Chapter 14 #6
“Here? Are Lucinda and Boyce, uh, joining us?” She frowned. “And by the way, why are we here? Is this business?” Her voice started to go up, tension filling it. A visceral sense of change made Kell pull her close.
“I’m sorry I didn’t explain. No business. Lucinda lent me the place for our date.”
“She what?”
“It’s weird, I know. I asked you out, but I forgot it’s February 10. You can’t get a reservation anywhere. Even Bilbee’s Tavern is full. So I called my cousin Blake, who owns The Food Alchemist, and he set us up with a takeout dinner, but it was either my apartment or find somewhere nicer.”
“Your apartment is nice!”
“Not this nice.” Guiding her to the conference room, he paused before the door, looking at her.
The expression on her face was not one of anticipatory joy, as he’d hoped.
“What’s wrong?”
“This is where I presented my deck to Lucinda and Boyce. Where you walked in front of the window looking like a deranged Neil Armstrong and distracted me in the middle of my pitch. And where they said no. A no I had to convert to a maybe by thinking fast on my feet.”
“Oh.”
He held back saying a curse word.
With a flourish, he opened the door. Rachel gasped.
“I didn’t think about any of that, Rachel. I’m sorry if the room has bad memories for you, but maybe we could replace those with some good ones?”
Candlelight gave the room a warm, womblike feel, the big window showing the steaming hot springs as the moonlight bounced off the water’s dark surface. The linens, the silver, the wine glasses–it all lent the room a romantic quality that made Kell relax.
“This is so sweet,” she whispered, turning to him, taller than usual in high heels.
As she tipped her head up to kiss him, his fingers sank into her hair, the lush sense of being exactly where he was supposed to be–suit or no suit, beard or no beard, restaurant or no restaurant–fading into nothing as Rachel kissed him and he kissed her back.
Nothing else mattered.
No one else existed.
He was with her and she was here, in his arms, and that was the meaning of his life.
Lost in the kiss, he felt years of anger and hurt float off him, evaporating like the steam on the other side of the window.
Why had he clung to it for so long? Why had it attached to him?
As it lifted, he thought back to that fateful moment in his old apartment, about to kiss Rachel, and he saw the last five years as a blip in his life.
A painful time, but a blip.
Letting that betrayal define him was the mistake, not the betrayal itself.
“Kell,” she whispered against his mouth. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For this.” She motioned to the romantic space he’d created for the two of them, the wide table in this conference room an ample spread for an…
Ample spread.
“We haven’t even had dinner. Thank me after.”
Her eyes twinkled. “Is that an offer?”
“Rachel,” he said, moving his hand from her waist to cup her ass. “That is more than an offer.”
He started to kiss her again, but she put her fingers on his lips.
“If we don’t eat dinner first, we’ll never eat. And I have a meeting here in this very room, to try to pitch the deal again, in five days. Boundaries, Kell–boundaries. I refuse to have sex on this conference table.”
“The thought never, ever occurred to me,” he lied.
“Liar.”
“Caught.”
With a deep laugh he adored, she handed him the bottle. “Why don’t you uncork this and we can start with a lovely glass of wine?”
“Fine. The table is off the table.”
As Kell got busy with Blake’s corkscrew, Rachel wandered over to the window, gazing out. The view of her from behind was exquisite, his brief touch a glimpse of what was to come.
He hadn’t had sex in a long time. Not for lack of offers.
More like lack of the right offer.
Pop! The cork came out easily and he poured two glasses, offering one to her.
“A toast,” he said smoothly, feeling more and more like the sophisticated man he’d hoped to become in D.C., but also grounded here in Maine. “To new beginnings.”
“And to old friends.”
As their glasses touched, he caught her eye and said, “Friends?”
“I want to be your friend again. I’ve wanted that for so long.”
“Just friends?”
“Friends and more. But Kell, I missed your friendship so much,” she confessed, breaking his heart a little because he felt the same way. Losing their connection five years ago had been about lost potential, that almost kiss a glimpse of what could be.
Losing her as a friend, though–that had been the true gut punch.
“Mmm,” she said, taking a sip. “The sommelier knew what he was doing.”
He sipped. “It’s good. It’s… red.”
“Not a wine connoisseur?”
“Not anymore. More of a beer guy.”
“Bearded Kell? I believe that. This Kell? You look more like the kind of guy who can tell me all about micro-distilled gin.”
“I’m more conversant in poison ivy identification and removal techniques than I am in gin.”
