Chapter 4
FOUR
Before they could toast to their sad little club, chimes rang inside the mansion.
Blair’s brows pulled together. “Is that the doorbell?”
“I think so,” Sienna said. “I’d better get it. Be right back.”
Blair used the edge of the towel to dab her eyes, but then brightened. “What if it’s the famous person and they’ve stopped by to say hello. We’ll finally know who it is. We should go see.”
Emily grinned. “I doubt it’s the musician. Didn’t Sienna say they were in Mykonos?”
“Oh yeah.” Blair lay back against the lounger. “Probably maintenance or groundskeepers or something. Who do rich people employ?”
But a few minutes went by, and Sienna didn’t return. Then the shadow of a man on his phone passed the glass door to the great room. Emily stood up and went inside, with Blair following.
In the kitchen the counters were littered with insulated cooler bags, baskets of fresh vegetables, and cooking supplies.
The tall, broad-shouldered man with gold stubble and a striking jawline glanced over.
His attention lingered on Emily as he talked quietly into his phone. She smiled, but he turned away.
“What’s all this?” Emily whispered to Sienna, waggling a finger at the items on the counter.
“He’s the musician’s personal chef. He’s supposed to be cooking dinner for him and his family this week,” Sienna whispered. “They forgot to tell him they weren’t going to be here.”
Just then, the man finished his call and joined them. Emily smiled again. He noticed her once more, a slight curiosity brimming in those brooding blue eyes. He turned to address Sienna, the movement revealing the bottom edge of a tattoo on his round bicep peeking out from under his short sleeve.
“The owner expresses his deep apologies for the interruption,” he said. “I’ll just leave the week’s groceries with you all. Dinner’s yours if you’d like it. I can bring the rest by tomorrow.”
“What was on the menu for tonight?” Blair asked.
“A starter of heirloom tomato and burrata salad with basil oil and sea salt, a main course of fried snapper with citrus herb butter, and a side of grilled sweet corn tossed with cotija, lime, and smoked paprika. For dessert, I planned key lime tarts with coconut crust and hand-whipped cream.”
“I’m salivating,” Sienna said as Blair peeked into one of the containers.
He didn’t laugh, but he offered a strained smile. “Well, enjoy.”
“Wait a minute,” Blair said, snapping one of the lids back into place. “None of it’s cooked.”
He pursed his lips. “Correct. I cook the clients’ food on-site.”
Blair waved a hand between the three of them. “We don’t know how to make any of that, do we?”
Emily and Sienna shook their heads.
“Leaving it would be a waste of food,” Blair said.
“She’s right,” Sienna agreed. “You’re welcome to take it back with you.”
“The boss paid for the whole week already, and he said to leave it here. You can dump it if you want to.”
Blair piped up. “There are children starving at this very hour. I can’t in good conscience throw all this away.”
He frowned, clearly considering this.
“Have you already been paid to cook as well?” Emily asked. “If not, maybe we could all chip in for the cost and have you cook for us, since you’d planned on doing that this week anyway.”
He searched her face and then his shoulders fell. “I’ve been paid, yes.”
“Perfect.” Sienna gave him a loaded grin. “Then cook us this fabulous food.”
Expressionless, he went over to the counter and began unpacking his supplies.
When it was clear the chef was only there to do his job and not to entertain them with small talk, they each poured themselves a lemonade and went back out to the pool.
“I think he was trying to get out of working this week,” Blair said under her breath as they sat at the poolside table under a large blue-and-white striped umbrella. “Should we have let him go?”
“I’m sure it’s weird for him to stay, since he doesn’t know us,” Emily added, uncertain why, given his frosty introduction, she’d stuck up for him. He could’ve at least been friendly.
“It’s weirder for us,” Blair said, craning her neck to get a glimpse of him through the French doors. “Did you see the way he looked at us? We don’t know him from Adam. Did he actually call the musician? He could be a murderer.”
Sienna laughed. “A murdering chef who works for my biggest client. Plus, the voice coming through his phone sounded just like the musician. And he’s too attractive to be a murderer.”
