that to me a million times.”
“But you haven’t taken it to heart.” He took the bowl from her.
“Hey!”
He dumped out the sticky mixture. “She only had to say it to me once,” he smirked at her. “I listened; I learned. Again.”
Chloe’s shoulders drooped. “Really? Freshly plucked rosemary, rub one leafed stem between my palms after warming between them for ten deep breaths?”
“It’s in the recipe.”
She huffed out a breath, and never had a sigh been more well-earned. “I never follow recipes. I just make it up, throw things together, see what happens.”
Often the compost bin was what happened.
“I thought chefs were creative.”
“They are.” His voice was dark as molasses, and Chloe blamed his potent draw for her distraction and disinterest in doing the recipe over again. Maybe she should just suck it up and hire caterers.
“But chefs learn the basics. Practice the essential skills over and over. We learn what works and how and why before we can play and get our hands truly dirty.”
The way he looked and sounded when he said “dirty” should be a sexy man internet meme. Viral. Boom! Mentally, Chloe made exploding jazz hands.
“You still write poetry?”
The question was unexpected, and she could barely swallow as a red wave swamped her cheeks. “Ummm…yeah?”
“There are rules to language. Grammar. Syntax. Stuff like that. Miss Millie told me you’re a high school English teacher, and that you also teach a creative writing class.”
Why she felt utterly exposed was a mystery. It wasn’t as if Rustin would want to see her journal…okay, dozens of journals. If he did, he’d abandon his new venture and head to a city where he didn’t feature in dozens of effusive entries about Rustin sightings in her childhood journals.
“You know the rules that make writing work so that the meaning is clear, so you can experiment a little—create a voice that sings on the page in places.”
“Like when I verbize nouns,” she said, making the connection.
“Yeah. I guess. So, this time do it exactly as specified in the recipe.”
“It’s not like this old book is the Bible,” she griped, reaching for the bag of flour. “And if you’d helped me, we’d both be tucked in bed.”
The flour dropped from her hands and would have plopped on the floor, making an even bigger mess, but Rustin caught it. Handed it back. His expression amused.
“Separately, I mean,” she stammered, sure she was crimson again. “Different beds. Yours. Mine. Oh. Never mind. Zipping. Right now.”
“Good idea. Again, exactly.”
Rustin was broodingly hot, but she felt he was laughing at her a little, and that cheered her, like they were friends.
So, she read the directions. Followed them exactly, including the rosemary stalk and the lemon candle, and then she plated the food exactly as Rustin had instructed. That part was interesting because she’d never thought about a plate as a canvas. Or like a choral arrangement, each voice singing something specific to complement or draw attention to a certain line or tone.
Rustin sounded like an artist as he talked about the shape and colors and texture and the way it would all “draw the eye.”
And it did. But, still, her eyes, her hungry gaze, would always, always, always be drawn to Rustin.
And now he was back in Belmont.
“Ta-da,” she said softly, placing the plate in front of Rustin as he sat at her bistro-style table she’d snagged at a Charlotte bakery that was going out of business. It was the one piece of furniture she’d chosen. Grandma Millie had chosen all the other furniture from generations of Mayes or Cramers. Chloe loved the thick, reclaimed wood round top and the hand-painted design accents.
Rustin looked at the food and then picked up the still piping-hot biscuit that she’d layered with slaw and the pulled pork that had cooked and marinated in her Crock-Pot all afternoon.
“Aren’t you going to taste it with me?” he asked.
“I feel like I’ve dined on the smell.”
“Foreplay,” Rustin said softly, and her tummy flipped.
Was he flirting with her? No. She was being her usual impulsive leap-before-looking self.
“Besides.” She rolled her eyes, remembering the directions— all of the directions. “The book says that the man must sample first.”
“Who am I to argue with tradition?”
Chloe barely refrained from snorting. “You fence with tradition daily,” she said. “Probably since birth. It’s your superpower.”
“A compliment from a Maye.” He picked up his fork.
“You don’t like the Mayes much,” she noted.
“You don’t consider yourself a Maye?”
She nibbled on her lip, her hands clasped together. She should. Grandma Millie had once taken her by the shoulders when she’d been seven or eight and sobbing over some holiday slight at the big table with all of the family, and her green eyes had been fierce.
You are a Maye! You are every inch a Maye, and I don’t want you to ever doubt it, not for one second more!
“I am,” Chloe said slowly. “But somedays, a lot of days, I feel only part Maye. And a lot of days, I don’t really fit in, and I wonder…” She shut her mouth before she verbally jumped off the ledge and overshared her curiosity about her birth family. Grandma Millie would be so hurt.
