Chapter Six Derek
CHAPTER SIX
Derek
When the cab pulled up to the address David had given me, I rushed out to open Jasmine’s door to help her out, just in case someone was watching and definitely not to hold her hand and get a closer whiff of whatever combination of perfumes and lotions had her smelling so good.
“Whoa,” she whispered under her breath as we surveyed the large house. I was thinking the same thing. By the look of the town itself, and, more specifically, The Mill, I’d expected something smaller. “Who are these people?”
I’d filled Jasmine in on my afternoon lunch with Tora at The Mill, so I assumed she’d been expecting a home befitting the image of an owner of a grist mill. So had I.
Jasmine was holding the bottle of wine she’d picked up on her walk earlier, so I rang the doorbell.
“Oh, how wonderful. You made it,” a female voice called out, “and you look so nice. I’ll be right there.
” Jasmine and I both instinctively looked around for cameras.
We caught each other’s eye, and I could’ve sworn I saw the corners of Jasmine’s mouth curl into a smile until she caught herself and quickly looked away.
The door swung open, and we were ushered inside by David’s wife, Eleanor, a beautiful woman with deep brown skin and shoulder-length corkscrew curls. She was dressed similarly to Jasmine except for the stilettos, but she didn’t need them since she was also tall with soft curves.
“Please come in,” she beckoned.
“Shoes off or on?” Jasmine asked. I’d almost forgotten how thoughtful she always was, or she had been when I’d known her.
“We’re usually a ‘shoes off’ family, but you can keep them on tonight.” She walked through the massive foyer toward a crowded dining room, and we followed her. “Where’s your dog?”
“Oh, he’s home,” I answered, before I caught my fake wife’s sideways glance. “I mean, he’s back at The Derry.”
“You should bring him next time you come over. Lord knows we have plenty of space for him to run.”
“Well, I’ll keep that in mind, but he’s fine on his own for a few hours, and he doesn’t always do well with strangers.” Except Jasmine, I thought. She caught my eye again at that moment and hit me with a smug smile.
“David,” Eleanor called to her husband. “Look who’s here.”
“Hey, Chief.” David reached out and clasped my hand in a hearty shake. “You clean up nice. Scared of you.” He chuckled.
“Hey, man, I’m just trying to keep up with you.” I nodded at his outfit. “Tom Ford.”
“Yeah, I’m not usually into all that kind of stuff, but the wife likes it.” He slid an arm around Eleanor’s waist. “I gotta look good to keep the young bucks like you from swooping in and stealing her away.” Eleanor rolled her eyes and shook her head.
“You don’t have to worry about me.” I slid an arm around Jasmine’s waist and felt her tense up and relax under the weight of my palm. “I’m already spoken for.”
“That you are, young man.” He nodded in approval. “That you are. Hi, I’m David Pike, and this is my wife, Eleanor.” He extended his hand to shake.
“Pike?” Jasmine asked. “As in John William Pike, one of the three prominent businessmen who founded Miller’s Cove in 1924?” It seemed that Jasmine hadn’t wasted any time. I made a mental note to step up my Google game after dinner.
“The one and only.” David laughed. “I’m his great-grandson. You’ve really done your research.”
“The history is so fascinating. I—we have wanted to visit.”
“You do seem to be making the most of your visit.” Eleanor remarked, looking at Jasmine’s ring. “Is that from Wakefield’s?”
“Yes, it is,” I answered for her. “I was walking by with Tora, and I saw a ring that was almost as beautiful as my wife, so I decided she had to have it.”
“Now, how sweet is that?” She glanced at David. “What happened to your other rings?” she asked, and my expression dropped.
Jasmine mirrored my expression before speaking up. “Actually, we didn’t have any. We got married so fast, we didn’t have time to shop for them.”
“Ah, so you’re newlyweds!” He clapped me on the shoulder.
“Yes.” I nodded. “Very new.”
“Well, that is definitely cause for a celebration.” Eleanor smiled. “Let me go see how dinner is doing. I need to keep Minnie away from the Lawry’s before she gives us all high blood pressure.”
“I’d love to help you in the kitchen.” Jasmine disengaged herself from my hold. “And we brought you this bottle of wine.”
“Ah, the good stuff,” Eleanor quipped. “We’ll get started on this while we finish up dinner.” David and I watched the two women weave their way through the crowd in the dining room and disappear.
