Baby Makes Three
Molly O’Keefe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELEVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Copyright

Molly O’Keefe has written eleven books for the Superromance, Flipside and Duets lines. When she isn’t writing happily ever after she can usually be found in the park acting as referee between her beleaguered border collie and her one-year-old son. She lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband, son, dog and the largest heap of dirty laundry in North America.

To Aunt Cherie and Uncle Earl

Sometimes, with family, you just get lucky.

And we are very lucky.

CHAPTER ONE

OUT OF THE CORNER of his eye, Gabe Mitchell saw his father, Patrick, spit a mouthful of seaweed-wrapped tofu into his napkin like a five-year-old.

Gabe kicked him under the table, appalled but envious.

“So?” Melissa-something-or-other, the chef responsible for the foul-tasting vegan spa cuisine, asked. “Was I right, or what?”

“Or what,” Patrick muttered, balling his napkin up beside his plate.

“You were right,” Gabe said and pushed his own mouthful of bitter mush into his cheek away from his taste buds. “This is really something.”

“Well?” She smiled broadly like a cat with her eye on the canary. “When do I start?”

Patrick laughed, but quickly coughed to cover it, so Gabe didn’t bother kicking him again.

He managed to swallow the mess in his mouth, took a huge sip of the unsweetened berry smoothie to wash it down and was appalled to discover she’d somehow made berries taste bad, too.

He’d interviewed and auditioned five chefs and this one really was the bottom of a very dark, very deep barrel.

“Well—” he smiled and lied through his teeth “—I have a few more interviews this week, so I will have to get back to you.”

The girl looked disappointed and a little meanspirited, which wasn’t going to help her get the job. “You know,” she said, “it’s not going to be easy to find someone willing to live out here in the middle of nowhere.”

“I understand that,” he said graciously, even though it was getting hard not to throw her out on her scrawny butt.

“And it’s a brand-new inn.” She shrugged. “It’s not like you have the credentials to get a—”

“Well, then.” He stood up and interrupted the little shit’s defeating diatribe before she got to the part about how he was ugly and his father dressed him funny. “Why don’t you gather your equipment and I’ll call you if—”

“And that’s another thing.” Now she was really getting snotty. What was it about vegans, he wondered, that made them so touchy? “Your kitchen is a disaster—”

“You know how building projects can be.” Patrick stood, his silver hair and dashing smile gleaming in the sunlight. “One minute shambles, the next state of the art.”

“You must be in the shambles part,” Melissa said.

“Very true, but I can guarantee within the week state-of-the-art.” His blue eyes twinkled as though he was letting Melissa in on a secret. It was times such as these that Gabe fully realized the compliment people gave him when they said he was a chip off the old block.

Patrick stepped to the side of Melissa and held out his arm toward the kitchen as though he were ushering her toward dinner, rather than away from a job interview she’d bombed.

Gabe sat with a smile. Dad was going to handle this one. Great. Because I am out of niceties.

“Tell me, Melissa, how did you get that tofu to stay together like that? In a tidy little bundle,” Patrick asked as they walked toward the kitchen.

Melissa blushed and launched into a speech on the magic of toothpicks.

God save me from novice chefs.

The swinging door to the kitchen swung open, revealing his nowhere-near-completed kitchen, and then swung shut behind his father giving the oblivious woman the heave-ho.

Gotta hand it to the guy, sixty-seven years old and he still has it.

Silence filled the room, from the cathedral ceiling to the fresh pine wood floors. The table and two chairs sat like an island in the middle of the vast, sunsplashed room.

He felt as though he was in the eye of the storm. If he left this room he’d be buffeted, torn apart by gale-force winds, deadlines, loose ends and a chefless kitchen.

“You’re too nice,” Patrick said, stepping back into the room.

“You told me to always be polite to women,” Gabe said.

“Not when they are trying to poison you.”

Patrick lowered himself into the chair he’d vacated and crossed his arms over his flannelcovered barrel chest. “She was worse than the other five chefs you’ve talked to.”

The seaweed-wrapped tofu on his plate seemed to mock Gabe, so he threw his napkin over it and pushed it away. At loose ends, he crossed his arms behind his head and stared out his wall of windows at his view of the Hudson River Valley.

The view was stunning. Gorgeous. Greens and grays and clouds like angels filling the slate-blue sky. He banked on that view to bring in the guests to his Riverview Inn, but he’d been hoping for a little more from the kitchen.

The Hudson River snaked its way through the corner of his property, and out the window, he could see the skeleton frame of the elaborate gazebo being built. The elaborate gazebo where, in two and a half months, there was going to be a very important wedding.

The mother of the bride had called out of the blue three days ago, needing an emergency site and had found him on the Web. And she’d been e-mailing every day to talk about the menu and he’d managed to put her off, telling her he needed guest numbers before he could put together a menu and a budget.

If they lost that wedding…well, he’d have to hope there was a manager’s job open at McDonald’s or that he could sell enough of his blood, or hair, or semen or whatever it took to get him out of the black hole of debt he’d be in.

All of the building was going according to plan. There had been a minor glitch with the plumber, however Max, his brother and begrudging but incredibly skilled general contractor, had sorted it out early and they were right back on track.

“Getting the chef was supposed to be the easy part, wasn’t it?” Patrick asked. “I thought you had those hotshot friends of yours in New York City.”

Gabe rolled his eyes at his father. Anyone who didn’t know the difference between a fuse box and a circuit breaker was a hotshot to him. And it wasn’t a compliment.

“They decided to stay in New York City,” he said. All three of his top choices, which had forced him into this hideous interview process.

Fifteen years in the restaurant business working his way up from waiter to bartender to sommelier. He had been the manager of the best restaurant in Albany for four years and finally owner of his own Zagat-rated bar and grill in Manhattan for the past five years and this is what he’d come to.

Seaweed-wrapped tofu.

“I can’t believe this is so hard,” he muttered.

Patrick grinned.

“I open in a month and I’ve got no chef. No kitchen staff whatsoever.”

Patrick chuckled.

“What the hell are you laughing at, Dad? I’m in serious trouble here.”

“Your mother would say this—”

Icy anger exploded in his exhausted brain. “What is this recent fascination with Mom? She’s been gone for years, I don’t care what she’d say.”

His cruel words echoed through the empty room. He rubbed his face, weary and ashamed of himself. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’ve got so much going on, I just don’t want—”

“I understand, son.” The heavy clap of his father’s hand on his shoulder nearly had him crumbling into a heap. “But not everything can be charmed or finessed. Sometimes it takes work—”

“I work.” Again, anger rose to the surface. “I work hard, Dad.”

“Oh, son.” Patrick’s voice was rough. “I know you do. But you’ve worked hard at making it all look easy. I’ve never seen a construction job go as smooth as this one has. You’ve got every lawyer, teamster and backhoe operator eating out of the palm of your hand.”

“You think that’s easy?” Gabe arched an eyebrow at his father.

“I know better than that. I’ve watched you work that gray in your hair and I’ve watched you work through the night for this place and I’m proud of you.”

Oh, Jesus, he was going to cry in his seaweed.

“But sometimes you have to make hard choices. Swallow your pride and beg and compromise and ask for favors. You have to fight, which is something you don’t like to do.”

That was true, he couldn’t actually say he fought for things. Fighting implied arguments and standoffs and a possibility of losing.

Losing wasn’t really his style.

He worked hard, he made the right contacts, he treated his friends well and his rivals better. He ensured things would go his way—which was a far cry from having them fall in his lap. But it was also a far cry from compromising or swallowing his pride or fighting.

The very idea gave Gabe the chills.

“You saying I should fight for Melissa?” He jerked his head at the door the vegan chef had left through.

“No.” Patrick’s bushy eyebrows lifted. “God, no. But I’m saying you should fight for the right chef.”

“What’re we fighting for?” Max, Gabe’s older brother stomped into the room, brushing sawdust from the chest and arms of his navy fleece onto the floor. “Did I miss lunch?”

“Not really,” Patrick said. “And we haven’t actually started any fight, so cool your jets.”

Max pulled one of the chairs from the stacks on tables in the corner, unclipped his tool belt and slung it over the back of the chair before sitting.

As the family expert on fighting, Max had made battles his life mission. And not just physically, though the bend in his nose attested to a few bar brawls and the scar on his neck from a bullet that got too close told the truth better than this new version of his brother, who, since being shot, acted as though he’d never relished a good confrontation.

Yep, Max knew how to fight, for all the good it did him.

“Well, from the look on Gabe’s face, I guess we still don’t have a chef,” Max said, sliding his sunglasses into the neck of his shirt.

