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“What, and inflate your already massive ego, Mr. Grumpy Pants?” she asked, reaching for a knife and one of the cutting boards stored on a countertop rack. “Where do you keep your olive oil and vinegar?”
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“Ooh, I love chicken piccata!” Summer exclaimed fifteen minutes later, when he brought a pair of plates to the table.
She had set the table for two, placed the salad bowl between them, and poured them both glasses of ice water garnished with leftover slices of lemon.
“Piccata? Well, aren’t you all high-falutin’?” he joked as he put the plates down on the table. “Why, this here’s my Grandma Russo’s lemon chicken with capers over spaghetti, and a side of fresh garden vegetables in garlic butter.”
“Well, it looks delicious.” She handed him the bowl of salad. “And there’s nothing as good as lettuce and tomatoes fresh from the garden.”
They sat down and dug in.
Pleasantly relaxed from several bouts of great sex, he’d had time to do some thinking while he dredged the flattened, seasoned chicken breasts in flour, then fried them up. And he’d come to some conclusions. Now it was time to man up, and say his piece.
“Look,” he began, after a few mouthfuls. “I wanted to tell you were right about the diner.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. She stopped with her fork halfway to her mouth. “What part? I thought you hated every item on my list.”
He winced. But, yeah, he deserved that. “Yeah, well, everything you’ve told me to do has worked out okay.Betterthan okay,” he amended. The next part was even harder to say. “I’m sorry I’ve been such an asshole about, well, everything.”
There. He’d managed to get the words out without choking on them.
Summer lowered her silverware and studied him, her cornflower-blue eyes serious. “Brock, help me understand why you’re hell-bent on keeping everything at the diner the way it’s always been.”
He stared back at her. He didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking. Why couldn’t she just accept his apology and move on with finishing dinner and then going back to bed?
She added, “I want to help you turn the place around, but I also don’t want to keep stepping on your toes.”
He bit back his first, sarcastic reply.Not the way to go after you just apologized, he told himself.
Especially since she sounded sincere about wanting to help him, not just because her grandmother had a cut a deal with her.
Plus, she’d worked her ass off over the past couple of days. He owed her the truth.
“I don’t know how much you’ve heard, but my dad walked out on us when I was in the fourth grade. We didn’t hear from him for years, and Mama never got a cent in child support. He was a drunk and a total deadbeat.” Brock blew out his breath. It wasn’t easy talking about this stuff. “Mama was always at the diner, so Gran was the one who raised me. She loved watching cooking shows and competitions, and she was a damned fine cook herself. She’s the one who taught me. When I got older, I started working at the diner, too. I did a little bit of everything—waited tables, washed dishes, swept floors, prepped ingredients, even cooked. I pitched in whenever and wherever we were short-handed.”
“So, you basically grew up at the diner?” Summer asked. “It was your second home?”
“Yeah. It was Mama’s place… like this house,” he said. Realization dawned. “Maybe that’s why making changes feels, well,wrong. Like I’m trying to erase her.”
A sympathetic expression on her face, Summer reached across the table and put her hand over his. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. And I love this chicken dish.”
“Thanks.”
Then she said, “I really do think we need to give the diner a facelift, though.”
Brock tensed. Hadn’t she understood what he was trying to tell her?
His expression must have given him away, because she added, “What if we put this lemon chicken on next Friday’s dinner menu? It’s quick, delicious, and doesn’t use any expensive ingredients. The profit margin would be good.”
“That sounds like a great idea. Gran would be tickled to know that her lemon chicken was good enough to serve in a restaurant.”
Summer nodded. “And if you have any other favorite recipes from your gran or your mom, maybe we could feature those as well, on a rotating basis.” She smiled at him. “It would be a way to keep their memories alive at The Yummy Cowboy Diner.”
“But I thought you only wanted upscale dishes on our dinner menu,” he said. Was she serious about wanting to serve Gran’s recipes, or just trying to make him feel better? “I mean, everyone went nuts for your goat cheese and peach jam salad, and the bison filet with the fucking delicious beer sauce… oh, excuse me, thedemi-glace.”
“Brock,” she said, frustration sharpening her tone.
