Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Pike was genuinely tickled when he walked through the door and smelled dinner cooking. It had been a long-ass time since anyone had lived with him. Since anyone had taken care of him like this.
Having Chloe home was... great. And yeah, there were complicated feelings tied up around all of it.
There were years with her that he was never going to be able to make up for.
He hadn’t been the father that she needed for all of her life.
But she was here now. She chose to be. Had chosen to come and be closer to him after she graduated from culinary school.
He could only be grateful for that.
And now, she was cooking for him.
He rounded the corner of his small house into the kitchen. She was cheerfully flipping vegetables aggressively in a pan.
“Good technique,” he said.
“It should be,” she said. “For as much as you paid for it.”
He laughed. “Yeah. Well. I’m glad that you got to go.”
“Me too. You’re right. Laney is great.”
His stomach tightened at the mention of Laney. “Good. I’m glad. You think she’s going to be a good boss?”
“She’s definitely a hardass. And a perfectionist. So, yeah. She’s going to be a great boss.”
“Glad you think so.”
Laney.
That woman had been under his skin from the moment she had first come to the Painted Ridge Resort.
He had been working on the ranch two years before the resort had opened, and it was good.
It was meditative work. It wasn’t the kind that engaged his passion, but he was a little bit suspicious of his passion at this point in his life.
It was the kind of work he liked. It exhausted his body, and didn’t leave his mind any energy to wander.
It was just fine with him.
But then Laney had been hired as the chef at the restaurant and he’d gone from being content with his celibacy to feeling like he’d been born again as a horny teenager. She flirted with him too, not lightly, in a dangerous way.
Laney wasn’t shy. Hell, she was forward enough she might even be teasing him but he’d been ready to table the whole conversation today and give her the one-night stand.
Which would have been stupid and disastrous in myriad ways.
The whole restaurant thing had been complicated from the start anyway.
He hadn’t put any of his work history as it related to restaurants on his resume when he had applied to work at the ranch.
He’d touted his skills as a ranch hand. Which he’d grossly under-aggrandized.
He had owned his own ranch for years. Worked it, managed it.
All while running the pastry side of a Michelin-starred restaurant at a resort in Wyoming that catered to celebrities.
Which was exactly what Laney would see when she Googled him.
There were probably some other things she would see too. Like the news article about his motorcycle accident. About some of the things that it had led to.
Most of that stuff was niche culinary news, but if she was going to look specifically for him, then she was going to get niche culinary news.
Thinking about the kitchen still hurt. Eight years later.
But it hadn’t been good for him. Trying to recover while trying to keep his position, while trying not to miss a beat at his job, had driven him to the darkest place he had ever been in his life.
It was what had nearly cost him Chloe.
So yeah, getting back into the kitchen when Chloe had just arrived... it felt risky. It felt possibly foolish.
His phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket, and saw that he had a text from Laney.
Yeah, I’d like your help.
He smiled, his stomach going tight. Well, he was committed to this, whether he felt great about it or not.
“Just so you know, I’m getting roped into helping out with this gingerbread event.”
Chloe looked worried. “Oh?”
“Don’t worry about it, Chloe. I promise, it’s not going to be a big deal.”
“I hope not. I don’t want you to be all stressed out. Why do you do this job, anyway?”
“I do it because I need to have something to do.”
“You could just sit around and count your money.”
He laughed. “I don’t know about that. I made some good investments, but that shit doesn’t last forever. All the better that I actually work for a living, honestly. Idle hands and all that.”
And his body had been the devil’s workshop for far too long.
“What did you make?”
“Oh, it’s something that we were working on in the kitchen today. Venison with some cranberry succotash. Also some wilted greens and cheese grits.”
“Sounds great,” he said.
And it was, absolutely perfect. He was so proud of his daughter, he could burst. He honestly didn’t think that he could take credit for what a wonderful human being she had turned into. Gracious, kind, talented. Driven.
He was grateful to his ex-wife, even if Melinda was never going to be especially grateful to him.
It was fine. He didn’t deserve it.
They didn’t hate each other at this point, and he thought that that was probably about the best outcome.
