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Cole skimmed the directions. “I’m good with the chicken and vegetables part, but I have to admit, the words roux and piecrust have me terrified. What the hell is a roux?”
She laughed. “I have no idea.”
Cole read over the directions again. “Sure you don’t want to just call for pizza?”
“Cole Watson, you’re not giving up already, are you?”
“Me? Never.”
“Me, either.” She turned the book back toward herself. “Besides, I need to learn how to do this.”
“Why? Why now?”
“Because it’s about darn time I learned how to cook,” she said, instead of the truth—that she had this dream of baking cookies with her child. Of being in the kitchen with Sweet Pea on a stool, helping to measure and stir. Building a family life of just two. She’d wanted that for so long—
Then why did the thought suddenly sadden her?
Outside, she could hear the sound of Joe chopping wood. She gestured toward the door. “If you want to help Joe, I can handle this.”
Cole arched a brow.
“I can figure it out. And if I don’t, I’ll blame you and call for pizza.” She grinned, half hoping he’d leave, half hoping he’d stay.
“I’d rather stay and help you. I should learn to cook, too, since I’m living on my own now.”
She didn’t remind him that he could afford a team of chefs to make him food around the clock.
“After all,” Cole said, leaning in toward her again, “didn’t you say you always wanted me to help you instead of hiring someone to do the work? Let me help you, Emily.”
She considered him for a moment. What would it hurt? Maybe together they could puzzle through this whole roux and piecrust thing. He had a point. She couldn’t say no when he was offering the very thing she’d asked him for.
“Okay, then, you have onion duty.” She plopped the offending vegetable onto Cole’s cutting board.
“You just want to see me cry.”
“No, but it is definitely a bonus.” She took the celery, trimmed off the ends and began to cut it into little green crescent shapes. Across from her, Cole had peeled the onion and sliced it down the middle. He made slow, neat, precise slices in the vegetable, so exact it was as if he’d measured them.
Cole stopped cutting and looked up at her. “What?”
“You’re treating that onion like it’s a prototype or a stock report. It won’t break if you chop it fast, Cole. We only have so long to get dinner on the table.”
“I like things neat,” he said.
“Neat? That’s an understatement. You should have been an accountant, Cole, with all those straight lines. Though, there were a couple times you didn’t mind a mess. One in particular I remember.” The last few words came out as a whisper. “Remember the closet in our first apartment?”
“That wasn’t a closet—it was an overgrown shoe box. It was impossible to keep neat.” He stopped slicing and looked up at her, and a knowing smile curved across his face. The kind of smile that came with a shared history, a decade of memories. It was a nice, comfortable place to be.
“The ties,” Cole said. “You’re talking about the ties.”
Oh, how she would miss this when her marriage was dissolved. All the memories they held together would be divided, like the furniture and the dishes and the books on the shelves. She’d be starting over with someone else. A blank slate, with no inside jokes about food fights and messy closets.
Emily craved those memories right now, craved the closeness they inspired. Just a little more, she told herself, and then she’d be ready to let go. “Remember that day you couldn’t find the red one with the white stripes?”
He nodded. “The one you gave me for our first Christmas. I said it was my lucky tie and I wanted to wear it on my first sales call.”
Their gazes met, the connection knitting tighter. She smiled. “You were so mad, because you like everything all ordered, and this was out of order. So I tore the closet apart looking for it, and because I was frustrated and in a hurry, I just threw all the ties in a pile on the floor. You came in and found me—”
“And at first I was upset at the mess, but then you held up the tie—”
“And I told you that if you made a mess once in a while, maybe you wouldn’t be so uptight.”
They laughed, the merry sound ringing in the bright and cheery kitchen. “But you forget the best part,” Cole said, moving a little closer, his voice darkening with desire. “How we ended up making love on that floor, on top of the ties, and having a hell of a good time.”
“In the middle of a mess.”
It had been a wild, uninhibited moment. They’d had so few of those. Too few.
Cole caught a strand of her hair in his fingers and let the slippery tress slide away. “Why didn’t I do that more often, Emily?”
She ached to lean into his touch, to turn her lips to his palm, to kiss the hand she knew so well. “I don’t know, Cole, I really don’t.”
He held her gaze for a moment, then a mischievous light appeared in his eyes and his hand dropped away. He shifted his attention to the onion again, and this time did a frantic chopping, sending pieces here and there, mincing it into a variety of tiny cubes. “There. Done. And messy as hell.”
She laughed. “I think the pie will be all the better for it.”