Rustin’s gaze drilled into her. “I know how it feels to not fully belong,” he said softly.
Chloe felt everything still inside her as if she’d stepped to the edge of the tall diving board at the YMCA.
Jump.
“I wonder if my birth family would have understood me better,” she blurted.
Rustin stilled. “I feel blessed that I have nothing in common with the previous generations of Wildish men.”
Chloe felt as if she were in church at the end of a prayer.
“Bon appetit,” Rustin said and took a bite.
Chloe held her breath.
*
The flavors and textures melded like magic in his mouth, and shock infused him as if he’d jumped into ice-cold water. Chloe had created this? Exquisite. He couldn’t even praise her—yes, he was exacting with his crew, but also unstinting with deserved praise—because his mouth was full of the divine.
Mutely, Rustin picked up the other quarter piece of the pulled-pork biscuit and held it out to her. Chloe looked nervous, yet her bow-shaped lips closed over the offering, brushing his fingers. A jolt speared through his chest harder than the time he’d been in a head-on when a small truck had jumped its lane on a mountain road in Turkey. The airbag had felt like a gunshot, and his sternum had been bruised and ached for a month.
Rustin stared into Chloe’s slightly mismatched eyes like he’d never seen her before. Her blue and slightly purple gaze held stars and questions he was just beginning to ask, and then as she chewed, her pale cheeks pinked, and she smiled, the hint of a sunrise swallowing the night.
“This is amazing. Delicious,” she said in wonder. “I did it! We did it!”
How could she speak? Rustin had no words. He could barely form a thought. It was like he’d walked up to a wall that became a door opening into a different universe.
Chloe Maye Cramer. Pixie adorable. Fairy smart. Creative, giving, funny, ethereal beauty, and so far out of his league.
Rustin felt dizzy, upended as if he were on the deck of a ship that was pulling the Titanic . But instead of drowning in icy water, a warm wave washed over him, pulling him somewhere he didn’t want to go.
What’s happening?
He gripped the edge of the table as if to hold himself in place, though he wasn’t sure he could move if he wanted to.
He inhaled the lemony fragrance of the candle. Lemon verbena. He would forever associate that scent with Chloe. What was happening? Was it magic? Witchcraft? He’d heard a few rumors and cutting comments about Chloe growing up, but since he’d resented the hell out of being a topic of gossip, he’d mostly ignored it.
“What have you done to me?”
“Huh?” Chloe asked around a bite of the popper. “You don’t like…?” She reached for one of the hush puppies. “Try the hush puppy, Rustin. They might be my favorite.”
But Rustin felt unraveled, as though he’d been a wrapped package, but now all the trimmings were stripped off, leaving him exposed. Brand new.
He stumbled to his feet on wobbly legs.
What was happening? She hadn’t drugged the food. She wouldn’t. He’d watched every step.
“You did something.”
“Yeah, I cooked. I did everything the book said. You insisted.”
“No, it’s wrong. Out of this world. Delicious.”
“That’s a good thing, right?”
Blindly he rushed for the door, stumbled down the stairs, and ran into the night. Gulping in air like a beached fish, he ran through the park, crossed Central, and ran to the river, thinking an icy dunk would somehow break the spell that had enveloped him. He ran and ran, even as every cell in his body screamed at him to turn around. Return to Chloe and her oddly old-fashioned apartment.
Panic screamed through him. He’d once given his heart to a Maye. Jessica had kicked it. Despised it. Mocked it. No way would he give another woman a chance to take a shot, especially not a Maye.
He felt like his chest was being crushed, but he fought back, harnessing his will that shoved him through tough spots. Rustin had grown up hard. Tough. He was a survivor. Chloe Maye Cramer would have no hold over him. Not ever.
*
Chloe should be exhausted. After Rustin had run out last night—embarrassingly not the only date that had ended with a man making a hasty exit—without an excuse, she’d wanted to run after him because she’d been worried. Had he had an allergy attack? Choked? But as she’d watched him fly across the park, she knew he was fine. Besides, following him would have felt stalkerish. She had done enough of that as a kid.
She had forced herself to stay put for once. Rustin knew all the ingredients. He’d been militant about every step in the preparation and cooking process. And he hadn’t indicated any concerns.
Instead, she cleaned her kitchen, stored all the food, and read through more of the book, putting sticky notes by recipes she thought might work. This afternoon, she’d rushed home from teaching, intending to check on Rustin and run the new recipe ideas by him. The fried sage leaves intrigued her, and yet she worried. Was that skill set too high a bar for her to hurdle?