“No,” Gabe growled. “We don’t.”

Now Max, his beloved brother, his best friend, stretched his arms over his head and laughed. “Never seen you have so much trouble, Gabe.”

“I am so glad that my whole family is getting such pleasure out of this. Need I remind you that if this doesn’t work, we’re all homeless. You should show a little concern about what’s going on.”

“It’s just a building,” Max said.

Gabe couldn’t agree less, but he kept his mouth shut. Going toe to toe with his brother, while satisfying on so many levels, wouldn’t get him a chef.

“I’m going to go make us some lunch.” Patrick stood and Max groaned. “Keep complaining and you can do it,” he said over his shoulder and disappeared into the kitchen.

“Cheese sandwiches. Again,” Max groused.

“It’s better than what we had, trust me.”

“What happened?”

“Ah, she fed us terrible food and then said I was crazy for trying to build an inn in the middle of nowhere and get a chef to come out here for little pay in a half-finished kitchen. Basically, what all the chefs have said to me.”

Gabe paused, then gathered the courage to ask the question that had been keeping him up nights.

“Do you think they’re right? Is it nuts to expect a high-caliber chef to come way out here and put their career on the line and their life on hold to see if this place takes off?”

Max tipped his head back and howled, the sound reverberating through the room, echoing off the vaulted ceiling. “Brother, I’ve been telling you this was nuts for over a year. Don’t tell me you’re starting to agree now!”

Gabe smiled. He was discouraged, sure. Tired as all hell, without a doubt. Frustrated and getting close to psychotic about his chefless state, absolutely. But his Riverview Inn was going to be a success.

He’d work himself into the hospital, into his grave to make sure of it.

He had been dreaming of this inn for ten years.

“It’s not like I’ve got no credentials.” He scowled, hating that Melissa had gotten under his skin and that he still felt the need to justify his dream. “I worked my way up to manager in the restaurant in Albany. And I owned one of the top ten restaurants in New York City for five years. I’ve had reporters and writers calling me for months wanting to do interviews. The restaurant reviewer for Bon Appetit wanted to come out and see the property before we even got started.”

“All the more reason to get yourself a great chef.”

“Who?” He rubbed his hands over his face.

“Call Alice,” Max said matter-of-factly, as though Alice was on speed dial or something.

Gabe’s heart chugged and sputtered.

He couldn’t breathe for a minute. It’d been so long since someone had said her name out loud. Alice.

“Who?” he asked through a dry throat. Gabe knew, of course. How many Alices could one guy know? But, surely his brother, his best friend, had not pulled Alice from the past and suggested she was the solution to his problems.

“Don’t be stupid.” Max slapped him on the back. “The whole idea of this place started with her—”

“No, it didn’t.” Gabe felt compelled to resist the whole suggestion. Alice had never, ever been the solution to a problem. She was the genesis of trouble, the spring from which any disaster in his life emerged.

Max shook his head and Gabe noticed the silver in his brother’s temples had spread to pepper his whole head and sprouted in his dark beard. This place was aging them both. “We open in a month and you want to act like a five-year-old?” Max asked.

“No, of course not. But my ex-wife isn’t going to help things here.”

“She’s an amazing chef.” Max licked his lips. “I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve woken up in a cold sweat thinking of that duck thing she made with the cherries.”

Gabe worried at the cut along his thumb with his other thumb and tried not to remember all the times in the past five years he’d woken in a cold sweat thinking of Alice.

“Gabe.” Max laid a hand on Gabe’s shoulder. “Be smart.”

“Last I heard she was a superstar,” Gabe said. He tried to relax the muscles of his back, his arms that had gone tight at the mention of Alice. He tried to calm his heart. “She wouldn’t be interested.”

“When was the last you heard?”

It’s not as though she’d stayed in touch after that first year when they’d divvied up all the things they’d gathered and collected—the antiques from upstate, their kitchen, their friends. “About four years ago.”

“Well, maybe she’ll know of someone. She can at least point you in the right direction.”

Gabe groaned. “I hate it when you’re right,” he muttered.

“Well, I’d think you’d be used to it by now.” Max laughed. “I think I’ll skip lunch and get back to work.” He grabbed his tool belt. “The gazebo should be done by tomorrow.”

“What’s the status on the cottages?” Gabe asked.

“You’ll have to ask Dad.” Max shrugged his broad shoulders and cinched the tool belt around his waist, over his faded and torn jeans. “As far as I know he just had some roofing and a little electrical to finish on the last one.”

Gabe’s affection and gratitude toward his brother and dad caught him right in the throat. The Riverview Inn with its cottages, stone-and-beam lodge and gazebo and walking trails and gardens had been his dream, the goal of his entire working life. But he never, ever would have been able to accomplish it without his family.

“Max, I know I don’t say it enough, but thank you. I—”

Max predictably held up a hand. “You can thank me by providing me with some decent chow. It’s not too much to ask.”

He took his sunglasses from the neck of his fleece and slid them on, looking dangerous, like the cop he’d been and not at all like the brother Gabe knew.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Max said, poised to leave. “Sheriff Ginley has got two more kids.”

“Can either of them cook?”

Max shrugged. “I think one of them got fired from McDonald’s.”

“Great, he can be our chef.”

“I don’t think Sheriff Ginley would smile upon a juvenile delinquent with such easy access to knives.”

The after-school work program for kids who got in trouble in Athens, the small town north of the inn, had been Max’s idea, but Gabe had to admit, the labor was handy, and he hoped they were doing some good for the kids. “They can help you with the grounds.”

“That’s what I figured.” Max smiled wickedly and left, his heavy-booted footsteps thudding through the nearly empty room.

Gabe sighed and let his head fall back. He stared up at the elaborate cedar joists in the ceiling, imagined them with the delicate white Christmas lights he planned on winding around them.

The ceiling would look like the night sky dotted with stars.

It had been one of Alice’s ideas.

He and Alice used to talk about opening a place out of the city. A place on a bluff. He’d talked about cottages and fireplaces and she’d talked about organic ingredients and local produce. They’d been a team then, she the chef, he the consummate host, producer and manager. He’d felt invincible in those early days with Alice by his side.

But then the problems came and Alice got more and more distant, more and more sad with every trip to the doctor, every failed effort that ended in blood and tears and—Well, he’d never felt so helpless in his life.

“Lunch, boys!” Dad called from the kitchen the way he had since their mom walked out on them more than thirty years ago.

Gabe smiled and stood.

Nothing to do but eat a cheese sandwich and get to work. His dream wasn’t going to build itself.

THE HANGOVER POUNDED behind Alice’s eyes. Her fingers shook, so she set down the knife before she diced up her finger along with the tomatoes.

“I’m taking a break,” she told Trudy, who worked across from her at the long stainless steel prep table

Trudy’s black eyes were concerned. “That’s your second break since you’ve been here and it’s only three.”

“Smoker’s rights,” Alice croaked and grabbed a mug from the drying rack by the industrial washer and filled it with the swill Johnny O’s called coffee.

“You don’t smoke,” Trudy pointed out, trying to be helpful and failing miserably. “If Darnell comes back here, what am I supposed to tell him?”

“That he can fire me.” Alice slid her sunglasses from her coat hanging by the door and used her hips to push out into the bright afternoon.

Even with her dark glasses on, the sunshine felt like razor wire against her eyeballs, so after she collapsed onto the bench that had been set up by the Dumpsters for staff, she just shut her eyes against the sun.

The hangover, the sleeplessness, this mindless menial job that paid her part of the mortgage, it all weighed her down like sandbags attached to her neck.

Tonight no drinking, she swore.

She couldn’t change the fact that she’d fallen from chef and owner of Zinnia’s to head line chef at one of the three Johnny O’s franchises in Albany. That damage was already done and she’d come to grips with it.

But she could control the drinking.

A small voice reminded her that she made that promise almost every night.

Sometimes she wanted to punch the small voice, but instead she breathed deep of the slightly putrid air and tried to get Zen about the whole situation. She took a sip of her coffee, and listened to the sound of traffic.

The parking lot was pretty empty, but soon the hungry folks of Albany would be getting off work and looking for a sunny patio and drink specials and a lot of them would head to Johnny O’s. The kitchen would be loud and on fire for about eight hours and in those eight hours, while arranging plates of pasta and firebaked pizzas and grilling steaks and fish specials, she would forget all the reasons she had to drink.

Maybe she’d help the cleaning staff tonight. Work herself into a good exhaustion so she wouldn’t need the red wine to relax.

She tilted her face up to the sun and stretched out her feet, pleased with her plan.

