Southern Charmer (Charleston Heat 1)

I smile back, my face growing warm.

My hands shake when I pick up the menu. I feel like a teenager again. A little sick with longing.

Longing I don’t want to feel. But there it is.

I imagine this is the kind of longing the heroine of my novel feels for the hero. It’s forbidden. Exciting because it’s forbidden.

Already a scene is taking shape in my head. The hero and heroine meeting eyes across a crowded room. Everything and everyone else falls away as wordless, primal understanding passes between them. Sounds, sights, smells—it’s overwhelming and distant, all at once. Time slows and goes too fast.

Anticipation thickens the air.

Maybe—just for tonight—I give in to this longing. Not give in give in—like in the biblical sense. But maybe I let myself feel it. Maybe I pretend that I really am a writer, and I really am living here, and I really am free to lust after Elijah Jackson the way my heroine lusts after her hero.

I try it.

I give in, meeting Eli’s eyes across the restaurant. For strictly literary purposes, of course. He smiles. So do I.

The sommelier pours the wine for our first course. It’s an Albariño, a crisp Spanish white that tastes like green apples on my tongue.

Then there’s the food. Course after course of fresh, inventive, supremely satisfying amazingness. We start with biscuits that are served with something called pimiento cheese, made in house. It’s so good I literally can’t stop eating it. When we run out of biscuits, I beg our server not to bring any more. I’m worried I’ll ruin my appetite for the real meal.

After the biscuits comes oysters on the half shell and a salad of pickled shrimp and green beans. Then broiled local snapper on a bed of collard greens cooked in coconut milk. Gnocchi made out of sweet potatoes follows, served with this tangy, yummy, buttery cream sauce that’s so good I have to resist the urge to lick my plate.

I feel like my senses are turned all the way up. It’s all too much. The wine and the food and Eli holding court in the kitchen. I find myself closing my eyes, willing myself to remember these moments, these flavors. This pure, fleeting bliss of just sitting and enjoying and lusting.

And often I find Eli watching me when I open them. Almost as often as I watch him working in the kitchen.

I can’t stop watching him. It’s full on competence porn. I stare as he grabs a pair of enormous tweezers from his breast pocket and uses them to painstakingly place a mint sprig on a perfectly round scoop of cream.

I feel myself getting wet.

There’s something so steady about him as he works. His economical movements. The steady way he plates each meal. There’s no rush. No second guessing. Eli is clearly in his element; watching him work alongside the other cooks, all of them putting these gorgeous dishes together without saying a word, is like watching a dance.

I drink my wine, my buzz so happy I feel it tingling behind my knees. The more I drink, the more I watch. The less I care about being caught watching.

No surprise that Eli catches me again. This time he shakes his head, teasingly, like he’s so sick of being the center of my attention. His eyes, though—they flicker with heat.

With a dare.

Keep looking, Yankee girl.

The guy’s incredibly sexy outside the kitchen.

But in it? He’s a god.

The kind I’ve only encountered in the pages of the romance novels that I love.

Finishing my wine, I feel a renewed surge of inspiration. This is how you capture a hero’s strength. His virility.

This is how he should look. Move. Exist within his world.

I grab my phone and open the notes app. I jot down all the ideas I’ve had tonight so far. I can’t wait to get back home to work on them.

By the time our server clears our dessert course—something called Coca-Cola sheet cake with ganache frosting that’s so good I eat every last crumb, even though I’m beyond stuffed—it’s late, and the restaurant has cleared out.

I notice everyone at my table is signing their bills and standing up.

Glancing around, I can’t find my check.

“Excuse me,” I say, flagging down our waiter. “I’ll take my bill when you have a second.”

He smiles. “I’ll be right back.”

My neighbor didn’t finish his cake. Taking a quick peek around to make sure no one is watching, I swipe the tip of my finger in the frosting and bring it to my mouth.

“I saw that, Yankee girl.”

I jump at the sound of the familiar, rumbly voice right behind me.

Turning, I see Eli standing there, looking bigger and broader and hotter than ever. The muscles in his forearms rope and bunch as he crosses his arms over his chest.

He’s smirking. Ted would be horrified if he caught me eating with my fingers. Especially if we were out in public.