“Yeah. One might,” he said dryly. He had some of the most highly sought after beef
in the country. And that wasn’t a euphemism.
“Anyway, I thought I might make an apple pie too. I have a cookbook—how hard could
it be?”
“Hard,” he said. “Had you ever cooked before last week?”
“Not once.”
That explained the hit-or-miss nature of the food that had ended up on his plate.
She’d more or less done a decent job, but his previous housekeeper had kept the house
up and provided him with fresh-baked bread for every meal, homemade pies and cakes,
real mashed potatoes with an ungodly amount of butter and meat roasted to perfection.
Americanized tostadas, spaghetti with sauce from a jar and hot dogs weren’t quite
in the same league, though he’d said nothing. Not even when he’d crunched his way
through that pasta.
He wasn’t sure why he was preserving her ego. Why he felt the importance of letting
her have this. He really wasn’t sure at all. It would be more fun to simply ignore
the fact that she was hurting, that she was human, and take a certain amount of petty
glee in her circumstances.
But he found he wasn’t as big of a bastard as he’d previously believed.
“Well, you’re doing all right,” he said, crossing the living room and following her
into the kitchen.
“Effusive praise coming from one such as yourself,” she said, her tone stiff.
“Effusive praise?”
She set the bags on the counter. “Yeah. I feel honored that I did ‘all right’ for
you.”
“Fine, your cooking is the best I’ve ever had,” he said. “I can’t remember any of
the dinners I ate before yours. All that other spaghetti meant nothing to me, baby.”
She rolled her eyes. “Please tell me you don’t actually say that to women.”
“Why? Something your ex might say?”
He didn’t know what in the hell had possessed him to ask that. He was perfectly content
to let her have her secrets. More than. He didn’t care what had happened to her, didn’t
care what would happen to her. He was doing his slightly self-indulgent good deed
by letting her stay here and work for him.
She laughed, but it wasn’t a fun, light sound. It was brittle. Bitter. “Oh, no. Not
even… no. That would require actually caring what I thought about him. It would
require him having some idea of what I felt. Or at least wanting to preserve my feelings.
He didn’t want to do that.”
“He didn’t?” He was still asking. Why was he still asking?
“No. It’s impossible to control a woman who thinks she’s important. You have to remind
her that she isn’t, any way you can. And then she starts to believe that… that
without you, she won’t last. She won’t have anything. So that, no matter what you
do, she won’t leave. And those men never have to explain it when they eat other…
spaghetti.”
He felt like someone had reached into his chest and clenched their fist tight around
whatever organs they could grab. “That’s not… that’s not what real men do, Lucy.”
“It’s what plenty of them do, though. And not just men—women too. My mother is exhibit
A. She told me to leave and not to come back without my wedding ring on. Like without
Daniel I’m not even a whole person.” She looked down, then back up, the pain in her
eyes raw, too real. Too hard to ignore. “I worry that they’re right sometimes. I was
with him for so long, and I don’t really know what I’m doing on my own.”
He looked at Lucy, really looked at her. At the lines that bracketed her mouth, the
shadows under her eyes, the sadness in them that made the deep brown color look flat.
Haunted.
How had he missed it before? How had he missed just how much she’d changed?
“You’re doing just fine,” he said. “I’ll be back in for dinner.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay.” He turned around and walked away. And he still couldn’t breathe.
Lucy didn’t remember ever having to saw through a pie before. But that was essentially
what she was doing with her pie. She was trying so hard. It wasn’t fair. She’d even
accosted Sarah Larsen in the produce aisle, someone she’d vaguely remembered from
high school as being wholesome and the kind of girl who probably watched Martha Stewart
after school, and asked her for tips.
She made it through the final crust layer and used the pie server to get it onto Mac’s
plate. The filling oozed out, and it looked good at least. Well, the crust looked
good too; it was just more like a piece of wood in texture than it was a flaky pastry.
The plan was to scurry back to her own house and not join him for any portion of the
meal, as she’d been doing for the past week. It was just more comfortable that way.
There was something about him, a sexy something about him, and she really didn’t like
that she noticed it.
Not to mention the fact that she had told him too much about her relationship with
Daniel. And also Mac was most definitely in a position where he might enjoy hearing
about all the junk that had happened to her since she’d left Silver Creek, and that
was really quite off-putting.
Mainly, though, it was the sexy thing.
She walked over to the dining table and set the dessert in front of him. “Enjoy,”
she said, handing him a fork, false smile firmly plastered on her face.
“Thanks,” he said. “Aren’t you going to join me?”
“Uh… no. I haven’t even had dinner yet, so I’ll probably just take my plate of
pot roast out to the house.”
“Why don’t you sit and have pie?”
“I just said.”
“Did you?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes. I didn’t have dinner.”
“So what? It’s the perk of being an adult. Of being your own person. Eat the pie first.”
“It’s not how you’re supposed to do it.”
“So. What. Lucy Ryan… Carter. Whichever. You need to eat dessert first.”
