One Night Wager, page 5
“Oh, you just don’t strike me as someone who does small talk.”
“You’re making me regret asking.”
She threw her head back and laughed, and a shaft of desire went through him. On the surface there was nothing about Indy Belmont that should have attracted him, yet here he was getting turned on.
“You know about my show Hometown, Home Again so I’m guessing you mean here in Gilbert Corners. I own the bookshop across the way as well as a Victorian house over on Maple. I thought Gilbert Corners would be a nice place to live and work for the next few years,” she said.
“Is it?”
“Well, there was this curse...”
He shook his head at her. She gave him a sheepish grin. “Sorry. I love it here. I mean my house needs more work than I expected and the foot traffic in town isn’t as lively as I’d like, but I do a good business online, so I’m good. We’ve already filmed me making over the bookshop and Java Juice. So next up we’re focusing on my Victorian house. I’ve been hunting for authentic pieces from that era to fill the rooms.”
“And you’re fixing up the town too?”
“Yes, that’s what my show is about. Well, I’m trying. I mean, this town should be a weekend tourist destination and no one gets off the train here,” she said. “Half the businesses on Main are closing down. I have friends who own their own businesses who I want to open shops here, but right now... I don’t blame them for saying no.”
He finished his iced coffee and put the tumbler on the ground. “So will you stay here after you finish fixing it all up?” He gestured to everyone working in the park.
“I don’t know. What about you?” she asked.
Her answers felt...pat, like she was hiding something. Her show was successful; when he’d gone back home after the cook-off he’d watched a few episodes, getting turned on watching her work in her overalls and making molding with a table saw. Not what he would have classified as one of his turn-ons but his erection said otherwise. “What about me?”
“Why did you leave Gilbert Corners?” she asked.
He shut down. He might like her and he planned to have her in his bed. But he never discussed his past. “That’s not small talk,” he said.
“Why not?” she asked in that soft, gentle way that he was coming to like a little too much. If she’d been demanding he would have walked away, but there was a genuineness to the question he wouldn’t ignore.
“It’s complicated,” he said at last.
“Was it because of the accident? I heard your grandfather died right after you’d recovered. That would make it hard to come back here,” she said.
She’d given him an acceptable reason for not wanting to be here. He could just smile and nod, but the fact was he didn’t want to lie to her. “No. It’s because of my grandfather himself. The old bastard made me miserable, and I want nothing to do with anything that he loved.”
She stared at him for a moment than nodded. “I’m sorr—
“Let’s get these rosebushes planted. Our groundskeeper used to water the ground before planting. I’ll get a watering can.”
He turned and walked away from her and the conversation. The last thing he wanted to discuss was his grandfather or this damned town. No matter how much Indy turned him on, he needed to finish this up and get out of town.
The sun was hot, and he heard the sound of kids laughing and playing, and all he could remember was how quiet and somber Gilbert Manor had been when he’d first arrived there.
* * *
Indy was starting to get a better picture of why the Gilberts had left Gilbert Corners. If Conrad hated his grandfather...maybe the other cousins did as well. But he was gone now and there was no reason for Conrad to stop coming here. Of course she hadn’t been able to make herself go back to campus after...well, after. So she knew that a place could often hold memories that logic couldn’t help her get beyond.
Except that Conrad looked like someone who didn’t have those kinds of issues. Which she immediately chided herself for thinking. She knew better than to judge him based on his life. Everyone had stuff in their past that they were dealing with.
His surly attitude should be all she needed to tell her that he was dealing with something. She’d thought it stemmed from the accident, but now she wondered if the accident was just the tip of the iceberg. She told herself she wanted to help Conrad because he was tied to Gilbert Corners and the alleged curse.
But she knew that was a lie. She wanted to help him because she liked him. As surly as he could be, there was a decent man underneath. And he was hot, which shouldn’t have anything to do with it, but there it was.
The first man she’d noticed as a woman in five years would be Conrad, wouldn’t it? He was difficult but also complex. There was so much more to him that his domineering chef persona. Instead of deterring her, that made her keener to get to know him. He came back with a watering can, and she realized she’d been watching him the entire time.
“Why didn’t you dig the hole for the plant?”
“Ah, you kind of sounded like you knew what you were doing,” she said.
“Here, hold this,” he said, handing her the watering can.
He dug a hole and then tossed the shovel down. “Put some water in. But not too much. We don’t want to drown the roots.”
“You actually did more than watch your groundskeeper, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. The staff were nice to me when I came to live with the old bastard.”
“You shouldn’t call him that.”
“Why not? That’s what he was,” he said.
She carefully poured in the water and he gestured for her stop. Then he took the rose plant and set it into the hole he’d made.
“Can you hold it upright while I cover the roots?” Conrad asked.
