Even after knowing her for nearly a year, he still couldn’t make sense of it. He’d known a lot of beautiful women in his life, arguably more beautiful or overtly sexy that Molly.
But with her buttery blond curls, big blue eyes and delicate, cupid’s bow mouth, Molly had an angel’s face contrasted sharply with a body that was custom made for sin, tempting him at every turn.
Not that she ever played it up—not on purpose anyway. But with a body with more curves than a mountain road, she made even a body hugging sweater and a slim fitting pair of jeans look sexy.
There was something else. Something about her that made him yearn for her the way he’d yearned for all of the things he couldn’t have as a kid. Because he couldn't afford them, or because people took one look at him and knew he wasn’t worthy.
Somehow, Molly had become the epitome of everything he always wanted and could never have.
He gave himself a mental shake and forced himself to put on his game face. “Don’t tell me you missed me, sweet thing?” He said, injecting his smile with just the right amount of leering quality.
Unsurprisingly, the blue eyes rolled. “Your cooking, yes. You, not so much.”
“Looks like you’re covering it pretty well,” he said, admiring the plate of skirt steak Molly set in front of the customer next to him. “That looks almost as good as mine. Obviously my lessons paid off,” he added with a small burst of pride.
When he’d gotten the call from his cousin, Erin, that he needed to come back to Idaho, he had hated the idea of leaving everyone—including Molly—at Adele’s in a bind. He wasn’t being cocky when he admitted that the day Damon had brought him in as the restaurant’s cook was a turning point for the struggling restaurant.
Though he didn’t have more than a couple of years of formal training, Brady knew he had a gift for cooking, an instinct for putting together ingredients. That, combined with the discipline and resilience instilled in his years as an Army Ranger, enabled him to develop the skills that helped transform Adele’s from a run of the mill diner into a restaurant locals flocked to and tourists made a point to visit.
He’d hated the idea that the food quality would suffer during his absence, so before he’d left, he’d put Molly, Ellie, and their mother, Adele, through an intense kitchen boot camp until they were able to recreate his recipes to his satisfaction.
All of them, Molly in particular, had stepped up to the challenge, and from the looks of the plates he saw, they were continuing to succeed.
“I’ll say they did,” Ellie said with a grin. Funny, aside from the difference in hair color, she looked almost exactly like her sister. But Ellie’s smile never made him feel like he wanted to haul her off to his lair, caveman style, and keep her there until she promised never to leave him.
“Mom and Molly have been doing most of it since up until recently I could barely look at food without barfing, but as far as I can tell the customers haven’t noticed a difference. Speaking of—” she paused and gave a huge yawn,—“you must be hungry from the drive—what can we get you?”
Brady tried to wave her off, but Ellie wouldn’t have it. “If you think Mom will let you leave without feeding you, you’re crazy.”Finally he conceded and ordered a burger. When Ellie started to the kitchen, Molly stayed her. “I’ve got it. In fact why don’t you take off?”
Ellie shook her head. “Damon and I are supposed to close tonight—“
“I can handle it. You’re exhausted, and there’s hardly anyone here anyway,” Molly gestured toward the dining room, where only half a dozen tables were occupied, and most of those were already on dessert.
“Are you sure?” Ellie said, already untying the apron around her waist. “You closed every night last week.”
Molly rolled her eyes. “You’re exhausted, and you need to rest up for the big day,” she said waggling her eyebrows. “Only two more days before you’re Mrs. Decker.”
“Can’t come soon enough,” Damon said with a smile so sappy Brady was tempted to demand he turn in his dude card. “But really, Molly, between this and helping with the wedding, you’ve been doing way more than your share.”
“I don’t mind, really,” she protested. “Besides, it’s not like I have anything better to do.” She gave a little laugh, but there was no missing the strain.
Brady felt his spidey sense go on high alert. When he’d left, Molly had balked at taking on any more work at the restaurant, intent as she was at moving her long standing engagement to Josh Patton to the finish line.
“Thought you were too busy planning the wedding of the year to put in any extra time here,” he said and took a sip of scotch from the glass Ellie had thankfully refilled, though the burn of the liquor did little to quell the twisting of his stomach at the thought of Molly’s grade A douchebag of a fiancé.