She looked at Mac, at the slight quirk in his lips, the sparkle in his eyes, and a
shiver ran through her, whispering along her veins like electricity over a wire. There
was something irresistible about that look he was giving her. Something intense. That
there was anything in his eyes at all, beyond boredom, or amusement, or disdain, made
it all feel new. As if a man had never looked at her before.
And for a moment, she could almost believe it was true. Could almost feel the last
eight years fall away. Could feel something warm and hopeful building in her chest.
“All right.” She turned on her heel and walked back into the kitchen, sawing herself
another piece of pie and plopping it onto a plate. She was extremely skeptical of
the pie’s viability, but she wasn’t going to show him that she was aware of her vulnerability.
She wouldn’t be able to hide its existence, not once he took a bite, but looking scared
of her own food just wouldn’t do.
She returned to the table and took a position in the chair at the very end corner
of the table, as far from him as possible without sitting directly across from him.
She’d been the foot of someone’s table for too long. She wasn’t going there again.
Mac was the first one to take a bit of the pie. His fork clunked against the ceramic
plate when it finally broke through the crust, proving just how much force it had
taken.
She winced, but watched him lift the bite to his lips. He put it in his mouth and
chewed for a lot longer than anyone should have to chew a bit of pie.
He swallowed, and the motion looked labored. “See? Dessert first is good for you.”
“You aren’t having dessert first, you already had dinner. And you don’t sound very
convincing.”
“I’ve never had piecrust done in quite this style,” he said, poking at the dessert
on his plate with his fork.
“I’m sure it’s not that different,” she said, pushing her own fork through the crust
and quickly shoveling a small bite into her mouth.
Oh, Lord, it was chewy. So chewy she was having a hard time getting through it.
She swallowed. “Okay, yeah, that’s pretty bad. But the filling isn’t. Is fifty percent
a passing grade?”
“Not so much.”
She peeled the top crust back from her piece and selected a cinnamon-and-sugar-covered
apple from the center. She took a bite and smiled. “Actually, it’s really good without
that rubber crust.”
Mac stood up and went to the counter, taking the pie plate and bringing it back to
the table. He took his fork and pried off the entire top of it, leaving only the filling
exposed and digging a forkful of apple from the center.
“You can’t do that!” she said.
“Yes, I can. I can eat the part I want, and you can eat dessert first. Pull your chair
this way.”
“You’re lawless, Mac Denton.”
“Happily.”
She stood up and moved down to the chair that was just next to his and followed his
lead, taking an apple-only bite. “Okay, this is better.”
“There are perks to being a little bit lawless.”
“Fine. Fine, there are perks.”
“Like not having to take the good with the bad. You just remove the bad.”
“Too bad life doesn’t actually work that way.”
“Are you getting philosophical over pie?”
She shrugged and took another bite. “Over pie filling, anyway.”
“You seem like you might be a little lawless yourself.”
She froze mid-chew. “Do I?”
“You left your husband, even though the decision was unpopular.”
She swallowed and looked back down at her plate. “Uh, yeah, unpopular to say the least.
But that was a little bigger than just dealing with inedible pie crust. He was…
Daniel Carter is a competent businessman, a respected boss and a beloved friend to
many in our little circle. But the thing about Daniel is that he likes to be in control.
He can hide that okay in other areas of his life, or apply it and use it to his advantage.
In terms of being married to someone like that, though… I just couldn’t take
it anymore.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“Not the way you mean. But that’s half of the problem. I didn’t show up at my parents’
house with black eye and horror stories about Daniel’s temper. That, I think, would
have made me justified in my parents’ eyes. But… it was a lot more difficult
to try and explain the way he was. The subtle ways he made me feel like I was beneath
him. Like I wasn’t smart enough to do anything. To get anything right.”
Mac frowned. “What did he do?”
“It’s… it’s hard to sum up eight years of that kind of thing. It’s like waves
on a rock, you know? It just wears you down over time. The best example I have is
that I spent weeks working on organizing this dinner party for him and his colleagues.
Everything seemed to go fine and I was so happy because he seemed happy with it. So
when everyone left I was shocked when he… he just turned around and asked me
how I could be so careless with everything. He said it’s not like I had to do any
actual work for it. I didn’t have to cook or clean, so why was everything done so
poorly? The menu I picked was haphazard, the decorations were awful. And worst of
all, I looked like I’d just rolled out of bed. He was always telling me I’d let myself
go. That I was looking my age. Asking if I had put on a few pounds. That last time,
that last dinner party, was my breaking point, and I don’t think you can possibly
understand it unless you realize that it was like that all the time.”
She looked back up at Mac, who was silent, his eyes trained on her. Emotion, nerves,
knotted together in a tight ball in her chest. She’d never told anyone. She’d never
spoken the whole story out loud. Never acknowledged how bad it had made her feel.
She looked for judgment there, for blame, and she didn’t see it. She took a breath
and continued.
