Читать книгу Christmas At Cupid's Hideaway - Connie Lane - Страница 9

“Stuck.”

Gabe couldn’t imagine why, but when he grumbled the word, Meg’s face went a little pale and her steps faltered.

“What’s that you said?” She stopped a couple of feet away and gave him the kind of look he usually reserved for folks on the subway who talked to the empty seats beside them.

“I said stuck.” Gabe rattled the brass knob on the door next to a metal sculpture that took up a good portion of the hallway wall. He knew he had the right room.

As if to reassure himself, he glanced at the artwork. It wasn’t what he expected to find in back-of-beyond Ohio. Quirky, well done, inspired—the sculpture was a one-quarter-size flamingo-pink Cadillac, complete with wide tail fins and enough chrome to make it gleam, even in the muted pink light of the hallway. In honor of the island holiday, a red sack filled with gift-wrapped packages had been tucked in the back seat.

“Love Me Tender.” He read the words painted on the trunk of the car in gleaming black enamel. “It’s the right room, isn’t it? But the door…” Just to show he knew what he was talking about, he turned the handle again and bumped the door to the room with his shoulder. It didn’t budge. “It’s—”

“Stuck. The door. The door to the room is stuck.” Meg breathed a long sigh that did remarkable things to the gauzy, hand-embroidered sundress she was wearing.

The fact that he wondered why she looked so relieved didn’t seem as important to Gabe as the fact that he’d actually noticed the way her breasts pressed against the gossamer fabric, the way her cheeks darkened to a color that nearly matched the glistening stones in her dangling earrings.

So he wasn’t completely brain-dead after all. And if the sudden fire in his blood and the fierce tightening in his gut meant anything, the rest of him was working pretty well, too.

That was enough to cheer him. He might be a man on the edge—of his patience, of his sanity and of what had once been a fulfilling, enjoyable, not to mention lucrative career—but at least all his good sense hadn’t deserted him. He still knew a beautiful woman when he saw one.

“The door of Love Me Tender always sticks.” Good thing Meg didn’t know what he was thinking. Otherwise, she might not have been so quick to hurry over to where Gabe was standing. And if she hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to breathe in the mingled scents of cinnamon and herbs that surrounded her.

“There’s a trick, actually,” she said. To get to the door, she squeezed between Gabe and his luggage. Almost close enough to touch. The air warmed and Gabe’s insides felt a little like they had on the ferry that brought him to the island.

“I should’ve warned you.” For a second, he wondered what she was talking about. Warned him? About the sensation swooping through his insides?

She smiled and pointed to the door before she gave a demonstration that had nothing to do with Gabe’s insides. And everything to do with physics. With a triumphant little smile that made her nose crinkle and brought out a dimple in her left cheek, she turned the shiny brass doorknob at the same time as she lifted it.

The door opened without a hitch.

“Your room.” Meg stood back and made a sweeping gesture toward the room and Gabe grabbed his suitcases and went inside.

“If there’s anything we can get you…” he heard her say from the hallway.

If he hadn’t been so stunned, he might have suggested an ice pack and a couple aspirin.

Gabe deposited his suitcases on the floor and glanced around Love Me Tender. What had he been thinking? That just being with a woman as vivacious and beautiful as Meg was enough to make him forget his troubles?

Well, he could forget about forgetting.

One look at Love Me Tender, one moment over the threshold, and Gabe felt…well…

“All shook up.” He didn’t think he groaned the words loud enough for her to hear until Meg stuck her head back in the room.

“All shook up? That’s over here.” She darted around both Gabe and his suitcases and stepped further into the room. Past the stained-glass window decorated with peacocks that took up most of one wall. Past a full-size, honest-to-gosh classic pink Cadillac parked in the center of the room, one that had no roof, a waterbed where the front and back seats had once been and a pair of blue suede shoes tucked near the steering wheel. Past a baby grand piano that gleamed in the afternoon sunlight and a wall covered with framed gold records. Along the far wall was a genuine fifties soda fountain, complete with bar stools with bright-blue vinyl seats. Apparently in honor of the week’s festivities, there was a miniature aluminum Christmas tree on the bar, complete with bubble lights. Above the fountain was a sign. Meg pointed to it.

