“It was awful, Leo. Just . . . awful.”
“Now, that is not what I heard.”
I looked around my kitchen at all the cleanup I needed to do and then walked into the living room and collapsed onto the couch. It would wait. I had absolutely nothing left to give right then.
“Well, unless Max is your source, they lied. I can’t imagine that anyone else could possibly have been pleased with any of it.”
“For your information, my source is Marshall Simons, so—”
I laughed dramatically. “Then he definitely lied to you.”
“He said your dessert was perfect.”
I couldn’t laugh at that. My dessert was perfect. It had even gotten Max to shut up. Finally.
“That’s nice to hear,” I acknowledged with a sigh.
I heard Leo clicking his teeth on the other end of the line—either debating how to proceed or attempting to get a chunk of meat out of his teeth.
“Look, Hadley, I hate to even say this, but if this is going to be too much for you, it’s not too late to back out.”
I shot up from my reclined position. “Back out? Are you kidding me? From Renowned? No. Of course I don’t want to back out.”
Pull it together, Hadley, I lectured myself. Vent to Stuart—who will say “I told you so” about a million times, but who will listen nonetheless. Vent to Meemaw—who will not listen, and who will need to be reminded what Renowned is at least once, but who will still love you when you’re done. Do not vent to your manager.
“It’s fine. Really, Leo. Thanks. I just needed to vent.”
“Oh, I understand. Cavanagh is a lot to deal with, I’m sure. Everyone in the business is claiming he has it all together now—has things under control, got help, has dried out, all of that—but you never can tell. Try not to let him get to you. All this stuff . . . it’s just for eight weeks. I suspect he’s just grasping at straws at this point, pulling out all the stops.”
I wanted to laugh at the thought. Max . . . desperate? Yeah, that didn’t seem likely. I could more easily imagine his entire culinary dynasty reduced to nothing but a snow cone hut on the side of the road, where Max would still be wearing his sunglasses, proclaiming there was too much sugar in the syrup, and serving tiny little baby portions of crushed ice. Charging $100 a pop, no doubt.
I decided to keep my skepticism to myself.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right.”
“Okay, kid. Just get some rest and let me know if you need anything.”
“I will. Thanks, Leo.”
I laid back down and pulled the pillow out from underneath my head. I fiddled with the seam for a moment before pulling it up to my face, turning over, and screaming into it.
Coming up for air, I muttered to myself, “Why’d I ever notice his stupid, perfect arms?”
And his stupid blue eyes that were actually three separate shades that came together to look like the color of the sky as a thunderstorm rolls in. And his stupid, idiotic beard that I did actually like so, so much.
Not that it was just about his looks. His looks had always been there—except the beard. Oh, the beard. But I hadn’t been able to see just how attractive he was through the pompous attitude, sexist tendencies, and nasty temper. When facing all those things, how is a person ever supposed to notice that someone’s actually every bit as sexy as the rest of the world already seems to think they are? You just can’t. So of course I was a little thrown off by seeing all of that for the first time.
But once I noticed his stupid, magnificent arms and all the rest, and I was forced to acknowledge that maybe I’d been wrong in thinking he wasn’t all that attractive, well . . . in record time I’d had to acknowledge that maybe I’d been wrong about him in other ways too. Or at least that what I’d thought before didn’t apply anymore.
It was much more disappointing to be wrong this time.
My phone buzzed and I raised it from the floor beside me, and then dropped it and screamed into my pillow once again.
Can we talk?
No. I just didn’t have it in me to face a chat with Sexy Texty Max. I threw the pillow across the room and sat up, taking my phone with me.
I don’t think we have anything to talk about.
I studied my phone, awaiting his reply, but it came in the form of a knock at my door. It was him. I just knew it was him.
Are you at my door?
I need some more Bouille Hadley. I NEED IT!
Nope. Nope, nope, nope.
I stormed to my front door and threw it open.
“What is your problem? Seriously! Do you have some sort of texting alter ego? You don’t get to be like that in the kitchen, and then like that!” I raised my phone in the air and shook it and, again, waited for his reply.
