Chapter 4 #2
It was hard enough hiding my whole-body response to the depth of flavor, the entire scale of dimension that lit my tongue up in ways I’ve never been introduced to in my nearly forty years from Wilder when I tried it. It’s almost as hard to keep it from Rory now.
“Phenomenal, right?” she asks, a knowing lift to her lips.
I don’t bother replying. If I wasn’t being so petty, maybe I’d admit that the man did make one hell of a chicken dish.
Maybe I’d go so far as to say it was kind of him to care for me when I passed out.
The fact that I passed out because of how much he worked me up—my blood pressure through the roof, overheated and flustered, knees locked for too long as I stood there watching him… That surely negates all the brownie points he would’ve earned for being a decent human after I fainted.
You don’t get a medal for putting out a fire you started.
“You don’t have to say it.” Rory scrunches up her nose at me, a knowing look in her eyes. “We both know it was the best thing you’ve had in your mouth in a long hot minute.”
Great. Another innuendo. And now I’m back to thinking of blowing Wilder.
But the way he picked me up, carried me to the counter and sat me down, made a drink for me to help me rehydrate… It’s hard to shake the ghost of his touch.
As the eldest daughter, the one who’s strong enough to look out for herself, being cared for is new for me.
I can still feel his strong arms banded beneath my shoulders and knees. No man has picked me up so easily, made me feel like I weigh little more than a doll.
A thrill zaps down through my core at the memory. It was hotter than it had any right to be, especially considering I still blame him for the fainting episode in the first place.
Finally, I come up with a response. “Rory, we’re just going to keep looking, that’s all there is to say on that.”
The man called me “gardener girl,” he didn’t even ask my name! He’s infuriating and I won’t deal with him, bottom line. I cross my arms over my chest and stare Rory down, plopping in the seat in front of her desk.
She takes her chair across from me, and her voice is gentle when she speaks.
“Lexi, this is your business, but speaking as your sister who loves you, who’s also the commissioner of this entire project and has been consulting you on this journey for months now…
” She lets the silence do the talking for a beat before continuing.
“I have to say, I think you’re making a huge mistake.
You’re understaffed. We don’t have another chef in this town, and no one here has his talent.
I ate his food for years. The man has a cult following back in New York.
I’m almost worried we’ll get some mobsters chasing us down for stealing him away, he’s that good. ”
“If he’s that good and has such a great life there, why the hell is he here?”
Rory shrugs easily, somehow still looking elegant in her slim-fit dress and heels, brunette hair tumbling over her shoulders as she does. “Sometimes Smoky Heights is just the right place at the right time.”
She’s talking about more than Wilder, I know she’s referring to her own situation. Maybe even Weston, and Amelia, too, for that matter. The Heights has become home to a lot of people lately.
“That’s sweet and all, but he’s not becoming my problem because he wanted to stretch his giant legs and get some mountain air.
I’m trying to run a business. Offer people somewhere nice to enjoy something tasty, keep it affordable, and also pay the bills.
I can’t have some drama king blowing that all up for me. ”
“Lex, I love you, but I am telling you, if you don’t bring him on while you have the chance, you are going to have problems in the restaurant. You don’t have enough help in the kitchen. We’ve talked about this ad nauseam.”
Who speaks in Latin?
“You’re ad nauseam,” I mutter under my breath, but she ignores me.
“That’s why I went to see him when I was in New York, Lex. For you. I still can’t believe it worked, but we need to not look a gift horse in the mouth right now.”
“I wasn’t gifted a horse, I was gifted an ass and it’s going to bite me in mine, I can feel it.”
She gives me a look that says I’m the one being the ass here, and I’m out of energy to fight her on this. She’s shot down every objection I’ve had, and I probably have a better chance of running him out of town than I do convincing Rory to let me pass on hiring him.
I let out a sigh so loud it flutters my lips. “I will try it. But only because for some stupid reason, I’ve been trusting you as my mentor on this project from the start.”
Rory beams, still a rare sight when it comes to her, and she stands, holding out her arms for a hug. I bat them away.
“No. We aren’t celebrating this. This is a day of mourning.”
She laughs again, and for the briefest second I reflect on how much I missed that sound for so many years.
