Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Get to know her better? She’d never set eyes on the man before.
She walked quickly into the back kitchen, plucking a menu from the wooden rack as she went, fanning herself with it. Her flushed cheeks had nothing to do with the morning sun streaming into the café, or the grills under which bacon sizzled.
Her sister, Jen, who still helped out at the café even though she no longer needed to, gave a low whistle. ‘Who’s that, Luce?’
Lucy faced her with a toss of her hair. ‘No idea.’
‘Oh, wow, so you fancy him.’
Lucy shot her a sardonic look. ‘Fancy? What are you, a teenager again?’
‘In my heart, yes.’
Lucy rolled her eyes. Her older sister certainly seemed to have shed years since she’d come back to New Zealand. It felt like a duty, as the younger sister, to be irritated — even while she was quietly thrilled.
‘And my teenage heart is now telling me my little sister completely fancies that man who strode over the road like a cowboy looking for his gal.’ Somehow Jen’s accent had morphed into Texan.
Lucy glared. ‘Stop it. You are terrible at accents.’
Nothing seemed to dent Jen’s good humour.
‘I don’t care, darlin’!’ Jen drawled as Lucy cringed. ‘Just sayin’ you seem peculiarly affected by that cowboy.’
Lucy swore under her breath and batted Jen away. ‘I can sack you, you know.’
Jen laughed. ‘No you wouldn’t. You like having me around. Admit it.’
Lucy sighed. ‘I admit I like having you around. But if this is what love does to you, you can count me out.’
‘Aw, you’ll fall in love one day.’ Jen flicked a brow up and nodded at the man at the window table, who was studiously ignoring a baby on her mother’s shoulder who was staring at him. ‘Maybe even with Mr Super-Smooth over there.’
‘I’m open to it,’ Lucy defended. ‘So long as my man respects my independence and—’
‘And does whatever you tell him to.’
‘That goes without saying.’
She didn’t give Jen a chance to torture the accent further. Grabbing a carafe of water and glass, she carefully stepped over a sleeping cocker spaniel and greeted its owner, before holding out the menu to the stranger.
She opened her mouth to speak — then he turned from the window, and whatever she’d been about to say slipped neatly out of her head.
Those eyes. Green? Blue? Hazel? All she knew was they were threatening to unravel her.
His smile broadened and he sat back, looping an arm over the chair as if he were a Hollywood star dropping into a small-town café, entirely sure of his reception, ready for adoration.
‘Coffee, black, no sugar, thanks,’ he said. ‘If that was what you were about to ask.’
‘It was. Thank you for answering my question before I had a chance to ask it.’
‘No problem. I’m good like that. And I’ll have eggs Benedict, too. Smells tempting.’
‘They are. Very popular.’ She opened her mouth to say more, but her gaze dipped from his eyes to his mouth and her words vanished. What on earth was wrong with her?
She turned away without adding anything else and returned to the kitchen. She passed the order to the chef and, out of sight of the café patrons, groaned.
‘What’s up?’ asked Jen, the Texan accent forgotten.
‘It’s been too long.’
‘Since what?’
‘Since I’ve seen a man I’m attracted to. I can’t think straight. I usually know what to say—’
‘That’s because you say the first thing that comes into your head.’
‘Yeah, well, I’d have been locked up if I’d said the first thing I thought just then.’
‘Ha! I knew it.’ Jen pushed aside a trailing plant and peeped through the glass of the muffin cabinet. ‘He is extremely handsome. Although he looks like he’d agree with me.’
Lucy bobbed down beside her and peeked out too, then groaned again. ‘You’re right on both counts. What is it with me and confident men?’
‘I think you’re confusing confidence with arrogance. And that guy’ — Jen jabbed a finger in his direction — ‘is definitely in the latter category.’
Lucy ground the beans for two coffees. She wasn’t going to contradict her sister, but she knew the difference.
Trouble was, she liked men who were both.
She should have known better after what she’d been through.
She didn’t seem to have much control over who attracted her.
What she did control was how much she let them in.
She took two black coffees back to the table. She slid one cup across to him, set the other opposite, and sat down.
He looked up from his phone, placed it face down onto the table and smiled slowly.
‘Hope you don’t mind if I join you?’
He leaned in, matching her move for move. ‘Not at all. You won’t be missed?’
She smiled sweetly. ‘I have staff for that. They’re capable. They can handle everything.’
‘Everything?’
‘Maybe not everything. But I’m intrigued.
’ She lifted her cup, the pungent steam touching her lips, and held his gaze as she sipped.
‘You said you wanted to get to know me better. That implies you know me already, and yet we haven’t met, have we?
