“So, turkey burgers tonight?” Juney asked the following morning as she and Rowan grabbed their coffees from the kitchen and wandered over to the couch to cuddle. The house was still quiet, and they were enjoying the solitude and view of the snow falling in big, thick, clumpy flakes as the sky slowly grew lighter.

“That’s the plan,” he yawned. “I’ll grind up the dark meat. I found a package of ground turkey in the freezer, too, so we’ll add that as well. And I’m thinking a mango salsa and papaya slaw with some brie melted onto the patties. I could whip up some Kaiser rolls, make some yam fries and potato chips. Sound good? I’ll call it ‘I like it when you call me Big Papaya. What do you think?”

Juney stared at him in awe as she brought her mug up to her chin and blew over the top, sending the steam coiling up and out into the air. “Sounds decadent for a burger.” Her lips lifted at the corner in a small smile. “And the name is hilarious. I can’t wait. Your culinary visions and creations amaze me. You’re exactly the kind of chef I’ve been looking for at my restaurant at the winery. Not afraid to take a classic and give it a classy and upscale twist, but without making it pretentious or unidentifiable. I swear every chef I interviewed wanted to do something deconstructed. What’s wrong with the constructed version as long as it’s done right? I don’t want a deconstructed filet mignon. I want a damn filet mignon!”

Rowan’s eyes lit up with laughter. He took a sip of his coffee. A sexy grin caught on his mouth as he swallowed. “What can I say? Food is my life. And I think that deconstructed nonsense is overrated and overdone.” He let out a defeated sigh, and his shoulder slumped ever so slightly. “Though, based on my current predicament, I’ll deconstruct the shit out of something if I have to to pay the bills. I’d love to have my own restaurant, but that takes capital, and with the way the country is going, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to afford to own my own restaurant. I’ll just have to start hitting the pavement when I get back to Olympia. Or maybe move to Seattle.” He shook his head. “Yeah, I’ll probably have to move to Seattle. Silvio’s probably blacklisted me in Olympia. The guy has connections, and I didn’t exactly leave on good terms.”

She rubbed his thigh, letting her hand slowly trail its way up to the V of his legs. She could feel his heat, and it was making her head loopy. Removing her hand quickly, she cupped her mug again in both palms.

But Rowan grabbed her hand again and put it back with another big, sexy smile. He ran his finger along the back of her hand, encouraging her to begin rubbing. She did, but her head wasn’t in it.

Juney pursed her lips together and gazed out the window again for a moment. Was it too soon? Could she ask him? Should she wait a bit, see if he finds something here in Washington? Would he think it was weird, her asking him? She spun back to face him. “I’d like to offer you a job.”

That smoldering look he’d been giving her a second ago, the same look he’d given her in the kitchen Christmas day and again in the bar bathroom last night, a look that said, “I’m seconds away from stripping you naked and taking you here and now —hard,” was gone. And a look she hadn’t seen before, didn’t recognize and couldn’t place quickly enveloped him. When he removed his hand from hers, she stopped rubbing and slowly withdrew.

“You taking pity on me?” he asked with such accusation, Juney’s eyes went wide and her skin prickled. Red shot across his cheekbones, and anger alighted in his eyes.

“N-no. Th-that’s not it at all.”

“Then why are you offering me a job? Trying to hang on to me any way you can?”

A fist. An enormous, callused, muscular fist gripped her heart and squeezed while a boot, a filthy steel-toed boot, pressed hard on her lungs as the heel swiveled relentlessly, grinding out the air from her body in ragged gasps. What was happening? She couldn’t breathe. Was she having a heart attack?

He sneered at her and stood up. “I’m no one’s pity hire, Juniper. I’ll find my own way. Find a new restaurant or take out a loan from the bank. Do a food truck or something. But I don’t need you, someone who barely knows me, offering me a job in motherfucking Canada out of pity. Jesus . . . ” He ran his hand through his hair. “Is it pity or desperation?”

