One Night, Two Consequences

Rein it in, Draycott. The last time you flirted with a hot man you ended up with a lot more than you bargained for.

So Remy dialled down her smile and gestured to the empty seats. ‘I’m absolutely starving and I was wondering if I could share your table. Please?’

The elfin face of the woman was tilted up and she smiled back. ‘Sure …’ She scooted up on the bench and patted the empty space next to her. ‘Take a seat. I’m Ginny, and this is my cousin Eli.’

Eli leaned back and gave her a long, lazy smile.

Yeah, definitely flirting material … Except that he didn’t do anything for her. The eyes were brown, not grey, his hair was too light and his smile was too open.

‘I’m Remy.’

‘Are you passing through?’ Eli asked.

‘I might be around for a couple of days—a week, maybe.’

It didn’t seem that big a town—surely it wouldn’t take that long to track Bo down? Maybe she could ask Eli and Ginny if they knew him. But later, after they’d all eaten.

She gestured to their half-eaten plates of food—salad for her, burger for him—and to their cooling coffee. ‘Don’t let me interrupt your conversation, please.’

Remy quietly ordered her food from a waitress as the cousins resumed their discussion around organic farming. Remy, not knowing anything about farming, and even less about organic farming, tuned out and leaned back and closed her eyes. Lord, she was tired. Soul-deep tired … Thank goodness she’d booked a room at the hotel down the street before she’d left Portland. After her burger she’d check in and maybe just lie down for a little while.

‘Did you see the sample menus from the chef candidates that were faxed through from LA?’ Ginny was asking.

‘Yeah … not that I read them,’ Eli answered.

She’d said the magic word ‘menus’ and Remy couldn’t help tuning in.

‘I bet you he didn’t explain the brief properly—the vision of the restaurant,’ Ginny grumbled. ‘They’re too far out. We don’t want Turkish eggs and caviar omelettes …’

‘What are Turkish eggs?’ Eli demanded.

‘Poached eggs, basically,’ Remy murmured, unable to help herself. ‘Although I do mine with mint, chilli and smoked paprika. Seriously yummy.’

‘Maybe we do want Turkish eggs on the menu,’ Eli told Ginny.

‘Well, I don’t want caviar omelettes. Caviar omelettes do not belong in the type of place we are opening at Belleaire,’ Ginny said obstinately.

Belleaire … Remy thought. The fancy wine estate on the outskirts of town. Were Eli and Ginny two of the three family members who owned and ran the upmarket, famous estate which was prominently featured in all the tourist brochures?

Okay, she wasn’t going to pretend that she wasn’t listening any more. ‘What type of restaurant are you opening?’ she asked, intrigued.

Ginny pushed her coffee cup away and half turned to face Remy. ‘A family place—breakfasts, teas, light lunches. Fresh, healthy, light, interesting food that’s not … pretentious. I want people to be able to relax, to bring their kids there, but still be able to get a nice meal, a decent glass of wine.’ She pulled out a sheaf of papers from her bag and slapped them onto the table. ‘My brother is currently interviewing candidates for the manager-cum-chef position and he’s asked them to send through sample menus for what they would do if they were offered the position.’

Remy gestured to the papers. ‘Can I look?’

‘Are you a chef?’

Remy shook her head. ‘No, but I am a cook and I adore food. I’ve done about a million cookery courses.’ She skimmed through the menus, tossed most of them aside and kept a couple in another pile. She tapped her finger against the slim pile. ‘These here are the best of a bad bunch, but they’re still not great.’

Eli folded his arms and his biceps bulged. Nice arms, wide chest, flat stomach … But still she felt nothing. Weird.

‘What would you do?’

She blinked at him. ‘About what?’

‘If it was your place? You obviously know food, and you seem to be familiar with the dishes on those menus.’

‘Oh.’ Remy thought for a minute, her face cupped in her hands. ‘Um … interesting salads. Couscous and butternut, watermelon and feta—things like that. Soups with crusty, gorgeous bread. Hearty dishes like lamb stew, lasagne and chicken casserole. Classic puddings with one or two exceptions to keep things interesting. A specially designed menu for kids—but I’d avoid burgers and hot dogs. Fish and chips, a chicken pasta dish—meals that kids like and mums like them eating.’