“Oh, yeah? Wait till we make the crust. You might not feel that way with flour in your hair.”
“You wouldn’t.”
He eyed the five-pound bag of all-purpose flour on the counter. “Oh, I would. And I will. I never did get you back for throwing my ties on the floor.” Cole came around to the other side of the bar, scooping up a bit of flour in his hand. “Are you sorry about that?” he asked.
There was a charge in the air, fueled by the innuendos and heat between them. It was delicious and sweet and she hoped the feeling stayed. “Not one bit.”
Cole held his hand over her head. “You want to rethink your position, Mrs. Watson?”
She hadn’t been called that in months, and the name jarred her for a second. She remembered when Cole had first proposed and she had written Mrs. Cole Watson a hundred times, until the proposal felt real and she could believe she was really going to marry the man of her dreams. Soon, she wouldn’t be Mrs. Watson anymore. Or a missus at all.
“I’m sorry, Cole,” she said softly.
He dropped his hand and met her gaze. “They were just ties, Emily. I didn’t really care.”
“I know,” she said. She was trying to hold on to the moment, but knew it was a butterfly, fleeting, impossible to catch. Eventually, Cole would go back to work, and she’d be on her own again. A single mom. Better to end it now than to prolong the inevitable. Emily returned to the vegetables. “Let’s, uh, get this pie made before Carol comes home.”
If he sensed the change in her, he didn’t say anything. He helped her finish chopping the vegetables and cooked chicken, then lifted the heavy food processor onto the counter and helped her assemble the ingredients for the piecrust. “Okay. Here goes nothing,” Cole said, pushing the pulse button. Several pulses later, the flour and butter and ice water had coalesced into a crust. “Voilà!” Cole said, lifting off the plastic lid. “Piecrust.”
“I am impressed,” she said. “What are you doing for your next trick, Superman?”
He grinned. “That you will have to wait to see, Mrs. Watson.”
She shook her head and dipped her gaze before he saw the tears that had rushed to her eyes. “Don’t call me that, Cole. Please.”
“Emily, Emily,” he said, tipping her chin until she was looking at him. “We cleaned up the mess with the ties. Why do you have such little faith that we can clean up the mess with our marriage?”
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_f7cdb543-c82f-5d7d-963d-95170f7b9f18)
THE FOUR OF them sat around the long dining room table, helping themselves to big slices of chicken potpie and generous bowls of tossed salad. Carol had brought home a loaf of bread from the bakery in town, which served as the perfect complement to the meal. Cole sat beside Joe, across from Emily and Carol in a warm and cozy room filled with great scents, great food and great people.
This, he thought, this is what home feels like.
Was that what he and Emily had missed? Had they been so fixated on getting from A to B that they had missed that critical step of building a home, not just a house?
Or rather, had he? Emily had asked him to be home more often, and he’d promised over and over to do that, only to spend his time at work instead. Then they’d built that house on the hill, and despite the fact that it had a table in the kitchen, a handcrafted one in the dining room and another outdoor eating space, they rarely ate together. Most nights, she had been asleep before he got home, and then he was gone again before she was awake.
“Great job, Emily.” Carol gestured toward the chicken potpie. “Maybe I should hire you on as a chef.”
Emily laughed. Cole liked it when she laughed, because her face and eyes lit up, and the whole room felt lighter. “I am far from being a chef. Cole’s the one who mastered the piecrust. I just read the directions.”
“You did more than that, Emily,” Cole said. “You taught me how to chop an onion, too.”
She dipped her head, a flush shading her cheeks. “I just told you it didn’t have to be all perfect.”
Joe looked from Cole to Emily and back again. “You got this guy to loosen the reins a little? What’d you do, drug him?”
“Hey, I’m not that bad,” Cole said.
“Right. You are the only man I know who had a typewritten itinerary for your own bachelor party.” Joe chuckled.
Cole scowled. “I like to be organized. So sue me.”
Joe leaned toward Emily with a conspiratorial grin. He cupped his hand around his mouth, mocking a whisper. “If you want to drive Cole crazy, just hide his lists and his planners.”
“First I’d have to pry his smartphone out of his hands,” Emily said, laughter in her voice. “And that’s almost impossible.”
Cole unclipped the phone and slid it across the table toward Emily. “Hey, I can disconnect the umbilical.”
Joe scoffed. “That’s not a challenge. It’s already after five.”
The cell phone sat on the table, one of the things that had built his company to its current position at the top, but also one of the things that had dragged his marriage to the bottom. That was one of the hazards of always being available—it was good for business, but bad for a relationship.