A black truck, mud splattered and beat-up, pulled in to the lot and parked directly across from her. She thought about heading back inside, or at least opening the door and yelling to warn Trudy customers were arriving and the kitchen was on demand. But Trudy had been in the business as long as she had and could handle cooking for a truckload of guys.

But only one guy got out.

One guy, holding a droopy bouquet of yellow roses.

One guy, whose slow amble toward her was painfully, heartbreakingly familiar.

Coffee sloshed onto her pants, so she set the cup down on the bench and clenched her suddenly shaking hands together.

Spots swam in front of her eyes and her head felt light and full, like a balloon about to pop.

The man was tall and lean, so handsome still it made her heart hurt.

He stopped right in front of her and pushed his sunglasses up onto his head, displacing his dark blond hair. The sun was behind him and he seemed so big. She used to love his size, love how it made her feel small and safe. He’d wrap those strong arms around her and she felt protected from the world, from herself.

He smiled like a man who knew all the tastiest things about her.

That smile was his trademark. He could disarm an angry patron at four feet with the strength of his charming smile. He could woo frigid reviewers, disgruntled suppliers…his ex-wife.

“Hello, Alice.” He held out the roses but she couldn’t get her hands to lift and take them.

She left her shades on, so shattered by Gabe’s sudden appearance in front of her, as if the past five years hadn’t happened.

“Gabe.” Her voice croaked again and she nearly cringed.

He took a deep breath, in through his nose, no doubt hoping for a bit more welcome from her, some reaction other than the stoic front that was all she had these days.

His hand holding the roses fell back to his side.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. She sounded accusatory and mean, like a stranger who had never known him at all.

And she felt that way. It was why, in part, the marriage had ended. Despite the late-night talks, the dreams of building a business together, the sex that held them together longer than they should have been, in the end, when things got bad, they really never knew each other at all.

“I could ask you the same thing.” His eyes swept the bench, the back door to Johnny O’s. The Dumpsters.

Suddenly, the reality of her life hammered home like a nail in her coffin. She worked shifts at a chain restaurant and was hungover at three on a Friday afternoon.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen, she thought bitterly, hating herself with a vehemence she usually saved for her dark drunken hours.

“I work here,” she said, battling her embarrassment with the sharp tilt of her head.

He nodded and watched her, his blue eyes cataloging the differences the five years between them had made. And behind her sunglasses, she did the same.

Gabe Mitchell was still devilishly easy on the eyes.

He’d always had her number. One sideways look from him, one tiny grin and she’d trip over her hormones to get into his arms. There was just something about the man and, she surmised after taking in his faded jeans and the black T-shirt with the rip at the collar, the work boots and his general allaround sexiness, there still was something about him.

But, she reminded herself, underneath that lovely candy coating beat one cold, cold heart. She’d learned it the hard way, and she still hadn’t recovered from the frost burn her five-year marriage had given her.

Call it fear of commitment, call it intimacy issues, whatever it was, Gabe had it bad. And watching him walk away from her and their marriage had nearly killed her.

“You look good,” Gabe said and it was such a lie, such an attempt to sweet-talk her, that she laughed. “You do,” he protested.

“Save the charm for someone else, Gabe.” Finally she pushed her shades up onto her head and looked her ex-husband in the eye. “I told you I never wanted to see you again.”

CHAPTER TWO

“AND—” HIS SMILE SEEMED a little brittle around the edges “—I think we both know you didn’t mean it.”

She arched her eyebrows in response. Oh, she’d meant it all right.

“What do you want, Gabe?”

“A guy can’t visit an old friend?”

She laughed outright. At him. At them. At this stupid little dance.

“Gabe, we were never friends.” The lie slipped off her tongue easily. It was better to pretend they had never been friends than to dwell on those memories, to give in to the sudden swell of feelings his presence stirred in her belly. “What. Do. You. Want?”

He ran his fingers through his too-long hair and scowled at her, the fierce look that always warned her he was running out of patience.

Good, she thought, get mad and leave like you always do.

She scowled back. She’d never been overly gracious—she was too busy for that—but in her time with Gabe she’d learned to be polite.

But not anymore. There was no one in her life to be polite to, so she had no practice.

And she wasn’t about to apologize. Not to him.

“I need you,” he said and she fought to keep herself from choking on a sound of disbelief.

“Gabe Mitchell at my door, begging.” She shivered dramatically. “Hell is getting colder.”

“Alice.” He sighed. “This isn’t easy for me. You know that. But I need you. Bad.”

His low tone hit her in the stomach and snaked down to her sex, which bloomed in sudden heat. Too familiar, those words. Too reminiscent of those nights together, when they’d needed each other so much, good sense got burned to ash.

“I really can’t imagine why,” she said, crossing one leg over another, and her arms came across her chest, giving him every signal to stop, to say goodbye and walk away.

But he didn’t and she wondered what was truly at stake here. The Gabe she knew did not fight and he never begged.

“I built the inn,” he said softly. “The one we always talked about.”

It was a slap. A punch in her gut. Her eyes burned from the pain and shock of it. How dare he? He’d walked away with her pride, her self-respect, her dreams of a family and now this.

She wanted to scream, just tilt her head back and howl at the pain and injustice of it all.

The inn. The home they’d dreamed of. He’d built it while she worked shifts grilling grade B steak and making nachos.

She let out a slow breath, emptying her body of air, so maybe the shell she was would just blow away on the wind.

“Good for you,” she managed to say through frozen lips and got to her feet. “I need to go.”

He stopped her, not by touching her—good God wouldn’t that be a disaster—but by getting in her way with his oversize body.

“It’s gorgeous, Alice, you should see it. I named it the Riverview Inn and it’s right on a bluff with the Hudson snaking through the property. You can see the river from the dining room.”

A mean anger seeped into her, culled from her crappy job, her hangover, her ruined life…even from the Dumpster. She didn’t need to be reminded of how much she’d lost and she really didn’t need to be brought face-to-face with how well Gabe had done.

“Like I said—” she didn’t spare the sarcasm “—bully for you. I’ll tell all my friends.” She ducked by him.

“I need a chef, Alice.”

She stopped midstride, snagged for a second on a splinter of hope. Of joy.

Then she jerked herself free and laughed, but refused to meet his earnest blue eyes. Was this real? Was this some kind of trick? A lie? Were the few remaining friends in her life setting up some elaborate intervention?

“Me? Oh, man, you must be in some dire straits if you are coming to me—”

“I am. I am desperate. And—” he inclined his head to the Dumpster, the plaza parking lot “—from the look of things…so are you.”

The bravado and sunglasses didn’t work. He saw right through her and it fueled her bitter anger.

“I’m fine,” she said, stubbornly clinging to her illusions. “I need to get back to work.”

“I want to talk to you about this, Alice. It’s a win-win for both of us.”

“Ah, Gabe Mitchell of the silver tongue. Everything is a win-win until it all goes to shit. No.” She shook her head, suddenly desperate to get away from him and his magnetic force that always spun her in circles. “I won’t be your chef.”

She walked around him, careful not to get too close, not to touch him, or smell him, or feel the heat from his arm.

“I know where you live, Alice,” he said, going for a joke, trying to be charming. “Look, I just want to talk. If you decide after we talk that it’s not for you, fine. That’s totally fine. But maybe you know someone—”

“I don’t.”

“Alice.” He sighed that sigh that weighed on her, that, during their marriage, had filled the distance between them and pushed them further apart. The sigh that said, “Don’t be difficult.”

“I don’t,” she insisted. “I don’t know anyone who would want to live out there.”

“Except you?” Gabe said.

“Not anymore,” she lied. “My break is over. I have to go.”

“I want to talk. Can I meet you at home?” He caught himself. “At your house?”

Painful sympathy leaped in her. He’d loved their house, had craved a home, some place solid to retreat to at the end of the day. He’d finished the basement and hung pictures and shelves and repaired the bad plumbing like a man in love. And in the divorce he’d given it to her, shoved the lovely Tudor away like a friend who’d betrayed him.

“The locks are changed,” she said.

“I’m sure they are, but I’ll bet you a drive out to the inn that you still keep the key under that ceramic frog you bought in Mexico.” He smiled, that crooked half grin. Charm and bonhomie oozing off him and she wanted to tell him no matter how well he thought he knew her, he didn’t.

But the key was under the frog.

“Suit yourself, Gabe,” she told him. “But my answer won’t change.”

“Alice—”

He held out the roses and she ignored them. She hit the door and didn’t look back. She could feel him, the touch of his gaze even through the steel door, through her clothes, through her skin right to the heart of her.

