Love Will Always Remember, page 2
Horrified, she’d slapped a steel lid on those emotions and riveted it shut. Despite the example shown by her parents, she wouldn’t use “feelings” to excuse a selfish and harmful decision.
It had been an unexpected, momentary lapse, never to be repeated. Now, she knew to be on guard. And as a bonus, Jonathan lived on the other side of the country. Since the brothers didn’t get along, she wouldn’t have much contact with him.
That all went out of the window when he decided to open a restaurant here.
Her driver pulled up to the curb in a black luxury sedan and she slid into the blessedly cool interior.
“You know how I feel about being late, Herb.”
“Don’t worry, ma’am. I’ll get you there on time.”
Leighton leaned back, closed her eyes and immediately opened them upon seeing Jonathan’s red-tinged image imprinted behind her lids.
No, no, no!
She’d figure out a way to get past this. She’d been in meetings with some of the most powerful people in the world, had dined and interacted with European royalty, Hollywood celebrities and world-famous musicians.
She’d be damned if she’d allow an inconvenient attraction to her future brother-in-law to get the best of her.
Chapter Two
What irritated Jonathan Moran more than the headache-inducing noise of five guys hammering, drilling and pounding wide-planked wood flooring into place was the knowledge he’d suffered through a similar installation a week before. He’d lost three days of access to his main dining room as workers had used concrete, stain and sealant to yield a floor similar to the one that graced his San Francisco restaurant, Quartet.
But when Karl, his designer, had breezed in from his red-eye flight, clutching a venti coffee and an artificial air of alertness, he’d taken one look at the floors of this new establishment, Sedici, and declared his vision corrupted. Unwilling to lose more time, Jonathan tried assuring him the floors were fine.
To which Karl had crossly replied, “Since you wouldn’t know an Aubusson from your asshole, please leave the flooring decisions to the experts.”
Considering Karl had devised the award-winning interior for Quartet, Jonathan had heeded the other man’s “advice” and signed the work order replacing a perfectly good floor with an entirely new one. After all, he had boatloads of time and an infinite supply of money.
Not.
Jonathan’s chest tightened and he massaged the offending spot, dreading the “discussion” that would occur when Zach found out about the additional five figure expenditure.
But not more than he dreaded this moment, this conversation, hell, this entire encounter with his brother. Even after all these years, Thomas Moran was still an asshole.
“Aren’t you worried?” Thomas asked, flicking back his jacket and sliding a hand into the pocket of his slacks.
Jonathan stared at his older brother, imperious in a custom-tailored suit. Jonathan never found it, but he was certain his parents had a baby picture of Thomas in a three-piece Hugo Boss, minutes after he’d been born.
If he’d sensed any sort of genuine concern on his brother’s part, any indication he actually cared, Jonathan might have confessed his uneasiness with the rising costs, constant delays and unexpected restrictions plaguing his latest venture.
But he didn’t.
“Not at all. Sedici will open in three weeks as planned.”
It saddened him that he and Thomas didn’t have a better relationship. Thomas had viewed his younger brother as a genealogical anchor and Jonathan had tired of being unfavorably compared to the Moran scion. He’d yearned to be his own man, to appreciate an experience without hearing how Thomas had done it first. And better. Going away had allowed him the time and space to mature. Coming home tested that growth.
Thomas curled his upper lip. “What in the hell is a suh-dee-chee?”
“It’s the name of the restaurant,” Jonathan gritted out.
“Interesting,” his brother said in a way that screamed it was anything but, condescension glazing his features. “I was talking about the construction going on outside your front door, but yeah, I’d be troubled about opening on time with the amount of work you have left to do.”
“Oh how I’ve missed these pep talks!” Jonathan lifted a crate of glasses and set them down beside the back bar. He shared a conspiratorial brow raise with his bar manager, who’d been concentrating on a group of bartenders-in-training. He re-focused on his brother. “What brings you by?”
“Besides the scent of impending disaster?” Thomas snorted at his own joke.
If he didn’t have a year and a shitload of money invested in opening this restaurant, he’d turn around, go back to San Francisco and never worry about seeing his asshat of a brother ever again. Repairing his relationship with Thomas was one of the reasons he’d made the decision to come back home. Watching his best friends find love and strengthen their families had made him acutely aware of his own familial deficiencies—and intent on correcting them. But that decision had been easy to make with three thousand miles and infrequent contact glossing over the reality of his brother’s disposition.
“Leighton and I are meeting a jeweler here in ten minutes.”
At the mention of Thomas’s fiancée, Jonathan’s breath hitched in his chest and a bolt of pure lust shredded down his spine and settled heavily in his cock. If his brother’s obnoxious personality wasn’t enough of a reason to keep his distance, his unadulterated attraction to Leighton Clarke should do it.
“What part of ‘my restaurant isn’t open’ didn’t you understand? This isn’t your satellite business office.”
Thomas looked around him, brows lifted. “If you think I would ever consider this shipwreck my office, it’s clear you have no idea what I do or how well I do it.”
Arrogant bastard.
Jonathan clenched his jaw so hard his molars could’ve cracked a walnut. He forced himself to relax, then calmly asked, “Why are you meeting a jeweler?”
