A Diamond in Her Stocking
Autor
Kandy Shepherd
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16
HarlequinChapter One
AS LIZZIE DUMONT looked around at the soon-to-open Bay Bites café, her new place of employment, she vowed she would never reveal how she really felt about the way her high-flying career as a chef had crash-landed into a culinary backwater like Dolphin Bay. Not when people here had been so kind to her.
She would put behind her the adrenalin rush of working at star-rated restaurants in the gastronomic capitals of Paris and Lyon. Give up the buzz of being part of the thriving restaurant scene in Sydney. Embrace the comparatively lowly life of a café cook.
Her sigh echoed around the empty café. Who was she kidding? That heady time in France had been the pinnacle of her career. But she’d been sinking in Sydney. Working shift after shift until past midnight in restaurant kitchens—no matter how fashionable the venues—had hardly been compatible with being a good parent to her five-year-old daughter, Amy.
With no family in Sydney to fall back on, and few friends because she’d lived in France for so long before her divorce, she’d struggled to give Amy a reasonable life. Drowning in debt, swimming against the current of erratic babysitter schedules and unreasonable rosters, after less than a year she’d been going under.
By the time her sister Sandy had approached her to manage the new café adjacent to Sandy’s bookshop, Lizzie had been on the edge of despair. She’d even been contemplating the unthinkable—letting Amy live permanently with her ex-husband Philippe in France.
Gratefully, she’d grabbed the lifeline Sandy had thrown her.
And here she was. Dolphin Bay was a rapidly growing resort town on the south coast of New South Wales, with a heritage-listed harbour and beautiful beaches. It was also, in her experience, a gastronomic wasteland—the only memorable meal she could ever remember eating was fish and chips straight from the vinegar-soaked wrapping.
But Sandy had offered her sanctuary and a new life with Amy. In return, Lizzie would throw herself wholeheartedly into making Bay Bites the best café on the south coast. Heck, why stop there? She would use her skills and expertise to make Bay Bites the best café in the country.
She let herself get the teeniest bit excited at the thought. After all, she would be in charge. No cranky head chef screaming insults at her. No gritting her teeth at an ill-chosen item on the menu she’d been forced to cook whether she’d liked it or not.
She continued her inspection, her spirits rising by the second. Sandy had done a wonderful job of the fit-out. The décor was sleek and contemporary but with welcome touches of whimsy. In particular, she loved the way the dolphin theme had been incorporated. Hand-painted tiles backed the service area. Carved wooden dolphins supported the wooden countertop and framed the large blackboard on the wall behind it where she would chalk up the daily specials.
There was still work to be done. Lots of it. Boxes were stacked around the perimeter of the café waiting for her to unpack. Large flat packages, wrapped in brown paper, were propped against the walls. She itched to get started.
But someone had started the unpacking. Outsized glass jars were already lined up at the other end of the counter to the cash register, their polished chrome lids glinting in the late afternoon sun that filtered through the plate glass windows that faced the view of the harbour.
She could envisage the jars already filled with her secret recipe cookies. Nearby was the old-fashioned glass-fronted rotating cabinet for cakes and pies she’d asked Sandy to order. The equipment in the kitchen was brand new. It was perfect. She would make this work.
Lizzie ran her hand along the wooden countertop, marvelling at the intricacy of the carved dolphins, breathing in the smell of fresh varnish and new beginnings.
‘Those dolphins are kinda cool, aren’t they?’ The deep masculine voice from behind her made her spin around. She recognised it immediately.
But the shock of seeing Jesse Morgan stride through the connecting doorway from Bay Books next door expelled all the breath from her lungs. Her heart started to hammer so hard she had to clutch her hands to her chest to still it.
Jesse Morgan. All six foot three of him: black-haired, blue-eyed, movie-star handsome. Jesse Morgan of the broad shoulders and lean hips; of honed muscles accentuated by white T-shirt and denim jeans. Jesse Morgan, who was meant to be somewhere far, far away from Dolphin Bay.
Why hadn’t someone warned her he was in town?
Lizzie’s sister was married to Jesse’s brother Ben. Six months ago, Jesse had been the best man and she the chief bridesmaid at Ben and Sandy’s wedding. Lizzie hoped against hope Jesse might have forgotten what had happened between them at the wedding reception.
One look at the expression in his deep blue eyes told her he had not.
She cringed all the way down to her sneaker-clad feet.
