“THAT WAS SOME speech, man.”
Josh jumped at the sound of the voice behind him before remembering the couch in the back of the storeroom and the fact that Nick, one of his prep cooks, often napped there while waiting for his wife to come pick him up.
Great. Now, not only was he shocked and sad, his love life would be public knowledge.
“So was that good news or bad?” Nick asked.
“Come again?”
Nick shrugged. “When a guy’s getting dumped you never know if the woman’s tearing him apart or doing him a favor. So which is it?”
Josh blinked. “I’m not really sure.”
Gut reaction? Kitty Clayborn had just taken his heart and put it through a meat grinder, seasoned it with arsenic then handed it back to him on a platter. But experience had taught him that having a woman do the breaking up was always a good thing. It was clean and easy. No hard feelings. A virtual get-out-of-jail-free card in the game of life. Besides, in the past, usually by the time they’d done the dumping, Josh had already moved on.
Except this time he didn’t have any desire to move on. And this time, it didn’t feel anything like a good thing.
“I vote for doing you a favor,” Nick said. “’Cause that woman’s so in love with you, if it weren’t for this deal she made with her pals, you would’ve been screwed.”
Josh frowned. “What are you talking about? She never said anything about love.”
“You’ve got to read between the lines, man.”
Josh stared at Nick—a hippie, thirty years Josh’s senior—and wondered if all those drugs the guy had done back in the sixties had finally caught up with him.
“All the stuff between the lines,” Josh repeated flatly. “And you managed to catch all that from behind the canned tomatoes?”
“I only heard what I heard. But take it from an old guy who’s been dealing with women since before you were crapping in diapers, that was not a girl happy about breaking up with you.”
Dismissing Nick’s assumptions, Josh frowned and headed back to the kitchen, his heart aching and his head too confused for cooking, but he tried anyway. Burying himself in his work had always been cleansing. When problems arose, he’d always used the job to take his mind off things and adjust his attitude long enough to step back and see answers clearly. Only tonight, no answer came, and an hour later, all he’d done was burn two game hens, yell at his favorite server and spoil a batch of ziti.
This wasn’t right.
No matter how he turned it over in his head and tried to make sense of it, he kept coming back to the same place. That the breakup wasn’t right, his reaction to it wasn’t right, and plan Howard was a disaster waiting to happen. But dammit if he could sort through the clutter and make sense of how this should have panned out.
He kept going back to the same thing: for Josh, marriage wasn’t an option. He knew that fact plain as day. Hell, he’d been repeating the phrase that he wasn’t a relationship kind of guy for fifteen years. So, remembering that, and considering that it was the only thing Kitty wanted, he should be thrilled and relieved she’d ended it. Except he wasn’t thrilled. Instead—in all irony—he felt as caged and trapped as he had that day so many years ago when the prospect of marriage and family had nearly ruined him.
Josh had only been nineteen, just starting fresh in the culinary academy with a bright future ahead of him and world-famous instructors telling him he had everything it took to hit it big. Then his girlfriend—the love of his life—turned up pregnant, and suddenly school and bright futures and hitting it big disintegrated in front of him. Instead he faced a dingy apartment, a crap job that barely paid the bills and the stark realization that said girlfriend wasn’t anything close to the love of his life.
To his relief it had only been a false alarm, and in all his thanks and glory, he’d been able to keep the life he’d dreamed of, but the situation had changed him forever. He got real religious about birth control and put his brain firmly in charge of his heart. No one would be able to take his dreams away, and never again would he mistake lust for love.
Simple. End of subject. And for fifteen years, it was.
Only now, the memory of that frightening situation did nothing to ease the anxiety in his chest or the panic running through his veins. Now, the thought of losing Kitty gave him the same sense of dread he’d had back when he’d feared losing his career.
How did he explain that?
You know what it is, said a voice in his head. You’re losing something you desperately want. Hurt is hurt and need is need. Only this time it’s a woman, not a career.
He stared at his grill, at the diners in his restaurant, at the staff bustling to keep it all going. This was everything he’d ever wanted and now he had it. And unlike those early days, having a relationship on top of it wouldn’t threaten to take it away. He really didn’t have to choose between a family and a career anymore. He could have both. In fact, with Kitty he could have both rather nicely, if he could just get over the terror he’d been harboring for half his life.