“Leighton needs to pick out an engagement ring.”
She wasn’t wearing a ring? Why hadn’t he noticed?
Because you refuse to let your eyes move any farther south than her neck.
“You’ve been engaged for months.” Irritation at his errant, inappropriate thought turned his voice sour. “Why haven’t you given her a ring?”
“How is that any of your business?”
Thomas was right. It wasn’t. But the restaurant, and what happened in it, was.
Jonathan shrugged. “You should’ve asked me first. I could’ve saved you the trip. Now isn’t a good time.”
Jonathan couldn’t imagine two brothers more different. He was food, friends and fun. Thomas was suits, salary, societal status. But did that mean they couldn’t get along? He’d hoped he’d magnified their differences in his mind. Maybe they’d grown out of it. The move, the restaurant, getting along with his brother; he’d come back determined to make it all work.
Then he’d met his brother’s fiancée.
A nimble once-over on his part, taking in her creamy dark skin, razor-sharp cheekbones and lush, sensuous lips, and his body had risen to attention like a recent Naval Academy graduate. And when her tongue had darted out to moisten said lips, desire had grabbed his balls in a vise-like grip and refused to let go. He’d wanted to slide his tongue along her neck, nibble the lobe of her ear, grip the enticing curve of her hip and pull her close. He’d wanted to cook for her, feed her, fuck her. He’d never experienced a lust so overwhelming, so powerful, so instantaneous . . .
And there was nothing he could do about it. She was going to marry his brother.
When they’d shaken hands, the connection altered him on a cellular level. Fear and confusion had him retreating to the opposite side of the room, where he’d surreptitiously watched them together until he’d been inexplicably drawn back to her luminous presence. He’d cursed himself for his weakness, told himself that coveting her was a negation of his self-imposed exile and personal progress.
He needn’t have bothered. Though stunningly beautiful on the outside, she’d been haughty and judgmental, a total snob.
And yet he couldn’t banish the mental spectacle of those long, lean legs wrapped around his waist, his lips attached to the throbbing pulse in her neck and her heady scent surrounding him as he plunged into her until his knees wobbled and he could barely stand.
“My bad,” Thomas sneered. “I forgot that nothing and no one is more important than your needs. Like when Dad had his retirement party and you couldn’t be bothered to come home.”
“Not on that day,” Jonathan objected. “But I flew him and Mom out to San Francisco the week after.”
“I had to move them to Florida by myself—”
“You picked the one weekend you knew I wasn’t available.” Jonathan was honored to be a judge at the annual Young Chefs of America competition. He’d participated every year for the past four years, issuing an open invitation for his family to join him in Palm Springs. His parents always accepted. His brother never did.
Thomas brushed aside his response. “I had to put the house on the market without you.”
“You’re keeping a tally?”
“Yes.”
“Are you serious? I can’t do you a favor because I’m busy opening my restaurant and suddenly I’m the bastard?”
“As a matter of fact, yes, that’s exactly how it works.” Thomas’s sigh would’ve made a soap opera matron proud. “I should be used to it. You’ve always done what’s best for you and fuck its effect on anyone else.”
Irritation bubbled to the surface at the old refrain. “That’s bullshit. You’re thirty-six years old. Isn’t it time you stopped bringing up things that happened when we were kids?”
“I’ll stop bringing up our childhood when you stop being a child.”
And like a fixed patio door, they slid effortlessly back into the acrimonious rhythm that had eventually poisoned their relationship.
The front door breezed open, halting the nasty retort on the tip of his tongue, and bringing with it the stifling humidity/heat combo of a DC summer night, the constant clamor of the construction happening directly outside his front door, and her.
The breath abandoned his body.
Leighton stood just inside the doorway, sheathed in a black and ivory form-fitting dress, the cinched waist emphasizing her sensuous figure. His heart shifted in his chest. She looked cool and poised despite the weather and late hour, her hair falling in a dark curtain around her shoulders and an impressive diamond bracelet glistening on her arm. He tightened his hands into fists at his side, in an effort to stem the tingling in his fingers.
Why her? DC was filled with gorgeous, accomplished women. Hell, roughly fifty-three percent of the population was female. Why couldn’t he stop thinking about the one engaged to his brother?
“I’m not an expert, but I don’t think requiring your customers to traverse an obstacle course to enter your restaurant will be good for business.”
Her smoky voice stroked him like a velvet glove. What he wouldn’t give for her to whisper dirty words in his ear while her hand stroked his cock in a similar manner.
A clattering crash jerked his attention away from temptation to the area behind the bar. A young man stood and placed several large jagged pieces of glass on the heavily veined marble counter.
His bar manager rolled her eyes. “If I catch any of you doing that cocktail shit, I will throw your asses out. That’s not what we do here.”
Exasperated at the broken glassware, but thankful for the interruption, Jonathan crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at the newcomer. “You’re right. You’re not an expert.”
Her dark, tilted eyes, the color of espresso, flickered and dropped lower to follow his movements. His pulse rocketed and his skin heated where seared by her glance. She drew in her lower lip and it popped out wet and glistening, before she gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of her head and looked away.
