CHAPTER 12
Laken
“You’re killing me with that dress,” Jake murmurs. His hand goes to my lower back as we walk through the restaurant. His overt compliment sends shivers up my spine.
After we’re seated and the waiter leaves, I start to open my menu but the look on Jake’s face has me stopping.
It’s appraising, and his eyes seem to be glittering with more than just appreciation.
“What?” I ask almost defensively.
He smiles as he shakes his head at me. “You have no clue.”
“Clue about what?”
“You and that dress,” he murmurs in a low voice, but I hear him clearly. His words reverberate through me. “Skin tight. Cherry red. Miles of bare legs and those heels that put your mouth closer to mine when we’re standing face to face. You’re just going to have to get used to me ogling you.”
“Just a girl in a dress,” I mutter and look down at the menu.
“Not just a girl in a dress,” he disagrees, and my gaze rises slowly to meet his. “You’re a gorgeous country veterinarian and a brilliant, sexy woman. When we walked through this restaurant, every man turned their head to look at you. Made me jealous and proud at the same time.”
I’m utterly surprised when heat flushes up the front of my neck and seems to settle in my cheeks.
“You are not blushing,” Jake teases me. “Are you?”
I ignore him, staring down at my menu.
He’s not done with me, though. “Not sexy, confident, goes-for-what-she-wants Laken Mancinkus.”
But I’ve had enough. I look him in the eye and change the subject. “You did really good, Mr. McDaniel. I’ve been dying to eat here.”
“You’re a foodie, huh?” he asks as he ignores the menu and reaches for the wine list.
“I guess you could say that,” I say vaguely. In fact, it’s one of the things I missed the most about Raleigh.
I love my hometown of Whynot, but there’s not much in the way of fine dining. When I lived in Raleigh for the two years following my graduation from vet school, I ate out a lot and there was never any shortage of wonderful restaurants opening since the Triangle—that would be Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill—is one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the nation.
The waiter returns, and Jake orders a bottle of wine for us. He does it with confidence and panache. It’s been a long time since I’ve been out with someone with those qualities, and that has been absolutely by choice. While I really wanted to come to Raleigh tonight on a nice dinner date with Jake, and while Jake is about as perfect company as one can get, it still causes some uneasy feelings to well up within me.
It brings back bad memories because this used to be my thing.
Fancy dinners, sports cars, expensive condo, jewelry. I fell for every bit of it, thinking it was the life for me, when really, I was a fool for ever trying to be anything different.
“Those look like some serious thoughts,” Jake says as he continues to ignore the menu.
I put on a bright smile. “No, not at all. Just thinking it’s been a long time since I came out to a nice meal like this.”
“Not too much five-star dining in Whynot, huh?” Jake says before taking a sip of his water.
At that moment, the waiter brings us our wine. I wait a moment as Jake is presented with a taste and approves it. After both our glasses are three-quarters full, I tell him, “Actually, we have a really nice upscale restaurant in Whynot. I mean… not upscale like this, but you can get a nice filet or salmon, good selection of wines. Wonderful desserts. It’s called Clementine’s.”
“I saw it,” Jakes says with a nod. “On the next block over from your clinic.”
“You should try it sometime,” I tell him and then pick up my wine. “And let me say, welcome back to Whynot. I know it’s not your permanent home, but looks like you’ll be here for a bit at least.”
Jake taps his glass against mine. “Our next dinner, we’ll go to Clementine’s.”
I give him a tart smile before I sip my wine. When I set it down, I say, “What makes you think there will be a next time?”
Jake just gives me a confident grin, looking at me over the rim of his glass while he also indulges in a sip of the red he’d chosen. When he puts his glass down, he says, “You’ve been in my bed twice, Laken, and it was beyond fantastic for both of us. I expect you’ll be back in it tonight, and that’s not ego talking. You enjoy me as much as I enjoy you. But that doesn’t have to be all. We can enjoy things like dinner and maybe even taking MG out on a walk or something.”
I can’t help the snicker that pops out. The thought of me and Jake walking MG down Main Street on a leash is almost too much to bear.
Choosing not to give any credence to his assertion, because he’s totally right that I’ll be back in his bed tonight, I ask him, “Seriously… can you really run your business from here?”
Jake nods. “The world is flat. There isn’t anything I can’t do from here. I can access anything via the internet, attend meetings by Skype, and sign documents electronically. I’ve got a good executive team in Chicago as well, so it’s doable. Not ideal, but doable for the short term.”
“What are you really trying to accomplish with Farrington Farms?” I ask, because I’d like some more perspective since Colt is so bent out of shape.
Jake studies me and for just a brief moment, I think maybe he has a nefarious motive. But he surprises me by saying, “It’s true I want the farm for a tax break, but I’m also trying to help out my sister-in-law.”
“Your brother’s wife?” I take a hesitant guess.
Jake shakes his head but before he can explain, I blurt out, “You’re married?”
“God, no,” he says quickly with a chuckle. “I was married. Divorced over a year now, but I’m trying to help out my ex-wife’s sister, Darby.”
Immediately, relief sweeps out the dark disappointment that had filled me at the thought I was sitting across the table from a married man. I’m not sure what it means, that he’d still want to help his ex’s sister, so I ask, “What does she have to do with the farm?”
“Darby is an agronomist,” Jake says. “A really smart one. She worked at John Deere in Moline and married a coworker, but she quit when they had their daughter, Linnie. The marriage crumbled, and Darby went back to school to complete her Ph.D. so she could do something with a degree that had gotten a little dusty over the past few years.”
