THEY showered together afterward and washed each other down. Simon took time and pleasure exploring the hidden angles and curve of Luke’s gorgeous body, and Luke took every opportunity to play grab-ass when Simon wasn’t expecting it.
By the time Simon had toweled off, he felt warm and muzzy, as though the champagne of earlier in the night were catching up with him again.
“Tired,” Luke murmured.
“Exhausted,” Simon agreed.
He let Luke lead him back into the main room, to the queen-size bed and the mussed sheets. Lying down made all his muscles ache in bliss. A moment later he heard the rattle of a belt buckle and opened one eye. Luke was wandering the breadth of the room, picking up discarded clothes.
“What are you doing?” Simon whispered.
Luke glanced at him.
“Oh, come on.” Simon gestured to him. “Stay.”
Luke licked his lips and remembered with a sick twist in his stomach that Luke had a flight in the morning.
“Please stay.”
Luke sighed, and a little smile crept over his features. “My flight is at seven.”
“Set an alarm. I’ll drive you.”
Luke nodded and dropped his clothes back on the floor, and Simon closed his eyes again. He felt Luke settle beside him, smelled the sandalwood musk of his skin, and burrowed close. He wanted to say “Please stay” again. He meant to. But exhaustion won, and sleep stole the words from him.
IT was nine o’clock when Simon woke up.
He didn’t wake up because an alarm went off or because he knew he had something to do. He woke because he was rested for maybe the first time in a decade. He rolled over and smiled. There, lying under the sheets, still naked, lay Luke.
Simon smiled at the sight of him, at the long expanse of bronze skin against the backdrop of white hotel sheets, at the curving slope of his muscled back and the swell of his ass, at the rumpled mass of curling black hair and the way Luke hid his face in the crook of his arm as he slept. And then Simon realized that it was 9:00 a.m. Holy shit, Luke had a flight to catch two hours ago.
“Shit, Luke,” Simon whispered, lurching upright. He caught Luke’s shoulder and shook him a little. “Your flight.”
“Hmm?” Luke raised his head. Then he smiled a lazy smile and put his head back down on the pillow of his arm. He nodded at Simon.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess it left. Missed it. Too bad.” He grinned.
Simon stared at him. He realized his mouth was hanging open and couldn’t bring himself to close it.
“You’re okay with this.”
Luke gazed at him patiently, as though he were waiting for a trainee sommelier to find the words to describe the wine he’d just tasted. “Uh-huh,” he said at last.
Simon gawped at him.
“We’re not going to catch up with it. You might as well lie back down.” Luke patted the bed and smiled.
But Simon couldn’t move. He couldn’t stop staring at Luke. The meaning slowly but surely trickled through the haze in Simon’s brain. Luke was staying in the US, at least for a little while. And his incredible desire to get back to Argentina, the desire to run that had been almost palpable all week, seemed to have simply evaporated. Luke’s serene expression, his sleepy eyes, his smile—it all made him look like a different man, a man who was relaxed, calm, and definitely up to something.
Because of this. Because of last night. Because of me.
“You’re staying,” he whispered.
Luke smiled again. He nodded. “Got it in one.”
Simon laughed softly at first, and then a little louder. “Are you kidding? I thought you couldn’t wait to get on that airplane. I thought you couldn’t wait to go.”
Luke rolled his eyes, apparently exasperated. “Of course I couldn’t. You were dangling in front of me, and I could never have you. It would make any man want to run to the other side of the world and hide on a ranch somewhere. Of course I couldn’t wait to get out of here. But now….” Luke jerked his chin at Simon and then at the door to the bathroom, where last night….
Simon felt himself blush. Luke grinned and pushed himself up in the bed so Simon could get an eyeful of those chiseled abs, the shape of his hips, the soft wine-red of his cock, which thickened just a little as Simon watched.
“Now,” Luke said finishing his thought, “now I’m interested in staying.”
Simon found himself a little breathless and fizzing like last night’s champagne. His body responded to the sight of Luke and Luke’s arousal. He could feel himself wake up and all his nerves come online. They pulled toward Luke as though he were a magnet and Luke his true north. Simon eased back down into bed and slid closer, to touch Luke’s soft, warm skin, to trace the line of his abs, to feel the ribs rising and falling there and the hard edge of his hip bone.
