There is wild joy in recognition.
A leap of faith to let yourself be known.
An old magic.
WELL OVER SIX FEET of hot-ass ginger celebrity chef, former model and childhood poster boy for a cult—and most notably one of her first really hard crushes—Beau Petty had aged really, really well. He had the kind of face that would only get better as he aged. At seventy-five, he’d still be searingly hot because it wasn’t just that he was chiseled and taut and broad shouldered, his attitude seemed to pump out confident alpha male.
He’d been gorgeous when she’d been sixteen and he twenty-one or -two, but seventeen years later, he was magnetic and intense on a whole new level. It made her heart skip a little just looking at him.
Cora had to lock her knees when his gaze flicked from Rachel over to her and his expression melted from surprise into pleasure as he dried his hands on a towel and headed toward her.
And then he hugged her and holy wow it was better than a doughnut. He smelled good and was big and hard and, wow, he was hugging her and when he stepped back he said her name. “Cora.”
It seemed as if the word echoed through her, plucked her like a musical note.
Wow.
“It’s really good to see you,” he said as he stepped back, and she had to crane her neck to look up, and up, into his face.
“What an unexpected surprise,” Cora told him.
“We have some catching up to do.”
The lines around his eyes begged for a kiss.
“You guys know each other? I mean, duh. Obviously as you just said her name and there was a hug and stuff.” Maybe smiled brightly, fishing for details in her cheerful, relentless way.
“First champagne and introductions, and then we will hear that story,” Gregori said, interrupting Maybe’s nosiness long enough to hand out glasses.
* * *
HE’D KNOWN BACK then that she’d had a crush on him, but she was still a kid. Then. Now? She still carried herself as if a secret song played in her head. But there was nothing girlish about her now.
Her hair—shades of brunette from milk chocolate to red wine—was captured back from her face in a ponytail, tied with a scarf that managed to look artsy and retro instead of silly. It only accentuated how big her eyes were, how high her cheekbones, the swell of her bottom lip that looked so juicy he wanted to bite it.
“Get started, if you’re hungry.” He indicated the long butcher-block counter where he’d set up some appetizers. “I was down at Pike Place earlier so the oysters are sweet and fresh. That’s also where the octopus in the salad came from, caught today. Just a quick grill with lemon and olive oil and pickled red onions.”
“Oh my god, really?” Cora cruised straight over and grabbed a plate.
A woman with an appreciation for food was sexy as hell.
“Update me on your life. What are you doing here in Seattle?” she asked, after eating two of the oysters and humming her satisfaction. “So good. This octopus is ridiculous. Is that jalapeño?”
“Good catch. Yes, in the olive oil I used to dress it.”
“I like it. What else are you making? Not that this isn’t really good, but I’m greedy.”
Watching her enjoy his food was a carnal shot to his gut. It set him off balance enough that he focused on the food for a few beats.
“I’m working on a new cookbook so I’m trying out some seafood recipes. Scallop and crab cakes with a couscous salad,” he said, pointing at the food.
“Yum! Ah, that’s why you’re in town?”
“I’ve been in Los Angeles for a long time.” Feeling antsy. He had houses, but no home. “I felt a change would be good. A friend who owns a number of restaurants in the area has given me access to his kitchens so I can try my ideas out there, as well.” He liked working around other chefs, found creative challenge in that atmosphere in a kitchen where the whole team loved to cook.
It was a good sort of competitive spirit. Pushed him to up his game, to be better. Far healthier for his liver and heart than all the drugs and alcohol that’d fueled his early twenties.
“That’s excellent,” she said. “Sometimes a change in surroundings is what you need to hit the reset button. Congratulations on your success. Every time I see your face on a cookbook or on television it makes me smile.”
He’d come a long way since he’d left the religious group many called a cult back when he was just seventeen. When he’d met Cora he’d only been out of Road to Glory for three years. Barely more than a legal adult. Modeling and wasting his money on drugs and private investigators, trying to find the children that had been stolen from him when the remaining cult members not yet arrested had gone on the run.
Seventeen years and it had been more than one lifetime. And he still hadn’t found his sons, who were adults by that point. Wherever they were now, all Beau could do was hope they were all right.
He shoved it away, into that well-worn place he kept his past, and went back to her compliments. “Thanks. What are you up to these days? I know your mom is still working because I listen to her stuff a lot when I cook.”
“She and I just got back from three months in London as she finished up a project.”