It was the ultimate salt rub in the wound, that not only was she off the market and wholly committed to someone she’d been dating since high school, but that she’d committed herself to someone so obviously unworthy.
“Oh, you didn’t hear? The wedding happened.”
Brady swallowed hard as the Scotch roiling in his belly threatened to make a reappearance. Why he was so upset, when he’d known this had been coming from the moment he met her, he didn’t know.
What, like he really thought she was going to fulfill his most secret fantasy and dump that loser Josh and realize she was as crazy about Brady as he was about her?
“Oh, uh, congratulations I guess.”
She let out a shrill laugh, the only sound in a room gone completely silent. “Oh, it wasn’t to me.”
His shook his head, utterly confounded.
“You didn’t hear? A few weeks ago Josh went to a convention in Vegas and came back with a wife. I’ll go let Mom know about that burger,” she said perkily, as though she hadn’t just imparted information that completely rocked his world.
He turned to Ellie and Damon, who wore matching expressions of dismay. “Is she serious?”
“You didn’t tell him?” Ellie asked Damon accusingly. “I thought you guys had been in touch.”
“We have been,” Damon said with a shrug, “but it never came up.”
Ellie gave an exasperated sigh. “It was like, the biggest scandal to hit town since, well, since I came back. How could it not come up?”
Damon shrugged. “We had other stuff to talk about, I guess.”
“Guys are so weird.” She turned to Brady. “Yeah, she's serious as a heart attack. Apparently he met this woman”—her voice dripped with disdain—“last spring at another conference and was doing her behind Molly’s back for months. Then they were in Vegas together and now they’re married and Josh has moved with her to Texas.”
“So he’s completely out of the picture,” Brady said, feeling a burst of what he could only call joy erupt in his chest. Sensing that a goofy grin was not the right response to this news, he schooled his features into a look of sympathetic concern.
Ellie nodded. “Yep. Told her he didn’t love her anymore and that he’d outgrown her a long time ago.”
He didn’t have to fake the disgust in his expression as he wished Josh would reappear from Texas long enough for Brady punch him in his evidently nonexistent ball sack. “What an asshole.”
Ellie nodded. “I know. I’m not going to lie, I never thought Josh was good enough for her, but still…” she paused as another yawn burst forth. She shook her head. “Anyway, now you know the skinny.” She turned to Damon. “I’m going to grab my purse and then we can head out.”
Damon nodded. “Sorry I can’t hang out, but duty calls.”
“Right, like going home with your beautiful fiancée is such a hardship,” Brady’s smile quickly faded. “So how’s she doing?”
“She’s okay,” Damon replied. “You know Molly, she likes to put up a tough front like nothing bothers her, but she’s hurting.”
Realistically, Brady knew it would take time for her to get over it. But that didn’t make him any less resentful that she was wasting her time and energy pining after that loser.
“So, you know, go easy on her,” Damon continued.
Brady’s expression must have shown how taken aback he was by the comment.
“I know you like to needle her and try to get a reaction out of her.”
Brady couldn’t argue. From their first meeting, it was clear to him he’d rubbed Molly the wrong way. He liked to think it was because she was as aware of the sexual chemistry sparking between them as he was, and it made her uncomfortable.
And because he sure as hell couldn’t be up front about the feelings that went well past mere sexual attraction, he’d perversely settled for any kind of attention he could get from her, negative or not.
“Don’t worry,” he said, draining his glass. “I know it might not seem like it, but I know when to lay off.”
He said goodnight to Damon and Ellie and wandered back into the kitchen to say hi to Adele.
She greeted him with a hug and a peck on the cheek, and he couldn’t help but marvel a little at the warm welcome he’d received here tonight.
A stark contrast from the greeting he’d received back in Bonner’s Ferry, where he’d encountered everything from wary looks to outright hostility from people he’d known since childhood. Including his own family.
He felt some of the tension that had knotted his muscles ever since he’d received Erin’s call start to loosen, aided by the Scotch and the familiar sights, sounds, and smells of Adele’s kitchen.
“I was just finishing your burger.” She grabbed a plate that already contained a bun and a pile of fixings on the side and turned back to the grill and put the burger in place. A pile of fries was added to the plate before she handed it over.