They were able to speak cordially about Chloe. They were both able to go to her graduation and pose for a picture on either side of her, her in the center.
A lot of growth from where they had been even five years ago.
And fair enough. When you broke people’s trust the way that he had, you had to earn it back.
And it wasn’t going to be instantaneous.
He had no right to be angry about the years that Melinda had kept Chloe from him.
He was a little angry about it, but he didn’t have the right to it.
She had cause to be suspicious of him. It had been reasonable. Protective.
It had been what he would have done in her position.
All he could do was be grateful where they had settled out.
“Is there dessert?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
He had prepared some things and put them in the freezer in the past when she’d come to visit, so she knew to expect he had treats. And he did.
Including lava blondies that just needed to be put in the oven for a bit, in a bain-marie. He cooked them up, put butterscotch sauce and ice cream over the top, and the two of them sat there in contented silence eating what was a damn fine dessert.
For years, cooking had been his love language. Baking even more so. Forgetting how to speak it, intentionally not allowing himself to do it in the way that he once had, had been cutting himself off from love.
When he started doing it at home again, he started to feel a little more like himself. It wasn’t an entire return to who he’d been, but it was better than not having it at all. “You have plans for the rest of the evening?” he asked.
“I’m going to call Noah.”
He nodded. He didn’t feel like he had a right to weigh in on his daughter’s love life, considering that he had been absent for a time. But he couldn’t say that he liked her current boyfriend all that much. More of a feeling than an actual reason.
Maybe that wasn’t fair. But... he wasn’t always going to be fair. At least not in his own head.
“Okay. I’m going to head out for a little bit.”
“Dad,” she said. “Do you have a date?”
He frowned. “No. I do not have a date. It’s a work thing. I told you, I’m helping Laney out.”
“Oh. You just looked... I don’t know. You looked at your phone and...”
He shifted uncomfortably. Yeah, he had definitely had a reaction, because Laney made him react. “She’s a co-worker,” he said.
“Well, that notoriously stops all kitchen hook-ups,” she said, her tone dry.
“What do you know about kitchen hook-ups?” he asked. “You’ve got a boyfriend.”
“I haven’t always,” she muttered.
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t wait up.”
“I won’t,” she said, waving at him.
He got back in his truck and drove the ten minutes to the ranch.
He lived in a little house just outside of Mustang River proper, and...
Yeah, Chloe was right. He could afford more.
He didn’t have to take work as a ranch hand.
But he’d been wrapped up in stuff before.
In having the biggest and best house. In being number one in his field.
All of it had led to destruction. He didn’t want to go there. Not again.
So he deliberately kept himself busy with modest work, living in a modest house. Plus, then Melinda had a great house to live in and Chloe had her education paid for.
A few of the restaurants he still held part ownership in were doing great, and... he reaped ongoing benefits from that.
This was enough of a life for him. Especially now that he and Chloe were spending time together. It was enough.
He told himself that even as he pulled into the parking lot of the hotel.
He got out of his truck and slammed the door shut, walking toward the sliding entrance doors and straight through the lobby, toward the dining room.
It was nine at night. There was an employee behind the desk, but...
the restaurant was empty. On a weekend, that wouldn’t be the case.
There would be people lingering in the dining room, and especially at the bar.
But on a Tuesday, not so much.
Laney poked her head out of the kitchen, and damned if his heart didn’t almost flutter.
Lord. It had been too many years since he’d gotten laid. He had passed into his forties and hadn’t had... sex one time in this new decade. That sucked.
A heavy realization, and one that he didn’t especially need to have... right now.
He had his reasons for it.
Again, he had cut himself off from passion in general.
He’d added bits of it back, but he felt like there was absolutely no call to go adding...
sexual relationships into a mix where he hadn’t healed things with his child, or with his ex-wife.
Those relationships didn’t deserve any attention as long as the most important relationships... weren’t getting what they needed.
After that? He just hadn’t gotten around to it.
Punishing yourself is so like you.
He ignored that.
“Thank you so much,” she said. “I know you’re on an early schedule, and I’m on a dinner service schedule, so if you get tired, of course, you can leave.”
“Are you kidding me? I’m raring to go. I haven’t done anything of the kind in a minute.”