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“Thank you.” The silence stretched out between them in a thick beat before Carly blinked away the memory and took two water bottles from the fridge.
“Well, believe me when I tell you there’s nothing quite as humbling as having a sister gloat over you. I bet your brothers didn’t mess with you after that, huh?” His sober expression had been replaced with a more comfortable, curious look.
“Not at Monopoly, anyway,” she said, her gaze catching on the six-bottle wine fridge perched in a corner on the countertop. “You want a glass of wine?”
“To be honest, I’m not usually a wine guy. But if you’ve got something that pairs well with total domination in the Monopoly arena, I might consider a change of heart.” He tried—unsuccessfully—to hide his smirk in the carton of beef broccoli.
“You’re going to eat those words, my friend.” Carly slid a bottle of Riesling from the fridge and uncorked it with a practiced hand, pouring two glasses before sauntering back to the living room with a confident swagger.
“Nice food reference. Do you ever leave work at work?” Jackson took the glass she offered him, the pale golden liquid shimmering against his hand. Finally, he’d asked an easy question.
“No.” She sat down cross-legged beside the coffee table and scooped up the dice, rattling them around with a muted click in her palm. “I look at food the way I look at life. It’s pretty much impossible to separate the two, so I don’t bother trying.” Carly tipped her glass at him and took a sip. The semi-sweet tang of the wine helped it slide down her throat with ease.
“And how do you look at life?”
She was all too aware of his eyes on her as she rolled the dice and moved her game piece to Vermont Avenue. Carly found a time-creased fifty-dollar bill in the neat stack Jackson had left for her and handed it over before answering.
“I think life should be simple, a reflection of what really matters, so I like to use ingredients that keep things uncomplicated. Then I can rely on honest flavors, evocative smells, and warm presentation to create an experience people will remember.”
Jackson snagged the property card from the bank and passed it over, tipping his head at her. “So, it’s not just about the food.”
“No, it’s bigger picture. I want people not just to remember the dish, but the feelings that go with it, if that makes sense.”
“Ah. And that makes it personal. So, food and life really do go hand in hand.”
“Exactly.” She took another sip of wine, admiring the lingering sweetness it left in its path. “How about you? How do you look at life?”
He let out a chuckle sexy enough to create an unfair advantage. “I’m pretty easy to please. Life’s too short for anything else.”
Right. Because just what her libido needed was more encouragement.
“So, you’re a go with the flow kind of guy,” Carly replied, watching Jackson roll the dice.
He moved his token around the board, the corded muscles in his forearm pulling taut over the bones beneath as he reached across the table to put the money for Pennsylvania Railroad in the bank. “Sure. Most of the time.”
“I might be jealous,” she said, reaching for her carton of Lo Mein. “In my line of work, going with the flow only gets you trampled.”
“Oh, come on. You probably have to adapt to a lot on any given night, right? I’d say that counts as going with the flow.” Jackson took a sip of wine, regarding the glass with a surprised glance that translated tonot bad.
Carly smiled, spooling more noodles over her chopsticks and taking a bite before scooping up the dice. “I’m adaptable, sure. But I can’t afford to be mellow about it, and I definitely can’t be easy to please. It’s part of what makes it so hard to be a woman in my line of work.”
“How do you mean?”
“In the kitchen, when a man is demanding, he’s considered ambitious. When a woman expects perfection and won’t settle for anything less, she’s just a bitch.” Carly shrugged, snapping up Kentucky Avenue and tucking the card next to her neatly divided stash of play money.
“Sounds like you have high standards.” Jackson rolled the dice and landed next to her on Kentucky Avenue, both groaning and laughing as he counted out the rent to settle his debt.
Carly held out an expectant hand, trying to press her gleeful grin into a gracious smile. “If I didn’t have high standards, I’d still be chopping onions for stock at the end of somebody’s line.”
“Is that how you got this?” Jackson trailed a roughened fingertip along the scar on her index finger before dropping the Monopoly money into her palm, and the unexpected contact sent a shiver down her spine.
“Oh.” The breathy little gasp that pushed its way up from her chest was downright embarrassing, and Carly dropped her hand to the coffee table in an effort to cover it up. “Uh, yeah. Well, not onions, but you’ve got the right idea. I was cubing a butternut squash one day and slipped. I ended up with seven stitches.”
A flicker darted over his blue eyes, darkening them for a split second before it disappeared. “Sounds like it hurt.”
“To be honest, I was kind of more pissed that I’d wrecked the dish I was working on.” That squash had been one of the most gorgeous items at Greenmarket that week. Bleeding all over it had been a travesty.
“You’re pretty tenacious. And before you apologize, I mean it as a compliment.”