“All shook up. Maisie’s idea of a joke. Shook up. Milkshakes. Get it?”

“I got it.” Gabe was also getting a little queasy. He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t suppose any of your other guests might want to—”

“Trade rooms?” So, she was the resident mind reader as well as the inn’s chef. Meg crossed her arms and stepped back, leaning against one of the bar stools. “Not a chance,” she told him. “Honeymooners in Close to the Heart and they look like they’re there for the long haul. A middle-aged couple in Smooth Operator. Regulars. Maisie wouldn’t have the heart to ask them to move. And from what I’ve heard, card-carrying nudists in Almost Paradise. Don’t worry,” she added when his mouth dropped open, “they promised to dress for breakfast.”

“This…” Gabe did a slow turn around the room. “It’s a musician’s—”

“Dream?” Meg suggested.

He was going to say nightmare. He stopped himself just in time. After all, it wasn’t Meg’s fault that he was feeling the way he was feeling, and there was no use taking it out on her or her grandmother. That didn’t stop a cold chill from seeping through him. He got as far as the piano and paused there. Before he even realized he was doing it, his hands were poised over the keys.

For one brief, shining moment, hope blossomed in his chest and some of the tension that had been tying his stomach in knots for the last couple of months eased. As effortlessly as breathing, he played a C Major chord. He smiled when the notes vibrated through him, like a second heartbeat. Lost in the magic of the moment, Gabe closed his eyes, ready to ride the wave of creativity as he had so many times before.

He couldn’t think of even one more note.

“You play?” Meg’s voice reminded him what he was doing. Or at least what he was trying to do.

As if the keys were on fire, he pulled his hands to his side.

“Nah.” Gabe backed away from the Steinway. “Used to,” he admitted. “But that was a long time ago. I’ve…” He coughed away the sudden tightness in his throat. “I’ve forgotten how.”

“Too bad.” Meg walked back to the door. Her footsteps against the green shag carpet were as light as her laughter. “We’ve got another piano down in the parlor. And I’m always up for a song.” In front of the stained-glass window, she swung around. “You’re not just saying you don’t play because you’ve heard me sing, are you?”

Not when she looked delicious enough to kiss.

Gabe’s reaction caught him off-guard and he braced himself and wondered what was wrong with him, anyway. There were more important things to think about than the Hideaway’s sexy chef. More important, sure, he told himself. But not nearly as delectable.

He wondered if Meg had any idea how incredible she looked against the backdrop of stained-glass colors made molten by the afternoon sun. The blue of the peacock’s feathers matched her summer dress perfectly and brought out blue flecks in eyes that were a shade between the spicy green of a habenero pepper and the cool color of a crisp salad. The yellow in the bird’s beak and the plume at the top of its head touched her shoulders like liquid sunshine and kissed the freckles sprinkled liberally over her arms and neck. The undulating red border around the bird turned the sun’s rays into fire that was every bit as bright but nowhere near as beautiful as her mahogany-colored hair.

Sing?

She could sing to him, all right. Anytime. Anywhere. Even if her voice did remind Gabe of a not-so-happy marriage between the sounds of a freight train at full throttle and a coop full of frightened chickens. Her singing voice might make his teeth ache and for sure it was as flat as a pancake, but the rest of her was curved very nicely.

Taking his time, Gabe glanced from the tips of her toenails with their candy-apple-red polish to the top of her head. He stopped in between for a quick mental inventory of the more interesting places, wondering in spite of himself what a woman who was bold enough to wear a brightly colored dress with her ruddy complexion and Titian hair wore underneath.

Like it or not, the idea heated Gabe clear through to his bones.

Meg could sing him to sleep after a night of wild lovemaking, he decided. She could sing him awake just so that he could scoop her into his arms and stop her singing with a kiss before they started the lovemaking all over again. She could sing through his bloodstream and she could sing through his dreams. She could sing to him like—

“Your phone.”