Remy didn’t notice the long look Ginny and Eli exchanged. Instead her eyes were on the waitress, who was walking in their direction with what was, hopefully, her burger. She was so hungry she could eat a horse.

‘Are you looking for work?’ Ginny asked.

‘Sorry? What?’ Remy sighed her disappointment when her burger went to the table two up from them.

‘We’re looking for a chef-manager to set up the bistro and you seem to know what you’re talking about,’ Ginny explained, her face animated with excitement.

‘Uh … I wasn’t planning on sticking around,’ Remy replied, her mind whirling.

She was here to talk to Bo and then she was on her way. But setting up a restaurant, designing a menu, building something from the ground up, sounded like a whole bunch of fun.

Throughout her life, and despite trying many different activities on her travels, food had seemed to be her only constant. When she was a child, battling to reconcile her intellect with her emotions, Grandma Rosie had often hauled out her baking bowl and flour and put her to work. Baking calmed her and it and cooking was still her favourite means of stress relief.

When she’d started travelling she had finally had the time to indulge her passion; she’d started to blog about food and spent an enormous amount of time seeking out the best food markets, learning how to cook the local foods.

She’d taken a course in how to cook Thai food in Bangkok, had done a confectionery course in London, a cordon bleu course in Marseille. Sushi in Sydney. Chinese in … Sydney again. She seemed to gravitate towards the food industry, but she didn’t want the pressure of working in a professional kitchen.

If she weren’t pregnant she wouldn’t hesitate to take Ginny up on her offer. But after seeing Bo she needed to keep moving while she still could. Some time in the next four months she had to find a town or a city she wanted to live in and—ack!—a job. Or, better, a business that covered her daily expenses and allowed her flexibility and freedom.

A cupcake shop? An ice cream parlour? An old-fashioned tea room?

And where? In Portland? Close to her mum and to Grandmother Rosie, who’d helped raise her?

‘Do you have another job? Somewhere to be?’ Ginny demanded, breaking into Remy’s thoughts. She pointed a finger at her. ‘I can see that you are intrigued and interested, and life is too short to spend your time doing stuff you don’t like.’

She knew that—that was why she didn’t have an ulcer any more. A baby, but not an ulcer.

‘I am interested … it does sound like fun.’ Remy tipped her head, thinking quickly. ‘Maybe I could spend a week or so here, look over the space and draw up some sample menus. I could possibly cook a couple of dishes that you can sample. I can’t commit to a taking a job right now—to anything right now—but I’d be happy to give you guys some ideas, so that when you do employ someone you can tell them what you want and not have to rely on their taste.’

Ginny clapped her hands in delight. ‘Would you? That sounds amazing. Of course we’d pay you for your time.’

‘Hell, I’d pay you to cook for me,’ Eli stated. ‘So, how long have you been travelling for?’

‘Ages.’ Remy smiled at him and his returning smile showed interest. She checked inside herself again … No flutter, no tingle—nothing. Damn.

Eli must have seen something cross her face, because his eyes laughed at her before he softly spoke again. ‘Huh, I must be losing my touch. That doesn’t happen often.’

He said it with such genuine regret and confusion that she couldn’t hold his arrogant statement against him. So she shrugged and smiled, genuinely regretful. ‘Sorry.’

‘I’ve lost track of this conversation,’ Ginny muttered.

‘I’ve lost track of my burger,’ Remy stated, desperate to change the subject. ‘Oh, good—it’s on its way.’

The waitress slipped her plate in front of her with a murmured apology about the delay. Remy waved her away—and then blanched as the smell of fried onions hit her nose. Swallowing down her sudden nausea, which she attributed to her being on the very wrong side of ravenous, she cut into her burger and pulled it apart. She’d ordered it rare, as she always did, and the patty was perfectly cooked, oozing juice.

Her stomach climbed up into her throat and Remy slapped her hand over her mouth.