Nope, she shook her head. Not again. Not ever again with that man. She’d worked too hard to forget the past. She’d worked too hard to stop the pain, to cauterize the wounds he’d left in her.

There was nothing he could say that would convince her. Nothing.

“WELL,” Gabe said, tossing the bouquet into the Dumpster. “That went well.”

He shook off the strange sensation in his stomach, brought on by the begging he’d had to do just to get her to listen to him.

Dad would be proud, he thought and the thought actually made him feel better.

He still couldn’t manage to wrap his head around the fact that she worked at Johnny O’s. Last he’d heard, her restaurant, Zinnia or Begonia or something, had gotten a high Zagat rating and someone had approached her about doing a cookbook.

He looked at the neon lights of the cookie-cutter restaurant she’d escaped into and smiled.

This had to bode well for him. She must be dying to get out of this place. He just had to figure out what kind of offer would make her see things his way.

First things first, he’d stop by the house, take stock of her kitchen, run for groceries and have some food waiting for her. Tomato soup and grilled-cheese on sourdough bread, her favorite. Followed up by mint Oreos—another favorite. Maybe he’d get the Beaujolais she loved, set up some candles…

A seduction. He smiled thinking about it, even when something primitive leaped in his gut. It was weird, but he’d set up a sexless chef seduction of his ex-wife.

Whatever it took.

He headed to his truck, climbed in and on autopilot wound his way through Albany to the lower east side. By rote he turned left on Mulberry, right on Pape and pulled in to the driveway of 312.

He took a deep breath, bracing himself.

Empty houses with dark windows disturbed him, ruffled those memories of being a boy and wondering if, when he went downstairs, she would finally be there. If this morning, after all the others, would be the one when the kitchen would be warm, the lights on, the smell of coffee and bacon in the air, and Mom would be sitting at the table. She’d tell him it all had been a mistake and she wouldn’t be leaving, ever again.

Stupid, he told himself. Ancient history. Like my marriage. It’s just a house. It’s not mine anymore.

Finally he looked up at the two-story Tudor—with its big backyard—where they’d planned to start their family. The magnolia tree out front was in full bloom, carpeting the lawn in thick creamy pink and white petals.

Her herb garden looked a little overrun with chives and she must have finally decided that perennials weren’t worth the hassle. Otherwise the house looked amazing.

Sunlight glittered off the leaded windows and he tried not to remember how he’d jumped on the house, probably paying too much. But it hadn’t mattered at the time—the house was meant to be theirs.

And it had been a happy home for a year.

His neck went hot and his fingers tingled. He forced himself to fold the feelings up and shove them back in the box from which they’d sprung.

Don’t care, he told himself ruthlessly, hardening his heart. He let himself go cold, pushing those memories away with the ones of his mother until his heart rate returned to normal, his fingers stopped tingling.

It’s just a building. Not my home.

He got out of the truck and bounded up the slate walkway.

He lifted the blue frog with the bulging eyes that sat on her porch and—as expected—there was the key. But he couldn’t pick it up. His body didn’t obey the messages from his brain. His body wanted to run.

“Hey, man? You need something?” Gabe whirled to find a good-looking, tall…kid. Really. Couldn’t have been older than twenty-six. He stood in the open doorway, a backpack slung over his shoulder.

“Hi,” Gabe started to say. “No. Well, yes. Actually.”

“You selling something?” The kid pointed to the sign Alice had hand printed and posted on the mailbox: No Salesmen, No Flyers, No Religious Fanatics. This Means You.

He smiled, typical Alice.

“No,” he told the kid. “I’m not selling anything. My name is Gabe and I—”

“You’re the dude in the pictures.” The guy smiled and held out his hand. “You look good, keeping in shape.”

Gabe was knocked off stride but managed to shake his hand anyway. “Thanks. Um…I’m sorry, who are you?” And what pictures?

“Charlie, I’m Alice’s roommate.”

Roommate? Gabe’s mouth fell open.

“No, no, man, not like that.” The kid laughed. “Though I did try at the beginning but she pretty much let me know that wasn’t going to be happening. I just pay rent and live in the basement.”

“Why does she need a roommate?” he asked.

Charlie shrugged. “Why does anyone need a roommate? Money, I guess. It’s not for the company that’s for sure. I barely see her anymore. She used to make me dinner.” He whistled through his teeth. “Best food I ever had.”

Gabe’s head reeled, but he saw the sugar he needed to sweeten the deal. Alice needed money, it was the only way his incredibly private ex-wife would ever rent out part of her home and, horrors, share her kitchen with some kid who no doubt scarfed down freeze-dried noodles and Lucky Charms by the boatload.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so hard to convince her—working at Johnny O’s, renting out the basement. He only needed to push down her pride and get her to see what an opportunity he had for her.

“She is a great chef,” Gabe said. “Look, Charlie. If you don’t mind, I was hoping to come in and wait for Alice to get home. I am supposed to have a business meeting with her.”

“Sure, no problem.” Charlie stepped out onto the porch, leaving the heavy wooden storm door open. “Don’t touch her booze, though. She gets crazy if you drink her stuff.”

Gabe nodded, suddenly speechless as Charlie walked by dragging with him Alice’s scent from the house. Roses and lemon swirled out around him, reminding him of the smell of her blue-black curls spread out across the pillows of their marriage bed, the damp nape of her neck after a shower.

“See you around,” Charlie said and took off on a bike.

Gabe lifted his hand in a halfhearted farewell.

Suddenly, the narrow hallway leading back to the living room with its big picture windows looked a mile long.

The brass key in his hand—a standard house key, identical to the one he’d carried on his key chain for years—weighed a thousand pounds.

Need a chef. Need a chef. Need a chef.

He wished it didn’t require going into that house.

He took a deep breath, buffered himself against the ghosts inside and stormed the gates. Immediately he was caught short by the familiarity of their home.

The foyer still had the cut-glass vase filled with overblown pink roses in it—she’d always loved putting it there—and the walls were adorned with their photos. Black-and-white shots from their various trips. Those were the pictures Charlie had referred to. Gabe was in some of them, standing next to the Vietnamese fisherman and the Mexican grandmother who made the best tortillas he’d ever tasted.

What is she doing with these still on the wall? He wondered. He’d emptied all his frames of her, his wallet and photo albums. Looking at his apartment, you’d never guess he’d been married. Looking at her house, you’d never guess she’d been divorced.

He stalked through the house and turned right toward the kitchen, resisting the urge to check out the family room and the back lawn.

More roses sat on the kitchen table. These were fresh, bright yellow buds still.

The kitchen was spotless. Their expensive renovation still looked modern and elegant, such a reflection of his wife.

Ex-wife. Ex.

An image—one of the few to have survived the war between him and Alice—came and went like smoke in sunshine.

The memory was of a random night—a Wednesday or something in March—when nothing special was happening. Alice had come home late from shutting down the restaurant and he’d woken up while she showered. He’d waited for her in this kitchen, dark but for the bright panels of moonlight that lay over the furniture like a sheet. She’d walked in wearing a pair of boxer shorts and nothing else.

She’d smelled sweet and clean. Powdery. Her hair a dark slick down her back. Her lithe body taut and graceful, her skin rosy and fresh.

“You’re better than sleep,” she’d said to him, pressing a kiss to the side of his neck, just south of his ear. He’d touched her back, found those dimples at the base of her spine that he’d loved with dizzying devotion.

And then they’d made slow, sleepy lazy love.

It surprised him at odd times when it seemed as though his Alice years had happened to someone else. When he thought he’d finally managed to put it all behind him.

But looking at his former kitchen, the memory ambushed him, rocked him on his heels and had him struggling for breath that didn’t taste of his ex-wife.

He tore open the maple cabinets, as if he could tear that stubborn memory out of his brain. But in cabinet after cabinet he only found empty shelves. Which was not at all like her. She used to say that having an empty pantry made her nervous. If there wasn’t pasta, garlic and olive oil on hand at all times she wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

Something in his gut twinged. Remorse? Worry?

No, couldn’t be. He was divorced. Papers, signed by both of them, exonerated him from worry and remorse.

But his gut still twinged.

He pulled open the cabinet above the fridge only to find it fully stocked with high-end liquor.

No need for the Beaujolais.

Another cabinet over the chopping block was filled with freeze-dried noodles and cereal.

Charlie’s small stake in the kitchen.

Something warm and fluffy brushed up against his ankles and he looked down to find Felix, their French cat. Another thing she’d gotten in the divorce.

“Bonjour, Felix,” he said with great affection. The gray-and-white cat wasn’t really French—he was south-side Albany Dumpster—but they considered him so due to his love of anchovies, olives and lemon juice.

