Pam, Shed’s owner and executive chef, sat hunched over table eighteen studying receipts and supply orders in neat little piles. By the way her fingers toyed with her short, platinum hair, he knew that something wasn’t adding up in the ledgers.
The only reason Xavier could work for Pam, a woman, and not fear the Burned Man, was because she sent out zero sexual vibes toward him. Probably had to do with the fact he had a penis.
Across the main dining floor, through the giant glass window of the open kitchen, Jose and Lars were setting up their
mise en place
for lunch service, their knives flying through prep. Ricardo was bending over the stock pots at the back burners. The familiar and welcome smells, sights, and sounds of the only place that had ever made Xavier happy.
He shuffled around the perimeter of the dining room, making a point to be noticed. Pam glanced up, distracted. “Hey, Carolina.”
“
Hola
,” he replied in the lilting voice of Shed’s cleaning lady. Magic tingled on his skin.
Veiled in the disguise of a tiny Hispanic woman, he slipped into the back room where Pam stored her linens and cutlery. He shut the door behind him and sagged against the shelves.
Shed’s front door opened.
Pam’s shoes clicked across the dining room floor. “We’re not open for lunch for another two hours.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
Her
.
Xavier groaned, her voice slicing through him like a newly sharpened blade. Desire flowed into the open wound, and despite his mind’s direct orders to stay away from the back room door, his arm reached out and cracked it open.
She stood by the hostess podium, her eyes darting around the dim dining room. The cold touched her cheeks with a gentle pink. “I was looking for someone. Really tall, wavy blond hair to his shoulders? Navy blue down coat?”
Pam nodded and half smiled in the way that looked like she was laughing at some private joke. “You mean Xavier? Hasn’t come in yet.”
The woman tilted her head, the red pompom flopping to one side. What was it about that silly hat that forced Xavier to conjure images of tomatoes being diced to hell?
“I thought I just saw him come in here.”
“Nope.” Pam fiddled with the menus on the hostess stand, perfectly aligning their edges.
“But he works here?”
“Yeah. He’s my saucier.” When the freckled woman looked confused, Pam added, “One of my line cooks.”
She shifted her weight and a snow chunk slid off her fuzzy boot. “Any chance you have a reservation open for tonight?”
Pam flipped open the mahogany leather reservation book and lazily dragged her finger down the page. “So. How do you know Xavier?”
The woman blushed almost as red as her hat. Xavier was horrible at guessing ages, considering his own was about as twisted as a screw, but she was younger than him. Mid-twenties, most likely. She kicked at the dislodged snow. “I…I don’t.”
Oh shit.
Pam looked like the fox who’d swallowed a chicken. Wrong person to learn a woman was looking for him. She’d been trying to get him to date ever since she discovered him working at an acquaintance’s bistro in San Francisco. She’d even gotten her girlfriend to start badgering him. Between the two of them the barrage was endless.
Let’s get the quiet cook laid
. They thought it funny, a game.
It was anything but.
Pam arched an eyebrow at the freckled woman, her wicked smile tipping toward flirtatious. “Oh, really?” She tapped the reservation book. “Look at this. Lucky for you. We have an opening at eight. For how many?”
Shed had been booked up for weeks, if not months.
“Um. Two. Put it under my name. Heddig.”
“Got a first name? Just in case I need it?”
Pam would need it all right—to needle Xavier all shift. He considered calling in sick but knew he couldn’t. Not during the
festival when every table would be full from lunch through close. Not when the only other option was holing himself up in his house. With the Burned Man making such an abrupt appearance, Xavier didn’t trust himself to be alone.
“My name’s Cat,” said the woman.
“Great, Cat.” Pam clicked the pen closed and grinned. “See you tonight.”
Here’s what Cat knew about the guy she’d followed from the
street performer’s circle: His name was Xavier. He cooked at Shed. And he was one of those incredibly good-looking men who didn’t know it and would never admit it, even with a gun to his head.
Here’s what she didn’t know: how she knew him.
She hadn’t thrown him a bad pick-up line out on the street. She’d been standing there, laughing at the performer in the jester hat, when all of a sudden she’d felt this tug on her subconscious. A burst of
awareness
—that’s the best way she could describe it. She’d looked up, and there stood Xavier.