Ginny frowned. ‘Hey, are you okay?’

Remy shook her head and pushed her plate away. She had to get out of here. Now!

Scrabbling for her bag, she stood up, teetering on her feet. Eli flew up and grabbed her arm, keeping her from doing a face-plant on the floor.

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she muttered to no one in particular.

From a long way away she heard Eli speaking to Ginny. ‘Maybe you should take her to wherever she’s staying, Gin, and I’ll settle the bill.’

Before she knew it the pint-sized Ginny had a surprisingly strong arm around her waist and was guiding her out of the restaurant.

So … okay, then, she thought as she sucked in fresh air. Maybe she wasn’t going to be one of those lucky women who got to skate through pregnancy.

Bo looked at his watch. He had ten minutes before his meeting with Ginny and Eli, and he was thinking, as he always did, that he was lucky to have his sister and his cousin as full partners in the family business. They fought like cats and dogs, but implicitly trusted each other, and each of them had their strengths, their place in the business.

His was the business brain and he kept the whole ship sailing smoothly, Eli made the exceptional wines the business was built on, and Ginny was the farmer, the viticulturist: responsible for looking after the vines and the land, the olive orchard and the vegetable gardens that supplied the mansion hotel and the restaurants with fresh produce.

On paper and in the eyes of their staff he was the boss, but in reality they operated as a rough sort of democracy. Any major decisions were made collectively, through negotiation and compromise. Sometimes that negotiation and compromise sounded more like shouting and arguing, but whatever worked …

And it did work. Better than any of them would have believed when they’d inherited equal shares of the winery, house and land after their beloved grandfather had passed on ten years before. He and Ginny had supported Eli when he’d informed them that he needed to travel, to visit other wine-producing countries, and he and Eli had trusted Ginny’s instincts to restore the Belleaire mansion to its former glory when they’d decided to turn it into a hotel. They’d both stood at his side when he’d buried his wife of six months …

Ana.

So little time as man and wife and he ached remembering that their marriage hadn’t been the happiest time of their relationship. As always, before he forced those thoughts away he consoled himself with the reminder that he’d known her and loved her one way or another all his life. She’d been his childhood friend, his first girlfriend, his prom date. They’d broken up during college but had reconnected in their mid-twenties when she’d become his live-in lover, his fiancée, and finally, for far too short a time, his wife.

And, to date, the only woman he’d ever loved. Would ever love.

Ignoring the issue that cropped up after they married, he deliberately remembered that they had suited each other perfectly. He was ambitious and dynamic and driven, able to take control and to be in charge. He had grounded her. She’d been sanguine and scatty, easy-going and happy to let him do what he did best—which had been to make the decisions and to chart the course of their lives. They’d been the perfect example of opposites attracting, and lightning, Bo thought, shoving his hands into his pockets as he stared out of his office window at the sun setting over the western vineyard, didn’t strike twice. He’d had the real thing. The only thing …

They said that memories of the people you’d lost faded, but even after four and a half years Bo didn’t need to look at the large black-and-white photograph that dominated the credenza next to his desk to visualise Ana. The long blonde hair he’d used to love wrapping around his fists as he slid into her, her dirty laugh, her wide blue eyes. Sometimes he swore he could still smell her.

She was still as much a part of him as she had been … she always would be. Love didn’t die with death. Or because of a rolling, on-off six month argument.

‘I’ll love you to the end …’ he’d told her as the light of life had faded from her eyes, as she’d lain in his arms, battered and broken, in that driving rain. She’d needed to hear it and he’d needed to say it.

She’d managed a final tiny smile. ‘Promise?’

‘Yeah. Always.’

He glanced at the photograph and his heart contracted. He was still in love with his wife—would always be in love with his wife. Despite everything that had happened, he’d never stopped loving her. As a result he liked women but he didn’t engage with them emotionally … financially. When you’d had something so amazing nobody else could compete—and he wasn’t prepared for them to try.

And if the fact that he was still in love with his wife wasn’t enough to put him off getting involved with a woman, then his job was. His career demanded eighty-hour weeks or more—when would he have time to date, for a relationship?