Gabe opened the fridge and found enough anchovies and expensive olives soaked in lemon juice to keep the cat happy for aeons.

He pulled out a slick, silver fish and fed it to the purring cat. “What’s happening here, Felix?” he asked, stroking the cat’s ears.

During their last big fight, Alice had told him that she would be better off without him. Happier. And he’d jumped at his chance for freedom, relieved to be away from the torture they constantly inflicted on each other.

But, as he looked around the home that hadn’t changed since he’d left, he wondered if this empty kitchen was really better.

Is this happy?

He stopped those thoughts before they went any further. That cold part of himself that didn’t care about her happiness, that only cared about creating the life he needed, the dream that had helped him survive their divorce, slid over him, protecting him from any reality he didn’t want to see.

SHE STUCK AROUND way after her shift, even went so far as to contemplate sleeping in the front corner booth in order to avoid Gabe.

Maybe he’s left, she thought hopefully. She longed for her home, her couch. Her scotch.

Her promise not to drink had evaporated in the heat of Gabe’s smile. She needed a drink after today. She’d barked at Trudy—who only ever tried to be kind to her, even when she was a nag—she’d burned her hand and screwed up two tables of food. And now, as penance, she mopped the tiled floor around the stainless steel prep table as if her life depended on it.

Maybe I should not be a chef, she considered. Maybe she could get into the cleaning profession. Work in one of those big high-rises after hours.

She imagined going back to her home and telling Gabe that she couldn’t be his chef because she was making a career change.

She almost laughed thinking about it.

“Alice?” Darnell poked his head out of the back office that adjoined the main prep area. “Can I speak to you a minute?”

She set the mop back in the bucket and propped it against the wall, making sure it wouldn’t slip, and stepped into the minuscule manager’s office.

“Go ahead and shut the door,” Darnell said from behind the cluttered desk. She had to move boxes of recipe and conduct manuals out of the way in order to shut the door that, as long as she’d been here, had never been shut.

She guessed Trudy had tattled. Again.

“Have a seat.” He gestured to the one folding chair beneath the giant white board with the schedule on it. She had to move a stack of staff uniforms in order to sit.

“If you wanted me to clean your office, Darnell, you could have just asked.” She thought it was a joke, but Darnell didn’t laugh. His brown eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses were stern and a little sad.

Maybe she’d have to up the apology to Trudy. She could buy drinks for the whole staff after work sometime. That should put her back in everyone’s good graces.

“What are you doing cleaning the kitchen?” he asked. “Did you, by chance, not notice the staff we have for that?”

“I was just helping out,” she said. “I’m a team player.”

His mouth dropped open in astonishment for a brief moment, and then he sat back, his chair creaking. “I can only guess you’re kidding.”

She sighed, pulled off her hairnet and yanked out the clasp that held her hair back. She scratched at her scalp. If she was going to get lectured, she was going to do it in some comfort.

“Do you want to be a chef here?” Darnell asked.

No. “Of course.”

“Is that why you show up late, take too many coffee breaks—”

“Everybody does that.”

“And order your coworkers around?”

“No, I just do that for fun.”

“Trudy doesn’t think it’s fun,” he said through pursed, white lips. “I don’t understand why you pick on her. She’s the nicest—”

That’s why Alice picked on her. Nice made her feel mean. Kindness hurt. “I’ll apologize—”

Darnell leaned forward on his desk. “I hired you based on your reputation and the few amazing meals I had at Zinnia.” Her gut clenched at the name of her failed restaurant, her baby, her reason for living after Gabe and she ended. “I thought you’d make this franchise something special.”

Her mouth fell open and she grabbed a recipe manual from the stack at her knee. “I cook from a manual, Darnell. It’s against corporate policy to do something special.”

“But you haven’t even tried, have you? We have nightly specials and I gave you carte blanche.”

“Right, and I’ve—”

“Served the same thing for two weeks, despite the fact that no one orders it. Our customers don’t like duck, Alice. But those ribs you made two months ago were amazing, and you served them for two days. That’s it. It’s like you don’t want to succeed.”

Darnell watched her expectantly and Alice dropped her eyes to the recipe manual. She didn’t want sympathy. She didn’t want to talk about her problems. She wanted to work, pay off the outrageous amount of money she owed the bank and annoy Trudy. That’s it.

And drink. Dear God. I need a drink.

“Alice, I don’t know the whole story behind what happened at Zinnia—”

“I’ll talk to Trudy and I’ll put the ribs back up on the specials board.” She stood, stared at Darnell with tired eyes. “I have to be back here tomorrow for—”

“No.” Darnell shook his head. “You don’t.”

She slumped.

“You’re fired.”

ALICE’S CAR rolled slowly down Pape and she could see the dim lights, the shadow of someone moving through her kitchen window. She knew it wasn’t Charlie.

He’s still here, she thought and hit the garage-door opener on her dashboard. An itchy anger chugged through her bloodstream like a drug, making her head spin.

Gabe was the last thing she needed tonight.

The heavy white door lifted and she drove into the parking spot between the empty freezers and the golf clubs Gabe had left. She tried to gather whatever resources were left in her tired, drinkcraving, jobless body.

After the day she’d had, there weren’t many left. Gabe reentering her life dredged up feelings she’d been managing, longings she’d been subduing.

But tonight those feelings were here in force, like weights on her heart.

I wish I wasn’t alone.

I wish I had a family.

And he was in there with dim lights and probably tomato soup, something she lost the taste for after he left.

She chewed her beleaguered thumbnail and watched the door between the garage and kitchen as though it might open and Gabe would come running out throwing knives at her car. Not that she was scared of him, just scared of what they were when they were together.

“I don’t need anything,” she whispered her oftrepeated mantra that eventually got her through the worst days. “There is nothing I want.”

But the fates had conspired tonight. Her mortgages—both of them—were due at the end of the week and she had only enough money to cover one.

Am I too old to sell my body? she wondered. But that was a bit drastic, even for her.

She felt raw and panicked, like a trapped animal. Gabe was going to make her an offer she couldn’t refuse and she wanted to punish him for it. She wanted him to pay for coming back here and rubbing his success in her face.

She wanted to pick the scabs between them, scratch at old wounds.

I want to fight. Alice smiled, feeling feral. And there’s nothing in this world that Gabe hates more than a fight.

She opened the door between the garage and the kitchen and Gabe looked up at her from the bread he sliced at her kitchen table. He was too handsome for words in this light.

“You’re still here,” she said, unbuttoning her dirty chef’s whites. “You make yourself at home?”

His smile dimmed a bit, no doubt startled by her biting sarcasm. She came out swinging, hoping to get a few licks in before he made her that offer and she had to take it.

“Did you take the tour?” she asked, throwing the dirty jacket on the table. “Visit the baby’s room?”

His eyes turned to stone. His smile became a grimace.

“Alice.” There was that sigh again. It told her, better than words, better than failed doctor’s appointments, better than divorce papers, that he was disappointed in her.

And immediately she regretted wanting to fight over this. A fight she never won.

“Alice, there was no baby.”

CHAPTER THREE

“FOR YOU,” she said, her eyes narrowed like a cat backed into a corner. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?”

He didn’t want to deal with this Alice, the Alice from the end of their marriage. He’d take her cool sarcasm, her judgment and disdain over this Alice—the Alice who wanted to talk about things.

He didn’t like this Alice.

“There were no babies, period.”

Every fiber in his body, his gut, told him to walk out the door. He didn’t have it in him to go another round over this.

She still wallowed in their old misery, he could see it in her black eyes. The miscarriages were all fresh. Real.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” he said, pushing away the bread. “I’m not here for that.”

Her laughter sounded like ice breaking. “Really? And here I thought you finally wanted to sit down and talk—” She pretended to be surprised when he stood.

“This isn’t going to work.” He slammed the serrated knife onto the small cutting board. “Coming here was a mistake.” He grabbed his keys and headed for the front door.

“Ah, the infamous Gabe Mitchell cold shoulder as he heads for the door. How I have missed that.” Her sarcasm raked him and suddenly he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

He put his hand on the doorknob and at the same time, she tentatively touched his elbow and a spark of electricity shot up his arm.

“No. Stop. Please, Gabe.” Her tone held a certain honesty that he couldn’t walk away from. He could walk away from her anger and sarcasm, her lies and evasions. But when she was vulnerable—he just couldn’t walk away.

He stopped, his shoulders hunched as if to protect himself. He noticed and immediately straightened.

“I’m—” He could hear her swallow around the words. “I’m sorry. I…forget I said anything.”

