Page 21 of The Last Goodbye

“Well, you probably broke my nose, so I don’t see why we’d stand on ceremony now.”

She grabbed a towel from the stack on the shelf and glanced around, then walked to the freezer like she owned the place.

“Here, sit down.” She returned with some ice and motioned to the chair beside the counter. She took the towel and said, “We need to put ice on it. That’ll stop the swelling.”

I did what she said, mainly because I was too tired to fight her.

She stunned me when she moved to stand between my legs and pressed the ice pack to my nose.

“We need to stop meeting like this,” she said with a smile.

The last time I’d seen her, I was the one holding an ice pack to her face. Her cheek still had a faint bruise, but it appeared to have healed up well.

Lavender and vanilla managed to surround me even with an injured nose. She applied a bit too much pressure, and my hand instinctively shot up to her arm to stop her. I eased my grip, brushing my thumb over her skin a few times. I didn’t miss the hitch in her breath before I pulled my hand back.

“Sorry,” I said. “That’s too much pressure.”

“Are you always such a baby?” she asked, her voice laced with humor. “The pressure will stop the bleeding.”

“And you know this because you’re a real estate attorney?” I asked, not hiding my irritation.

“I got into a few fights when I was a kid,” she said, as if that were a perfectly normal thing to say.

“Really? Were you insisting the other kids do what you wanted them to do or you’d fight them in the parking lot?”

I’d meant it as a joke, but it didn’t appear to land like one, judging by the look on her face.

“You really don’t know anything about me.” She motioned for me to hold the ice pack and stepped back. “I didn’t mean to punch you in the face, and I’m not some spoiled rich girl who has a temper tantrum whenever she doesn’t get her way.”

“Yet you just punched me in the face,” I pointed out.

“That was an accident. You startled me.”

“So then, why were you getting in fights as a kid?” I asked, genuinely curious. This woman was so polished and poised, at least when she wasn’t falling over her own two feet and hitting the pavement on her run, or punching me in the face.

“If you must know, they were making fun of my mom for working at the diner,” she said, her voice quieter now.

Her father was the president of the family business, which he’d started with his wife. So why the hell was she getting teased about her mom working at a diner when she was a kid?

“Did your dad not make his fortune until he was older?”

The question clearly made her uncomfortable, because her shoulders stiffened and she shifted in her seat.

“I wasn’t raised by my father.” She cleared her throat, obviously done discussing it. “I really am sorry about punching you in the face.”

I chuckled. “I’m sure you’ve been dying to do it since we spoke last.”

“I mean, I certainly didn’t come here to punch you in the face, but I will admit that I’ve cursed your name more times than I can count over the last few days.” She shrugged. “But I haven’t resorted to violence since I was a kid.”

I pulled the ice away from my face and set it on the counter beside me, rubbing my hand over my nose to warm it up a bit. “So you want to tell me why you were sleeping on the steps outside my restaurant?”

She rolled her eyes. “I wanted to explain a few things to you, because you’ve made some comments about me that are unfair, and I wasn’t going to leave town without clearing it up.”

I ran my hand over my jaw. “Listen, this isn’t personal, Briar. It’s business. I don’t want to sell my restaurant. It’s as simple as that.”

“It definitely feels personal when you make statements about me that aren’t correct or fair.” Her eyes locked with mine.

“You presented an offer, and I rejected it. You continued to come to my restaurant every day to try to push me into doing something that I don’t want to do. So I called you out for it.” I stepped closer to where she was leaning against the prep table and closed the space between us. “You know the saying, Briar. ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get the hell out of the kitchen.’”