“You’ve been seen with her.”
“And where did this miraculous event allegedly take place?”
“Behind the pharmacy.”
“Standing in close proximity in a parking lot doesn’t equate to anything even close to interest.”
“Honey, the story I heard was that your hands were all over the back of her embarrassingly high-waisted trousers.”
“And who told you this fairy tale?”
Kristen rattles off a name, but I don’t hear it. I gulp air as my thoughts whirl into a bottomless spiral.
Most of the stories floating around town are fiction, but that one’s true. Luke insists on discretion. We got sloppy. Well, hedid. He sneaked up behind me when I was shoving a box of pharmacy supplies into the trunk of the doctor’s car. He nibbled on my neck, and his wayward palm squeezed my backside.
“Let me spoil you tonight,” he murmured. “Dinner. Then…” He filled the gap with a kiss.
It was the first time he asked me over to do anything except—and this is the polite way to put it—fornicate.
That night was the most fun I’ve had since my divorce.
Luke isn’t just a chef. He’s a celebrity chef. His face is everywhere now that he’s guest-starred on a TV cooking show. The night he invited me over, he whipped up a roast chicken for dinner, but somehow, that simple meal was the best I’ve ever eaten. Dessert was sipping champagne on his deck overlooking the ocean and then rolling around in his silk sheets for a few hours. It was almost morning when I snuck out, barefoot, my loafers clutched in my hand like a guilty college kid stealing home before the world woke up.
Luke spoils me. It’s nice. Having someone care about whether I breathe again is addictive, but he made no promises to me. He doesn’t want everyone to know his business. I understand. I don’t want anyone to know mine, either. Certainly not Kristen.
“So, that’s the town scandal?” Faint amusement edges Luke’s voice. “I offered to help Elsie carry a few boxes. Bloody hell.Thisis why I avoid dating.”
“There’s a difference between dating and fu—”
“Ignore the gossip, Kris.”
“There’s never been much gossip about you.”
“And I’d like to keep it that way—especially with that bottom-feeding journalist sniffing around ahead of the festival next month.”
“A tabloid scoop about you and the pretentious old maid?” Kristen laughs. “I’ll buy a copy and frame it.”
He laughs with her. “I have absolutely no interest in settling down. And if I did, it certainly wouldn’t be with a train wreck like Elsie Hoskins.”
“Not your type?”
“She’s a zero out of ten.”
Luke’s cruel words twist around my chest until all the air squeezes out of my lungs. The gravel sways and swirls beneath my feet.
Train wreck?
Zero?
My mind claws through the last three months, desperately grasping for something—anything—that makes sense. I almost miss the deep grunt of annoyance.
“Something to add, Sawyer?” Kristen demands. “Surelyyoudon’t care about the dating life of the woman who answers telephones at the clinic?”
As if the humiliation can’t get any worse. The fisherman’s there too.
“Keep me out of your bullshit,” is the blunt reply. “I won’t stand around listenin’ while you two spew trash about that woman. Take a hard fuckin’ look at yourselves.”
At leastsomeone’slooking out for me.