Tears, hot and plentiful, burned the corners of Juney’s eyes as she stared up at the man she thought she had been falling for. She couldn’t have been more wrong. Everything he’d ever said to her had been a lie. A ruse to get into her pants. She’d been a complete and total fool.

Swallowing past the hard lump in her throat, she set her coffee mug down on the side table, bunched her fists at her sides and stood up. He was at least four to six inches taller than her, and Juney was no slouch at five-foot-eight, so she had to tilt her head up to look at him. But she did it with grace and poise, angling her chin just right and clenching her teeth until she no longer felt the need to cry.

“No, Rowan,” she started, hating the slight quaver to her voice. “It wasn’t a pity offer. It was a genuine offer. I like your food. I like you and thought it could work. Even if we weren’t sleeping together, and I was matched with Will or Austin, I probably would have still offered you the job. Your food is delicious. As for desperation . . . ” Her lip turned up into a snarl. “I’m not desperate at all. In fact, I’m desperate for nothing. I can and I will achieve everything I want, and I’ll do it on my own. You could have called it hope. But not desperation. You see, I am at the top of my game. I’m a best-selling author, an award-winning vintner, and a successful entrepreneur. I’m not desperate at all, I have it all. But you, you’re a fucking unemployed chef who’s shot his mouth off one too many times and is desperate for work. And now, you’ve lost the opportunity to run your own restaurant, to fulfill your dream. And now it would seem you’ve also lost the girl.”

She turned away, ready to head down the hall, but then vengeance, running hot through her blood, caused her to turn back. “You know, I don’t think Rowarn needs a girlfriend after all. I think Junica will do just fine on her own. Maybe I’ll cut out his character altogether or kill him gruesomely. Toss him out the castle tower window down into the town square or have him mauled by rabid wolfenboars.” She grinned wickedly at him as emotion clawed at the back of her throat. “Yeah, torn limb from limb by a pack of wolfenboars. I like that idea. Rowarn is dead to me.”

Her lip trembled slightly on that last bit. Despite her attempt at being cruel and hurting him the way he’d hurt her, she just didn’t have it in her to be mean. She was in too much pain to be mean. But she managed to keep those tears at bay long enough to say what she needed to. So, with one last steely glare as her heart slowly shattered, she spun on her heel and stalked off down the hallway, willing her body to cooperate and keep the emotions in check until she was behind closed doors. She grabbed her doorknob, and a lone tear trickled down her cheek. Desperate? Yeah, Juney was desperate not to let this man destroy her heart, but she was beginning to think it was too late.

Fuck! Rowan was an idiot. A moron. A dumbass. What had he done?

Probably ruined and alienated the best thing that has EVER happened to you, you jackass.

She’d offered him a job, named a fucking character after him, opened up her HEART to him, and he went and stomped all over everything. Let his pride get in the way. Who the fuck did he think he was? Gordon Ramsay? Hell, even Gordon Ramsay would probably be telling Rowan what a giant fuck-up he was being right now. Then he’d tell him that he’d overcooked his scallops and needed to do them again.

Go after her!

Shaking his head to release the fog, he made his way down the hallway. It’d only been a few minutes, but even that could have been too long. What if she was beyond the point of forgiveness? He really couldn’t blame her if she was, he’d been so cruel. Pity? Desperate? That was his anger at himself coming out. Anger at his situation. That he was jobless . . . again. After being overlooked at work . . . again. He’d gone and shot his mouth off, and now he had no job and no girl. But Juney had offered to change all of that. She’d offered him a job and her heart and instead he’d stomped all over both and her country. Would he forgive her if the roles were reversed? He wasn’t entirely sure.

His fingers came up, and he rapped on her door, nostalgia from four nights ago swamping him. He’d been just as nervous that night, but for different reasons. Now he wasn’t only nervous, he was terrified.

“Go away,” she said through the door. The faint sound of sniffles and tissues being drawn from their box made his chest tighten.

“Juney, can I come in? I’m really sorry. I . . . Can I come in, please?”