Rachel wandered over to them to add her two cents. “And she pretty much runs the gallery. Plus she holds the tattoo shop together. And keeps Walda out of trouble, which is a full-time job. She writes poetry and takes amazing photographs. Oh, and she’s an amazing knitter.”
“I keep books for my sister from time to time. That’s hardly holding the shop together,” Cora said with affection clear in her tone.
“And the marketing. You set up the new network too. So, yeah, holding things together. It’s what she does. How do you and Cora know one another?” Rachel repeated Maybe’s earlier question more firmly, clearly taking his measure.
“At first glance you think it’s Maybe who’s the pushiest. But Rachel is way sneakier,” Cora told him with a shrug. “Beau and I met when he and Walda lived in the same building in Santa Monica. I was fifteen or sixteen at the time. He was a model so Mom kept herself between us. As if he even noticed me when he was surrounded by gorgeous models.”
He hadn’t noticed Walda getting between him and Cora, but Cora had been correct that he hadn’t seen her in that way. For a whole host of reasons, chiefly that she was simply too young.
Then. Not so much now.
“We were there a year so I had a tutor, who, if I recall correctly, Beau definitely noticed.” Cora snickered.
Beau hadn’t learned algebra until he was an adult. Hadn’t read a single classic literary novel until he was twenty-one. Education was a tool, something to dig yourself out of a bad spot—especially if you didn’t have the face and fortune to be a model while you got your education—so he was glad Walda snapped to it when it came to being sure her daughter got what she needed.
He honestly couldn’t even remember the tutor, just the sweet kid who’d grown up well.
“Anyway, that’s how we met, and in the intervening years he’s been a supermodel and now a celebrity chef and cookbook author.” Cora smiled at him. “Go you.”
“How do you know Gregori?” Rachel asked once they’d settled in at the long table in the main room.
“Beau and I were young men with more money than sense in the art scene,” Gregori said. “He was one of the first friends I made here in the US. We’ve been in contact on and off since. I had no idea of the connection between him and Cora.”
“It was a pleasant surprise,” Beau told them with a shrug. “I know many people. I’m friends with very few, so those I like to keep around.”
“I didn’t even know crab and scallop cakes were an actual thing. I vote yay,” Cora said as she put another two on her plate.
In addition, there were brussels sprout leaves roasted with parmesan and walnuts, fruit and cheese with honey, wine, champagne and at the end, not just one cake, but two.
Not a lot satisfied Beau more than seeing people enjoy food he’d made. Cooking was his way of pleasing others. Of being worthy.
Even as fucked-up as he was, he’d managed to substitute out the most harmful ways of feeling worthy and pleasing others. His life was his own now. No one made his choices. He owed no one anything he didn’t want to give.
A far cry from his days in Road to Glory, when every bit of his life had been chosen for him and the others in the group.
“You’re having a very intense conversation in your head,” Cora said quietly.
He shrugged. “Not really,” he lied.
She sniffed, like she wanted him to know she saw right through him. Defensiveness rose in his gut, warring with fascination and no small amount of admiration that she would not only see the truth of it, but also let him know she got that he was evading.
But she let it go and he appreciated it a great deal.
A few hours in, Vic and Rachel peeled off. Gregori explained that Vic worked in a bakery, the same one that had provided some of the sweets they’d eaten that night, and had to be up by four-thirty.
He realized, as they cleaned up, that he didn’t really want his time with Cora to end. Which was unusual. Unusual enough that he paid attention to it. She was a gorgeous, creative, interesting woman and an old friend. That was it. Probably.
Still, when she headed to the door, he followed. “Hey, where are you off to?”
“Home. I’ve been up well over twenty-four hours at this point and the travel has just sort of smacked me in the head. Now that my belly is full and I’ve been loved up on by my friends, I’m going to head back to my place and sleep for many hours.”
“Where are you parked? Do you need a ride home?” Wren asked Cora, and then Gregori sighed. Clearly he’d noticed the chemistry between Cora and Beau all night.
Cora hadn’t seemed to hear Gregori’s sigh as she replied, “I’m just parked right around the corner at the lot near Ink Sisters. I’m good. Thank you though.” Cora hugged Wren, and then tiptoed up to do the same with Gregori.
“I’ll walk with you,” Beau said, grabbing his coat. “If that’s cool with you.”
Cora shrugged. “Sure. You don’t have to. It’s not that far.”
“And then you can give him a ride,” Gregori told her. “He’s staying in a flat in the Bay Vista Tower so he’s on your way home anyway.”
Gregori gave him a very slight smile. Beau owed his friend a beer for that little suggestion that allowed him more time with her.