She didn’t recognize his face—she’d definitely remember that—but there was something
about
him. She was far from a granola hippie chick, so it felt silly to admit, but it seemed to be something in his aura. It connected with her, hit some note of recognition deep within her body, and she knew that even in the throng of people she could pick him out with her eyes closed.
But he was a local, and she’d never been to White Clover Creek. Hell, she hadn’t even left the Florida Keys in two years.
And, of course, he’d run from her like she was a leper. Nice, Cat. Chasing down the guy who mowed over about twenty people to get away from you.
She’d never done anything like that in her life. Never trailed after a guy like a puppy. Certainly never stalked anyone by making restaurant reservations just to get another look. No wonder he’d told that woman Pam to cover for him as he hid
in the back. Cat would have done the same thing if a strange guy had followed her back to the hotel bar where she worked.
Except that for a long moment, when their eyes had first met, she could have sworn he was interested…
She shook her head to clear it, slapped her mittened hands together and straightened her coat. What was she doing standing there in an alley, propped up by a potted, leftover Christmas tree? Today was one of the most important days of her life and she was about to be late for it.
Back out on Waterleaf, she wove through the mob, keeping one eye on the salted sidewalk. She wasn’t built for freezing temperatures, for snow. At least if she bit it, the tight crowd would keep her from falling on her butt. She was so cold she probably wouldn’t feel it anyway.
Waterleaf cut away from the main square and climbed a steep, steady slope. Lovely old buildings with elaborate, nineteenth-century wood scrollwork lined both sides. Festival goers bundled in thick boots and puffy coats and expensive sunglasses spilled out of the shops and restaurants. A few she recognized from TV or the movies, and their way of sauntering about in the broad daylight was clearly meant to draw attention.
No one knew who she was, but, according to Michael, by the end of the festival that would change. Hell
yes
. The beginning of the rest of her life.
It had to be. She had no idea where to go or what to do if it wasn’t.
The Drift Art Gallery capped the end of stair-stepped shops at the very top of Waterleaf, before the downtown blurred into residential neighborhoods. A century of Colorado winters had weathered the gallery’s brick, but its wooden trim glowed in bright purple. Striped paper covered the windows, blocking the interior. On the neon green front door dangled a small chalkboard sign:
CAT HEDDIG, PAINTER. FEBRUARY 6
–
MARCH 31. OPENING RECEPTION FEBRUARY 5
,
BY INVITATION ONLY.
Even though full-on hypothermia was about ten seconds away, she just stood there on the slanted sidewalk, staring at her name. So it was real. Her first show. Her big debut, to take place in front of scads of Michael Ebrecht’s Hollywood folk.
Back when she’d first picked up a brush, almost six years
ago, she hadn’t known this was where she wanted to be. All she knew was that there was something artistic and magical and frustrated swirling around inside her, dying to be released, and that she refused to be a bartender for the rest of her life. Now that she was here? It felt like she was standing on a stoop, lifting her hand to knock on the door of the place that was to become her home. And that’s all she’d ever wanted, wasn’t it? A true home.
Nerves skated around her belly—the good kind, the dreaded kind, all mixed together—but she wouldn’t let them stop her. Not now. She opened the creaking wooden door. An old-fashioned bell tinkled overhead. Bass-heavy music played somewhere out of sight, mingling with the sounds of men’s muffled voices. She stepped into a cloud of paint fumes. Ladders and folded drop cloths sat in the far corner of the long, narrow exhibit space.
She heard Michael before she saw him. “No, Helen.
No
. That’s not what we agreed.
Pond #11
will go up front, hanging from the ceiling when you walk in. Bam! It hits you right away.”
Pond #11
was Michael’s favorite painting of hers that he didn’t already own.
He appeared from the back hall, trailing a statuesque woman in her late sixties with dyed black hair and glasses on a long, beaded chain. Helen Wolfe, presumably, Drift’s owner and curator. Helen was shaking her head, talking to Michael over her shoulder as he snipped at her heels. Cat gasped. No one ever walked away from Michael. And if they did, he certainly never followed.