‘What are you doing here?’ she managed to choke out once she had regained use of her voice. She was aiming for nonchalance but it came out as a wobbly attempt at bravado.
‘Hello to you, too, Lizzie,’ he said with a Jesse-brand charming smile, standing there in her café as confident and sure of himself as ever. A confidence surely bred from an awareness that since he’d been a teenager he would always be the best-looking man in the room. But she noticed the smile didn’t quite warm his eyes.
She tried to backtrack to a more polite greeting. But she didn’t know what to say. Not when the last time they’d met she’d been passionately kissing him, wanting him so badly she’d been tempted to throw away all caution and common sense and go much further than kissing.
‘You gave me a fright coming in behind me like that,’ she said with a rising note of defensiveness to her voice. Darn it. That was a dumb thing to say. She didn’t want him to think he had any effect on her at all.
Which, in spite of everything, would be a total lie. Jesse Morgan exuded raw masculine appeal. It triggered a sudden rush of awareness that tingled right through her. Any red-blooded woman would feel it. Lots of red-blooded women had felt it, by all accounts, she thought, her lips thinning.
‘I didn’t mean to scare you,’ he said. ‘But Sandy told me you were in here. She sent me to give you a hand with the unpacking. I’ve made a start, as you can see.’
He took a step towards her. She scuttled backwards, right up against the countertop, cursing herself for her total lack of cool. She was so anxious to keep a distance between them she didn’t register the discomfort of the dorsal fin of the wooden dolphin pressing into her back.
It wasn’t fair a man could be so outrageously handsome. The Black Irish looks he’d inherited from his mother’s side gave him the currency he could have chosen to trade for a career as an actor or model. But he’d laughed that off in a self-deprecating way when she’d teased him with it.
Which had only made him seem even more appealing.
How very wrong could she have been about a man?
‘I only just got here from Sydney, after a four-hour drive,’ she said. ‘I...I haven’t really thought where to start.’
‘Can I get you a drink—some water, a coffee?’ he asked.
He sounded so sincere. All part of the act.
‘No, thank you,’ she said, regaining some of her manners now the shock of seeing him had passed. After all, he was her sister’s brother-in-law. She couldn’t just ask him to leave, the way she’d like to. ‘I stopped for a bite to eat on the way down.’
Despite herself she couldn’t help scanning his face to see what change six months had brought him. Heaven knew what change he saw in her. She felt all the stress of the last months had aged her way more than her twenty-nine years.
He, about the same age, looked as though a care had never caused his brow to furrow. His tan was deeper than when she’d last seen him, making his eyes seem even bluer. A day away from a shave, dark growth shadowed his jaw. His black hair was longer and curled around his ears. She remembered the way she had fisted her hand in his hair to pull him closer as she’d kissed him.
How could she have been so taken in by him?
She squirmed with regret. She’d known of his reputation. But one champagne had led to one champagne too many and all the tightly held resolutions she’d made after her divorce about having nothing to do with too-handsome, too-charming men had dissolved in the laughter and fun she’d shared with Jesse.
Was he remembering that night? How they’d found the same exhilarating rhythm dancing with each other? How, when the band had taken a break, they’d gone outside on the balcony?
She’d been warned that Jesse was a heartbreaker, a womaniser. But he’d been fun and there hadn’t been much fun in her life for a long time. It had seemed the most natural thing in the world to slip into his arms when he had kissed her in a private corner of the balcony lit only by the faintest beams of moonlight. His kiss had been magical—slow, sensuous, thrilling. It had evoked needs and desires long buried and she had given herself to the moment, not caring about consequences.
Then a group of other guests had pushed through the doors to the balcony with a burst of loud chatter, and broken the spell.
It had been the classic wedding cliché—the chief bridesmaid and the best man getting caught in a passionate clinch.
Lizzie cringed at the memory of those moments. The hoots and catcalls of the other guests as they’d discovered them kissing. ‘Jesse’s at it again,’ someone had called, laughing.
She’d never felt more humiliated. Not because of being caught kissing. They were both single adults who could kiss whomever they darn well pleased. She’d laughed that off. No. The humiliation was caused by the painful awareness she’d been seen as just another in a long line of Jesse’s girls. Girls he had kissed and discarded when the next pretty face had come along.
But, despite knowing that, it hadn’t stopped her from going back for more with Jesse that night. Why had she imagined he’d be any different with her?
What an idiot she’d been.