Meg’s voice startled him back to reality. He found her with an expectant look on her face and her eyes homing in on the right side pocket of his jeans, where he’d tucked his cell phone before he hopped out of the car. “Your phone. It’s ringing.”

Gabe shook off the momentary paralysis caused by his own wayward thoughts. That was what he got for dipping his toe in the deep waters of fantasy. Blindsided. If he wasn’t careful, he’d get drawn in and towed under and—

“Your phone is still ringing.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He plucked the ringing phone out of his pocket and bobbled it from hand to hand. At least it didn’t play Beethoven’s Fifth like it used to. Gabe had changed it back to an old-fashioned, boring, non-musical ring a couple of weeks before. But although it wasn’t loud, the ringing was insistent.

“You’re not going to answer it?”

Good question. He didn’t even stop to consider it. He tossed the phone over on the bed and watched it shimmy on the water-filled mattress.

It kept right on ringing.

“That’s it?” Like a rubbernecker at the scene of an especially gruesome accident, Meg was staring at the phone. “That’s how you answer the phone?”

Gabe poked his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “That’s how I answer the phone.”

She slid him a sidelong look. “Woman?” she asked.

Maybe it was his imagination. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking. He could’ve sworn that waiting for his answer, she tensed a little.

“Worse.” He marched over to the 55 Cadillac, picked up the phone and shoved it under the pillows in their pink satin cases. It was still ringing, but at least now the noise was muffled. “Secretary.”

Imagination again. It had to be. Meg looked…relieved.

She glanced toward the bed. “Determined little devil. Must be some secretary.”

“Oh, she is. The best there is on the Left Coast. Way smarter than me. More organized than the dictionary. Has the scheduling talents of those folks at NASA who can make a camera do a fly-by of some planet a million miles away.”

“She is a paragon.” Meg nodded. “Can she leap tall buildings in a single bound?”

“Never seen her do it, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Latoya is also—” It wasn’t until the phone abruptly stopped ringing that Gabe realized his thumbs were tight around his fists. He flexed his fingers. Forced the muscles in his neck and shoulders to relax. Unclenched his teeth.

When an entire minute went by and the ringing didn’t start again, he let out a long breath. “She is also persistent.”

Meg swung her gaze from the bed to Gabe. “Which would make an ordinary person wonder about what Latoya’s being so persistent about.”

Maybe because he’d dodged another Latoya bullet, Gabe felt unaccountably pleased with himself. Or maybe it was the shimmer in Meg’s eyes, the impossible blue of her dress, the surprising way his blood buzzed when she flicked her tongue over her lips. Whatever the reason, he stepped just a little closer and lowered his voice. “In most cases it would,” he said. “But you haven’t known me long enough to find out that I’m far from ordinary.”

“Wrong, Mr. Morrison.” As if the statement didn’t make her very happy, Meg’s bottom lip puckered and her eyebrows dipped over her eyes. She shook her head and though she moved as gracefully as a dancer, Gabe couldn’t help noticing that when she spun around and headed into the hallway, it looked more like a retreat than a well-timed exit. “I realized that,” she told him, closing the door behind her, “the moment I saw you.”

For what seemed a very long time, Gabe stood staring at the closed door, feeling as if the world had tipped on its axis. Crazy reaction. But then, he suspected there was a lot about Meg that would cause the kind of peculiar humming he felt in his bloodstream.

It took a couple of minutes for his thoughts to settle and a couple more after that before his heart rate throttled back to a beat that was even close to normal.

Cupid’s Hideaway might be—as the lady at the local hotel where he’d first stopped for a room had informed him—the most romantic spot east of the Mississippi. But romance and the racing heartbeat that went along with it weren’t on his agenda.

He twitched away the idea and hauled his suitcase on to the couch. He unzipped it and flipped it open, looking for a change of clothes.

Better to leave the romance to the honeymooners and the nudists, he told himself. All he wanted was a place to lie low. For as long as he could get away with it.

Sooner or later, he’d have to fess up and admit the truth. To Latoya. To Dennis. To the Tasty Time Burger folks.

