Chapter Seven
“This is good.”
Bethany fingered her apron and watched as the blond hunk across from her closed his eyes and took another giant bite of whoopie pie.
Was she crazy? This was the self-centered jerk who would open a fitness center or sell her building on a whim.
She knew it was in her best interest to let him stay and ply him with food, but she shouldn’t let herself be mesmerized by the way he enjoyed her cooking.
She should stay focused on her business.
“Where did you learn to bake like this?” He took a large gulp of milk and wiped his lips on his napkin.
A warm feeling filled her belly. The feeling she got whenever her cooking brought comfort to another.
Despite all the warnings she’d given herself over the last couple of hours, she could not stop a smile from spreading across her face.
“My grandmother. The filling is a family secret.” She lowered her voice and applied her best gangster accent.
“I could tell ya, but then I’d have to kill ya. ”
He laughed, the sound as strong and rich and attractive as its owner. “I’d die happy. It’s delicious. I’ve never had better. Your grandmother must be quite the cook.” He opened his mouth and devoured the rest of the cookie.
Another warm tingle shot through her. “She was. She and my grandpa opened Grandma Lou’s and left it to my parents.
It was meant to be a restaurant, but Grandma Lou had a soft spot for the hungry.
So she began feeding them from her kitchen, and we’ve continued the tradition.
I have a lot of memories in this place. Travis and I grew up working in it. ”
“Your parents are retired?”
“Oh—no.” She looked toward the door as if she’d spotted a customer.
She hated this. Her parents had been larger-than-life.
It always shook her to say they were gone.
As if some part of her thought they were still going to walk through the door, her dad singing the donut song.
Well, I walked around the corner, and I walked around the block, and I walked right into the donut shop . . .
“What happened?”
Her gaze flew to Hank’s. He watched her from under hooded eyes, making her realize his casual questions and laid-back pose were a front. He saw much more than she had given him credit for.
She swallowed, loosening the tightness in her throat. “They passed away in a car accident several years ago. Today’s the anniversary of their deaths. Drunk driver.”
“I’m sorry.” He sounded sincere, as if he understood her pain and sympathized. Silly. What did Hank Haverill know about loss?
He stretched his hands and placed them behind his head in a gesture she was beginning to recognize as uniquely his.
She yanked her gaze back to the table. To cover the awkwardness of the sudden movement, she asked the question foremost in her mind.
“Why do they want you to open a fitness center in Cleveland?”
“I was born here.”
“You were? Here?” God, she sounded like one of his rabid fans. “Well, not here but in Cleveland?”
He nodded. “Not far from here. My grandfather always loved this building.”
Most people who had been in the building loved it—it was that kind of place.
Built more than a hundred years earlier as an inn, it possessed the stately elegance of a bygone era.
The outside was weathered red brick and the long windows were set off by charming white fleur-de-lis.
Inside, the building possessed high ceilings and wood floors and a sense that time stood still.
The old soda fountain counter served as a place to display baked goods and housed the register.
“Where did you grow up?” she asked.
He shrugged as if the answer were trivial. “Not here. Many places. My dad was in the military. We moved to Virginia when I was a baby. I’d lived in ten states by the time I was ten.”
“And where do they live now, your parents?”
His lips drooped at the corners, and he hunched forward until his hands rested on the table again. “My dad and I aren’t close. I’ve no idea where he lives right now. My mom died when I was twenty.”
“I’m sorry.” She couldn’t stop a shiver. So he had understood her loss. Lived it. “I had no idea. Was it—an auto accident?”
“Nah.” He grimaced, and she knew without quite knowing how that whatever had happened to his mother was as bad as a car crash. He didn’t elaborate, though, putting Bethany in the strange position of wanting to know more but not wanting to pry. Curiosity warred with courtesy. Curiosity won.
“What was it?”
He moved forward, balling his napkin in one hand. Bethany wasn’t certain he would answer, but he did, his voice rough and scratchy and an octave lower.
“Brain aneurysm.”
“Oh geez.” She shouldn’t pry. Even TV stars were entitled to privacy. On impulse, she reached out and patted his arm, touching golden hair. “I’m sorry.”
Heat enveloped her. She gazed at her hand in horror, pulling it back as fast as she could without being obvious, then stuffing it under the table and into her apron pocket. What was she doing? She had no business touching him. “That’s awful,” she finally added.
He offered a lazy shrug again, his gaze still tracking her hand. “It was a long time ago.”
“There’s no one else—a brother or sister?” She struggled to recall if she’d heard anything about his family.
He laughed, but it was not cheerful, and lifted his gaze from her apron to meet her startled expression. “What are you, a reporter?”
She sucked in a breath at the sting, hating the sarcasm and tone of his voice.
Tears threatened, taking her by surprise, and she looked away.
It was the emotion of the day. That was all.
Why should she care if Hank Haverill thought her a busybody?
After he left Grandma Lou’s, chances were he would sell the building, and she would never see him again.
Her gaze met his and eyes the color of a perfect summer sky warred with her own. They seemed to suck all the oxygen from the room. Her earlier question still hung in the air, making Bethany wish she could take it back. She pushed her chair out. “I should get back to work.”