Simon nuzzled close. He shut his eyes and savored the sensation of contented, comfortable, perfect stillness. “Come back into the kitchen,” he whispered. “We need you. And you need it.”
“You don’t need me,” Luke said quietly. “You have a magnificent sous chef who only needs her chance to shine.”
Luke was absolutely right. Jenny had been magnificent. If Mark was going to be out for a while, they’d need a new chef, and it would be crass of him not to offer her the job after she carried the kitchen through Luminara. But that wasn’t where he was going with that.
“I mean the food industry needs you,” Simon corrected. “We do.”
He heard the low rumble of Luke’s quiet hmmm and raised his head from the hollow of Luke’s arm to look him in the face. “What?” he asked. “I saw you last night, Luke. Cooking is who you are. If I cracked any bone in your body, it would say ‘If found please return to the kitchen’ on the inside.”
Luke huffed a little laugh. “It probably would,” he admitted. “Or, ‘Bake with butter at 350 until done.’” He shifted then and turned onto his side, so the comfortable pillow of his shoulder was gone, and Simon had to prop his head up on his own arm. “I’ve been thinking….” Simon nudged him in the thigh with his knee, and Luke looked sheepish. He had a half smile on his face, as though it hadn’t meant to wind up there. “Food trucks are the new things. Small kitchen. No pretension.”
Simon wasn’t sure he’d heard that right. He blinked a couple times. “A food truck,” he said at last.
Luke gave him a playful shove with one hand. “Don’t say it like that. I’m not telling you I gave you herpes last night.”
Simon ducked his head and laughed.
“I mean it—a food truck. I can make anything I want, then, any day, no menu. Just come and get something hot and tasty, something I wanted to make. And when I get tired of the view? I can move on to another part of town.”
“Are you serious? You want to run a food truck in winter?”
Luke made a face. “I wasn’t thinking about winters,” he confessed, and he shrugged. “It’s such a nice dream. I could teach kids how to cook—homeless kids like Sam, maybe. Give them a chance, help them build skills. I don’t want to just feed rich people fancy food and have branded merchandise. I want to do something good in the world.”
Simon could hardly look at him. His eyes were so fierce and his expression so intense.
“I want to… be more like Mark,” Luke went on. “Maybe I could mentor a great chef like Jenny.”
“Mark’s head will explode when I tell him you said that. So will Jenny’s, actually,” Simon said and then shifted gears. “Why a food truck?”
Luke seemed to think about that. “Just running, I suppose. It’s about as far from fine dining as it’s possible to get.” Luke shook his head and smiled.
Simon turned over on his side. “What about Argentina?”
Luke gave him a flat look.
“I mean it,” Simon said. “I love that this morning you want to stay, but last week you were serious. You miss the hell out of it.”
Luke sighed and flopped back among the pillows. “Okay,” he admitted. “Yes, I do.” He looked at the ceiling a while, and Simon looked at him and simply enjoyed Luke’s presence beside him in his bed—the fine profile, the bronzed features, the intensity of his eyes, even when he was daydreaming. He’s mine, in a way. It felt as though someone had poured melted chocolate into his belly. Those hands, that mouth, that magnificent mind, all those plans….
“Lake Balmoral’s nice,” Simon ventured then, as though it were no big deal, as though he weren’t incredibly heavily invested in where Luke was going to put down roots. “Rent’s pretty cheap, and, uh… I’m thinking it’s time I moved out of the hotel. I’d get a place big enough for two, and, I mean, if you want to….”
Luke’s smile grew soft. “I do,” he said quietly, “very much.” Luke shifted, and the comforter brushed Simon’s book off the side table. It landed with a thump on the floor. Luke reached over, picked it up, and glanced at the cover with a frown. “You read travel guides to go to sleep?” he asked as he put the book back where it had been.
Simon spread his hands. “I like them. I never really had the chance to travel. It’s weird, I guess, but you kind of get the flavor of a place. France, Korea….”
Luke gave him a long look. “What about Argentina? Did you ever want to go there?”
Simon didn’t answer, because the answer was no. He never had until now.