Even to himself.

Did he really think hiding out on an island in the middle of Lake Erie would buy him some time?

“Damn straight,” he grumbled.

He grabbed a handful of clothing and walked over to the dresser across the room to put it away, stopping to glare at the reflection frowning back at him from the mirror.

“Gabriel Morrison,” he mumbled, addressing the worried-looking man in the mirror. “World’s greatest jingle writer. The guy who’s got more awards piled up in his office than even Latoya knows what to do with. Aren’t you the guy who’s never at a loss for clever words? The one who can write music in his sleep? The clown who unleashed the Love Me Tenders commercial and Duke the Dog on an unsuspecting and gullible public? Good going, Morrison.”

He yanked open the top dresser drawer, tossed his clothes inside and went back for another handful.

“A meeting in New York in two weeks and just like always, you’ve promised them the world, haven’t you?” he muttered when he was in front of the mirror again. “Only this time, things are different.”

The hard reality of the situation nagged at him while he paced between the kitschy fifties soda fountain and the pink Cadillac.

Things were different, all right. Because whenever Gabe had promised the world before, he’d always delivered it on a silver platter.

And this time?

This time, Gabriel Morrison, the Mozart of the advertising industry, the man whose name was synonymous with catchy tunes and clever lyrics and ad campaigns that never failed to raise clients’ notoriety as well as their profits…

This time, Gabriel Morrison had a major case of jingle-writer’s block.

“DELICIOUS!”

Meg didn’t have to turn around from the stove. She knew when her grandmother walked into the kitchen from the dining room where she’d just poured the morning orange juice, she was definitely not talking about the ham-and-cheese omelets Meg was making. There was a little nuance in Maisie’s voice, a little skip in her step that Meg recognized as having nothing to do with food—and everything to do with romance.

“Nice to know your guests are enjoying themselves so much.” Meg was an expert at both cooking and ignoring Maisie’s less-than-subtle hints, and she put both talents to use. She flipped the omelets, added a sprinkling of dill and firmly refused to get hooked by the bait Maisie was dangling in front of her. “The honeymooners are happy?”

“Nonsense!” Out of the corner of her eye, Meg saw her grandmother wave away the very thought. “Of course the Kilbanes are happy. Honeymooners are always happy. Since they’ve checked in, they’ve gone through two bottles of champagne, three boxes of scented candles and two pairs of those bubble-gumflavored edible undies we have on special in the Love Shack. They’re as happy as clams. I wasn’t talking about Brian and Jenny Kilbane, and you know it.”

“The nudists?” Meg slid the omelets onto china plates and passed the plates to Maisie. “Or the spy wannabes?”

Maisie nodded her approval of the omelets, but even so, she didn’t look very happy. “You know exactly what I’m talking about,” she said, frowning at Meg.

“I do.” Meg reached for the pan of hash-brown potatoes that was sitting on the stove. She scooped a pile of perfectly browned potatoes onto each of the festive plates—decorated with fir trees and snowflakes—that Maisie used only twice each year, in December and for Christmas in July. “I know you’re talking about Gabe Morrison.” Finished with the potatoes, she set down the pan, wiped her hands on her white apron and gave her grandmother her full attention. With any luck, Maisie would catch on to the fact that she wasn’t kidding.

Then again, if luck had anything to do with the way things were going, Meg wouldn’t have spent the entire time since she’d checked Gabe into the inn thinking all the things about him that Maisie thought she should be thinking.

All the things Meg knew she shouldn’t have been thinking.

Meg’s spirits plummeted. Delicious was the least of her problems. When it came to their newest guest, there was also charming to consider—in those few and far between moments when he seemed to forget himself enough to allow his natural sense of humor to come through. Then there was gorgeous, available and successful. Not to mention tempting.

Meg drew in a long breath to steady her suddenly racing heartbeat. “I’m not interested,” she told Maisie. And herself. “So whether Gabe is delicious or not doesn’t change anything…” She looked the breakfast dishes over one final time. “I need something,” she grumbled.