Brady set his plate on the prep counter, pulled up a stool, and tucked into his burger while Adele piled her dirty pots and pans into the sink.
“Brady, this is Dave,” she said, indicating a kid in his late teens or early twenties who quickly got to rinsing the dishes and loading them into the industrial dishwasher. “We hired him a couple weeks ago.”
The kid nodded in greeting and turned back to his task.
“You can take off after you put that load in,” Adele said. At that moment Molly came into the kitchen, starting a little when she saw Brady.
“Here Mom, let me help you,” Molly said when she saw Adele packing up the night’s leftovers. “You can take off if you want—the last table just asked for their check.”
“Thanks sweetie,” Adele said and raised her arms in a little stretch. “I swear, the older I get, the more running this place feels like an endurance sport.”
She left out the back and Dave quickly followed suit.
Brady ate the last fry, took his plate over to the sink, rinsed it, and placed it next to the dishwasher for the next cycle. The kitchen was silent but for the industrious sounds of Molly finishing cleanup.
Brady cleared his throat and wordlessly joined her in her task.
He knew he needed to play this right—like Damon said, he needed to go easy on her, but not for the reasons Damon thought. If he really wanted a chance in Hell with Molly, he not only had to be nice, he had to take it slow.
No more of his vaguely insulting, sexually charged innuendos intended to elicit a glare and flushed cheeks. Not that he didn’t love that look.
But where to start, when nearly every conversational salvo he’d thrown her in the past year had been patently inappropriate?
He put a Tupperware full of cooked chicken breasts into the designated spot in the refrigerator and turned to see Molly casting him furtive glances out of the corner of her eye. There was no mistaking the tension in her movements as the silence grew thicker.
Evidently she had enough of it because suddenly she turned on him and snapped, “Go ahead and get it over with. The tension is killing me.”
He shook his head.
“Go ahead,” she repeated, untying her apron in jerky motions, “say ‘I told you so.’ Go ahead and gloat.”
He frowned, felt a little pinch in his gut at the thought that he could take any pleasure in how Josh had treated her. “Why would I gloat? What Josh did to you was terrible. No one deserves to be treated that way. Especially you.”
She stood, frozen, her chin nearly hitting her chest as her jaw dropped open.
“I’m sorry, Molly. I guess the only consolation is that maybe now you’ll find someone who’s actually worthy of you.”
And maybe, just maybe, if I play my cards right that someone will be me.
“No!” Molly threw up her hands as though to ward him off. “No, no, no, no. This— this nice Brady, who says nice things to try to make me feel better? I can’t deal with that right now.”
He felt his lips pull tight. “What do you want me to stay instead?”
“I don’t know,” she threw her arms out to her sides. “Like, maybe how you’re not surprised, that he probably got tired of having to put antifreeze on his crotch every time he wanted to sleep with me?”
He couldn’t have stopped the laugh from ripping from his chest. “That’s a good one,” he said, the grin lingering on his face as her laughter echoed his own.
The sound was creaky though, like she hadn’t made it in a while. “Come on, it’s your turn now,” she prodded. “Say something that’s going to get a reaction, that’s going to piss me off.”
He could think of something that would get a reaction all right, but he didn’t have anything to gain by laying all of his cards on the table. Not this early in the game. “I have a feeling you’ve been pissed off enough lately.”
“You’d be right,” she rubbed her hand across the back of her neck. Her shoulders drooped, and he was suddenly aware of how exhausted she looked. Dark shadows showed faintly under her eyes, and now that he looked closer, he could see her features were more finely drawn, her jaw and cheekbones more defined.
“You’ve lost weight.”
“Thank you. The heartbreak diet works wonders.”
He felt his fingers curl into a fist at her choice of words. Heartbreak. He hated to think of her heart being broken over someone so unworthy. It would take her a while to get over this, and he had to resign himself to a long road ahead.
“It wasn’t a compliment,” he said tightly, “As far as I’m concerned, a skinny ass has never been on my top ten list of desirables.”
Molly flashed him a grin. “Now that’s more like it.” The smile faded. “But if you’d seen Josh’s new wife…” She stumbled a little on the word. Brady fought the urge to pull her into his arms, knowing she wasn’t ready for that from him. Not yet.