“You should come with me.” Luke suddenly turned to face him. “You said it yourself that you need a vacation. You’ve never gone anywhere, and you obviously want to travel.” He gestured at the broken-down stack of old guidebooks on Simon’s bedside table, and Simon blushed. “Look at that,” Luke whispered and rolled over so he could frame Simon’s face in his hands. “Look at that beautiful expression. That’s desire—real desire. You want to get away. And there’s nothing in the world more important than passion, is there?”
“Who’d run the place without me?” Simon asked quietly.
“For three weeks? Couldn’t Ginger run the restaurant and someone else run the hotel?”
Simon felt excitement seep through the wall of anxiety, first in a trickle, then a flood. “Jim has been running the front desk for years,” he said quietly. “He could do it. He’s really good.”
“And it’ll be shoulder season. Things slow right down.”
Simon nodded.
“And you have a place to stay in Argentina, so the trip is pretty cheap.”
Simon closed his eyes and pushed back the sudden overwhelming rush of emotion. He ducked his head, pressed his forehead into Luke’s bare shoulder and breathed the scent of him as Luke settled his warm arm around his shoulder and pulled him in.
“I can’t stay away,” Simon whispered into Luke’s shoulder. “I have to come back.” And then it occurred to him, and he smiled. He looked up and met Luke’s gaze. “Did you ever want to be a stockman in the US?”
Luke shook his head. “I’m not a stockman, I’m a landowner. I can run a business, and I can ride a fence line, and I can spot a lame cow at twenty paces. That’s about it.”
But Simon was dead serious. “We need someone to support Meaghan. She can do the beef cattle, but she’s never run dairy before.”
“Well neither have I.”
“But would you be willing to learn?” Simon propped himself up on one elbow. “You’d be the perfect go-between for Mark and Jenny and the cattle. You’d understand what they’re trying to achieve, and you’d understand the cattle. It’d be perfect, actually. It’s ideal. And,” he added a little lamely, “and then you’d be in the neighborhood too.”
Luke smiled and settled back into the pillows. He blinked a long, slow blink. “That sounds like bliss,” he said very quietly. “Do you think we could pull it off?”
“I think we have to, or we’re both going to grow up to be miserable old men.”
“Too late,” Luke murmured.
“Never,” Simon answered.
“I won’t go back to a fine-dining kitchen,” Luke said softly after a while. “So if this is some kind of long con to get me back in whites, you should know I’m not going to be happy about it.”
“Just the cattle. And horseback riding. And talking with Mark and Jenny and maybe giving feedback on the dishes they’re working on.”
“Wait, did I just sleep my way to a job?”
“I don’t think we can afford you, frankly,” Simon answered with a laugh. “I’m telling you to start a business, and we’ll bring you on as a contractor.”
Luke snorted. “That sounds more like it. When would you need me to start?”
“Well, since we’re buying cattle this year, now is great.”
“I can’t start now,” Luke answered. When Simon’s questing fingers froze, he explained. “I told the family I was coming back, so now I do actually have a few things I need to take care of over there. But those things can wait. As it happens, I have some things to attend to in the US.”
Simon started to explore Luke’s body again—the coarse, dark hair on his belly. Luke hissed and squirmed.
“Hey.”
“Ticklish?”
“No.”
Simon grinned.
“I hate being tickled.”
Simon waggled his fingers.
“Don’t you dare,” Luke warned. He caught both his hands, pulled Simon in close, and then slid his hands over Simon’s hips to grab a handful of Simon’s ass.
Simon let him pull him in until their bodies pressed together, flesh on flesh, and Luke’s mouth was on his shoulder, sucking the skin there. Simon tried to think of anything to say, but couldn’t. Luke’s mouth was short-circuiting the language centers of Simon’s brain.
“And you?” Luke raised his head so he could look Simon in the face. “What do you have going on today?”
Simon sighed and slumped down into the pillows. He thought of his office, the paperwork, the dairy herd, and the kitchen schedule that would have to be rejiggered to accommodate Mark’s absence.
“I have….” He opened his eyes again, looked at Luke, and smiled. “Nothing,” he said. “I have absolutely nothing planned for today. I’m not going anywhere.”
Luke made a small, pleased sound and trailed fingers down Simon’s side. “Well that’s settled,” he said. “Let’s get room service.”