“So, a full house, huh?” I looked at the small crowd of people milling around long wooden table.
“Yeah, my wife loves to throw dinners, and I’ll use any excuse to fire up the grills.” He chuckled.
“Grills?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said in a mischievous almost-growl. “Follow me.”
David led me through the back door of his house to a large patio structure with a perimeter of what looked like every iteration of an outdoor cooking appliance I’d ever heard of. There were barbecue grills, smokers, large griddles, and a few I didn’t recognize.
If I was in a cartoon, the smell emanating from this outdoor piece of heaven could have picked me up and carried me away.
It was sweet, spicy, meaty, smoky, and other varieties of delicious that I couldn’t identify.
David caught my eye and gave me a knowing nod before handing me a black apron similar to the one he’d been wearing when we’d met this afternoon.
After handing me a beer and introducing me to other men drinking beer and manning their own meat stations, David gave me a blow-by-blow of some of the most sophisticated cooking tools I’d ever seen.
“Wait, so you built this?” I pointed to a large smoker.
“Well, I modified it.” He chuckled. “You can’t trust what comes out of a factory. You gotta put your own sauce on it.”
“David is being modest.” A man who was named Rick, but was called Bubba, pointed at David with his beer. “He built most of these. He invented some stuff, too. Things you won’t see anywhere else.”
“That’s impressive.” I nodded.
“Well, it’s in the genes.” David smiled and cracked open another beer. “Inventing and building stuff runs through my veins. My great-grandfather was an inventor. That’s how he could afford to found an entire town. Growing up, we were always told, ‘If you can’t find it…’”
“…‘make it,” the rest of the men finished in unison before cheering.
“So tell me more about this smoker.” I gestured to all the buttons and dials. “What does this run on, propane?”
The entire group went silent.
“Propane?” a man named Eric shouted in disbelief. “David, where did you find this fool?”
“Boo this man,” Bubba chimed in.
“All right! All right!” I held my hands up in concession. “My mistake.” I chuckled. “So tell me what this thing does use for fuel.”
I spent the next hour or so getting the equivalent of a grilling lesson from a NASA scientist. David told me that he had a handful of advanced engineering degrees from MIT, where he met his wife, and some other prestigious schools.
When he was about my age he left his high-six-figure job—at NASA, coincidentally—to move back to Miller’s Cove to raise his family.
I immediately wanted to ask him if he had any regrets, but the contented look on his face erased all my doubts.
If you had asked me at any point in my life up until the minute I had this conversation if I would be willing to walk away from my hard-earned career to grill ribs on my back porch with my friends, toss a couple of kids in the air, and be loved by a good woman, I would have answered “no” without hesitation.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
After we spent an hour grilling a sufficient amount of meat and talking a sufficient amount of trash, I followed David and the rest of the men back into the house.
A group of loud but surprisingly well-organized children were setting the large dining table.
David led me to the bar and began to make a martini.
“Eleanor loves one of these at the beginning of dinner.” He poured a splash of sweet vermouth in a martini glass and swirled it around before dumping it out. “And she looooves the way I make it. The secret ingredient is love.” He waggled his eyebrows. “What does your lady drink?”
I had to think for a moment. My mind traveled back to the night Jasmine ruined what would be my first and last date with a stockbroker my mother set me up with.
If Jasmine stealing my shrimp and exposing my digestive issues weren’t enough, she’d definitely noticed me glancing at Jasmine sitting at the bar with her coworker all night.
I’d still been fuming from our meeting with Edward Mason and our confrontation in her office. I’d almost canceled the date that I really hadn’t wanted to go on, but I’d been determined not to let Jasmine Morgan ruin my entire day—but fate had other plans.
She’d been sitting at the bar, directly in my line of sight, downing pink drinks in a martini glass.
She’d seemed sad, angry, and beautiful. So damn beautiful, making me even more annoyed by her presence.
My date had noticed and remarked on it. I’d tried to play it off, but when Jasmine had downed the remnants of her cocktail and stormed over to our table, the final nail had been put in the coffin.
What the hell could she have been drinking?
When we were kids, she and her little friends had been obsessed with the OG Sex and the City show. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d been drinking a cosmopolitan. Plus, I knew that her favorite color was pink—or at least, it was when I knew her.
“She likes cosmos.” I proceeded to perform my best approximation of the cocktail.