Emily glanced at his phone, then slid it back. “I don’t need it. I’m just glad you’re getting some time away from the office here.”
“Are you glad I’m here?” he asked, his gaze meeting hers.
A small, bittersweet smile crossed her lips. “Of course. You work so hard, I was always worried you’d have a heart attack. You need some time to destress.”
That wasn’t what Cole had hoped Emily would say. He’d wanted her to say she was glad he was here with her, finally trying to work on their marriage again.
“And in the process,” Emily added, “maybe you can get back to what’s important.”
The last few words had him trying to read Em’s face, but her gaze was on her plate, keeping whatever secrets she had hidden behind her wide green eyes.
“That’s what this inn was always about. Helping people get in touch with their lives, themselves,” Carol said. “And what I’d like to do more of if I end up keeping it. I think it’d make a great retreat for corporate types who want to get out from behind the desk.”
“You could make it a win-win,” Joe said with a grin. “Give them some hammers and nails or some paint and a paintbrush and put them to work on that project list that Cole drew up. You’ll get the stuff done around here, and they’ll get to do something other than sit around an office all day. Plus, Cole would get to check things off on one of his lists, and we all know how happy that makes him.”
Cole laughed. Damn, it was good to have Joe here. His friend kept him grounded, real. “Joe, only you would make people work on vacation.”
Emily dished up some more salad and grabbed another slice of bread. “Says the man who hasn’t taken a vacation in years.”
“True.” Cole gave her a nod, then leaned in with a grin. “Maybe you should have kidnapped me and whisked me away to an undisclosed location. Out of network range, of course.”
A mischievous glint shone in her eyes. “That might have been fun.”
“Just for the record, if you ever get the urge to do something like that, I’m game.” It seemed as if the room had closed to just the two of them. He held her gaze, and his heart skipped a beat. “But you might want to take my phone first.”
“If I get that thing in my hands, I’ll end up smashing it with a sledgehammer,” Emily said with a teasing smile. “It’s needier than a three-year-old.”
As if on cue, the smartphone began to ring and the caller ID screen lit. Doug, probably calling about another problem with the new product launch. Cole reached forward, pressed the button on the side of the phone, sent the call to voice mail and darkened the screen. The action sent a flicker of anxiety through him, but he pushed it aside. Emily was right. He’d spent far too much time letting work interrupt dinners, and the last thing he wanted was an interruption in this one, when things seemed to be going so well, almost like the old days.
“That’s a good start,” Emily said, and gave him a smile that he wanted to hold in his heart. “Thank you, Cole.”
The dinner ended too soon. Carol began to pick up the dishes and put out a hand to stop Cole and Emily when they rose to help her. “You two go off on a walk or something. Joe and I can get these.”
“Are you sure?” Emily asked. “You already do so much.”
“That’s my job. Your job is to go relax,” Carol said. “And that’s an order.”
“Don’t worry about Carol,” Joe said. He flexed his biceps. “She’s got a whole lotta help.”
Cole chuckled. “A whole lotta something, that’s for sure.” Then he turned to Emily, glad that Carol had made it impossible for Emily to say no. “Want to take a walk? It’s not too cold out tonight.”
She glanced at Carol, who nodded and waved her off. “Okay. Let me get my coat.”
A few minutes later, they were outside, breathing in the crisp fall night air. The scent of a wood-burning stove filled the air, mixing in the fragrance of cedar and oak. “It’s a beautiful night,” Cole said. “Look at the lake. It’s as smooth as glass.”
“It’s gorgeous. Like a postcard.” Her breath frosted in the air, surrounding her face with a soft cloud.
He thought of what she had said before, about how he should learn to make a mess more often, to be less uptight and rigid and planned. Spontaneity had never been Cole’s strong suit, yet the happiest times he could remember were when he went off schedule. Maybe that was the key to finding his way back to where they used to be—throwing out the plan and just...
Being.
A rowboat lay on the beach, flanked by a pair of oars. The moon glinted off the wooden boat’s hull, making it look like a giant smile in the dark. “Hey, let’s take the boat out,” he said.
“At night? In the middle of November?”
He leaned in close, catching the sweet scent of her floral perfume, a fragrance he knew as well as he knew his own name. Her hair drifted across his lips. “Live on the edge, Emily,” he whispered. “With me.”
She turned to him, her lips an inch away from his. Her eyes widened, she inhaled, and Cole wanted her more in that moment than he could remember. “On the edge? But it’s dangerous. It’s nighttime, the water is cold and...well, things could go wrong. Remember the story Carol told?”