“Yes. Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”
He didn’t say anything in response, just covered over the roots and then took the watering can and put more water on top of the soil. They planted the other three rose bushes in silence, working together as a team.
She wished she could unsay that thing about his grandfather. That was the problem with being her. She was impulsive all the time. She never thought things through, just blurted them out.
“I was trying—”
“I know you were trying to be nice because that’s who you are. But I’m just as much of a bastard as he was. I can’t help myself.”
He leaned on the shovel and stared at her. “Sorry.”
She had a feeling he didn’t often apologize and didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. “How about I make you some lunch as sort pax?”
“You mean before I take you away for the weekend I won,” he reminded her drily.
“Yes. Want to meet me at my place? I walked over,” she said.
“Sure, I’ll take my bike over after I return the watering can and shovel,” he said.
“I’m number 8 Maple Street.”
“I’ll see you there,” he said.
Yikes!
Her house was still not finished; inviting Conrad over had seemed like the right thing to do, but now she was mentally going through it trying to remember if she had any unfinished projects lying around.
She pushed that to the back of her mind. She’d done some good work with the house, uncovering the herringbone wood floors which she’d sanded and then sealed. She was nervous for him to see all the work she’d put into it. For her, this house would be like letting him see her naked...more intimate than he even knew.
She went over to help Nola clean up and then thanked everyone for helping out, deliberately stalling before she walked to her house. When she got there Conrad’s bike was in her driveway, but he wasn’t. As she got closer, she noticed he was sitting on the Hammonds’s front porch talking to Miss Martha and Miss Jean-Marie. He waved at her as she approached and said goodbye to the elderly ladies.
She fumbled with her old skeleton key to open her door and finally got it to work. She opened the door, which she had repaired when she first moved in. The foyer had terrazzo tiles on the floor and the twelve-foot ceilings created an open and cool space. She had a table next to the door where she tossed her keys into a bowl. She toed off her tennis shoes and then turned as Conrad closed the door behind himself.
“There’s a bathroom through that door if you want to wash up. The kitchen is down to the left. I’m going to go use the master bath.”
He didn’t say anything, but she already knew he wasn’t chatty. She was curious to see what he thought of her place, but also to learn more about him. He’d mentioned his grandfather, and given that local lore held that it was the Gilbert curse, maybe the surly old man was responsible for everyone feeling that way.
She liked Conrad, and there was something about him that she trusted. But at the same time, she sensed the danger in him.
She needed to be cautious. She didn’t think he’d harm her, but she knew herself, and there was a very real risk that she’d let herself fall for him. And Conrad Gilbert wasn’t the kind of man who wanted women falling for him.
She would do well to remember that. But when she came into the kitchen and found him already assembling ingredients for their lunch, she knew it was going to be harder than she planned.
Five
Her kitchen hadn’t been renovated but had a working stove top, which was all he needed. He decided he’d make her some lunch before they left. He had been rude, but that didn’t bother him. He knew most people expected him to be—either because he was born with the proverbial silver spoon, or they knew that his moniker of Beast wasn’t just a cute marketing one.
But he’d seen real hurt in her eyes and...
He wasn’t going to delve deeper than that.
It was safe to say that Indy had horrible eating habits. He found a forgotten stick of butter in the back of a drawer, along with a block of cheddar cheese and generic store brand white bread. Her cabinets revealed no seasonings to speak of, but he found some salt and pepper packets from a local take-out place in a drawer.
“What are you doing?”
“Making lunch,” he said.
“Oh well thanks. I am sorry I trapped you into coming today. I just...no excuses, sometimes my mouth just goes off without warning,” she said with a grin that made him want to pull her into his arms and kiss her until they were both naked.
He looked back to the kitchen counter. She’d had an underripe tomato and some wilted lettuce in her fridge. Along with leftovers of some rotisserie chicken.
“Chicken salad or grilled cheese?”
“I don’t have any mayo,” she said.
“Of course you don’t. What were you planning to serve me?”
“Subs from Jacob’s Deli. They deliver.”
He said nothing, just continued going through her pantry and fridge until he had assembled everything he thought he could use. She pulled out one of the stools, sat at the breakfast counter and watched him.
He forgot that he was in Gilbert Corners and focused only on Indy. He wanted to impress her. He admired the work she’d done on her house, and the way that she’d used her determination and kindheartedness to rally the community to make improvements. He remembered the town, and it had taken more than the money that Dash and he had allocated to get them motivated to clean up the park.
He guessed it was all down to her.
“Have you ever done that cooking show where they only give you a few ingredients?” she asked.
“No, I’m not that kind of chef.”
“What kind are you?” she asked. “You don’t have a restaurant, do you?”
“Not anymore.”
“So you had one?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Ugh. Are you seriously going to just answer everything with one word?”
“Probably.”
“The next time you do that you have to...”
“What?”
She shook her head. “So how’d you start cooking.”