That was the problem. The terror. The sheer unbending fright of leaving the safety net he’d shrouded himself in for so long. Even though everything in his gut said Kitty was special, that what they had was special, and that he’d better grab on to it before it slipped from his hands, those fears had become so ingrained, they’d become part of who he was.
Was he really capable of flipping the switch just like that?
He tossed down the tongs in his hand and muttered to Seth, “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“You sure?” Seth asked. “I’ve got some grilled tuna I thought you’d like to burn to a crisp first.”
“Oh, that’s hysterical.”
“No, what’s hysterical is seeing you brought to your knees by a woman.” Seth eyed Josh sympathetically. “She must be pretty great.”
He’d gotten that right. Kitty was definitely pretty great. Now, what was he supposed to do about it?
SHE’D GOTTEN THE HARD part over with and she’d made it out in one piece. As Kitty stood in front of the glass doors of Hollies Paints, she told herself the rest was downright easy. Just walk in, ask Howard on a date and walk out. Then her duty would be done, her future would be set properly in motion, and she could go back to her store and spend the rest of the night in tears.
What a perfect thought with which to greet the man you might spend the rest of your life with.
Taking a deep breath, she worked to pull herself together, reminding herself that she wasn’t marrying Howard. This was just the beginning of a relationship that might actually go somewhere for a change, that was all. Just a small step forward, and if it didn’t work out, she’d end up a little wiser and go from there.
It was enough reassurance to have her grabbing the handle and opening the door. She walked into the bright lights as the happy door chime announced her arrival, and from behind the back counter, she spotted Howard in his blue Hollies Paints polo shirt.
Howard was a pleasant-looking man with a sunny disposition. Tall and gangly as a teen, he’d grown into his body over the years, and now those blue eyes seemed almost a little sexy under the dark bangs on his brow. She hadn’t seen him in a while, and her memory kept straying back to those gangly teen days. Looking at him now was a nice surprise. He was better-looking than she’d remembered.
Yeah, but could you do him?
She almost visibly gasped at the devilish thought that sped through her, but it brought a badly needed smile to her face. She surely couldn’t go up and ask a man on a date looking as though she’d just lost a bet.
“Hi, Kitty!” Howard said cheerily. “What brings you here? Going to give the store a new look? I heard you’re making some changes down there.”
The heavy boulder she’d felt in her chest began to ease. Howard really was very sweet.
“No, actually.” She stepped to the counter then eyed left and right, checking to see who might be listening and happily finding no one around. “I came to see you.”
He grinned. “Lucky me.”
Yeah, lucky Howard.
She shut her conscience down before it got in the way of her goal and blurted, “I was wondering if you’d be interested in going out with me sometime. Soon.”
The happy look on his face vanished. “You’re asking me out?”
“Yes.” She opened her mouth to expand on that, but the only thing that came out was another, “Yes.”
He smiled awkwardly and scratched the back of his neck. “Gosh, that’s really flattering, Kitty, but…I’ve already got a girlfriend.”
She froze. “A what?”
“Yeah, I’m kinda dating someone.”
“Dating who?”
Okay, so she didn’t need to sound so astonished, but…well…she was astonished. This town was small. Mrs. Marney down on Broad Street didn’t change her cat’s litter box without half the town knowing about it. Howard Bloombauer getting a girlfriend? That would have made the Shiloh Gazette.
“Yeah, for a couple of weeks now. She’s an interior designer who had the booth next to mine at the Sonoma County Home Show a while back. She just bought the old Baker house, came in for paint and, well…” He smiled victoriously. “We’re dating now.”
“You’re dating now,” she repeated, the words trailing off to a whisper as she stared into space and felt her future glide away from her.
“Sorry,” he said. “Maybe if it doesn’t work out—”
Pasting a quick smile on her face, she gave him her congrats, mumbled something about seeing him around sometime and walked out the door, trying hard to process everything that had just happened.
Somehow, in the span of fifteen minutes she’d thrown away the best thing that had ever happened to her, showed up a day late for the man who would save her future, and placed herself squarely in the company of Barry the Bartender come Valentine’s Day.
If there was ever a time to start crying, now would be it.