They didn’t see her and she didn’t call to them, painfully curious to hear what they had to say when clearly she was their topic of conversation. Helen whirled, jabbing her glasses at Michael. “That was before I actually saw it. It’s too large. Cuts off the flow of the main gallery and the view from the street once the paper is taken off the windows. We’ll do a ceiling mount of
Pond #11
in the back gallery, use it to draw the crowds into that room. Happy?”
Michael ran a hand around the back of his neck. “Then
Ocean #16
goes up front.”
Ocean #16
was Cat’s favorite.
Helen considered him for longer moments than Cat figured
him patient for. Cat was dying to know how this woman was able to speak to Michael the way she did.
“Agreed,” Helen said.
A young woman just barely out of college stepped from the side office. She, too, wore glasses, though they were likely just for show—she had that faux look about her. She made a beeline for Cat. “Sorry, but we’re closed for installation. You’ll have to come back February sixth.” She emphasized
sixth
as though to underscore only certain people would be welcome for the opening on the fifth.
Michael and Helen looked over and finally saw Cat. She quirked a smile and saluted them with her mittened hand.
Michael charged toward the door, a Rottweiler in a stunning charcoal suit likely from some designer she couldn’t pronounce. “No, no, Alissa. This is
Cat
. The
artist
.”
Poor Alissa. Michael would never give her the time of day now. The assistant turned on a smile, fake as Miami boobs, and swiveled back into the office.
Michael pulled Cat in for a brief hug that had more space than contact, then stepped back, holding her arms. “You made it. How was the flight?”
He looked good, as usual, the wrinkles on his forehead and under his eyes making him look commanding, not old. The dusting of silver in his gelled-back hair perfectly complemented his clothes.
“Ugh.” She stifled a yawn. “My first and last red-eye.”
But he was barely listening, also as usual. He ran his hand down her arm, his fingers catching on something. He gave it a snap and lifted up the offending price tag with a raise of his eyebrows.
She snatched it from his fingers. “Er, just bought it yesterday. Do you know how hard it is to find a winter coat in the Keys?”
He was smiling at her in that way she never quite knew how to read. Like he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to roll his eyes or kiss her. In the two years they’d known each other he’d never come on to her, but occasionally, like now, she wondered if he might be pondering it…or if he just saw her as some flighty bartender obsessed with painting water.
As for her, she’d never been attracted to him in that way.
The twenty-year age difference might have had something to do with it. Or the fact that he only visited his house in the Keys a few times a year. Or that sometimes he could be a serious jerk. Or that he was the one who’d plucked her from a life of showing her paintings to cruise tourists on a stopover. He’d believed in her, stuck his neck out for her, and she wasn’t about to mix business with pleasure.
Helen inserted herself between them, hand outstretched. “Ms. Heddig. Lovely to finally meet you after speaking on the phone. Michael Ray has told me so much about you. Ever since he bought that first piece of yours at that art fair.”
Michael Ray?
Cat blinked, realizing that she knew little to nothing about Helen herself—other than she was one of the most well-connected independent gallery owners in the U.S. Shaking Helen’s hand, she said, “Michael speaks of your gallery very highly. I’ve seen some of the pieces in his private collection. You must have worked together a lot in the past.”
Helen grinned while Michael shifted on his feet and stuffed his hands in his pockets. Who
was
this guy?
“I should say we have,” Helen said slowly, with a hint of amusement and a sideways look at Michael. “You didn’t tell her?”
He cleared his throat. “Helen’s my first former stepmom. Out of four.”
“Your favorite former stepmom,” she added with affection.
Michael wiped at the corners of his mouth as his gaze bounced around the eggshell-glazed room. So he’d not only aligned his well-known name with a bartender slash beach-bum artist like her, but he’d involved a clearly beloved member of his own family. Cat slapped on her most charming smile—the one she wore for her five-star hotel customers—but the pressure inside made her want to put her hands on her knees and swallow a few deep breaths.
To hide her nervousness, she reminded herself of why she’d wanted to do the show in the first place. Years of wandering. Years of solitude. Day after day filled with false smiles and forced conversation with resort guests. The only thing that made it worth it was the daylight hours she could dedicate to painting her obsession: The thing that poked at her mind at
night until she finally fell asleep. The first thing to stab itself into her consciousness when she awoke. The thing whose call tugged at her all day long.