This time it came in the form of two self-assured steps into my house, both of his hands cupped around my jawline, his fingers tangled in the hair at the nape of my neck, and his lips pressed against mine.
There was no thought of protest. No breath left for words. There was only Max and his kiss—gentle but urgent. Growing more urgent as we ignored the need to breathe in favor of something we needed even more desperately. He grasped a fist of my hair and pulled my face away from his. Delicately so he didn’t hurt me, but intensely, as if his hands were capable of doing what his mouth was not—separating, just long enough to gasp for air.
He panted. “Hadley, I’m—”
“Shut up,” I whimpered as my arms locked around his neck and pulled him back to me.
He willingly complied, but the spell had been broken for us both. Or, more than the spell having been broken, reality set back in—and it was more powerful than the spell. We pulled away so awkwardly. Me as if I’d been burned, him as if he were one of those golden retrievers whose owner takes their picture with a chewed-up slipper and a sign that says, “I’m a bad dog.” I began to back away, and my mind began to transition into lecture mode, but before I could back completely away—and before my lips had even stopped tingling—he stopped me.
“Hey. Wait.” He grabbed my wrist—so differently than he had touched my wrist earlier in the day—and then moved his fingers down to clasp my hand. “We’ll talk. Or I’ll go. Whatever you want. But . . .” His eyes did a pretty good job of communicating the intent behind the words that were failing him.
“Don’t go,” I whispered. “Let’s talk.”
He shut the door behind him and followed me into the dining room. I needed a table between us. We sat in silence not looking at each other for a few minutes. At least, I wasn’t looking at him, so I don’t have any idea what he was looking at. But I was choosing to believe he wasn’t looking at me. I wouldn’t have been able to bear it.
“Should I apologize?” he finally asked.
“I guess that depends. Are you sorry?”
He sighed. “Well, I guess that depends.” I could hear his smile as he asked, “Did it make things better or worse?”
I chuckled softly and finally looked at him. That was probably a mistake. All I saw was the Max I liked. The one with the arms and the eyes, and good golly, the lips. The one who was surprisingly quiet and wonderfully funny.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Maybe a little bit of both.”
“Then maybe I’m a little bit sorry. I think I’d have a pretty tough time being any more than that.”
“Max, can we talk?”
“I think that would be—”
He studied me and nodded. “Sure.”
“I don’t . . .” I took a deep breath. “You see, the thing is, I don’t know what to make of you.”
His eyebrow arched. “Go on . . .”
I stood from my seat and walked to one of the giant windows. It was too dark to see my dogwoods, but it was just nice knowing they were there.
“Okay, well, if we go all the way back to the beginning—”
“The beginning?”
“America’s Fiercest Chef. You were . . . well . . . we know what you were then. Then you show up at my door months later with the most uncomfortable apology imaginable. The next day, you alternated between infuriating and charming. But then we start texting, and maybe it was naïve of me, but I thought we were becoming friends.”
“We were. Weren’t we?”
“See! That’s the thing. I don’t know! Because the minute the cameras started rolling today, you became the same cold, pompous, self-centered jerk from before.” He looked as if I’d slapped him. “Okay, that’s not fair. You weren’t that bad. But it wasn’t good, that’s for sure.”
I stopped talking so he could offer some justification. Maybe even an apology. Truth be told, if he wanted to swoop in for another kiss, I probably wasn’t going to stop him.
“You’re a really good kisser, by the way,” I whispered sheepishly.
“Thanks. So are you.”
“And this is why my head is a mess!” I shouted, returning to the table across from him. “Right there, I was waiting for you to say something to explain why you were a jerk to me earlier, and instead I complimented your kissing skills.” I buried my head in my arms on the table. “I’m so confused.”