“Of course you do.” Maisie’s expression brightened. “It’s what I’ve said all along. You need something. A little companionship. Is that such a bad thing? Or how about a full-fledged, all-out, over-the-top fling?” Maisie laughed the same throaty laugh Meg had heard from her grandmother’s private rooms on the nights Doc Ross visited. “If you ask me, sweetie, an amour would do you a world of good. Help you forget that chef of yours, the one who had oatmeal where his brains were supposed to be and nothing but ice cubes inside his chest. You know, that what’s-his-name.”

“Ben.” Still staring at the hash browns and omelets, Meg supplied the name automatically. It took her a second to realize that saying it didn’t hurt. At least, not as much as it used to, anyway. “Ben,” she said again, testing out the theory and discovering that for the first time in the fourteen months she’d been back on the island and out of the magnetic pull of Ben Lucarelli’s overblown personality and his overrated talent, the very memory of him didn’t skewer her like a shish kebab.

“And I wasn’t talking about Ben.” She looked at the door that led into the dining room where Maisie’s guests were waiting for breakfast. “Or about anyone else, for that matter. I was talking about breakfast.” She studied the plates, and the answer hit her. “Strawberries,” she mumbled and she hurried over to the refrigerator on the other side of the room. She found seven of the plumpest, reddest strawberries she’d picked just two days before over on the mainland and, in a flash, had them washed, sliced, sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar and arranged on each plate.

“Much better,” She said with satisfaction. “The muffins are already on the table?”

“I did that first thing,” Maisie assured her. “And everyone’s enjoying them.” Her expression fell. “Everyone but poor Gabe.”

Meg already had four of the plates in her hands. She stepped back to let Maisie leave the kitchen with the other three, but not before she rolled her eyes, just so her grandmother would know what she thought of her little stab at theatrics. “And I’m supposed to care, right? I’m supposed to ask why he’s not enjoying the muffins. Or am I supposed to be worried about why you’re calling him ‘poor Gabe’?”

“Good heavens, dear.” Maisie clicked her tongue and went into the inn’s dining room. Although she didn’t have the nerve to pretend she was embarrassed, she at least had the decency to blush a shade darker than her hot-pink pantsuit. “You are so suspicious! You can’t possibly think I’m so meddlesome that…”

Her comment trailed away, and Meg supposed it was just as well. She didn’t need her grandmother to elaborate. Not about Gabe.

In the hours since she’d met him, Meg’s own imagination had done enough elaborating for the both of them.

That brought her up short, and right before she bumped the swinging door with her hip and entered the dining room, Meg paused to catch her breath. The last thing she needed were her own fantasies sneaking up to destroy her self-control. Not when she was about to walk into the dining room and come face to face with the man who’d inspired those fantasies. All night long.

Meg twitched the thought away as inconsequential, inconsistent with what she wanted out of her life and her career, and just plain old insane. She gave the door an authoritative smack and got down to business—which would’ve been considerably easier if it wasn’t for the scene that greeted her in the dining room.

Maisie was fluttering around the table pouring coffee and chatting up a storm, just as she did every morning when they had guests. The Kilbanes were holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes. The nudists and the spies…

Meg glanced around the table. Because she wasn’t usually involved in the day-to-day operation of the inn outside the kitchen, she wasn’t sure which guests were the nudists and which were the James Bond fans. She did, however, know exactly which guest Maisie was referring to when she’d mentioned delicious.

Delicious was a word that didn’t adequately describe how Gabe looked early in the morning.

He was wearing khakis and an inky shirt that brought out the highlights in his dark hair, and though he was sitting with his back to the windows with their view of the lake, she could tell he’d shaved since she’d last seen him. Yesterday’s sprinkling of dark stubble was gone, replaced by a smooth sweep of jaw that was squarer—and more stubborn—than she remembered.

The impression did nothing to dampen the little thread of awareness that wound through Meg. Her mind on everything but the dishes she was placing on the table in front of their guests, she went through the motions, calling on a lifetime of experience in the restaurant industry and fourteen months’ worth of experience in the I’m-thinking-about-him-but-I’m-not-going-to-let-anyone-know-it department. She succeeded at both. By the time she got around to sliding his dish in front of Gabe, the other guests were murmuring their admiration of her presentation, nodding their approval of her menu selection and digging in.

