It was a recipe for disaster.
‘I miss her for her wisdom,’ Poppy went on. ‘She taught me more about food and cooking than any hospitality college could do. The thing most people don’t get about cooking is it’s not just a collection of ingredients, and hey presto, out comes a five-star meal. It’s so much more than that.’
‘So what does make a meal special?’
‘The love that goes into it.’
‘Love?’
‘The best restaurants are where the chefs love the food they prepare and the people they feed,’ she said. ‘It’s a symbiotic relationship.’
‘So what you’re telling me is you actually love the people who come to your tearoom?’
She gave him a pert look. ‘Maybe not all of them.’
Rafe laughed. ‘So what do I have to do to win your love? Have my cake and eat it too?’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t want my love. You just want my house.’
I want much more than your house.
Rafe pushed the thought aside as Morgan approached with their meals. He had to stay focused. The goal was the dower house; that was what he was after. He didn’t want or need anything else. He wouldn’t be around long enough to invest in anything other than building a top-notch hotel that would make him loads and loads of money.
Goal.
Focus.
Win.
Sure, it would be fun to have Poppy Silverton in his bed for the short time he was here, but he wasn’t about to offer her anything else. She was looking for her fairy-tale prince, someone to sweep her off her feet and carrying her off into a happy-ever-after sunset.
Rafe’s princely attributes leaned more to the darker side.
That whole domestic scene women like Poppy were after was nothing like the life he had carved for himself. He didn’t do picket fences, puppies and sweet-smelling babies. He was never in the same place more than a week or two. He never stayed with a lover more than a month; six weeks max. He didn’t do commitment. Maybe he was more like his grandfather than he cared to admit.
Not evil, but not squeaky-clean either.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AFTER THEY LEFT the restaurant, Rafe drove Poppy back home and walked her to the front door of the dower house. She hadn’t expected to enjoy the night out, but Rafe had been nothing but charming, and even though Oliver’s restaurant wouldn’t have been her first choice of venue, in the end it had given her a sense of closure.
But it niggled at her that yet again Rafe had achieved what he’d set out to achieve. He’d got her to agree to cook for him while he stayed on site at Dalrymple Manor. It showed how incredibly shrewd he was. He knew how to turn things to his advantage, to find an opponent’s weak spot and then go in for the kill.
And she’d done exactly as he had hoped she would do. She had snapped up the bait and now was committed to seeing him every night as she delivered his food to his door. Was she so predictable, or was he particularly clever at reading her?
Poppy turned to face him on her doorstep. ‘Do you have any preferences for meals? Any particular cuisine you’d prefer over another or are you happy with whatever I come up with?’
His dark eyes flicked to her mouth for a brief moment. ‘That’s not why I asked you out tonight.’
She arched a brow at him. ‘Is it not?’
‘No.’ His voice seemed deeper than normal, almost husky.
Poppy’s eyes were almost on a level with his as she was standing two steps above him, and she was wearing her highest heels. She could see the wide black circles of his pupils in those impossibly deep brown eyes. She could see the way his lips were pressed firmly together as if he was fighting some sort of private internal battle. She could sense the tension in him and in the fragrant night air that circled them. ‘Then why?’
‘I asked you out so I could sleep with you.’
Poppy’s eyes widened at his blunt honesty. ‘You don’t pull your punches, do you?’