He weighed the cost of turning around. Of sitting back at that kitchen table, the one from her grandmother.

He needed a chef and she was the best.

He turned and looked right into her liquid black eyes. “No more talk about the marriage or the miscarriages.” He shook his head. “It’s counterproductive. For both of us.”

She huffed a little laugh and licked her lips. “Okay. You’re right.”

He sat down in the midst of the awkward silence that breathed between them, but he was satisfied that the past wouldn’t leap out at him anymore, ambushing his plans for the inn.

“You want something to drink?” she asked, heading for the cabinet above the fridge. She stood on tiptoe and pulled down a bottle of red wine.

And, despite himself, he watched her move. Her pale skin glowed in the half light. She’d lost some of the lush curvy weight she’d carried in happier days. Her arms were muscled from the hard work of running a kitchen, but the rest of her was a whipcord.

She looked as if she’d missed too many meals. She looked tough.

“I thought you might be hungry,” he said. She hadn’t even glanced at the stove even though he knew she could smell the tomato soup.

“I ate at work,” she said and he didn’t force the issue. He’d bet the inn she was lying.

“Wine?” she asked, holding up a bottle.

“I’d love some.” He forced himself to be warm to her, cordial. Due to years of practice, he could slip into gracious without batting an eye. It was a suit he donned when he needed it. “I’ve got Oreos.”

That made her smile, and the tension in the room cracked and he could breathe again.

“I met your roommate,” Gabe said, watching her uncork the bottle like a professional. “Nice guy.”

He tried to steer the conversation toward her situation, remind them both, no matter how unsavory, they needed each other.

“He’s clean and pays the rent on time.”

“Sounds like the proper arrangement. How was work?”

“Why don’t we just cut to the chase here, Gabe.”

She popped the cork, poured a perfect four ounces in each glass, grabbed a cookie from the package on the table, then retreated across the kitchen. She hoisted herself onto the counter, sitting in the shadows. He could only see the gleam of her skin, the shine of her eyes and her shaking hands as she lifted her glass to her mouth and drank like a woman in need.

Again, his gut told him to get out of that kitchen, away from the quicksand of Alice’s pain.

“Go ahead, Gabe,” she said. “Give me your pitch.”

He rubbed his face, wondering how he’d ended up here, of all places.

“Having second thoughts?” she asked, her voice a sarcastic coo from the darkness by the stove. “Wondering if your ex-wife might be drinking a bit too much? Thinking maybe she’s just a little too much trouble?”

“Yep,” he told her point-blank. She poured herself another glass, not even trying to assuage his fears.

“Well, you had to be pretty damn desperate to come find me. So unless things have changed since this afternoon, you’re still pretty damn desperate, right?”

He nodded.

“Let me tell you, drunk or not, I’m still the best chef you know. So, give me your pitch.”

“I can’t ask you to do this if you’re…not stable.”

“I’m plenty stable, Gabe. I just drink too much after work. I drink too much so I can live in this house and not go crazy.”

He understood that all too well, but it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t jeopardize the Riverview Inn with a bad decision, and Alice could be a very bad decision.

“But Zinnia? What happened there?”

“I didn’t realize I was applying for a job. You came to me.”

“Yeah, I came to you in a parking lot at Johnny O’s. You’re the best chef I know, but something’s happened to you and I think I need to know before I make you an offer.”

“I’ll worry about me, you worry about your inn.” She stared unflinchingly into his eyes and he knew from years of hard experience that he wouldn’t get any more from her.

“I could leave,” he said, a warning he knew he really couldn’t follow through on.

“You have before,” she said. “But I think you’re too desperate to walk out that door and—” her smile was wan “—I’m too desperate to let you. Tell me what the job is.”

Honesty again, when he’d least expected it, and as usual when she was real with him, he couldn’t refuse.

“The position is executive chef at Riverview Inn. Opening day is May 1.”

She choked on her Oreo. “That’s a month away. Cutting it close, don’t you think?”

“No one knows that better than me right now.” He smiled ruefully. “As bad as that sounds it’s actually worse. I have the Crimpson wedding in June and—”

“Crimpson? Crimpson frozen foods?” she asked and he nodded. “Well, that’s quite a feather in your cap.”

“Right, so it’s pretty important that the event be flawless.”

“Two months?” she asked. She leaned over the stove and waved the scent of the soup up to her nose. “Opening day in four weeks and a wedding in eight?”

“After the event you can walk away,” he told her. “And I imagine it would be best if you did.”

She dipped her pinkie in the red liquid and touched it to her tongue. “I imagine it would, too.” She hopped down from the counter and opened the cupboard to the left of the gas stove. She sprinkled the soup with balsamic vinegar and a couple of twists from the black-pepper grinder and tasted again. She nodded, so he guessed it was better.

“Staff?” she asked.

Gabe didn’t answer and her black eyes pinned him to the wall. “Staff?” she repeated.

“A young guy with some excellent past experience.” Gabe watched the wine in his glass instead of meeting her eyes and hoped that kid who’d been fired from McDonald’s could be trusted around knives and headstrong chefs.

“I’ll need more,” she said.

“You going to take the job?”

“Not so fast,” she said, pulling down the kosher salt from the cupboard and giving the soup a few hefty pinches. “What are you going to pay me?”

He braced himself. “Twenty—”

“Nope.”

“You’ll only be there two months.”

“I won’t be there at all for twenty grand.”

“Okay.” He sighed, having expected that. His budget for a far less experienced chef was forty grand for the year. He was blowing everything on this gamble—he’d have to take money from the landscaping funds to pay another chef when she left. “Thirty. For two months’ work, I won’t give you more.”

She tasted the soup again, nodded definitively and took it off the burner.

“Are you going to have any?” Gabe asked, gesturing to the heavy pot.

“Nope. And I won’t go to your inn for thirty grand, either.”

“Thirty-five and some shares in the place.”

Her eyes burned fever bright. He knew what shares represented. Income. Success. And after two months she wouldn’t have to work for it.

It would help, maybe after they split ways again. Make it so she wouldn’t have to work at a terrible job or share her house with a stranger.

“You know it’s a good deal. I’ve never had a restaurant not turn a profit.”

She rubbed her forehead and he knew he had her. It was just a matter of sealing the deal.

“It would be a fresh start, Al.”

Her nickname warmed the air.

“It hardly seems fresh.” She laughed. “You’re my ex-husband and this is an old plan of ours. It feels like trouble.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” He laughed, too. “But you’d have total run of the kitchen.”

She scoffed. “Right.”

“I’m serious, I’ll be very busy—”

“Getting in my way.” She looked at him for a brief moment and all the problems in their relationship—the fights and clashing egos—for some reason, in this room with the wine, he felt…nostalgic for them. Those nights when he made her so mad she threw things at him, broke plates against the floor and ruined meals with her temper. The long days when he wouldn’t talk to her, giving her a silent treatment so cold and deep that the only way to thaw both of them…

She cleared her throat, seeming uncomfortable, as if she’d been thinking the same thing. “I’ll do it.”

Gabe felt both jubilant and wary. Is this the right thing? Am I making a deal with the devil? “I’m so glad.”

“But—” she held up a finger “—I’m out of there the second that wedding is over and I run the kitchen. Not you.”

He nodded, stood and held out his hand.

“I’m serious, Gabe. I won’t have you trying to take things over. You hired me to be executive chef—”

“I promise.” He put his hand on his chest and bowed his head slightly. “I absolutely promise to stay out of your way as long as you promise to try to be a team player. My dad and Max—”

“Your dad and Max are there?” she asked, bright joy filtering through the dark clouds on her face.

“They are and they’ll be very glad to see you.”

She smiled and held out her hand. “I can be a team player.”

“And I can stay out of your way.”

They shook on it and Gabe had to wonder who was going to break their promise first.

PATRICK MITCHELL watched his oldest son walk away whistling.

Whistling! And after the bomb Gabe had just laid on them, watching him whistle was akin to watching him hit himself in the head with a ball-peen hammer.

“Alice?” Patrick, incredulous, turned to his youngest son. “Max? Alice was your idea?”

Max ignored him, or pretended to, and poured more eggshell paint in the trays. He practiced being oblivious as though there was a contest.

“Son.” Patrick tried again as Max dipped his roller in the paint and began applying their last coat on the last wall of the kitchen. “I leave you alone with him for ten minutes and this is what you do? Are you trying to ruin this inn?”

“He needed a chef.” Max shrugged, but there was a smile on his lips. “Alice is a chef.”

Patrick nodded. “She is, sure. But she’s also pure trouble for that boy.”

“I thought you liked Alice,” Max said.