I’m sure’ — the slight, flirtatious smile came easily — ‘I would have remembered.’
His smile faltered for a fraction of a second before recovering. If she hadn’t been watching so closely, she might have missed it. But she was watching. She wanted to know everything about this man.
‘I guess I feel like I know you already,’ he said smoothly.
Nicely done, she thought. She’d unsettled him, but he’d recovered well.
‘Sitting across the road,’ he went on, ‘watching you with your customers, you exhibited a certain… theatre — irresistible, by the way — alongside the utmost professionalism. You make sure your punters get what they came for.’
She arched a brow. ‘And what is it they come for, do you suppose?’
‘To imagine that you care, and to eat and drink well.’
‘I do care,’ she said, stung. The idea that her care might be something people only ‘imagined’ hit a raw spot.
His smile deepened. ‘And that’s why you’re so good at your work, Miss Lucy MacLeod.’
Damn. Neat sidestep. ‘You know my name.’
‘It’s on the front door.’
‘Not many people notice.’
‘Maybe not many people are interested. But, you see…’ He sat back, narrowed his eyes, and laced his fingers, thumbs circling, as if he were about to interrogate her. ‘I am.’
If he thought she was going to play the victim, he could think again. She sat back too, taking her time, her gaze never leaving his.
She tilted her head and gave him a polite smile. ‘May I ask why?’ Her voice sounded sweet, innocent. Two things no one had ever accused her of being.
‘Because it’s hard asking someone out to dinner when you don’t know their name. Call me old-fashioned; I prefer to make the invitation personal.’ The way he said ‘personal’ wasn’t subtle. She pretended not to notice.
‘I wouldn’t,’ she said, leaning in until her face was close to his. Close enough to decide that his eyes were, indeed, blue. The tan and shirt colour must have made them look green at first.
‘You wouldn’t what?’ His voice had dropped, low and intimate.
‘Call you old-fashioned.’ She lifted her cup and held his gaze as she sipped. As she intended, his eyes dropped to her mouth and stayed there until she set the cup back down. He definitely wasn’t immune. Good to know she hadn’t lost her touch.
‘You’re perceptive,’ he said.
‘Not really.’ She wasn’t about to make things easy. ‘But you don’t look like a man with good old-fashioned values.’
‘Depends what you’re referring to.’
‘Well, my mother is the epitome of old-fashioned values.’
‘Your mother… Maybe I should meet her. If she looks like you and shares my values, we might get on.’
‘You’re not in my mother’s league. She chews up men like you and spits them out.’
‘Sounds formidable.’
‘She is. In an extremely polite, gentle, yet forceful kind of way.’
‘You’re not like your mother, I take it?’
‘I’m not. Although I don’t believe you have much to base that on.’
‘You’re forgetting, I’ve seen you in action. I didn’t witness “extremely polite” or “gentle”. Only forceful.’
‘That doesn’t sound very attractive.’
‘Oh, you’re wrong. It sounds very attractive. To me, anyway. I don’t like a pushover. A bit of resistance is very sexy.’
She wished that weren’t true.
‘So long as it doesn’t get out of hand,’ she said.
‘Of course, my grandmother, if nothing else, taught me to respect women.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ And she was. It was one thing to be attracted to arrogant, strong men; they also had to know where the line was. It sounded like… She suddenly realised she didn’t know his name. ‘Mr…?’ She lifted a brow.
‘So formal.’
‘I’d use your given name if I knew it.’
He held out his hand. ‘Oliver.’
‘Oliver,’ she repeated, taking it. ‘Nice to meet you.’
‘And you… very nice,’ he said.
His handshake was firm without being crushing. A man with nothing to prove. He held on a fraction too long and she didn’t pull away, enjoying the little fizz of attraction between them.
‘And what brings you to MacLeod’s Cove, Oliver? Presumably not my coffee.’ She glanced down at it. ‘As good as it is, I doubt they’ve heard about it in Australia. And you do have an Aussie twang, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘You’re not mistaken. But then, I doubt you’re mistaken about many things.’
She leaned back, looping an arm over the back of her chair. ‘Well, that’s true on at least two counts here.’
‘And they are?’
‘You’re a good judge of character.’
‘And?’
‘You’re trying to flatter me for some reason.’
There it was again — the tiniest flinch, then recovery.
‘And why,’ he said, folding his arms on the table and leaning closer, ‘would you think I want to flatter you?’
She sighed and let her gaze drift around the café, as if this were all incidental, while she gathered her thoughts. Then she snapped back to him, catching his gaze head-on.
‘Because you want something from me. What that is, I’m not yet sure.’