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“It is a little late in the season. Perhaps we should go with something appropriate for fall instead? Apples, perhaps?”
“Apples? How pedestrian.” Jack sniffed disdainfully but she gave him a cheerful smile.
“That’s probably true for chefs without your skills, but I know you could transform them into something amazing.”
Jack hesitated, clearly torn between his desire to prove his skills and his reluctance to give up on his grievance.
“Of course, I can,” he said finally, sniffing again, but he returned to work and Cody winked at her.
She lingered a moment longer, watching enviously as Jack bent over one of his pots. No one in any of her foster homes had ever bothered teaching her to cook, and once she was on the road she rarely had a full kitchen in which to experiment. Since she had moved here, Wendy had tried to teach her but her efforts had not been particularly successful.
She was still wistfully watching the chef’s skillful movements when a cold breeze drifted across her neck.Leo.Even without the breeze she was so attuned to him that she would have known he was present, but something had shifted between them, creating a new level of intimacy now. It was as if he were actually standing right behind her. As if she could lean back against that broad chest while he put his arms around her. The image was so real that for a moment she could almost feel those powerful arms wrapped around her.
“Dude.”
Cody grinned, and she could have sworn he was actually looking at Leo over her head, but then he jumped down off the counter.
“Gotta get those apples. Be back later.”
He ambled out of the kitchen as she frowned after him, still convinced that he’d been as aware of Leo’s presence as she was. She flicked a quick look back over her shoulder but he wasn’t visible, even though she knew he was there.
“I need to check on the reservations for tonight,” she said quickly and fled.
CHAPTER 2
Leo bit back a sigh as Jessica fled down the stairs. His little psychic was the most skittish female he’d ever met. She was also the bravest. She had faced down his vengeful ex-wife, despite Alexis’s hate fueled powers.
How could I ever have been such a fool, he wondered as he had many times over the long years of his entrapment. They had met in his last year in college. She was a beautiful woman and he’d been beguiled by her outer beauty. By the time he discovered that her outer beauty concealed an ugly soul, it was too late. She’d told him she was pregnant, so he’d done the honorable thing and married her.Honorable, but foolish.
She hadn’t been pregnant. She just hadn’t had any interest in getting a job, and she’d thought that she could turn him into someone he was not. She hadn’t been successful, and she’d made both of them miserable in the process. At least he had been miserable. She seemed to derive some type of vicious satisfaction out of pointing out his shortcomings and the many ways he’d failed her.
The move to Fairhaven Falls had been one of those failures.
He’d started a logging business on land he’d inherited from his grandparents just outside of town. Alexis liked the idea of being married to a successful businessman. She didn’t like the fact that he’d actually worked with his crews instead of sitting in an office wearing a suit and tie every day.
She also hated the fact that the town was so small. And she despised the fact that so many Others had chosen to live in Fairhaven Falls. He’d offered her a divorce but she refused, although he’d had no idea why at the time. He couldn’t bring himself to force her so he buried himself in work instead. She’d found other interests and even though they continued to occupy the same house they rarely saw each other. He’d even moved into one of the upstairs bedrooms.
It hadn’t been the marriage and family he’d always envisioned but he’d accepted it. It wasn’t until the last year of his life that everything fell apart.
A few years before that his half-brother had come looking for a job. Tim was six years younger than him and they had never been particularly close, but he’d been family. Leo had foolishly assumed that meant he could trust him. Tim had been the one who remained in the office, managing the business side of things—or rather mismanaging it as he’d discovered too late.
His brother was using company funds to pay his own bills and siphoning off money into his own accounts. He was also having an affair with Alexis—an affair that had apparently been going on since not long after he came to town.
If he had loved her, the betrayal would have devastated him. Instead it only made him feel sick.
Tim had been behaving more and more erratically and Leo had been forced to spend more time in the office. That was when he discovered that Tim was stealing money from the company.
He’d fired him immediately—and that’s when he discovered the affair. Alexis had been furious with him and ordered him to take Tim back. When he refused, she told him they loved each other, even though he knew that his brother had been having a torrid affair with his secretary for the past six months.
He’d done his best to warn her, but she hadn’t wanted to listen. Just as she never listened to him.
He told her he was going to start divorce proceedings, but that night Tim had shown up at the house ranting about how much Leo owed him.
“I owe you?” he asked in astonishment. “You’re the one who’s been stealing from my company.”
“It should have been my company. Our grandparents should have left the land to me.”
He didn’t bother pointing out that they’d been his mother’s parents, not Tim’s mother’s. He just sighed, tired of the whole sordid business.