“I do. I love her like a daughter but they are trouble for each other and she is the last thing your brother needs.”

“Please.” Max looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but still that devil’s smile was on his lips. If the situation weren’t so dire, Patrick would be happy to see Alice. “They’re grown-ups. They can make it work. At least we’ll eat well while she’s here. I’m about a week away from liver failure after eating your cooking for the past few months.”

Patrick’s mouth dropped open. “Where did I go wrong?” He pretended to be upset, when really these past few months had been the happiest of his life. This teasing was their old shtick. Kept them from ever having to address anything head-on—such as emotion. Such as the past. “I’m supposed to be growing senile on a porch somewhere with grandkids on my knee. Not working manual labor for one son and roommates with the other.”

“Right, because living with my dad is exactly what I want to be doing,” Max said without heat, and Patrick yearned, absolutely longed, to ask his boy what had happened to him. What was wrong. What was still hurting him so badly from the shooting last year that sent him into this tailspin. It wasn’t as though he was that different—the scar on his neck was new, sure. But he still laughed. He still made every effort to get the best of his brother. But it was as though he did those things because he was supposed to, not because he wanted to. Something had happened to leach the joy out of his boy, and he wanted to know what that was.

But if he asked, Max would probably fall on the floor in heart failure or shock. The Mitchell men didn’t ask probing questions.

So, they worked, the way they always did, instead of saying the important things. And Patrick hoped that whatever Max needed he was getting in some way.

The back door to the kitchen opened, letting in a warm breeze and a shaft of bright spring sunlight.

A woman stood in the doorway but it wasn’t Alice. The woman didn’t give off the kinetic energy that had surrounded his daughter-in-law.

Ex-daughter-in-law.

“Excuse me?” she said, stepping from the bright doorway into the kitchen. The door shut behind her and her features emerged from silhouette. “I’m looking for the chef.” She had a pretty smile that turned her plain face into something quite lovely.

“She’s not here,” Max said.

And his dumb son watched the paint dry in front of him rather than look at the pretty girl to his left.

Patrick despaired for the boy, he really did.

“She’s supposed to be here Monday,” Max said. He darted a quick look her way, then returned to the careful application of a second coat of pale cream paint on a pale cream wall, as though failure could blow up the building.

“Maybe there’s something we could do for you?” Patrick asked, stepping into the breach.

“Well, is Gabe—”

“Hello?” Gabe ducked his head out of the small office he’d built off the kitchen. “Hi!” He caught sight of the woman and Patrick knew his eldest son would appreciate how she appeared plain but somehow interesting all the same. True to form, Gabe smiled, the old charmer, and shook the woman’s hand. “I’m Gabe.”

Patrick shot Max a look that said, “That’s how you do it, nincompoop.” Max just rolled his eyes.

“I’m Daphne from Athens Organics. We talked briefly on the phone yesterday. I was hoping to meet with your chef about being a supplier for your kitchen.”

“Of course,” Gabe said, “My chef isn’t here yet, but I’m so glad you stopped by. Come on into my office.” He opened the door for her and she smiled girlishly and Max rolled his eyes again.

Silence filled the kitchen after Gabe shut the office door. Patrick watched his son paint and Max ignored him.

“You’re a virgin, aren’t you?” Patrick asked.

“Shut up, Dad.”

“It’s the only thing that explains why you’re such an idiot around women.”

“I’m not an idiot, I’m just not…Gabe. And that’s fine by me.” He smiled, that sharp, wicked smile from the corner of his mouth. It made Patrick feel as though the boy he remembered with the temper and the laugh that could light up a room was still in there somewhere. “And it’s pretty okay by the women I have sex with, too.”

“Thank God.”

Max laughed, sort of. And Patrick’s heart leaped.

Now, he wondered. Is now the right time? The letter he’d been carrying in the front chest pocket of his work shirt felt like deadweight against his chest. At night, it sat on his bedside table and glowed with a life of its own.

He couldn’t sleep. He didn’t eat. He took a hundred bathroom breaks a day so he could sit down and reread the words he’d memorized.

The office door opened and Gabe and Daphne stepped back into the kitchen. Her color was high and her smile ready as they shook hands. Gabe walked her out the door to her car.

“Maybe he’s going to start working on those grandkids you want,” Max said, nodding in the direction his brother had gone. “It’s about time, the guy’s been thinking about a family since he could walk.”

I just want them to know love. To know love like I knew it, is that so hard? Patrick wondered. So impossible?

The subject of love was a sore one among the Mitchell men. Had been since Iris walked out on them thirty years ago.

Not that he was counting.

“You know—” he dipped his paintbrush into the can of paint he’d set on the top step of the ladder and watched Max for a reaction “—when you lost your mother—”

“Dad.” Max practically growled the word. “What is this new fascination with Mom? You haven’t mentioned her in years and now every time I turn around you’re bringing her up.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m living with her son, who is just as moody and muleheaded as she was.”

Max fell silent. Any reminder of being like his mother could turn him off like a light switch.

“When you lost her—”

“You make it sound like she died!” Max cried, finally setting the roller down. “Or like we misplaced her somewhere. She left. She walked away. I don’t want to talk about her. If you want to reminisce about the past, talk to Gabe.”

Gabe had given him the same reaction every time he tried talking about Iris. Patrick couldn’t blame them—Iris had walked away from them, which, as Gabe had told him, was worse than if she’d died.

She didn’t want us, Dad. She didn’t want any of us, he’d said.

It wasn’t true—entirely. She had wanted them, but there had been things happening that the boys were too young to understand or remember. They didn’t understand why Patrick didn’t just get over it. Over her.

He’d held out a thin ribbon of hope that maybe, just maybe Iris would realize she’d made a mistake and she’d forgive his. Ignore his foolish anger and pride. For years he’d held on to that ribbon. Two weeks ago she’d finally picked up her end.

CHAPTER FOUR

MONDAY MORNING Alice opened the kitchen door of the Riverview Inn and stepped into a dream. Her dream.

Doubt, second thoughts, worry that she’d somehow screw this up the way she’d screwed up Zinnia, had plagued her for the past three days, since taking the job. Uncertainty had dogged her as she drove down from Albany. But now, as she set down her bag and tried to catch her breath, worry vanished.

This kitchen was hers. Meant to be hers. It was as if Gabe had opened her head and pulled out the daydreams and plans she’d been accumulating over the years.

A south-facing window overlooking a brilliant green forest filled the room with sunshine. The pale cream walls seemed to glow in the clear morning light and the appliances sparkled, clean and unused.

Racks of pots hung from the ceiling. She reached up and carefully knocked the saucepan into a sauté pan and reflected light scattered across the far wall.

It was the most beautiful kind of chandelier.

A stainless steel table filled the bottom portion of the L-shaped room beside two big glass-front refrigerators.

In a place that was often busy and loud and filled with a sort of graceful chaos, the silence of the downtimes seemed almost healing.

A kitchen at rest, a kitchen such as this one, was a beautiful thing. A place of peace.

She ran her hand along the chopping block sitting next to the stove. The same monster slab of oak, easily ten inches thick, used to sit in their house. It had come from Gabe’s mother whose parents had been Polish butchers. Thousands of pigs had been bled on that wood, thousands of cabbages had been chopped, thousands of perogies had been rolled and formed there. Alice wanted to climb on top of it and dance.

This kitchen even smelled like a fresh start.

I will stop drinking, she promised. I will not waste this chance. She made the promise even as the remainder of last night’s wine throbbed in her skull. I will swallow my resentment and try very hard not to fight with my ex-husband.

“Hey,” Gabe said from behind her as if her promise had conjured him. She couldn’t quite face him yet. Things in her were shaken loose by the beauty of the place, by her earnest desire to deserve this fresh start.

“Executive chef,” she said, opening a door to find a small closet, lined with shelves, ready for spices and root vegetables, maple syrup and vinegars, “reporting for duty.”

“What do you think?” he asked and she finally had to look at him. For an instant she wanted to shield her eyes from the radiant brightness of him. He was clean and fresh in a wrinkled white shirt and khaki pants, his blond hair mussed by his hands, his face tanned from working outside.

He looked like a lifeguard. A Swiss Alps skirescue guy. He just needed the dog.

She felt small in comparison, dark and mean, dressed in black because it didn’t require her to think to coordinate.

“Alice?” he said, breaking in to her ugly comparisons. He ducked his head to look into her eyes and smiled. “What do you think? Recognize it?”

She realized, belatedly, that the kitchen wasn’t a coincidence. She’d told him a million times what a kitchen should look like according to her. She’d sketched the floor plan on the bare skin of his back over and over again.