The door swung open a second later, and there she stood, with a tear-stained face and puffy red eyes. Both fists held wrinkly wads of tissues. A few others were strewn about the bed. “You come to tell me my books are crap, too?” she snapped, but her quivering lip told him she was seconds away from fresh tears. Tears he’d caused. Fuck if it was the last thing he did, he would never be the cause of Juney’s tears again.

He pushed his way inside and shut the door. She took a few steps back, eyeing him suspiciously, bracing herself for more vitriol.

He fell to his knees. “Juniper, I am so, so sorry. I . . . ” Inching forward until he was directly in front of her, Rowan grabbed her tissue-filled hands. “I honestly don’t even know what came over me. There’s no excuse. Everything I said, my reaction, my behavior, it was all wrong.”

She pulled her hands free and glared down at him. “Stand up, you jackass.”

He deserved that.

His lips bunched as he pushed himself to his feet, using the end of the bed for leverage. “I’m angry with myself, and I took it out on you,” he started to say. “Angry that I haven’t made it in the business despite how long I’ve been in it. Angry at constantly being overlooked, underestimated. Told that my food isn’t good enough to make it onto the menu. And that I’ll probably never get to run my own restaurant.”

“So you decided to spit on a job offer to have all of those things? While subsequently calling me desperate and making me feel like complete garbage?”

Shit!

She wasn’t going to be easy to win over. Here he’d thought a simple knock on the door and a Canadian-y “I’m sorry” would do the trick. Was there something Canadians said besides “I’m sorry” for when they really fucked up?

I’m really, really sorry, my maple syrup queen?

Say that out loud and we will cut out your tongue with that St. Maurice Lefebvre knife.

He swallowed. “Juney, I am so, incredibly, genuinely, truly sorry. If I could take it all back, I would. None of what I said was true or a reflection of my real feelings. I was . . . shocked. You hardly know me and yet, you offered me a job.”

She lifted one shoulder. “I like you, and I like your food. I go with my gut in this industry, and not once has it led me astray. I know wine, I know food and . . . ”

“You thought you knew me.”

She pursed her lips. “I thought I was starting to.”

He took a step forward and reached for her hands again. She let the tissues fall to the floor and allowed him to lace their fingers. “You do know me. Probably better than a lot of people. I’ve . . . I’ve never been happier than I have in these last four days, Juney. I’ve been a workaholic for years. Miserable and desperate to get ahead.”

Her head snapped up to face him.

“Yes, I’m the desperate one. Not you. Me. I’m desperate to have the kind of success you have in your field, in my own. Desperate for acceptance from my culinary peers. Desperate to have people love and rave about my food the way you do. The way I love and rave about your books. I’m the desperate one. Not you. And right now I’m desperate for you to forgive me. You are my match. Without a doubt. And even if the job offer is now off the table, and you go and have Rowarn brutally murdered, I still want to be with you.”

Bright azure-blue eyes, still red-rimmed and glassy, shone back at him. She was gorgeous. Stunning. Even in goofy red and white candy cane pajama shorts and a red tank top, the woman was breathtaking. And, God, how he hated himself for how badly he’d hurt her. Even if Juney forgave him, he wasn’t sure he would ever forgive himself.

“It would mean you’d have to move to Canada,” she whispered, a smile in her voice and then a small one spreading on her lips.

Slowly, the vice around his heart released. “Haven’t met a Canadian I didn’t like. And your healthcare is better.”

Her eyes took on a wicked gleam. “So, it’s the universal healthcare that’s sealed the deal, is it?”

Boldly, he swept his arm out and gathered her around the waist, pulling her tight against his chest. “No, it’s the sexy, perfect little blue-eyed goddess offering to make all my dreams come true that has sealed the deal. All I have to do is not piss her off, and we should be golden.”

She beamed, her arms floating up to rest on his shoulders. “I’ll write up a proper contract, but for now, I believe a verbal contract should suffice.”

“Verbal shmerbal,” he purred. His hand came up, and he moved his fingers through her dark waves as he slanted his mouth over hers. “We seal this deal with a kiss.”