Nah, he was happy to play it cool, skimming along the surface …

Then his thoughts veered off on a tangent, as they often did lately, and the image of Remy—naked, looking down at him, her pale eyes warm with laughter—appeared behind his retina. Remy, his hot-as-hell, over-before-daylight, one-night lover. He could remember every kiss, every touch, every smell and he wished he could forget. One of these days he’d stop thinking of her … of that mind-blowing night.

Hopefully it would be sometime soon, so that his life could go back to normal. He hadn’t seen another woman, hadn’t had sex for six weeks, and it was time—way past time—to replace those hot memories of the champagne-eyed witch with the very bad pickup lines.

A hand slapping his desk jerked him back to the present. Eli and Ginny were on the other side of his desk, looking at him expectantly. When had they come in? He hadn’t even noticed.

‘Hi … what’s up?’

Ginny and Eli exchanged a long, weird look. ‘You called us to a meeting, Bo,’ Ginny said, pushing her hair behind her ears. ‘Are you okay?’

That would be a negative.

‘Sure,’ he lied, hating the feeling of operating on only one or two cylinders. He ran a multimillion-dollar company—it was time he acted like the super-sharp businessman he was reputed to be. Remembering his wife was normal—to be expected, even—but daydreaming about a hot night with a woman he wouldn’t see again was not. It was utterly ridiculous …

Irritated with himself, he located the file he needed from a pile to his right and tossed it across the table to where his sister and cousin were now sitting.

Dropping into his leather chair, he leaned back and placed his feet on the corner of his desk. ‘Bella’s Folly.’

Ginny leaned forward, clasping her hands around her knees. ‘The land with no owner?’

‘That we know of. If there isn’t a will, then the estate will pass on to her nearest relative. If there is a will, then it’s simple. Either way, we need to find the heir first,’ Eli said, placing his ankle on his knee.

‘Yeah. There is going to be a lot of interest in the property.’ Bo leaned further back in his chair. ‘Moving on from one folly to another … The renovations for the bistro and coffee shop are nearly finished, and I’m flying to New York tonight and will be back tomorrow evening. I need to see some customers, talk to some distributors, and I’ll also interview a couple of chefs for the position of the bistro chef/manager while I’m out there.’

Eli frowned. ‘No candidates from California?’

‘A couple,’ Bo answered. ‘These are better qualified.’

‘We met someone today who had real potential. Someone who knew food and whom we really liked,’ Ginny mused. ‘She could be just what we’re looking for.’

Bo lifted his eyebrows. ‘Is she applying for the job?’

Ginny pulled a face. ‘She’s not sticking around that long—which is a pity, because I think she would’ve been perfect for the bistro.’

Comme ci, comme ça … Bo shrugged. ‘I’ll find someone in New York.’

Ginny shook her head. ‘Just remember that we need the right personality. Someone who will fit in here at Belleaire with us. We want someone who is warm and funny, who can talk to kids and adults alike. Someone who has brilliant people skills and a solid sense of humour,’ Ginny insisted.

The last person he’d come across with a solid sense of humour had turned out to be the best sex of his life.

Better than Ana? Really?

Different from Ana, he quickly amended. Very different.

I thought we were done thinking about her, moron?

‘It would be nice if she was a looker, too.’ Eli added.

Remy had been a looker …

Enough, Tessier!

Bo looked at his watch. ‘I need to get going. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m away, okay?’

Eli sent Ginny a sardonic look. ‘How old are we? Ten?’

‘One of these days he’ll realise that he isn’t actually the boss of us,’ Ginny replied.

‘Somebody needs to keep you two in line,’ Bo told them, and held up his hand as mouths opened to protest. ‘Yeah, I know. I’m arrogant, annoying and bossy.’ He smiled at the two people he loved best. ‘Now, get out of my office. I’ve got a lot to do before I head to the airport.’

Eli and Ginny, not in the least offended, stood up. Ginny, being Ginny, walked around his desk to give him a hug goodbye. It didn’t matter if he was going away for two days or two years. Ginny would hug him as if he was leaving for ever.

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