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“I just meant that he and Drea were checking in, like they usually do, although I did call them this time, admittedly, and I may have let slip that you’ll be working here. It was totally a casual thing, not any sort of behind-your-back gossip.” Molly retreated from her original topic, tripping over her words the way a rabbit would scamper out of a fox’s hole knowing full well it had just gotten itself into nine kinds of trouble.
Behind-his-back gossip. Was that what his brothers thought of him? That he was such a lost cause, it would have been better to keep their counsel than have him know the truth depths of his helplessness?
“It’s no matter, really,” he replied, marshaling the bleakness from his tone.
It wasn’t until Molly relaxed against the kitchen door that Brass noticed a blue and white flier adorning a corkboard on the wall next to it. She followed his gaze, and as if relieved to steer the conversation anywhere but off the cliff they were careening toward, she snatched the thing from its tack.
“This was why Chrome was giving me the heads-up about your aversion to the season, I suppose.” She offered the paper to him.
In a single stride, he was in front of her, fingers grazing the warm spots of the paper where she’d touched it. Though hardly a caress, their almost-connection leveled a softness over his frame that calmed the final ripples of rage he’d been struggling to tamp down. This unburdened weightlessness was a new torture, however, a distinctly honed infliction that made his soul sigh instead of scream and only came upon him when he was near her. Was this another trick? A different punishment manifested by the curse, one that teased him with relief on the eve of his demise?
It was a trouble he’d have to examine later. For now, the comfort was too great to dismiss, allowing him to lean into what he’d come there to do startlingly unencumbered. Glancing down at the paper, Brass tried to focus on the whorls of snowflakes, pudgy bubble letters, and two types of glitter used to convey a message that, if it were up to him, would have been just as fine scrawled in ballpoint pen on the back of a crumpled cocktail napkin.
“It’s the Aurora Winter Whimsy Festival. The town holds it on the winter solstice every year, and this year, Suerte and Honeysuckles is going to have a vendor booth.” More resignation than excitement tinged Molly’s voice, especially given the milligrams of caffeine no doubt bouncing around her nervous system.
“You don’t sound excited,” Brass observed.
“I’m excited,” she confirmed, brightening with false assuredness before her voice betrayed her. “I’m also terrified, ill-prepared, and worried about impressing the right people.”
Molly settled her weight against the swinging door behind her, mistaking it for an immobile surface. Before Brass could catch her, she righted herself. After covering the gaffe with an adorable hop, she tested the counter next to her and, seemingly satisfied, rested her hip against it.
Brass didn’t even bother fighting back his smile that time. The once-playful part of him had the desire to use his power and melt away every screw securing the counter to the wall just to have her lose her balance all over again so he could be the one to catch her, to feel her softness writhing and wriggling in his grasp.
Would he feel the heat of her skin beneath her flannel button-down shirt? Did she run hotter because of her natural exuberance? Then his mind sank into other depths, wondering what it would take to cause other parts of her to flush the same high color currently painting her cheeks.
Mages, it had been so long, so infuriatingly long since he’d even had the desire to tease and tempt, let alone allow himself to indulge in a woman. And with Molly, it would be the ultimate indulgence, one a male like him didn’t simply sip but savor, if his time were his own.
If all the days before him weren’t measured in hours but eons.
He cleared his throat against a host of alternate realities that did not have his name on them and did his best to rejoin her regrettably one-sided conversation.
“The festival always has a good turnout, not only of the town’s residents and tourists but also of business investors, restaurant groups, catering companies, and local food industry professionals. Lots of the right people to rub elbows with and tempt into financing my venture with a huge influx of cash. Many of the region’s well-beloved restaurants either got their seed money or expansion investments from being noticed at the festival.” It was easy to catch her excitement, enthusiastic as she was about everything pertaining to her profession, until her gaze slid away and some of that spark dimmed. “It’s a really important date on the calendar, and we’ve only got three weeks to pull it all together.”
Then the gears abruptly clicked into place. That was when her words from earlier broke through Brass’s fog of euphoria. “It’s on the solstice?”
“Yup. December twenty-first. It’s a snow or shine event, too. The only thing that shuts it down is a blizzard, and that’s only happened, like, twice since the town’s been running it the last thirty years or so.”
Brass slid the paper onto the counter, putting as much distance as possible between him and that date. The chilling bite of the wind outside had somehow found its way to his skin, nipping and pricking its little agonies along every nerve ending.
“Are you all right?” Molly asked, and damn how he wanted to rip out the concern lacing her words. If he’d wanted concerned eyes and remorseful pleas, he’d have stayed home. But here, with the one woman who could somehow calm his curse while he offered to help with her business on that day? A day that should enrage him?
She stepped closer then, her fingertips hovering and her chocolate doe eyes unsure where to land, trying to decipher what about him needed the most aid.
Everything.
Before he could shutter his eyes and lean into whatever it was about her that soothed his seething, he flung himself away. Only once he’d placed no fewer than two tables between them did he trust his voice enough to speak.
“Yes, I’m fine. All this is fine.” He swept an arm out to encompass the restaurant as a whole, as well as the contents of the flier. “Now,” he said, shrugging out of his coat and walking past her toward the kitchen. “Show me what you need done. I imagine your line cook will be here any moment, correct?”
Because if he didn’t throw himself into some manual labor soon, the restaurant’s front windows would be next.
Chapter 7
For the third time in as many hours as the restaurant had been open, Molly wondered just how the hell servers did this job without a tub of pain relief cream at the ready and a one-ounce bottle of the holiday cheer du jour tucked in their back pocket.
Relishing a blessed break in the breakfast action, she dragged herself to the corner of the dining room and unceremoniously arched her back, pressing out the kinks at the base. Molly had spent the better part of her adult life on her feet with her face hovering dangerously close to high-octane commercial kitchen flames. While it was literally hotter than the hell some people believed in, she’d take that any day and twice on Sundays if it meant, for one goddamn moment, she didn’t have to lean over a table anymore to clarify which menu items were gluten-free, dairy-free, and nut-free, despite the helpful key she’d specifically designed in the menu’s corner outlining all of this.
For every year she spent perfecting her signature black truffle and Gruyère cheese souffle, she’d give each one of them back if she never had another guest ask her whether the chicken the restaurant sourced was gluten-free. When in the holy hell had restaurant service come to this? All she wanted to do, all she ever wanted to do, was cook, dammit. If she’d known running her own eatery would require her to answer more asinine questions than there were hours in the day, she’d have more strongly considered her mother’s suggestion to go into veterinary school.