Hank held out a hand. “Don’t go. Please, I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just, I’m asked a lot of questions. All the time. But this . . . sit, please. I’ll explain.”
Against her better judgment, Bethany sat—maybe because she believed his apology or maybe because she wanted to know the answer.
He cleared his throat and fingered the etchings in the wood table, his head bowed as if in prayer. “I have two half-sisters and a half-brother. All from different mothers. I’ve never met my sisters. I only recently met my half-brother, Connor.”
He looked up, and his gaze met hers. Sympathy welled inside her like he’d drilled for oil and found her weak spot. Her insides melted, but she did her best not to let pity show on her face. Pity shut down confidences faster than a lightning strike.
“This isn’t something I tell reporters.” He quirked his lips in a half-hearted smile. “I’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself. My dad was popular with the ladies. He was also a terrible father.”
Bethany placed a hand over her heart. “Look how you’ve turned out. I bet he’s sorry you don’t keep in touch.”
Instead of answering, Hank leaned back in his chair, ignoring the cell phone next to his plate, which seemed to vibrate every few minutes with an incoming call. “I didn’t say we don’t keep in touch, just that we’re not close. He contacts me every few months or so.”
“You don’t know where he lives?”
“He’s a nomad. Has trouble holding down a job. He never stays in one place for long.”
“He wouldn’t make the effort to call if he didn’t care.”
Hank raised his eyebrows and accompanied it with a snort of laughter. “Whatever you say, Pollyanna.”
Heat flooded her cheeks, but she kept her voice firm. “A dad doesn’t call his child unless he cares.”
He slanted a brow. “This one calls because he wants money.”
She opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again, causing him to give her a superior smile.
“I told you he’s a terrible father.”
She puckered her lips. “Well, you have your brother, right?”
Hank shook his head and laughed, raising his glass of milk in a toast, then tossing down its contents like a shot of tequila.
She must have looked stumped because he set the glass down with a sigh and continued.
“More like he has me. My brother’s nineteen.
He looked me up because he needs money for college and a place to live.
He’s bright. Studying business. I couldn’t see the sense in making him struggle. ”
“He lives with you?”
Hank shook his head and stretched his long arms behind his head. “No, he lives on campus. UCLA. Now I’ve satisfied your curiosity, it’s my turn, Beth.”
“Oh.” She swallowed a bubble in her throat. Her father had been the only one who’d ever called her Beth. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the simple nickname.
She squinted at him. He looked lazy and relaxed but somehow Bethany knew he wasn’t.
She dropped her gaze to the table. A perfect rose scarred the wood.
The rose had been there all of Bethany’s thirty-two years, even longer.
Her father had carved it for her mother when they’d been teenagers in love.
How could she ever bear to lose this old place?
Bethany’s eyes burned, but she refused to give in to tears.
Instead, she swallowed and raised her head, looking over Hank’s shoulder and not at his face.
“What could you possibly want to know about me?”
“Who’s the actor who broke your heart?”
Bethany gasped, her eyes flicking to his intense gaze before she could prevent it. His question was so unexpected, it felt like he’d dumped a bucket of ice water over her head. She tried to laugh it off and failed. She managed a croak. “He’s not an actor.”
“Who is he then?”
“Just a chef.”
“Someone famous?”
She couldn’t help making a face, because Desmond’s recent commercial success after he’d stolen her money and broken her heart struck at her pride. “Yes.”
He nodded as if that solved some puzzle he’d been working out in his head and leaned forward, folding his hands together. “You’re not going to tell me his name?”
She forced herself to stare into his beautiful blue eyes. Strange to think of a man’s eyes as beautiful, but they were. Soft as sea foam but deeper than the bottom of the ocean. “Why do you care?”
He smiled, slow and easy, until it reached every corner of his face, revealing his dimples. “I don’t know. Do you still love him?”
“Er . . .” For a moment, Bethany’s heart stopped before beating a rapid staccato against her ribs and then settling again.
Was Hank Haverill flirting? With her? He’s an actor.
A celebrity. Love ’em and leave ’em—that was the secret celebrity code of non-ethics they all followed, wasn’t it?
And Hank had already admitted he needed money.
He wouldn’t be sticking around Cleveland for long.
He was amusing himself out of boredom or for some other bizarre reason. Well, she refused to be his plaything.
Hank tilted his head and waited. The staccato drumbeat in her chest started up again, louder this time. “Cat got your tongue?”
The cell phone buzzed next to his left hand, causing Hank to glance at it. His lips turned down. “Sorry, it’s a text from my agent. I have to make a call. But don’t go anywhere. Our conversation is not over.”
Bethany was pretty certain her rear end was glued to the chair and her feet to the floor because she couldn’t move even if she wanted to.
But Hank was wrong. Their conversation was over. It had to be.
She didn’t know what Hank Haverill’s motive was, but he must have one. Maybe he wanted her to play nice with the press after he booted her out to launch his fitness center.
Her hands hurt, and she looked at them as if they belonged to someone else until she realized she had a death grip on the table.
She wouldn’t be taken in by another con artist, even if he was gorgeous, intelligent, and a TV star. She wouldn’t let him destroy her family’s legacy. Put her and the other tenants out of business on a whim.
She just had to keep reminding herself of that fact.