Gabe, on the other hand, was staring into his coffee cup which, Meg noticed, was empty.

“Coffee?” When Maisie picked that exact moment to zoom by, Meg plucked the silver coffee pot off the tray she was carrying. She stepped back and waited for Gabe to answer and when he didn’t, she gave it another try.

“Coffee?” she asked again.

As if he’d been touched with a cattle prod, he snapped to attention and for the first time, Meg saw that while everyone else had been munching her island-famous blueberry muffins and making small talk, Gabe had been lost in his own world. He’d brought a legal pad down to the dining room and it was covered with doodles.

“Buildings.” She tipped her head and examined the pictures that covered the entire top page of the pad. Though she was no expert when it came to art of any kind, she knew good work when she saw it. And Gabe’s drawings were definitely good.

There was a sketch of the Chrysler building in New York on one corner of the pad. Another toward the bottom of the page reminded her of the glass pyramid at the Louvre. In between was a building she didn’t recognize, one with broad lines and a bold silhouette.

“You’re pretty talented,” she told him.

“No. I’m not.” Gabe frowned at the drawings before he ripped off the page and scrunched it into a ball. He glanced around as if he didn’t know what to do with it and Meg held out her hand. “I’m just doodling,” he told her, dropping the ball of paper into her hands. “Passing the time. Doodling.”

“Whatever you say.” Meg stuck the paper in the pocket of her apron and held out the coffeepot, trying again. Gabe finally took the hint. He held up his cup for her to fill and she had another chance to look at him. This close, she saw that there were still dark smudges under Gabe’s eyes. He was just as on-edge as when he’d arrived at the Hideaway. Just as tired-looking.

As if she’d seen it, too, Maisie stepped in. “I do hope you slept well, Mr. Morrison.” She offered him one of her patented smiles and an expectant look that told him whether he liked it or not, she was about to draw him into the conversation. “The Kilbanes here…” She tipped her head toward the honeymooning couple. “They were just saying that the bed in Close to the Heart is the most comfortable they’ve ever been in. For sleeping or for…” Maisie’s gentle laughter rippled around the room. “Well, they are on their honeymoon, after all!”

The other guests nodded and smiled, and one of the other men (either the nudist or the spy) raised his orange-juice glass and proposed a toast. Gabe didn’t say a thing. He drank some of his coffee and held the cup out for Meg to top off. When she was done, she backed away from the table and returned to the kitchen. Better to hide out with the dirty dishes and the greasy pans than to stand here and listen to Maisie’s barefaced attempts at drawing Gabe out of his shell and into a heart-to-heart.

Once the door was safely closed behind her, she breathed a sigh of relief.

The reprieve didn’t last long.

“I think it’s going very well.” Maisie breezed into the kitchen with the empty orange-juice pitcher, a smile on her face and a purr of satisfaction in her voice. “He’s fitting right in, don’t you think?”

“I think,” Meg told her, being careful to keep her voice down, “that he’s sullen and in a world of his own. Can’t you see that, Grandma? The man obviously has problems, and I don’t think your attempts to introducing hearts and flowers into his life will help. He’s worried.”

“He needs someone to help him not worry.”

“He’s crabby.”

“Who wouldn’t be if they were all alone?”

“He’s not interested.”

“Did I say anything about him being interested?” Maisie’s silvery eyebrows rose nearly as far as the sweep of fluffy white hair that touched her forehead. “Really, Meg, I think you’re way ahead of me here. You’re having ideas I haven’t even thought of. Do you want him to be interested?”

“I’m—” Meg grumbled her displeasure. Of Maisie’s shameless tactics. Of her own inexplicable reaction to Gabe. “It doesn’t matter whether I want him to be or not,” she admitted. “He’s obviously not.”

Maisie leaned against the countertop, head cocked, eyes sparkling. “How do you know?” she asked.