Rory moves closer, pulling me in for a hug against my will, and I struggle in her arms, trying to break free of her embrace. For someone who’s so much thinner than me, she sure is strong.
“On a trial basis,” I clarify. “Through the summer. And I’m scheduling us on separate shifts as much as possible.”
My sister pulls back from me, tucking some hair behind her ear as she watches me fondly. And to think, she used to negotiate nine-figure deals on behalf of her mega clients. Now she has to mediate spats between the local business owners, and I know I’m not the worst of them.
The phone in my back pocket vibrates. Not just once, like a text, but it keeps going, like someone is calling me.
Ew. Who calls people anymore? Boomers and scammers, and that’s it.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and see the contact name flashing across the screen.
Hitting the side button, I pray that Rory didn’t see the caller and doesn’t smell the unease in me as I slide my phone back in my overalls.
I’m doing my best to keep collected, not show that anything is unusual here, and I vow to change the name in my phone immediately.
Lucky for me, she’s still blabbering about Wilder.
“You’d better not schedule you two so far off that you can’t coordinate on all the items you’ll need to do together.
Menu, food quality, ordering, health inspections, there’s a whole host of tasks your jobs will require you to work together on both before and after the opening. ”
The reminder wasn’t needed. My eye twitches, and I slap a hand to it to stop it.
“As little time together as possible,” I say again, through clenched teeth. “And one other thing.”
“Yeah?” she asks.
“He doesn’t find out I’m the owner.”
My sister is too graceful to roll her eyes, but she does something close to it.
“No,” I jump back in. “He’s not exempt from our little secret. We are telling everyone—including him—I’m the manager.”
“I know,” she says, voice soft, like she’s talking to a wild animal.
She’s kept my secret this long, so I’m not sure what possesses me to lay that point out there, but I know that I feel strongly about it.
This whole owning a business thing is scary enough without everyone in town watching me to see if I fail.
Let them all think I’m just the manager brought in to run the daily operations.
Especially Wilder.
He waltzes up to my business, looking for a job, making fun of the name, the whole existence of downtown, and then he calls me the gardener.
Listen, if I could make a living at gardening, I’d be doing it.
My love for plants of all types stems back as far as I can recall.
Probably back to camping trips with my dad when Rory and I were little girls, and he’d explain the various trees, bushes, and flowering buds to us whenever I asked about them.
Shit, my small bungalow is full of greenery that are practically my children. Being a gardener is far from an insult.
But he treated me like an outsider in my own kitchen. The kitchen I grew up watching my dad cook in. It doesn’t matter that I can’t cook a single thing in there, everything about that place is my past and my future, yet he saw me like I was from a different world to his own.
It’ll be sweet when he realizes I’m his boss.
For some reason I can’t explain, it feels like I’d be the one with egg on my face if he found out I’m not just the manager though.
Rory watches me closely for long enough to accept that this is important to me, and not to bicker over it anymore.
“Fine,” she concedes. “I won’t say a thing. I’m still not sure how you’re going to keep a secret from anyone in this town, you know how the gossip goes.”
I do know how the gossip goes. But while it’s common knowledge I’m involved in reviving the diner, turning it into a fresh café, very few realize that the grant—the weight of possible failure—is under my name.
Rory, our stepfather, and Rory’s husband, Wyatt, might be just about the only ones in town who know.
And those three are all pretty good at keeping secrets of their own.
Besides, this isn’t the only secret I’m keeping these days anyway. What’s one more?
Family dinner two nights later is a rather awkward affair.
First of all, it’s the first one since Wyatt and Weston made up. They’d gotten in a big fight before Rory and Wyatt left for the city last week, Wyatt has this weird thing where his brother is concerned.
He found out his little brother had been hooking up with the new girl in town, a tiny cutie of an angel that I just adore.
Wyatt was the last one who didn’t realize they were banging harder than a trailer’s screen door in a tornado, and he had a damn meltdown when he caught them in the act.
Or right after it. I didn’t get enough details.
Rory iced Wyatt out until he finally talked things out with his brother and made good there. So tonight, Weston is bringing a date to family dinner for the first time—probably not just in our new tradition, but I’m guessing in his life.