“I didn’t realize that was what he was doing, of course. I like to think if I had
I wouldn’t have stayed for so long. But that night, the night of the dinner party,
when I was standing there feeling like the biggest failure in the world because my
husband thought that my choice of a shrimp cocktail was cliché, I realized what he’d
turned me into. I was a bitch in high school, but at least I liked myself. At least
I was excited to get up in the morning and be me. By that point in my marriage I was
struggling every day to be the woman he expected me to be. Not the woman I was. I
didn’t even know who I was, because I went from being an immature teenager to being
Daniel Carter’s trophy wife, and there was no transition period. No in-between.”
“And you left.”
“I waited to do that until I had seen a lawyer and gotten together all the legal papers
that needed to be gathered. Then I had someone serve him at work when I was safely
at a hotel.”
“Did you really think he might hurt you?”
She shook her head. “Not physically. But I was afraid that I might not be strong enough
if he got a chance to talk to me. A chance to dig his hooks back in. I got this amazing
gift, this moment of clarity, and I didn’t want to go back to how I’d been thinking
before. To this simpering, ridiculous woman who did whatever Daniel wanted because
I was trying to be his version of perfect.”
“And the divorce is final now?”
“Yes. It went quickly because the pre-nup was so straightforward.”
“And you knew that by being the one to serve papers you wouldn’t get a penny.”
“I didn’t care.”
“What about now?” he asked.
“What? Now that I have to clean your house for a living? Okay, I care a little more,
but I’d still rather be here and not have to deal with all that. I know for a fact
that money doesn’t matter all that much when you feel like absolute garbage all the
time.”
Mac shook his head. “If I ever meet that guy in a dark alley… Hell, if I meet
him in a brightly lit street, I’m going to cave his face in.”
A promise of violence shouldn’t have made her feel quite so warm and fuzzy inside,
but it did. Maybe because no one had ever stood up for her with such vehemence. Or
at all. Her parents had been of the opinion that she should simply accept the dynamic
of her marriage and not be so sensitive. Even her lawyer had seemed to quietly find
her stupid, throwing away all that money over a few insults every now and again.
No one had seemed to think she was worth more. No one had told her to take a stand,
to take back her self-esteem. No one seemed to find her self-esteem all that important.
Except Mac, who really shouldn’t have any reason to want to see her happy. Mac, who
she’d insulted and belittled in high school. Mac, who knew what it was like to face
real hardship in life.
He was the one who seemed to think she was worth more than a place on Daniel Carter’s
trophy shelf.
“You have no idea how much I appreciate that,” she said, blinking back sudden and
unexpected tears. She didn’t know why she was feeling so emotional. She’d learned
years ago to keep her emotions trapped beneath the surface. To let things look like
they’d rolled right off even when they’d sunk down deep.
“You’re an easy woman to please.”
“Maybe I am,” she said. “No one’s ever really tried to please me, so the theory has
rarely been tested.”
“Then the people in your life really are idiots.”
Something changed in his eyes, a heat sparking in the depths, and she felt an answering
spark in her stomach, warming her, making her feel restless and needy and bringing
up feelings she hadn’t had in a very long time.
She and her husband had never had the most intensely passionate relationship, but
in the beginning, she’d wanted him. She’d enjoyed sex with him. Not so much as time
had gone on.
Desire, when one’s husband was an ass, was hard to come by. There was resentment.
There was a lot of lying back and taking one for the marital team. But there wasn’t
a lot of take-me-now happening, that was for sure.
But she felt a little of that now. With Mac.
She stood up, reaching across the table and grabbing her plate, then taking his. “Are
you done with the… uh… pie… filling?”
“Sure,” he said, putting his fork in the baking dish.
“Great, I’ll just uh… wash up and then I’ll head back to my room for that dinner
that I saved for last.”
“Are you okay?”
“Me?” The word came out overly shrill. “Pfft. I’m fine.” She dumped the dishes into
the sink and rinsed them quickly, then opened the dishwasher and started loading it.
“You don’t seem fine.”
“I’m just hungry. I want dinner.”
“You can eat dinner here. You don’t have to do the dishes first.”
“No. I’ll eat back in my… in my house.” After talking about Daniel, she was just
feeling stripped emotionally, which was likely where the heat was coming from. From
a place of neediness and vulnerability that she didn’t normally let herself feel.
She’d taken care to shore herself up in preparation for the divorce, and somehow,
Mac and her sudden willingness—need, even—to confide in him, was breaking down all
kinds of barriers that she relied on.
Mac stood and made his way from the dining area into the kitchen. He never took his
eyes off of hers, his focus intense. “I know what I said about enjoying your situation,
and that it’s a huge part of why you’ve been avoiding me.”
Not as huge as he might think.
“But I didn’t understand what you’d been through. Honestly, that high school stuff
doesn’t matter anymore. Clearly we’re different people now.”
“Yeah.” Her mouth was dry. She blamed Mac, Mac and all his untamed masculinity and
muscles and things she’d been completely immune to for far too long.
Oh, geez. Why was she having a sudden sexual reawakening? She did not need this. Not
now, not with the man who was currently paying her to work for him.
And he thought it was because he’d insulted her by saying he was enjoying her fall
from grace a little bit. Oddly, she wasn’t that insulted by that. Because she’d been
a bitch in high school, and it wasn’t like he’d had a front-row seat to everything
she’d been through in the past few years.