What the fuck? Did she just check him out?
Thomas strode forward creating a physical and mental barrier between them. “Ignore him. Contemplating the possibility of failure has put him in a foul mood.”
“Ignore me? In my restaurant? You can both leave, make it that much easier.”
Thomas brushed a brief kiss at the corner of her mouth and squeezed her upper arm.
That’s how he greeted her? If nine o’clock at night was the first time Jonathan had seen Leighton all day, he’d do more than peck her cheek. He’d tangle his hand in the thickness of her hair, claim those ripe lips and show her just how much she’d been on his mind—
If he liked her and she was his fiancée.
Which he didn’t.
And she wasn’t.
Not wanting to see if there was more to Thomas’s welcome, Jonathan headed over to the guys installing the floor. “Why don’t you call it a night?”
The foreman stood. “Are you sure? We could keep going.”
While Jonathan’s wallet appreciated the sentiment, his head couldn’t take any more noise. And with Leighton here, he’d need to exert the maximum amount of mental focus. “You can finish in the morning.”
“Alright, Chef.” The foreman motioned to the workers, who ceased hammering and began putting their tools away.
When he tuned back in to their conversation, Leighton was asking Thomas, “What time is your flight?”
“Six tomorrow night. I’ll go straight to the airport from my lunch meeting with the partners.”
For the first time since her arrival, she smiled and it was a thing of beauty. “The fact that they’re sending you is a sign of their confidence in you.”
What the fuck are you doing to yourself? Why are you still here?
He was a glutton for punishment. He should be somewhere in the back checking inventory or helping Gib with the staff or doing one of the other numerous tasks on his punch list. But he wasn’t. He was here, watching Leighton smile and wishing like hell it was directed at him.
It was a dick move to covet his brother’s woman.
Still, he inserted himself into their conversation. “Where are you going?”
He didn’t expect a real response, so he was surprised when Thomas exhaled loudly thorough his nose, but answered. “My firm is sending me to implement a new accounting system for our London office.”
He was impressed despite his efforts to feel otherwise. “Will you be gone long?”
Brown eyes, identical to the ones he saw in the mirror every day, save the thin white scar above the left brow, met his then darted away. “Six weeks.”
The disappointment burned like a shot of cheap tequila. He rolled his lips inward and nodded his head. His brother would miss the opening. Why should he have expected anything different?
Thomas pulled out his phone and asked Leighton, “Did you get my message about the wedding planner?”
She nodded. “I did. I made the call and she’s in.”
“Excellent.”
Not surprising. He’d been back in DC for over a year and he was already learning that whatever Leighton Clarke wanted, Leighton Clarke got.
You’re just mad she doesn’t want you.
“She’ll call me tomorrow with her earliest available appointment.”
“Everything is coming along as we planned,” Thomas said, the glee in his voice invoking the image of an evil mastermind rubbing his hands together.
“Where’s the jeweler? He’s late,” Leighton said.
Jonathan checked his watch. “Only a few minutes.”
“Our time is valuable,” Thomas said, his implication clear.
“So is mine,” Jonathan challenged. “Yet here you are.”
“You don’t need to be here,” Thomas said. “We wanted the space, not you.”
Fucker.
It’s the same thing he’d told himself minutes ago, but still . . .
Leighton’s gaze flew to meet his and the frost melted from her countenance. With a lingering look at him, she touched Thomas’s arm and spoke in a low voice.
Jealousy gnawed the edges of his heart.
Thomas’s lips firmed into a straight line and he gave a brisk nod. Facing Jonathan, but staring at something over his shoulder, his brother said, “We appreciate you allowing us to use the restaurant.”
Jonathan looked from Thomas to Leighton, who stood in profile to him, her arms folded stiffly in front of her, her gaze somewhere near the entrance to the kitchen.
“You’re welcome.”
He didn’t need his brother’s gratitude, didn’t want it. But he took it.
Because she’d offered it.
All three turned at the sharp knock on glass. An older man holding a silver aluminum briefcase stood just outside the front door, eyeing the metal scaffolding as if he were being forced to cross a large open field with buried land mines.
Jonathan opened the door a bit. “Can I help you?”
The visitor adjusted the wire-rimmed glasses on his round face. “I’m Samuel Bridge from Walker-Grant Jewelers. I’m here to meet Leighton Clarke and Thomas Moran.”
He pushed the door wider in invitation. “I’m Jonathan Moran. Please, come in. They’re expecting you.”
Bridge shook his outstretched hand. “It’s a pleasure, Chef. I’m a fan. My wife and I dined at Quartet when we were in San Francisco last year. The roasted squab was incredible.”
Pleasure blossomed in his chest. He’d never tire of hearing how much people loved his food. “Thank you.”
Thomas’s features tightened at the admiration. As the oldest, he wasn’t used to being the subordinate of the two Moran brothers. “I’m Thomas Moran and this is my fiancée, Leighton Clarke.”
Bridge’s face flushed red in a mottled pattern that would be concerning in a different situation but was probably par for the course with Leighton. “A pleasure.”
They shook hands. Leighton had a strong handshake, no limp wrist or lady fingers for her.
