He heard the impassioned sigh she gave before she pushed her stool a few feet away.
“When we first met ten years ago, did you ever imagine we’d become friends?”
Her gorgeous eyes immediately went to slits. “What made you ask me that? Aren’t we talking about Operation Madison?”
“In a second.” He sipped his mezcal smoothly, leaning an elbow on the island. “Answer the question.”
Her frustrated exhale ruffled her short black bangs. “No. You looked way too perfect back then.”
Another sip coated the dryness of his mouth. “What changed your mind?”
She started tugging at her black jeans as if she couldn’t bear to look at his face. “You were kind to Thea. Nanine adored you. And you didn’t make fun of me or try to get into my pants and then act like we’d never met. There! Are you happy now?”
His heart pulsed with hurt for her, and he recalled what she’d said earlier about making her own birthday cake, over and over again, as a kid. Some people would have given up and stopped making a cake or celebrating altogether. That took determination—and a desire for happiness, didn’t it? He filed that away. “Do you know what I thought about you?”
“That I had great fashion sense?” She smirked. “No, what?”
He bit his lip to keep from chuckling. “I thought you were awesome with all your badass rebel attitude. You didn’t give a shit about who I’d been in Austin or who my family was. None of that impressed you. In fact, it worked against me. I got to start fresh and just be me.”
“We all had a second chance to ditch our past.” She took a healthy sip of her drink. “But some things linger, don’t they? Like me loving mezcal. It’s from my other life, just like you’ve carried things from your past here with you.”
He didn’t know where she was going with this line, so he waited. Patiently. Like he always did.
She finally looked him straight in the eye, and he could see the fear banked in her gaze. “You want to know why we’re friends, Kyle? It’s because you always stop and listen before you act. Usually in my interest.”
His inner wince made him shift on his barstool. “Do you think I’m acting against your best interests by asking our friends to help with Operation Madison?”
Drumming her fingers nervously on the island, she worried her mouth. “That’scompliqué,like the French say. Part of me knows that’s something you’d never do, and yet you put yourself on the other side of some kind of chess game with me today. We need to talk about that.”
A chess game, huh?
“I’m not playing you, Madison. When I say I want you, I mean it. All the way.”
She held up her hand as she swallowed thickly, clearly as affected as he felt. “I know that. And I need to stop hiding under the covers like a little kid and go balls to the wall, so to speak. I want you. You want me. We’re best friends. Blah-blah-blah. We’ve talked it to death. The smart thing would be to wait.”
A snarl caught his mouth. “For what?”
“The Michelin decision.” She bit her lip before pressing her hands to her cheeks. “It’s only ten weeks away.”
“No,” he immediately answered and then winced. “God, I want to say, sure, but do you really think we can take another ten weeks of this tension and?—”
“Temptation?” she added, expelling a heartfelt breath. “Not really. Also, I have to be flat-out honest here. Thea planted a dark seed in my mind today, one about me cooking even better if I finally let myself be with you. She made a good argument. Her breads went from incredible to out of this world after she and Jean Luc started seeing each other.”
Thank you, Thea.
“Yes, they did.”
“Will you feel weird or used if I say I’m as tempted by the possibility of boosting my cooking up another level as by finding out what it would be like between us?”
He started laughing, like double over and fall off his chair laughing. “Oh, Mad, please use me. However you want.”
She grabbed his shoulders and righted him on the barstool. “That’s what I thought, so listen carefully. You made your move today. Here’s my counter.”
He watched as she leaned back and pulled a folded recipe card out of her jeans pocket. Interesting…
Taking another sip of his drink, he tried to imagine what the hell she was thinking, and then she waved it in the air between them.
“Thea—in her usual sweet way—brought me a recipe card for my life as part of Operation Madison.”