“You’re busy.”
“Grandma Millie.” Chloe pulled up short as she headed out her front door.
“You’ve been cooking?” Grandma Millie sniffed the air delicately. “Nothing smells charred.”
“Ha. Ha. I followed a recipe. Like really followed it. Detail by detail.”
“No cowgirling up?”
Chloe laughed. She’d forgotten that Grandma Millie used to tease her about being a cowgirl in a past life because she’d been so independent and spirited and fiercely willing to strike out on her own and follow an idea, though never with a plan.
“Not a single yeehaw . Rustin supervised and made me start over and over if I deviated. I even had to light a lemon-scented candle and let him take the first bite because he was the big man.”
“Oh my.” Grandma Millie hid a smile. “That sounds very diligent. What did Rustin think? He’s a tough critic but fair.”
“No idea,” she said, still troubled. “I thought he liked it, but after he offered me a bite, he got this weirdly intense look on his face like I was a stranger and accused me of doing something to him. Then he stood up all wobbly and took off at a run. I think maybe he’d OD’d on me by that time. We shopped together, as he’d found my kitchen utterly lacking, and then he had me make the sauce and get the pork cooking in the Crock-Pot, and he came back last night and watched me do the whole thing. He didn’t help one bit.”
Chloe waited for Grandma Millie to say something wise.
Instead, she seemed to be choosing and rejecting several replies. Chloe was puzzled because Grandma Millie was never at a loss for words.
“A fine way to teach,” she finally said. “What cookbook did you use?”
“I found one in your mini library. It’s…unusual. I was thinking about roots, Belmont and North Carolina roots. Rustin was all in on the idea, and when he saw the book, he agreed to help me if I let him look through it, take some inspiration. It only seemed fair to agree. I need the help, and I know he’s busy and not a Chloe fan.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Grandma Millie said drily.
“You want to try what we…well, what I made? I have a plate already. I was hoping we could have dinner later tonight and review some other recipes to try because I want your feedback, but I wanted to check in with Rustin first. I’ve been worried and confused all day.”
“I would enjoy eating dinner with you, my darling Chloe, but the decisions about what you are going to serve at the Movable Feast are yours,” she said tartly.
“But Grandma Millie, it’s me! And the Maye name and tradition! I don’t want to mess it up!”
“Dear girl, I have no doubt you will hold up your end. Shall we say dinner at my house at seven? Invite Rustin. Not sure he’ll want to come, but since you’ll be using my kitchen, I’ve no doubt he will be full of opinions.”
*
“No,” Rustin crossed his arms when Lucas and Rebekah approached him, Rebekah with a budget request and Lucas with his unrequited crush on Rebekah, supporting her every idea.
“Absolutely not. I will not have cheesy red and green or tinsel sparkling anything.”
“The Wild Side is kicking off the holiday season in this dinky town. This is no time to play a too-cool heathen,” Rebekah shot back. “The next town over is called McAdenville and in December it becomes Christmas Town, USA. and has a huge light show. I’ve seen it online.”
“I’ve been there,” Lucas said. “It was the one Christmas thing we could afford when we were kids. We should do the pop-up there too.”
“I’ve applied for a permit for that event too, for several nights.”
“What? No. We’re not open,” Rustin reminded. “We’ve already been dragged unwillingly into the Movable Feast.”
“Speak for yourself. The rest of us are thrilled you will be creating an aperitif with a sweet edible garnish to kick off the feast.”
“And a cherry bounce cocktail,” Lucas added.
Rustin heard the excitement, but also the sarcasm in his brother’s voice—he knew it burned his ass that Miss Millie had issued an edict, and though he was now a man, he didn’t have it in him to ignore her.
“So, we need decorations.” Rebekah pushed her agenda, clicking her red nails together.
Rustin pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d felt off-balance since last night. What had he been thinking—that he was in love with Chloe Maye Cramer? Absurd. He hadn’t been idiotically in love since he’d been sixteen. He was just tired. Hungry. Slammed with so many memories—many of them unpleasant—since he’d returned to Belmont.
“We are absolutely not decorating for Christmas. Final answer,” he told his crew, trying to ignore their disappointed expressions and slumped shoulders.
“Oh no, Rustin, absolutely you need to decorate for Christmas.”
Chloe marched into his restaurant from the outside deck, holding the book and something in Tupperware.
God, no.
She was here to poison him again.
“The Wild Side will be ground zero. It will set the stage for the Movable Feast,” she smiled at him. That cute little dent in her chin tempted him to reach out and caress it.
Her eyes were liquid with emotion, sparkling with excitement.