I heard his chair scoot across the wood floor, and every muscle in my body tightened. I didn’t know where he was going, or what he was doing.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered against my hair as chills ran down my spine. I peeked my eyes above my bent elbow and was met with his face, just inches from mine. “I didn’t mean to be a jerk today.” He tucked my hair behind my ear, but it kept falling, so he kept his hand in place. “And truthfully, I really don’t think I was so bad.”
I laughed humorlessly and then stopped abruptly. I was going to give him some examples, but my Max confusion had consumed my brain again, and I couldn’t fully remember what he had done that I had found so offensive earlier. Except cute. I remembered cute.
“No, I guess you weren’t so bad,” I conceded with a hesitant sigh. “But please understand I’m grading on the Cavanagh scale—not any sort of normal scale. By your standard, you weren’t so bad.”
His fingers fell away, releasing my hair to cover my eyes. I lifted my head and saw that he was sitting back in his chair, with the most ambiguous expression on his face.
“Remember when I said we should practice?” he asked, his voice low and raspy. “For Renowned, I mean.”
“Yeah.”
“They’re pitting us against each other.”
I scoffed. “I think we do a pretty good job of that on our own. Don’t you? That’s why we’re both on this season. Remember?”
He shook his head and then stood and looked out the window, into my pitch-black backyard. I felt the strongest desire to stand behind him. Wrap my arms around him. Feel the muscles in his shoulders under my fingers. Maybe even invite myself into the comfort that I just knew would be found under the crook of his arm. Against his chest. What would he do if I did?
“When do I get to prepare my signature dish, Hadley?”
“What do you—”
“From the moment Marshall Simons got here tonight, he was pitting us against each other.” He turned to face me. “Think about it. If you think about it, you’ll realize I’m right.”
I thought about it. Or I tried. But staring at Max, I wasn’t going to be able to think about anything except how far away he was, there on the other side of the room, and how lonely my lips had gotten.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I can’t look at you right now,” I replied softly, with a quick peek through my fingers, which were covering my eyes.
A warm laugh filled the space between us. “Why? What did I do this time?”
I sighed and muttered, “You know what you did.”
“No, I really don’t.” When my hands dropped from my eyes to my lap in exasperation, I spotted his mischievous grin. “You might need to remind me.”
Uh-oh. My hands flew back to my eyes and I got up and turned away from him. I heard him chuckle lightly, but I decided I’d just have to ignore that too. There was something I was supposed to be thinking about. What was it . . . ?
Nope. Thinking wasn’t going to happen.
I felt him before I heard him. He brushed my hair away from my neck and over my left shoulder, as he began planting soft kisses where my neck and shoulder met on the right. His skilled, expert hands—that had climbed Kilimanjaro, caught scallops during a free-dive in Scotland, and prepared dinner for presidents and kings—wrapped around my waist.
“I’m supposed to be thinking,” I whispered as I melted into him.
“So, think,” he breathed against my skin.
Suddenly my eyes widened and I pulled away. “When are you going to prepare your signature dish?”
Max ran his hand through his hair. “Or maybe don’t think . . .”
“No, you’re right! They had me make mine. When are you supposed to make yours?” The thoughts were running wild and rampant all of a sudden—and in a decidedly less romantic direction. “What is your signature dish?”
“Beef Wellington. Well, and my wild mushroom risotto.”
“Sheesh. Maybe they just didn’t want us to be here all night. Maybe if your signature dish was meatloaf . . .”
“But no one even mentioned—”
“No one even mentioned it!” I exclaimed, every thought I was having totally original, of course. “And . . . hey! The way Chef Simons was practically ignoring you? I mean, I just thought he liked me better than you, and let’s face it, he probably does—”
“Thanks for that.”
“But it was a little weird, now that I think about it.”
He nodded. “It was just pushing buttons. Wanting us to talk about our ‘shared history,’ two hours into this whole thing? I mean, c’mon. They definitely know how to push the right buttons to get us to act the way they think we need to, in order to get the show they want.”
I decided to embrace the hopeful glimmer in my mind. “And that’s why you were such a jerk?”
One corner of his mouth inched upward. “Doubt it. But it sure didn’t help.”