“What look?”
“That one. The one that says you’re spoiling for a fight.” He tried not to smile. “I’ve come to recognize the signs.”
Crista glared at him in silence and then she let out her breath.
“Sorry,” she said, turning back to the stove. “It’s just that—well, I suppose I’m a little touchy on the subject. My…lineage was a problem the past few years.”
Grant’s smile faded. “I don’t understand.”
“Uncle Simon,” she said as she poured a thin stream of golden olive oil into the skillet.
“I still don’t—”
“He never lost an opportunity to tell me that my father had married a woman who was—I think the kindest thing Simon ever called her was ‘exotic’.” Sighing, she dipped the spoon into the sauce, then lifted it to her nose, and took a sniff. “Mmm,” she said. “It smells good.”
Grant watched as she blew gently on the spoon. His body clenched as her lips parted; he saw the tip of her tongue and he turned away and took a deep, deep breath.
“It is good. Want another taste?”
He cleared his throat and looked at her.
“No,” he said carefully, “no, I’ll, ah, I’ll pass.”
She grinned. “Coward.”
She bent toward the skillet again, lifting her hand to her hair and tucking it back behind her ear as she did. Her breasts rose gently beneath her sweater, and he almost groaned aloud.
Hell, she was right. He was a coward. Otherwise, he’d take her in his arms, claim her mouth with his, then carry her up to his bedroom, strip away her clothes, and finish what had been between them from the first minute they’d met…
“…worst food I’d ever eaten.”
Grant swallowed. “I’m, ah, I’m sorry. I missed that.”
“I said, when I went to live with my uncle, I couldn’t believe the things his cook served.” She was setting the table now, and she smiled at him over her shoulder. “Of course, Simon thought it was ambrosial. He said I was just being difficult when I didn’t finish what was on my plate.”
Grant forced himself to concentrate on what she was saying. “Sushi?”
Crista laughed. “You need a lesson in demographics. Simon was an old-line WASP of the worst kind. He believed in the restorative powers of vegetables cooked until they were limp and beef and chicken roasted until they were dry. Anything in a sauce was suspect.” She gave a delicate shudder. “Meal after meal was the same. His cook gave a whole new meaning to the word ‘predictable’.”
Grant leaned back against the counter, his arms crossed.
“Predictable is bad?”
“Not necessarily. It’s just that sometimes you need to try something different, something with—oh, I don’t know. Something colorful.”
“And if it turns out you don’t like it?”
Crista laughed. “So what? You say yuck, that was awful. I hated it, I won’t go near it ever again.”
“I suppose you think that philosophy should apply to everything, not just to cooking,” Grant said.
She looked at him in surprise. “I never thought about it, but—yes. I suppose I do.”
His expression hardened. “That’s a foolish way to live.”
“Trying new things is foolish?”
“Dangerous, then. It’s—it’s…”
He frowned and clamped his lips together. When had this simple conversation gotten so complicated? And what the hell was he talking about? Crista was looking at him as if she thought he’d lost his mind, and he couldn’t much blame her.
“Hell,” he said, choking out a laugh, “I think I must be showing the effects of hunger on the human brain. Isn’t that stuff ready yet?”
Crista looked at him a second longer and then she smiled.
“I think it is. Are you willing to risk my cooking?”
“Sure.” Grant shot her a quick grin. “I can always go out the back door and catch myself some sushi on the hoof if I don’t like the main course.”
They smiled and settled opposite each other at the table and Crista watched as Grant took the first mouthful.
“Well?”
“It’s good.”
“Good?”
“Yes.”
“Good?” she repeated, her eyes narrowing.
He laughed. “Okay. It’s delicious. Does it have a name?”
Crista picked up her fork and twirled it through the steaming pasta on her plate.
“Uh-huh. Pasta with garlic and olive oil.” She smiled. “I’m sure it does have a name, but I don’t know it. I could…”
I could ask Danny, she’d almost said, and caught herself just in time. She didn’t want to spoil this fragile peace. After all, they were parting tomorrow. Wouldn’t it be nice to walk away from each other with a handshake instead of a grimace?