“But I can see why you want to do something different.” She put down the book and Tupperware on the long, family-style table, and then draped her pink coat over a chair.
She turned a circle. “You want to really make a big WOW.” She swung her arms wide. “Lean into the industrial vibe you’re rocking with a pop of festive that’s unexpected, unique, and yet sings Christmas. Oh! I know!” Chloe snapped her fingers, and he found himself totally charmed. “A rebar tree. I could talk to the high school shop teacher. She has a welding class. I have some students who are talented metal artists. They could make you an unconventional tree, maybe even a little abstract, that you could mount on the wall with vintage lights. We could paint the two-story side wall with a glossy red. Vibrant, with the tree and lights. And then we’d need a smaller tree where we hang the giving cards.”
Her ideas flowed like the Catawba River in spring. How did she have so many? And she walked around his main dining room, the bar, and the outdoor patio, her petite frame and elfin figure seemed to glow with happiness. Rebekah actually followed her, phone out taking notes.
“Poinsettias are probably too traditional, and I bet swags of evergreen are out too.” She smiled across the room at him, while he stood watching her, helpless to look away even as he prompted himself to walk.
“Maybe holly twined around bare branches, or… I know!” Chloe bounced to her toes. “Large, matte black pots and white birch branches—white pots would emanate a sterile hospital vibe—so white birch branches in big black pots, black stones, and tiny LED twinkle lights. Not twinkling; they could be programmed to change colors for different seasons or events. Those could go on the patio. Visual interest and light source and holiday without the holiday.”
“Huh?” Lucas said. “I can’t see it.”
“I can,” Rebekah said.
Unfortunately, so could Rustin, and he liked it too much, damn it.
“You,” Rebekah pointed at talon at Chloe, “sit. Mood board. Google. We do have a budget,” she said warningly to Rustin, who had clearly just lost control of his restaurant and vision.
“Excellent,” Chloe smiled and then crooked a finger at him. “Two birds, one stone,” she said, patting the space next to her. “I brought snack samples and would love some feedback, and yes, Chef, I followed the directions exactly.”
No. No. No.
But Rebekah sat, Lucas popped the lid off the Tupperware, and everyone who’d been curiously eavesdropping, swooped in.
“This is a bad idea,” Rustin said.
“You promised to help,” Chloe said, sounding, unfortunately, reasonable. “And a promise is a promise. And I promise.” She crossed her heart like she was a little kid. “I was totally the un-Chloe, and I did everything exactly, including simmering rosemary to infuse the room with remembrance and love and fidelity and,” her voice dropped dramatically low, “immortality.”
“Don’t eat…” he warned but Lucas had already grabbed a hush puppy stuffed with tilapia, green olives, red peppers, and charred corn and popped the whole thing in his mouth.
“Slay,” he mumbled and thumbs-upped the snack.
Chloe glowed with the praise. Rebekah ate a hush puppy and moaned low in her throat before reaching for another and shouting out, “Come and get, boys and girls!”
Rustin watched, eyes narrowed, waiting. But everyone seemed normal. Lucas kept his calf-eyed love gaze fixed only on Rebekah, and Rebekah didn’t suddenly turn gay.
“What do you think, Rustin? Please?” Chloe stood at his elbow, a hush puppy snuggled in a napkin between her thumb and forefinger. “I was worried about you,” she said softly. “Last night you ran off and… You looked weirded out. I thought I should chase you, but…”
“Women can chase men. It’s the twenty-first century.” What was he doing flirting with Chloe?
She smiled. “And you never tried the hush puppies.”
“Did you follow the recipe for the hush puppies exactly, exactly how we discussed?” He clarified.
“Yes, Chef.”
He waited for a moment, scrolling through mental scenarios. Maybe, if he took a bite, this…this fascination bordering on obsession would unwind. Spell broken. Or what if it made it worse? But his team seemed normal. Eating. Jawing at each other. Maybe the feeling of being hit by a two-by-four and seeing stars in the form of Chloe Maye Cramer had just been caused by exhaustion or his nerves about The Wild Side’s opening.
But he had nerves of titanium.
And arrogance to spare.
Leaning forward, gaze firmly locked on Chloe’s slightly mismatched blue and purple eyes, Rustin took a bite of the hush puppy, deliberately brushing Chloe’s fingers with his lips. Heat speared through him even as his tongue was bathed in flavors as warm and bright as Chloe’s shy smile. Her pupils dilated.
“Rustin?” she whispered, but she might as well have shouted because his vision tunneled and the room silenced. Time stood still. Just him. Her.
And Rustin knew he’d made his second mistake since coming home.