AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He left the kitchen in a huff and Priscilla walked over to me.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, other than the alarm clock going off offensively early this morning. How about you?”
“No complaints. Lenny caught an eight-pound bass on his fishing trip. Can you believe that?”
“Wow, that’s great. I want to see pictures later.”
She tied an apron around her waist. “Of course. How was the bachelorette party?”
“It was fun. But I’m going to have to beat my brother up for messing with my phone, and he’s a lot bigger than he was the last time I beat him up. He was around seven then.”
She chuckled. “He just wanted you to get a real weekend away. He told Nina to call him if there was a true emergency.”
I gave her a mock angry look. “Grr. You knew about it, too?”
“Course I did. And if Caden says anything about Nina, I was here Saturday until one and that girl worked her ass off. We were going through bacon like you wouldn’t believe and we didn’t have enough stove space to keep up, so Nina had us cooking it on the stove and in the oven. People would run up to the buffet servers and clear the bacon out of the containers before they could even get it to the buffet.”
“I hate that buffet.”
“Girl, same.” She gathered a few kitchen tools. “You want me to prep some sausage gravy and get it in the warmer?”
“That would be great, thanks.”
She turned and pointed a whisk at me as she walked away. “Don’t let Caden guilt you for taking a weekend off. You deserve a lot more time off than you get. He has no life outside of this place.”
Lenny switched on the local AM radio station, which we always listened to when we were doing breakfast prep.
“...a beautiful, sunny Monday here in the Beard,” Bert Stanton, one of the morning hosts, said. “We’ll have Chief Painter here soon with some fire prevention tips and then we’ll have a chat with Mick VanDyke, the winner of the weekend fishing tournament.”
“You know what, Bert? I heard he caught an eleven-pounder,” said Jeannie White, the other host.
“He was a whopper, for sure. I was there to see it. But before we talk to him and the chief, let’s have a word from one of our sponsors, Mort’s Bait Shop. They’re master baiters.”
I’d made the cherry pastries I was preparing so many times that I didn’t even have to think about it. I knew every measurement and direction by heart, so my mind wandered as I scooped and stirred.
The weekend was amazing. I left work at two on Friday for the two-hour drive to the cabin with Avon and Bess, and not getting a single phone call had made it seem more like a vacation than just a weekend.
Priscilla’s comment about Caden not having a life was still at the front of my mind. Usually, I didn’t have much of a life outside of The Sleepy Moose, either. It was nearly impossible to. Being chef here required overseeing the menu and food prep seven days a week. No one else who worked here had been to culinary school.
Spending time with Holt at the cabin had made me feel like more than just a chef. When he looked at me and said he thought I was beautiful, I felt like a woman. He smoothed out the rough edges in my self-esteem and made me wonder what it would be like to have a life outside of this place all the time.
It couldn’t be with him. My instinct to resist my attraction to him had been right. Now that he’d opened up to me about what his ex had put him and his kids through, I was even more convinced that it was too soon for him to date.
I’d always thought people saying everything was right about another person except the timing was bullshit, but I understood now. Truly caring about Holt, Spencer and Marley meant putting my selfish attraction to Holt aside to allow them more time to heal.
I smiled as I whisked baking powder into my flower, remembering the moment in the hot tub when he told me how much he liked me. Just knowing that had filled up something inside me that had been empty for a very long time.
I was desirable. My feelings for Holt had been an unexpected gift that showed me how much I was missing out on. If I could find that kind of connection with him, maybe I could find it with someone else, too.
Maybe I could even have kids of my own. Being around Spencer and Marley had reminded me how much I loved kids. Spending an hour in the work kitchen baking cookies with them filled me up more than preparing time-intensive fine cuisine did.
I was determined not to turn into Caden. He was in his midforties and often slept on the couch in his office because he had no one to go home to.
My kiss with Holt had awoken my desire, not just for him but for something more for myself.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
