AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But Gavin took a step toward her, then two, and her words faded away.
“I might be able to solve your problem. See, I’m looking for a babysitter.” He sent a pointed glance over his shoulder, and holy crap, Bree was sitting right there at the table behind him, her brown eyes wide and her cheeks tearstained.
“As long as that’s okay with you,” Gavin said to Bree, and she looked at Sloane and nodded.
“Yeah. That’s okay with me.”
Sloane blinked, her lips parting in shock. “You want me back?”
Gavin was beside her in an instant. “I believe you, Sloane, and I love you, too. I want to come home to you every night, and wake up next to you every morning. I don’t just want you back. I want you forever. What do you say?”
“Yes. God, yes!”
His arms felt perfect as they slid around her, and perfect got even better as Bree’s arms folded over them both. They stood there in the middle of the restaurant, tangled together and laughing like gleeful idiots until finally, Gavin pulled back with a mischievous grin.
“Okay, big spender. Let’s open this bottle up and celebrate your homecoming, shall we?”
Sloane’s laughter bubbled out of her, all the way from her toes. “We can celebrate more than that.”
“We can?” Bree asked. “Like what?”
“Let’s just say my latest proposal went over incredibly well with Belinda. She gave me the green light to write the book I’ve been working on. So, it looks like I’m gainfully employed twice.”
“I don’t think I can compete with a major publishing house,” Gavin said with a shake of his head.
But Sloane just threw her head back and laughed. “They can’t hold a candle to you, boss. Now open up that bottle, would you? I’m ready to stir up a little trouble, one sip at a time.”
EPILOGUE
Adrian Holt got three steps past the back door at La Dolce Vita before the dangerous combination of fear and anger cemented him to the kitchen tile. He fisted the keys to the building in his palm, hard enough to feel the metal bite into his callused skin.
Someone was in the kitchen.
He was supposed to be the first one in and the last one out, just like he had been for the past twelve days while Carly was on her honeymoon. She’d made it clear, both as his boss and best friend, that the kitchen—herkitchen—was in his hands. The place should be a ghost town, especially at nine o’clock on a Friday morning.
Muffled noise sounded off from down the hallway, filtering past the dishwashing station and the tidy, darkened office, sending his heartbeat into a staccato, adrenaline-soaked rhythm. The telltale clink of pots and pans grated on his ears from the center of the kitchen, and Adrian’s muscles thrummed with instinct.
If some chucklehead from the resort was back here messing around, he was going to be seriously pissed. Just because La Dolce Vita served as Pine Mountain Resort’s only full-service restaurant and shared a wall with the main lodge, that didn’t give anybody free reign to—
What was that smell?
Adrian followed his nose through the dishwashing station as quietly as he could, although admittedly, at six-foot-five, stealth had never been his strong suit. Damn it, he wasn’t even in the position to get a parking ticket right now, much less jump in some wannabe chef’s face for being here uninvited and unattended. But Carly had trusted him, and no way was he going to let some deviant creep his way into the place like he had a claim to the real estate. Dicey or not, Adrian owed it to Carly to at least keep the kitchen she’d worked her ass off for intact.
Actually, he owed her a hell of a lot more than that, but now wasn’t the time to split hairs.
He rounded the corner by the pastry chef’s prep space at the back of the kitchen, the keys put away but his fists still curled into place. The warm, mellow scent of caramelizing onions tempted his anger to ease, but Adrian didn’t bite. The intruder could be making European white truffles drowning in Cristal for all he cared. Whoever it was had picked the wrong fucking kitchen for playing house.
Adrian hit the back of the line with the edgy tension of twelve days’ worth of double shifts in his stride and his pulse playing chicken with his blood pressure. The perpetrator had his back turned and body crouched, head halfway into the lowboy for God-knows-what, but that didn’t change Adrian’s snap first, ask questions later mindset.
“Hey!” He threaded his arms into a thick knot of black leather and menacing intentions over his chest. His voice matched his tension with every razor-sharp syllable as he planted his boots on the tile. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re about three seconds from getting tossed out of here on your ass, and I started counting two seconds ago.”
A pair of slim shoulders hitched upward in surprise before the person unfolded to a slow stand, and recognition slammed into him, too late.
“All things considered, that might not be your wisest plan, Chef Holt.”
The familiar timbre of Carly’s voice scattered Adrian’s edgy irritation like breadcrumbs in a shallow bowl, although it left a trail of unease in its wake. Okay, so her braid had been slung over her shoulder where he couldn’t see it, and yeah, he wasn’t expecting her for another two days, but had he seriously been strung tight enough not to put two and two together?
“You’re not supposed to be back at work until Monday,” he accused, although the smile tugging at his lips canceled out the sting of the words.