“Which is why your company is growing by leaps and bounds.”
Pulling a chair out from the table, he turned one, then a second chair, toward the window, urging her to sit. There, they stared out at the mist and sipped their wine, Kell reaching down to unbutton his jacket, enjoying being able to breathe again.
“My company is a source of confusion,” he admitted.
“Why?”
“I love it. Really enjoy going out and providing a service that’s hard to find and desperately needed.”
“I’m surprised people don’t just use herbicides.”
“They can. But plenty of people don’t want that, or the ivy is resistant. No one wants to use an herbicide too close to a vegetable garden, for instance. Or their well. Or they have kids, or pets.”
“You get very excited when you talk about this.”
“Because it’s exciting!”
“Why not do it full time, then? It’s clear you could have a bigger business if you wanted. Hire more people.”
“It’s hard to find the right people. You have to follow a careful protocol. I pay very well, but it’s still hard.”
“How hard have you tried?”
“Not very,” he admitted.
“I think I know why it’s so difficult for you.”
“You do?”
“It’s psychological. Not operational.”
“Okay, Dr. Freud-Hart, do tell.”
“If Pulling for You becomes too successful, you’ll have to choose between working with your dad and running your own business. You don’t want to break your dad’s heart.”
“You think I’m sabotaging my own success?”
“Not sabotaging. Just that all the work that’s required to succeed becomes an obstacle for you. You can limp along and do the actual physical work no problem.”
“I enjoy that part.”
“The administrative side isn’t that hard. Not yet. If you grow, the scope will grow, of course.”
“Complexity, too,” he added.
She had finished her wine and he almost had, the first glass loosening him up. After Rachel set her glass on the table, he took her hand.
She let him. They sat in silence for a few moments.
“I can see why it’s hard. I wouldn’t have understood even a few days ago.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not just a straightforward business question. You have your dad, your family, and your town and all the people you know here to consider.”
“I do.”
“You barter a lot, don’t you?”
He kissed the back of her hand and stood. “Speaking of bartering, let’s start dinner.”
“The wine isn't a course?” Rachel began to stand. He pressed her shoulders down gently, kissing the back of her neck.
“Let me serve you.”
“Whoa, buddy. Are you sure you’re not designed by artificial intelligence to be perfect?”
“Nothing artificial here,” he murmured against her ear, giving it a quick, impish bite. She lifted her shoulder into her ear and giggled as he left the room for the small counter next to the cooler, quickly creating the bread basket, oil dip bowl, and bringing two small salads with him.
As he set everything down on the table in front of them, Rachel gave him a wondering look.
“All this? It’s like being in a four-star restaurant without the hassle!”
“The bread is homemade by Sheila, my cousin’s wife. Salad is from a hydroponics farm in Bethel. They’re a farm-to-table restaurant and they work very hard to source as much as possible from nearby growers and producers.”
Rachel took a bite of what smelled like sourdough bread. “Mmm.” Kell did the same and his mouth exploded with flavor.
Not that he wanted to replace the taste of her, but…
“I didn’t realize how hungry I was!” Rachel said as the two of them worked their way through the bread, the oil, and their salads.
“Same. Blake and Sheila make such good food.”
“This is as good as anything I’d have in L.A.,” she gushed. “The dressing has something I can’t quite name, but it’s amazing.”
“I think it’s ground fennel seed?”
“Mmm.”
He loved her appreciation of good food. Loved the little sounds she made as they ate together. Loved that she wasn’t nervous or tense, but instead fully present, sharing time and space with him.
“Why,” she asked, after setting down her fork on an empty salad plate, “can’t your mom and dad just hire someone else to do the tree work?”
“Dad wants to hand it off to one of his kids.”
“Okay, I can see that. But he can still run the business for at least another decade, right?”
“Sure. Can’t climb that long, but yes.”
“Then why don’t you build your business and help him part-time? Not the other way around. He can hire people to help now, but when he wants to retire, you take on more of a managerial/owner role, instead of being the one in the field?”
“That’s not how Dad does things.”
“He wouldn’t be the one running it then, Kell. Who says you have to do it his way when you take over?”
The thought made him feel every red blood cell in his body. Rachel’s words reached down to another layer in him, tying together years of loose thoughts and feelings that had never quite fit together.
“That’s a lot to consider,” he said, at a loss for words. Needing to do something, he stood slowly, her face turning from curious and engaged to alarmed.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m just going to get the main course.”
“Oh! I thought I’d offended you.”