Blair’s mouth opened slightly. “That’s the perfect cover-up.” She looked in at him again and shivered dramatically, then moved to the lounger. “The sky looks gray over there.” She pointed to the horizon. “I’d better get my sun now. Looks like a storm’s on the way.”
Sienna slipped off her cover-up and draped it on the back of the chair again.
“I heard most of the storms here are quick. It’ll rush up on us, but I’ll bet it’ll be in and out in less than an hour.
And the sun doesn’t set for ages. It’ll be light until after eight.
” She stepped into the pool, rolled onto her back, and floated across the water as a seagull squawked overhead.
The quiet shush of the Gulf and the coastal breeze lulled Emily into a state of calm.
She leaned back in the chair and tipped her face toward the sunshine, relishing the quiet of her mind.
All her problems suddenly seemed far away.
Until then, her mind had been full of thoughts about where she would live once the house was sold, if she couldn’t get her apartment back, whether she wanted to stay in Nashville where she was bound to run into Will, or if she should leave the area.
But after being at the beach house for a while, it was as if there was some sort of tropical shield keeping all those questions at bay.
She welcomed it. The vacation was finally kicking in.
After a while, she stood up. “I’m going in to get my novel. Does anyone need anything?”
Blair rattled the ice in her glass. “I could do with another lemonade, if you don’t mind. I’d rather not bother the murderer.”
Emily laughed. “Okay.” She took Blair’s glass and went inside.
Her vision adjusted to the interior light to find the chef working between a couple of bowls, marinating the snapper.
The scent of butter and herbs wafted toward her, making her stomach growl.
She set the empty glass on the edge of the counter, then went past him and up to her room where she dug her book from the pocket of her suitcase.
Tucking the book under her arm, she returned to the kitchen to refill Blair’s glass.
The chef glanced at her when she opened the fridge to retrieve the lemonade. She set her novel on the counter, careful not to trespass on his workspace. While he mixed herbs in a small bowl, Blair’s murderer comment floated into Emily’s mind, and she had to fight off a giggle.
His strong hands worked gently, meticulously, his attention focused.
Having him in the house with them was awkward when they didn’t even know his name.
Especially if there was a possibility that he’d be cooking for them all week.
Emily’s years of teaching had taught her how to break the ice with quiet children, and she was sure that if she could just get him talking, the tension would fade away.
“My name’s Emily,” she said as she closed the refrigerator. “Emily Jacobs.”
He nodded, continuing his prep work, dicing tomatoes with a large knife.
While they were at the beach, and the dress code was certainly more relaxed, he seemed less like a fancy butler-type and more like a regular guy she might see casting a fishing rod off the side of a pier with a can of beer in his other hand.
His skin was tanned, and the gold flecks in the hair at his temples and the small sun lines around his eyes made him look distinguished.
Nothing about him was fussy. She wondered what he looked like when he laughed.
He couldn’t be this serious all the time, could he?
She set the bottle of lemonade and glass onto the counter beside his bowl. “And you are?”
Those stormy eyes found hers. “Patrick Owens.”
Her mind pinged with recognition. She offered her most friendly smile, but he’d already resumed his chopping.
Then everything came back to her: The girl selling the magazine to them had said the New York chef was hot, mysterious, shopped at the fish market.
Yep, that had to be the same guy. But didn’t he own a restaurant? He was a personal chef too?
“It’s nice to meet you, Patrick.” She unscrewed the cap on the bottle of lemonade. “So do you only work for the rich and famous?”
His hands slowed, but his attention remained on the pile of vegetables on the cutting board.
Emily pretended to be interested in his cooking gadgets, but his career choice aside, she really wondered why he was so standoffish. The shop girl who’d shown them the magazine had said he didn’t talk, but certainly he’d want to make a good impression for his client, right?
The insignia on a plastic measurement-conversion chart caught her eye. She picked it up and ran a finger over a gold seal on the bottom. Embossed in the center was a matte-gold emblem, flanked by small lettering:
JSOC – Culinary Detachment
“Is this from the military?”
“Navy.”
“You were a chef in the navy?”
“Yeah.”
The center emblem depicted a bald eagle clutching arrows and lightning bolts, perched over a globe, and surrounded by Latin words.
