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She thanked him and took her seat. “I didn’t realize you cooked. Did your mom teach you?”
Blake chuckled. “There were too many of us to be underfoot in the kitchen.”
“Not even your sister?”
Blake remembered the day his mother decided to teach Zora to cook.
“My sister was a feminist at the age of ten. When she discovered Mom hadn’t taught any of us to cook, she staged a protest, complete with hand-painted signs. Something about equal treatment for sisters and brothers, if I remember correctly.”
“Your mother didn’t get upset?”
“She wanted to be, but she and my dad were too busy trying not to laugh. Besides, she was proud my sister stuck up for herself.”
“A lesson your sister obviously took to heart.” Savannah smiled. “So if your mother didn’t teach you to cook, who did?”
“I became a cookbook addict a few years back.” A dark cloud gathered over Blake’s head, transporting him back to a place he didn’t want to go.
“Why the sudden interest?” She studied him. The question felt like more than just small talk.
Blake shrugged and shoveled a forkful of fried rice into his mouth. “Got tired of fast food.”
“I would think there’s always a place for you all at Duke and Iris’s dinner table.” Savannah took a bite, then sighed with appreciation.
What he wouldn’t give to hear her utter that sound in a very different setting: her body beneath his as he gripped her generous curves and joined their bodies.
“There is an open invitation to dinner at my parents’ home,” he confirmed. “But at the time I was seeing someone who didn’t get along with my mother and sister.” He grunted as he chewed another bite of food. “One of the many red flags I barreled past.”
“You’re all so close. I’m surprised this woman made the cut if she didn’t get along with Zora or Iris.”
This was not the dinner conversation Blake hoped to have. He’d planned to use the opportunity to learn more about Savannah. Instead, she was giving him the third degree.
“We met in college. By the time she met any of my family…I was already in too deep. A mistake I’ve been careful not to repeat,” he added under his breath, though she clearly heard him.
“Is that why things didn’t work out? Because your family didn’t like her?”
He responded with a hollow, humorless laugh. “She left me. For someone else.”
The wound in his chest reopened. Not because he missed his ex or wanted her back. Because he hadn’t forgiven himself for choosing her over his family.
Though, at the time, he hadn’t seen it that way.
After college, he’d moved back home and worked at the distillery, and he and Gavrilla had a long-distance relationship. But when he’d been promoted to VP of operations, he’d asked her to move to Magnolia Lake with him.
The beginning of the end.
Up till then, his ex, his mother and sister had politely endured one another during Gavrilla’s visits to town. Once she lived there full-time, the thin veneer of niceties had quickly chipped away.
Blake had risked his relationship with his family because he loved her. She’d repaid his loyalty with callous betrayal.
She’d taught him a hard lesson he’d learned well. It was the reason he was so reluctant to give his heart to anyone again.
“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have brought it up if I’d known it would stir up bad memories.” Savannah frowned.
“You couldn’t have known. It’s not something I talk about.” Blake gulped his icy beer, unsure why he’d told Savannah.
“Then I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to talk about it.”
“That surprises me.” He narrowed his gaze.
“Why?”
“You go out of your way not to form attachments at work.”
Savannah’s cheeks and forehead turned crimson. She lowered her gaze and slowly chewed her food. “I don’t mean to be—”
“Standoffish?” He did his best to hold back a grin. “Their words, not mine.”
“Whose words?”
“You don’t actually think I’m going to throw a member of my team under the bus like that, do you?” Blake chuckled. “But that fence you work so hard to put around yourself… It’s working.”
“I don’t come to work for social hour. I’m there to do the job you hired me to do.” Savannah’s tone was defensive. She took a sip of her wine and set it on the table with a thud.
“That’s too bad.” Blake studied her. Tension rolled off her lean shoulders. “At King’s Finest, we treat our employees like family. After all, we spend most of our waking hours at the distillery. Seems less like work when you enjoy what you do and like the people you do it with.”