“You could what?” Grant asked.
On the other hand, she could tell him the truth. It was silly to let him go on thinking Danny was her lover.
“Crista? What were you going to say?”
No. It was none of his business what her relationship with Danny was. And besides, it seemed—it seemed safer tonight to let the deception continue…
“I was going to say that I could check my mother’s recipes. She used to make something similar to this, except that her version had chili peppers in it.”
“Chili peppers!”
She laughed. “Her Mexican heritage was incorrigible sometimes.”
Grant looked at her. “You must have been devastated when your parents died,” he said softly.
Crista’s smile dimmed. “Yes. What made it even worse was Simon’s determination to make me forget them.”
“Forget your parents? But why—”
“Well, not my father. But my mother—that was a different story. ‘I know you loved her, my dear Crista,’ Simon would say, ‘but now she is gone, and you must work to overcome that part of your ancestry.’”
Grant put down his fork. “Surely he didn’t mean—”
“Of course he did. And I—well, I’d never run into that before. Growing up in the Village—”
“That’s where you grew up? In Greenwich Village?”
She nodded. “Why do you look so surprised?”
“Well…” Grant frowned. “Blackburn said—he said…” He cleared his throat. “So. You weren’t happy living with your uncle?”
Crista let out a sighing breath. “I tried to be grateful, to remember that he’d been under no obligation to take me in. But I didn’t want to forget who I was. So I rebelled. Simon sent me to boarding school after boarding school. Each was supposed to make me sound and look like a lady, but I wouldn’t cut my hair, or give up the way I dressed, or say what people wanted to hear instead of what I really believe.”
“I see,” Grant said quietly.
“So they’d send me back to Simon, who’d warn me that I was going to grow up to be just like my mother unless I mended my ways, and I’d tell him that was perfectly fine with me, and—and…”
Her eyes met Grant’s and she flushed and shoved back her chair. “Just listen to me,” she said as she snatched up their plates. “I
don’t know why I told you all this.”
Grant stood up, too, and jammed his hands into his pockets. It was the only sure way he could think of to keep from walking to where she stood, putting his arms around her, and telling her that her uncle was a fool and that she was a fool for wasting herself on Danny. And Gus. And who knew how many others?
“Forgive me, Grant. I didn’t mean to bore you to death.”
Grant took a deep breath, then smiled.
“You didn’t bore me,” he said, “and, just for the record, good old Uncle Simon sounds like a prime ass.”
Crista laughed. “Believe me, he was. And I never missed the chance to point it out to him. Subtly, of course.”
Grant chuckled. “Of course.”
“The only trouble was, it just reinforced what he already thought of me,” she said as she filled the sink with soapy water. “I’d tell myself I was just playing into his hands, but—”
“But,” Grant said as he took a towel from the rack, “you hated him so much that you could never resist the chance to nail him.”
Crista looked at him in surprise. “How would you—”
“Life With Father,” he said with a tight smile. “My brothers and I all did whatever we could to rebel.”
“You?” She shook her head. “I can’t believe it.”
“Do I strike you as such a straight-arrow, Crista?”
She looked up. His voice was suddenly soft and dangerous, and when she looked into his eyes, the images of what had happened between them in this room only hours before seemed mirrored in their depths.
“No,” she said, dragging her eyes from his, “no, I didn’t mean that. I just—I can’t imagine you breaking the rules.”
There was a silence. When Grant spoke again, his voice was harsh.
“We all did—Cade, and Zach, and me. Of course, we all did it differently.”
Crista looked at him. “How did you do it?”
“Well, I was the eldest, so I was supposed to walk in the old man’s footsteps. Be a football hero. Go to his university. And come home to work at Landon Enterprises.”
“But?” she prompted softly, her eyes on his face.
“But, I went out for track instead of football, attended the university that was the longtime rival of his, and made my career in New York.”