“Ah! Yes, that’s totally on my way home. I can easily drop you off as a thanks for walking with me and defending my honor in case a drunken Pioneer Square reveler gives me any guff. Not that they would with an eleven-foot-tall dude, but you know what I mean,” Cora said.
“There are perks to being tall. And I’d appreciate the ride as I walked over earlier today.” And he’d get to be alone with her in the car, where he planned on asking her out.
He shouldn’t. He usually kept himself clear of getting involved with a friend or anyone in his social circle that he might have to see regularly in the wake of something unpleasant.
But she felt like home to him in a way that he couldn’t really put into words. And he really needed home after drifting for far too long.
* * *
CORA LIKED WALKING with Beau. When she stopped to peer more closely, and then photograph a wet leaf, he didn’t get impatient. When she wanted to look in a window or pause to stare up at the lights, he paused too. He meandered like she did. Which was something she found herself charmed by.
Certainly there was no denying the way people tended to get out of their way as they came along. Even sauced-up patrons, who’d poured out of bars and onto the sidewalks, parted to let them pass. He was big. Sturdy and broad shouldered. As a short girl, it was pretty freaking nice, she had to admit.
So she told him. Or, well, she thought it out loud, and then just went with it because it was too late to do anything else.
He leaned closer and the heat of him seemed to brush against her skin. “It’s a novel thing to imagine the world from your perspective,” he said in a voice that wrapped around her and tugged.
What an unexpectedly wonderful compliment that was.
“Thank you. You have a great voice. I figure I should go ahead and tell you that.” Flattered and a little flustered, Cora pointed at her car as they came upon the lot where she’d parked. “That’s me.”
Cora didn’t think herself overly concerned with things. But this car—named Eldon—was her not-so-guilty pleasure.
A gift from her mother—because Cora never would have done it for herself and because Walda loved giving extravagant gifts. When it appealed to her anyway.
It was low-slung and sporty, and when she got in and closed the door, the world drifted away.
He came to a startled halt. “That?”
Cora was glad it was dark enough he couldn’t see her blush. “Okay. I know. It’s an extravagance. My mom decided I should have it. And I tried to turn it down or talk her into a less, uh, over-the-top choice. But she’s Walda and she does what she wants.”
“I’m jealous. I nearly bought a TT S last year.”
Oh. Well, that was nice. Thanking him, she clicked the locks and he waited for her to get in before he followed suit.
“You’re really tall and I was worried you’d have to bend like a pretzel to fit in the passenger seat. So I’m glad that didn’t happen because you have those jeans on and I don’t want you to have to cut off circulation or whatever.”
Jesus, she just made a thinly veiled joke about his dick getting bent in an uncomfortable way. She’d been hanging out around the Dolans way too long.
He snorted a laugh. “I’ve never been as entertained by a conversation,” he said as she pulled out of the lot.
“Oh. Well. Good because I’m entertaining that way so I’m delighted you can see the benefits. I’m glad you’re in Seattle, Beau. I hope we’ll see one another again before you leave. And wow, this whole segment of our conversation is really just me wandering all around. I’m normally better at this. Really.”
“Still entertaining. Five stars,” he said through laughter. “I’d love to see you again. Me and you. What does your kitchen look like?”
“Uh. It’s a nice kitchen. I like to cook well enough. I decided to take the space from a third bedroom and make the kitchen and the master bigger. Gas stove.”
He nodded and she felt a little relieved that she’d passed a test of some sort.
“Are you free tomorrow night? I’d like to make you dinner and catch up on the last seventeen years.”
He just asked her out. She hadn’t imagined the chemistry between them. This day was pretty fucking great so far.
“Totally free. I’ll be home by six and I can handle the dessert.”
“I’ll be there by six-thirty with everything I need.”
A wave of heat washed through her. There was no misunderstanding the way his voice had that husky undertone. That was perhaps—hopefully—an I’ll be putting my mouth on you at some point during this date tone and she liked it. It left her drunk with delight.
She gave him her address as she found a space to slide into across the street from his building. “Okay. So. Um. I’ll see you tomorrow night then.”
He unbuckled himself, but before he got out, he leaned close and surprised her when he laid a kiss on her lips.
Just a casual kiss. Quick but not so fast he didn’t slowly drag his teeth over her bottom lip as he pulled back.
“See you then.”
Still tasting him, she watched as he jogged across the street, and then made his way into the building.
Cora wasn’t entirely sure what she was getting herself into, but she liked it.