He pretended he didn’t hear that. The last thing he wanted to do was get into postaccident Conrad. In fact, there was very little about himself he wanted to discuss. Maybe a sliver of time when he’d been eight to ten years old and life had been good.
“You said you own the bookshop?”
She tilted her head and reached over to steal a piece of cheese she’d sliced for their sandwiches. “I do. I love bookstores. I used to spend all my money at the bookstore in Lansdowne...that’s where I grew up. So when I graduated and came back home to ‘figure myself out’ and it was up for sale, my parents suggested I buy it and run it.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah. But the town was dying, so I started making YouTube videos and then invited friends to come to town and help me make over different abandoned shops. I talked Nola into coming to town and opening a bakery. Which she did. Then my parents used their contacts to talk more families into either coming back to town or enticing their kids back. And then I got my show.”
“Sounds impressive. Why’d you leave?”
She chewed her lower lip for a second, drawing his eyes to her mouth. She had a full lower lip and a cute little Cupid’s bow on her top lip, which he’d noticed when he’d watched her videos. He really wanted to kiss her.
“I could never tell if my success was mine or because of my parents. I have my own show, but a big part of my success was due to my parents’ contacts and easy loans were used as an incentive to encourage people to move back and start businesses. Everyone in town made all of that possible.”
“So you came here?” he asked. He was only half listening to her. In his mind he was exploring the softness of her mouth, but this was important to Indy and he wanted to know about her.
“Yeah. I need to prove that I can do it without them. I know how that sounds,” she said with a little shrug.
“It’s cool—I get it.” He’d always been all about proving himself to everyone.
“What about you? How’d you become a chef instead of a CEO like your cousin Dash?” she asked.
He could do this, tell her the safe stuff. The simple answer he gave when strangers asked him. “Well I dropped out of college thanks in part to the accident. I was in a medically induced coma and then rehab for most of my junior year, so I didn’t go back. I went to Europe and took dishwashing jobs to piss my grandfather off and learned to cook.”
“Did you become a chef to tick him off?” she asked carefully, reaching over to steal another piece of cheese from his tray.
“Partially, but not really. I just loved it. I had a really good mentor and once I worked my way up from sous-chef to chef de partie, I knew that I was hooked,” he said, smiling to himself as he remembered some of the kitchens he’d worked in, and the people. He’d eventually earned a Michelin star and then felt like he’d reached the pinnacle. That was when he transferred control of the kitchen to his sous-chef and started making his TV show.
He saw her put the piece of cheese in her mouth and chew it slowly. Inwardly he groaned. He needed to get laid, either with Indy or someone else. Because he felt like he was one big hormone at this point. He hadn’t been this horny since he’d been a teenager.
“What about you? Is breaking curses your passion?” he asked to lighten things up.
She shook her head and her curls bounced around her face as she gave him a self-conscious look. “I’m not sure I actually broke anything.”
She was still hiding something. From experience he knew that passion only came when faced with a desperate choice; only then would a person find the thing that they were called to do. For him it had been cooking. For Indy, well she didn’t seem like the kind of lady who had ever had to face that choice.
* * *
Watching Conrad in the kitchen, he was starting to make more sense to her. At the park earlier today, he’d held himself as a sort of aristocrat in his fiefdom, but here in the kitchen he was different. There was a harmony to him and his movements, and she struggled to keep from staring at him.
Yeah, that was the reason why she couldn’t keep her eyes off him. It had nothing to do with the skintight T-shirt and his muscly arms. The choice of thorns wrapping around his body wasn’t one she understood. She wanted to ask about them. Why was she hesitating? It wasn’t like he’d feel pressured to answer her.
He’d probably never done anything just to be nice, which was sort of her modus operandi. She wanted to ask him about his past and how the car crash changed him. But that would be intrusive and she wanted to be chill maybe more refrained.
“Do your tattoos have special meaning?”
“Yes.”
She waited to see if he was going to elaborate, but it was clear he wasn’t going to. “Thorny bushes aren’t the typical tattoo, and what’s that thing mean?”
She leaned forward across the counter and touched the stylized symbol on his left forearm.
“It’s the Celtic symbol for brother,” he said.
“Do you have a brother? I thought it was just you and your cousins.”
He had finished chopping the cheese and had mashed together some herbs that she hadn’t known she owned in a bowl. He reached above her head to the pot rack where she had a frying pan her grandmother had given her when Indy had left home.
“No brother. Dash and I got them together.”
“He’s your cousin, right?”
He gave her a sardonic look. “You know he is.”
“I do. Figured I’d keep asking similar questions and see if you open up a bit.”
He took the pan to the sink and washed and then put it on the burner to heat up. “I’m not going to.”
He didn’t talk while he made their sandwiches and she sort of just stared at his butt until she realized what she was doing. She got up and set places for both of them at the counter. “What would you like to drink?”