“It’s amazing,” she said, her joy in finding her dream brought to life turning to cold resentment. Of course he would take this for himself, too. “You know that.”

“I practically have the floor plan tattooed on my back.” He grinned and the reminder of their intimacies, casually uttered out loud, chilled her to the bone. “When the time came to design the kitchen, I just remembered everything you taught me.”

It was a compliment, probably a sincere one, but she didn’t want compliments.

This is not mine, she told herself, ripping the dream from her clenched fists. I am hired help. I am a bit player. She had no business coveting the butcher’s block, imagining years of early mornings in this kitchen, planning menus.

There is nothing I want, she reminded herself. There is nothing I need.

She forced cold distance into her head and her heart and when she looked at the beautiful kitchen, the chandelier of pots and pans, she just saw things. Inanimate objects that had no relationship to her, that cost her nothing and only represented a way to get out of debt and move on with her life.

They were tools. That’s all. Gabe, this kitchen, the whole inn, they were a means to an end.

“I think we better get to work if you want to open in a month,” she said, cold as ice.

“But did you see the view?” Gabe pointed to the window. “Come on, we can have coffee and take a walk around the grounds. We have a capacity of one hundred guests between the cottages and the lodge, which we’re hoping—”

“No.” She shook her head. “I just want to work, Gabe. That’s all.”

For a moment she thought he might ask her what was wrong. Instead, true to form, he nodded in that definitive way that always indicated he was biting his tongue. “Okay. Come on into the office and we’ll talk—”

“Get your hands off me!” someone yelled, and both Gabe and Alice whirled to the doorway leading to the dining room. They stood like deer in headlights while the swinging door banged open and Max and a teenage boy plowed into the kitchen. “Didn’t you hear what I said!” The kid, practically drowning in oversize black clothes, yelled.

“Yep. And I’m not touching you.”

“Good, don’t start.”

Alice nearly stepped back, as though the kid were a rabid dog.

“Here he is,” Max said and from the corner of her eye she saw Gabe’s mouth fall open.

“You’re kidding me,” he said.

“Nope.” Max shook his head. “This is Cameron.”

“Cut that out, man,” Cameron said, jerking himself away from Max. “The name is Chaz.”

“Chaz makes you sound like an idiot,” Max said. “Your name is Cameron.”

“Hi, Max,” Alice said, pleased to see her former brother-in-law. The best things about Gabe were his brother and father, both as emotionally retarded as Gabe, but at least they didn’t try to pretend otherwise.

“Hey, Alice,” Max said with a quick grin. “Good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too.” She meant it. “How you keeping?”

“Starving,” he said. “We’ve been living on toast and freeze-dried noodles around here.”

Alice shuddered and Max’s grin stretched into a smile. He looked thin, painfully so, and wounded in some dark way, as if all the intensity that had illuminated him was banked, burning out.

“What the hell am I doing here, man?” Cameron, or whatever his name was, asked. “This is an afterschool program.”

“Not when you’ve got a day off school. Then it’s an all-day program.” Max answered.

“This your love-child you never told us about?” Alice asked Max, falling into their old give-and-take.

“This dude ain’t my father,” Cameron answered for him.

“Gabe didn’t tell you?” Max asked, his dark eyebrows hitting his hairline, and Alice suddenly felt a serious lack of information.

“Tell me what?” She crossed her arms over her chest, just in case Gabe misinterpreted her tone as happy.

It took a moment, but Gabe finally issued a response. He looked at her, put on his game face and said, “He’s your staff.”

“Bullshit!” the kid yelled.

Alice laughed. “I’m with him.”

Gabe winced and remained silent, which could mean only one thing. Alice’s mouth fell open. “You’re kidding.”

He shook his head.

“You’re kidding.” She turned to Max, who only shrugged.

She finally focused on the kid, whose eyes met hers briefly. “I got nothing to kid about,” he said, looking as unhappy as she felt.

She shook her head. “I can work alone until I get proper staff.”

“Okay,” Max said, opening the swing door behind him. “Let’s go back to stacking that wood.”

“This is bullshit!” The kid hollered as Max led him into the dining room.

Gabe’s silence worried her, actually set small stones atwirl in her stomach. “What aren’t you telling me, Gabe?”

“There’s no money for staff unless you take a pay cut,” he said point-blank. “Not until the next check comes in from the Crimpsons.”

“When will that be?” She asked, disbelieving.

“Two weeks.”

“Even if that kid was Cordon Bleu trained, I couldn’t pull together the menu for this wedding with one staff member!”

“I know.” He rubbed his forehead. “We open in a month and I’ve already got some reservations and am running an Internet spring promotion, so I should get more. I can make this work. We can use the money—”

She laughed, listening to him rob from Peter to pay Paul.

“You think this is funny?” he asked, his blue eyes dangerously clouded over.

“A little, yeah.”

“Great. Wonderful attitude from my chef.”

“You hired a chef, Gabe. Not a cheerleader. If you’re screwing up—”

Her comment must have lit his dormant temper because he bristled. “I’m not screwing up. You’re the one doing two months’ work for the price of what I had earmarked for a yearly chef’s salary.”

She shrugged. “You should have gotten a beginner chef.”

“No, you should have been reasonable.”

“Ah, I thought I recognized that voice.”

Patrick Mitchell’s loud voice boomed through the kitchen, stalling their argument as he stepped in from the outside. His red flannel shirt matched his ruddy cheeks and it was as if the sun had come out from behind clouds. Indomitably cheerful, that was Patrick, and she was inordinately glad to see him.

“There’s only one person Gabe actually fights with,” Patrick said and held out his thick burly arms. Alice allowed herself to be hugged, the sensation odd but pleasant enough since it didn’t last too long.

When was the last time someone touched me? she wondered. Even casually. That awkward embarrassing kiss from Charlie months ago, when she’d been so lonely and sad and drunk that she’d let him touch her.

She didn’t know when she lost the capacity for casual touch, when any sort of physical affection, no matter how benign, made her ache.

“How is my favorite former daughter-in-law?” Patrick asked, his blue eyes twinkling.

Some of the tension from locking horns with Gabe fell away and she smiled, even patted Patrick’s grizzled cheek.

“Don’t tell me he’s got you working here, too?” she asked.

“Slave labor.” Patrick shook his head, always one for teasing. “At least now we’ll have decent chow.”

“Don’t be too sure, Dad,” Gabe said, leaning against the doorjamb of his office. “She may have decided she doesn’t like the terms.”

“Always trying to make it my fault, aren’t you, Gabe.”

“If the shoe—”

“Wonderful!” Patrick rubbed his hands together. “If you don’t mind, Max and I are just going to pull up some chairs and watch you two duke it out for the next few months. That way no work will get done.” His eyes flicked from her to Gabe, who, chagrined by his father’s reverse chastisement, looked down at his shoes.

“I told Max this was going to be trouble,” Patrick said and she could feel his direct gaze on her face.

She’d only been here minutes and already things were going wrong.

“I can make it work,” Gabe said, resolute. “It won’t be a problem.”

“For you,” she said.

“You, either,” Gabe insisted, his tone hard, his smile sharp. “I will make it work.”

She nodded, wondering why she felt so small. So dark and ill-tempered. He was the one who had lied, who had told her he had staff. She shouldn’t feel bad because she was making him hold up his end of the bargain.

“You always do,” she said. He did. He could make gold out of hay without making it look hard.

“Ah, that’s how children should play,” Patrick said. “Nice.”

“Don’t you have some work to do, Dad?” Gabe asked.

“I’m going to hook up your fancy dishwasher,” he said, pointing to the far corner of the room where a dishwasher sat, with its tube and wire guts spread out across the floor.

He winked at Alice and vanished behind the equipment.

“Let’s get to work,” she said and pushed past Gabe into his minuscule office. “I’ve got some ideas for menus.”

GABE HAD PREPARED himself for the worst. He was fortified by too much caffeine, and ready to do battle with Alice over kitchen operations. But, surprisingly, there was no battle. It didn’t take long for them to ease into their old routine. They were rusty at first, but the one thing they’d always shared—well, two things—was that they were both perfectionists. Fortunately they both had the same idea of what perfect was.

“All right—” Alice looked down at her notebook “—breakfast buffets at the beginning. You have some kind of waitstaff, or do you expect me to do that?” She glanced at him from beneath her lashes and her eyes, black as night, twinkled just a little more than they had before, and he sighed.

“I’ve got staff.”

“Juvenile delinquents?” She was having too much fun with this at his expense. “Cameron going to be your front-of-house staff? He’ll be a real hit with guests.”

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