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“Oh wow, I’d love to get a peek into your kitchen.”
“Really?” Caroline lifted her hand to the dress form and traced her finger along the neckline of the garment. “I’m sure it’s nothing compared to what you and your dad have here at the house.”
Nadia shrugged. “I just think yours would be a little less… stiff?”
Caroline’s chin dropped. “What?”
Nadia’s hands made a helpless gesture. “Anal?”
Caroline was barely able to hide her snort of laughter behind her hand. “Wow, that’s, um… a loaded statement.”
“It’s the truth. I normally love helping my dad with stuff around the house, but not the kitchen. I like cooking, don’t get me wrong. I do my share of it, but not when he’s around. Having him watch me cook makes me feel a little…” Nadia’s gaze drifted off to the side and then snapped back to her face, “judged.”
Caroline bobbed her head in a half nod, half shake. “I’m sure he doesn’t feel like that.”
“Don’t get me wrong. He’s a great dad! Soooo much better than some other chef’s kids. Still, I feel like not having his skills in the kitchen, or even the drive to learn, he has to be disappointed in me.”
“I can’t imagine that he feels like that. I’ve seen the pride in his eyes when he looks at you. There are years of photos online showing how he beams at you all the time. We all can’t have the same interests as our parents. It doesn’t work that way. Sometimes the last thing we want to do is what our parents wanted us to.”
“What did your parents want you to do?” Nadia leaned against her sewing table and bit into her bottom lip.
“My mom worked for a bio-medical research lab.” Caroline let out a sigh. “And my dad was an aerospace engineer. Let’s just say neither of them congratulated me when I announced that I was going to get a job instead of going to college.”
“Are they still mad at you?”
Caroline shrugged. “We hardly talk anymore, but I think most of that is because they’re just as stubborn as I am. I doubt they’ll ever admit they might be a teeny tiny bit proud of me. Or if they aren’t, then I’m not sure I want to know that either.”
An awkward silence fell between them as Caroline realized that her answer might not have been reassuring to Nadia.
Before she could think of something a little more positive to say, a loud squawk of some sort came from beyond Nadia’s window.
“Oh, the chickens!” Nadia reached out and grabbed Caroline’s wrist. “Come look!”
Caroline stood at the windows beside Nadia and couldn’t help but stare.
Lucas was outside in the backyard, standing by something that indeed looked like a castle. He was spreading something that looked like bird feed in the grass. Behind him was a line of chickens, tracing his path through the grass.
“Seriously, Caroline… this is the best part of my day, watching my dad followed by a bunch of chicks. Real chickens. Not like the women he was always fending off.”
“Fending off?” Caroline hadn’t meant her question to sound so incredulous, but Nadia didn’t seem to take it that way.
The teen shrugged, but with a bright smile on her face. “I know. The press loves to take pictures of my dad with beautiful women. Hell, they even tried to say that my dad was responsible for breaking up that superstar couple… Paulina Thompson and Rafe Bond. I mean, sure, my dad makes women giggle and blush just looking at him, but he’s hasn’t dated anyone for as long as I can remember.”
“Well…” Caroline paused for a moment as Lucas sat down on a bench and spread his arms across the back of it. The lord of all he surveyed, and it looked good on him. Almost too good. “Maybe he saw some women… casually? A lunch? Had her come to the restaurant?”
“No, no women.” Nadia sighed and leaned her temple against the large glass window. “Don’t get me wrong, he has women friends, but dating? Nope. It’s like he stopped trying right around the time you stopped working with him.”
Caroline’s face went cold, her hands too.
Nadia couldn’t know what she was talking about, right?
She’d been a child, back when Caroline was working at Bulldog. So she wasn’t sure that Nadia’s memories of that time in her life might not be the most accurate.
But what about later?
Caroline hated feeling like she was arguing with herself, but the question did beg to be asked.
Then again, her involvement with Lucas Brierly’s personal life was nil.