“How do I—” Too restless to stand still, Meg tugged her apron over her head and threw it on the countertop. “Did you take a good look at him?” She pointed toward the closed door and the dining room beyond. “How can the man be interested in anything? He’s preoccupied. He’s troubled.”

“Pish-tush.” Maisie tossed her head. “I haven’t met a man yet who’s too preoccupied to notice a woman noticing him. And if I haven’t told you this before, Meg, I’ve met plenty of men in my life.” Warming to the idea, she went over to the coffee maker to refill the silver pot they passed around the table. “Maybe he just doesn’t realize how interested he really is,” she said with a mischievous smile. “Or at least how interested he could be, if he had half a chance.”

“Oh, come on, Grandma!” Meg laughed, which was mighty peculiar considering she wasn’t feeling the least bit happy with the way things were going. “Are you telling me that if I threw myself at the man—”

“Would I ever suggest a thing like that?” Maisie’s cheeks went noticeably pale. “It’s so…so low-class, this whole notion of women coming onto men as if that was the only way to attract their attention. You know me better than that! What you need to do is be more subtle. More discreet. Take my word for it, that will attract a man’s attention surer than if you walked through the dining room stark-naked. Well…maybe if you walked through the dining room stark naked…”

“Oh, no! I’m not going for the Lady Godiva routine.” Because she knew a losing cause when she saw one, Meg gave up the fight. She took the coffeepot out of Maisie’s hands and turned toward the dining room.

“Bet you it’s true.”

The challenge was delivered in the sweetest tones, but it was a challenge nonetheless.

Meg turned and faced her grandmother head-on. “You mean about attracting his attention? Bet it’s not,” she said.

Maisie’s lips twitched with a barely controlled smile. “Bet if you flirted with him, he’d react. Big-time.”

Meg clenched her teeth. “Bet he wouldn’t.”

“You brave enough to find out?”

Whether it meant jumping into the lake from the highest rock on the shore, swimming the farthest, running the fastest or outrunning a storm in the family sailboat, Meg couldn’t stand to have her courage questioned. It was one of the reasons she’d gotten into so much trouble as a teenager. One of the reasons she’d had her eyes on a life on the mainland and her heart firmly set on Ben Lucarelli, even when everyone who’d ever met the man insisted he wasn’t right for her.

It was the one and only reason it had taken her so long to break up with Ben. Even when she finally found out that he wasn’t as interested in Meg the person as he was in Meg the chef, the woman who could make him—and his chi-chi Baltimore restaurant—a five-star hit.

Meg had never backed down from a challenge in her life.

And Maisie knew it.

“All right. You want proof. I’ll give you proof.” Meg raised her chin in the kind of I’m-not-budging-an-inch-on-this-look she’d learned at Maisie’s knee. She put down the coffeepot long enough to pull the elastic band out of her hair and combed through her ponytail with her fingers. When she was done, she shook her curls loose and grabbed the silver pot again. “I’m going in there and I’m going to flirt with Gabe Morrison. And it’s going to get me nowhere. Guaranteed.”

“We’ll see.” Maisie nodded. “And if I lose—”

“You will,” Meg assured her.

“If I lose and he’s not attracted to you…well, I’ll cook dinner for you one night. How about that? And if I win…”

“You won’t.”

“If I win…” She winked at Meg and, reaching for her, turned her toward the door. “If I win, you win, too. Now go get him,” she said, and nudged her out of the kitchen.

“Fine. Good.” Meg paused just outside the dining-room door, fighting the sudden urge to run.

She might have done it, too, if behind her, she didn’t hear the kitchen door open just enough to allow Maisie to peek out. “Remember, be subtle. Bet he’ll fall head over heels,” Maisie whispered.

“Bet he won’t,” Meg insisted, and because she knew she’d talked herself into something she couldn’t talk herself out of, she figured she had no choice but to get it over with.

Her shoulders squared, her jaw steady, her insides jumping like a fish at the wrong end of a hook, she marched back into the dining room to face Gabe Morrison.

And her own nagging insecurities.