She read them aloud. “Silentium Est Fidelitas. What does that mean?”
“Silence is loyalty.” He plucked the card from her hand. “Silence is also my preference. If I’m distracted, I might burn your snapper.” While he still wasn’t terribly forthcoming, his tone had softened a little. “Dinner will be ready in about a half an hour.”
“Okay,” she said, returning the lemonade to the refrigerator. She picked up Blair’s drink and her novel and headed outside.
“Thank you,” Blair said as Emily handed over the full glass. “I was starting to wonder if I needed to go inside and check the closets for you.” She sent a dramatic look through the window.
Emily grinned. “His name is Patrick Owens.”
Blair perked up. “Oh. Isn’t that the guy from the article in the magazine?”
Emily nodded. “I knew right away after he said it.”
Blair’s eyebrows bounced. “Oh, now I want to go back and buy it. I wonder how he ended up as the musician’s personal chef. Doesn’t he run a fancy restaurant or something?”
Emily shrugged. “Did the girl at the shop say he’s opening one?”
Blair eyed Sienna, but Sienna just shook her head.
“What did he say to you when you were in there?” Sienna asked from the water.
“He was in the navy,” Emily replied.
Sienna fanned out her arms and pushed herself over to the edge of the pool. She placed her elbows on the pavement and set her chin on her forearms. “What else did he say?”
“That was it.”
Blair rattled the ice around in her lemonade. “It took all that time just to find out that little bit of information? He’s a ball of fun.”
“He’s working,” Emily said. “I didn’t want to bother him too much.”
She placed her novel on the table. A warm, salty gust of air blew, sending Sienna’s cover-up to the pavement.
Emily put it back on the chair, and they settled into a moment of quiet.
Blair took a sip from her glass, set it beside her, then leaned back and closed her eyes.
Sienna pushed away from the edge and did another lap around the pool.
But they didn’t have peace for long before Patrick stuck his head out the door.
“Someone’s phone is ringing off the hook upstairs. Just wanted to let you know.”
“I’ll check.” Emily went into the house just in time to hear the phone ring one final time. She went upstairs and into her room, where her phone lay, lit up, on her bed.
Three missed calls from Will.
Reality slithered through her. What does he want? With a deep breath, she dialed his number and put the phone to her ear.
“The real estate agent needs your house key so she can put it in the front-door lockbox,” Will said without a hello.
Emily tensed at the sound of his voice. It had a quality she hadn’t heard before, except when she’d called him about the breakup. “I put it under the mat.”
“What about the extra one? We also need one for the real estate office so she can have it for inspections, staging, and any emergencies.”
“Well, I’m not in the state, and I have it with me so I can get back in to get my boxes when I get home.”
“Can you overnight it?”
She sucked in another deep breath. “Give her your key.”
“I need mine to work on packing and organizing all my stuff in the garage. I’d already brought all my tools and things over, remember?”
A pinch took hold of her shoulder. “That’s your problem,” she clipped instead.
“I know you’re still furious with me, but you don’t need to be difficult.”
She gritted her teeth. “I’m being difficult? You called me on my vacation to ask me to solve your problems. Problems you’ve brought on entirely by yourself. Use your own key.” She hung up, silenced the phone, and threw it back on the bed.
Emily stood there, staring at the dark screen, her lip quivering, tears brimming.
She’d acted the way he deserved, but she didn’t want any of it.
She wanted her happy life back. Her worries about selling the house, canceling the wedding, and figuring out the rest of her life flooded her, spreading through her limbs in a warm, thick panic.
She focused on her breathing to get herself together enough to rejoin her friends, then went into the bathroom and checked her face.
From the outside, no one could tell that her heart was shattered.
She washed her hands and patted her cheeks with cool water.
When she came downstairs, Patrick glanced at her curiously.
“It won’t ring again,” she said, trying to keep her voice from wobbling.
Before she burst into tears, she went outside and sucked in the warm air to calm herself once more.
Blair and Sienna were in the pool. Emily slipped off her cover-up and waded into the cool water.
With every step, her friends in front of her and the sun on her shoulders, she silently released her pent-up feelings into the air.
She would not allow Will to ruin this moment. He’d ruined enough already.