Of course I knew what an agronomist is. It wasn’t possible to come from a farming family and not know. People who work in the field of agronomy are mainly researchers, studying the science and associated technologies regarding plant production.
“So, she’s what?” I ask. “Going to get practical experience or something?”
“Darby’s marriage ended badly,” Jake says, and his soft tone shows me that he cares for this woman a great deal. “She wants to relocate, and there’s a company focusing on crop sciences right here in the Triangle she’d love to get in on. But she needs to complete her thesis.”
“And her thesis has something to do with Farrington Farms,” I conclude.
“She wants to start a peach orchard, and her thesis will focus on the application of various micronutrients to boost production,” he tells me. “It gives her a place to live while she completes her thesis, and I can pay her a salary to watch over the farm. It gets her away from her ex, who is not a very nice guy at all.”
“And why does she need the grant?” I ask. Because really, that’s what Colt is focused on.
“I have no idea,” Jake says with a shrug. “But I’m going to find out. She’s coming down next week to take a look around. Maybe she and Colt can talk.”
I snort. “He’s pretty mad. I don’t think he’d have much nice to say to her.”
“It’s just a grant,” Jake says.
“It’s just our livelihood,” I retort. “This isn’t for an educational paper or to see who can grow the prettiest peaches. Mainer Farms depends on that grant each year.”
“I checked into it,” Jake says hesitantly. “There’s a third applicant as well.”
“What?” I ask, sitting up straighter in my chair. No one had ever competed with the Mainers before.
“Goddard Farms,” Jake says.
I mutter a curse under my breath. They have a small turkey farm on the edge of the county, and I have no clue why they are throwing their hat into the ring. I’ll have to ask Colt about it.
“So that’s my real story, Laken,” he says as he picks his wine glass up again. “I bought the farm for a tax write-off, but I also bought it to put my sister-in-law up and let her complete her Ph.D. Two birds, one stone.”
“Admirable,” I murmur.
“I’m assuming the sister-in-law part,” Jake says with a grin. “Nothing admirable about taxes.”
“Well, there’s that.”
Jake holds his glass of wine out, and I do the same, now tapping my rim to his.
“To the most beautiful girl down South,” Jake says. “I’m really glad I met you, Laken Mancinkus.”
Heat settles back in my cheeks and low in my belly. Jake is being absolutely genuine in his compliment but not in an unnecessary way. He knows I’m a sure bet tonight. But I can see the appreciation and respect of my company in his gaze. As I sip at my wine, any of the unease I’d been experiencing before seems to melt away.
Jake is not Cam.
Well, he’s similar, but it doesn’t mean he’s the same as Cam.
“I want to hear the real story of why you left Raleigh for Whynot to practice,” Jake says, and I immediately go stiff all over. How could I be silently comparing Jake to Cam, and then he just ask about the reasons why I ran away from Raleigh?
For a second, I think about making up some benign story. Maybe the old, “I’m just a small-town girl” type of thing, but I’m betting Jake would see through it.
But then, why shouldn’t I tell him the truth?
Why not just lay it out there so he knows no matter how many fancy dinners he takes me on or how many times he makes me scream with pleasure, it will never be anything more than just a casual fling to me.
“Okay, Mr. McDaniel,” I say with a wink. “I’ll tell you my story. But after we eat as I’m starved.”
“Deal,” he says with a grin and finally picks up his menu to peruse. I do the same, and I actually feel okay about this. It’s not a story I tell many people because it really has no bearing on things. My relationships are passionate but short-lived. If Jake is going to be here for a while, then he probably needs to know the truth so we keep our expectations in line with reality.
♦
Herman
On the competition…
I’m not quite sure what’s going on. A few hours ago, Mom spent a lot of time in her bathroom doing weird things to her face and hair. She sprayed on some stuff that made my nose tickle, and I sneezed. When she picked up her keys, I got excited because I thought we might go for a ride, but she patted me on the head and told me I had to stay home and be a good boy.
Some hours later, I was snoozing in the middle of her bed pretty hard when she came home, and was slightly confused when she yelled from the front door, “Come on, Herman. We’re going for a ride.”
Of course, I flopped from back to belly and shot off the bed, careened off the wall, and barreled into her. I was enjoying a nice double-ear scratching from my mom when I suddenly noticed a man standing near her.
The same man who had scratched my ears when I was lying on that porch the other night, protecting Mom and that funny-smelling little animal. He seemed all right then, and I guess he’s all right now. I push my head into his leg, and he gives me an ear scratch, too.
Yeah… he’s okay.
Mom and the man engage in gibberish. No clue what it means.
“Want to pack a bag?”
“Nope. I’ll just do the walk of shame tomorrow morning.”
“You said you’d lounge tomorrow morning rather than run out.”
“I suppose I did.”
The man laughs. Mom packs a bag.
Then we’re heading outside, and Mom has me get in her truck. We follow the man back to the house with the funny-smelling animal, but rather than me staying on the porch, I’m invited inside.
I follow Mom and the man upstairs, but when we get to a room, Mom turns to me and says, “No, Herman. You stay out here.”
She scratches my ear, kisses my snout, and then closes the door. I curl around three times and lay on the floor just outside the door. Tonight, I’m protecting Mom and the man.
I wonder where the funny-smelling beastie is?