Now she cleared her throat, determined to make normal—if stilted—conversation; not to let Jesse know how shaken she was at seeing him again. How compellingly attractive she still found him.
‘Aren’t you meant to be gallivanting around the world doing good works? I thought you were in India,’ she asked. Jesse worked for an international aid organisation that built housing for the victims of natural disasters.
Jesse shook his head. ‘The Philippines this time. Rebuilding villages in the aftermath of a gigantic mudslide. Thousands of houses were destroyed.’
‘That must have been dangerous,’ she said. Jesse was a party guy personified, and yet his job took him to developing countries where he used his skills as an engineer to help strangers in need. She’d found that contradiction fascinating.
Just another way she’d been sucked into his game.
‘Dangerous and dirty,’ he said simply. ‘But that’s what we do.’
She shouldn’t feel a surge of relief that he had escaped that danger without harm. But she did. Though she told herself that was just because he was part of the extended family now. The black sheep, as far as she was concerned.
‘So you’re back here because...?’
‘The “good works” led to an injured shoulder,’ he said. He raised his broad right shoulder to demonstrate and in doing so winced. His so-handsome face contorted in pain and the blood drained, leaving him pale under his tan.
Her first reaction was to rush over and comfort him. To stroke his shoulder to help ease the pain. Or offer to kiss it better...
No! She forced her thoughts away from Crazyville. Gripped her hands tightly together so she wouldn’t be tempted. She was furious with herself. Wasn’t she meant to now be immune to his appeal?
Getting together with Jesse Morgan at the wedding had been like nibbling on just one square of a bar of fine Belgian dark chocolate and denying herself the rest even though she knew it would be utterly delicious. Quite possibly the best chocolate she had ever tasted.
But she prided herself on her willpower when it came to chocolate. And men who offered her nothing more than a fleeting physical thrill.
Her aim was to build a new life for her and Amy. She didn’t want a man around to complicate things. Not now. Maybe not ever. And if she did decide to date again it wouldn’t be with someone like Jesse Morgan. She’d been there, done that, with her good-looking charmer of an ex-husband who had let her down so badly.
The next man for her—if she decided to go there—would be steady, reliable, living in the same country as her and average-looking. She wanted a man who only had eyes for her.
Jesse was a player and Lizzie didn’t want to play. Her party-girl days were far behind her. It would be work, work, work for her in Dolphin Bay. And being the best mother she could possibly be to her precious daughter.
Not that Jesse was giving her any indication that he had a real interest in her. Not now. Not then. It still stung. How could she have believed in him?
After they’d been interrupted on the balcony, she’d rushed away to look in on Amy. When she’d returned, out of breath from her hurry to get back to Jesse, she had found him dancing with a beautiful dark-haired woman, his head too close to hers, his laughter ringing out over the noise of the band. Had he taken her out onto the balcony and kissed her too? Lizzie hadn’t hung around to find out. She’d avoided him for the rest of the evening.
‘I’m sorry to hear you’ve been hurt,’ she said stiffly.
Boy, had she wanted to hurt him back then.
‘All in the line of duty,’ he said. ‘My own fault for grappling with a too-large concrete beam without help.’
‘So you’ve come home to recuperate?’ she asked. She became aware of the carving pressing into her back and moved from the countertop, being careful not to take a step closer to him. Her reaction to him had unnerved her. She didn’t know that she could trust herself not to reach out to him if she got too near.
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘But I’m bored with all the physiotherapy and “taking it easy”. I’ve been helping Ben and Sandy finish off the café.’ He looked around him with a proprietorial air that she found disconcerting. ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’
‘Very,’ she said. ‘I love the dolphin carvings. Every business in this town has to display some kind of dolphin motif, if I remember correctly. These are works of art.’
She kept her tone neutral but inside she was seething. In all their phone calls and Skype discussions about the progress of the café, Sandy had never once mentioned that Jesse was back in town. Her sister, along with everyone else in this gossip-ridden small town, knew she and Jesse had been caught making out on the balcony.
It wouldn’t have been a huge deal anywhere else but here it was big news. Jesse was the kind of guy the locals kept odds on. The big bets were on that he would never settle down with one woman.
She found herself nervously glancing out of the plate glass windows that led to the street for fear people walking by might notice her and Jesse alone together.
She didn’t want to become part of the Jesse mythology. Be a butt of local jokes. But her indiscretion on the night of the wedding meant, most likely, she’d been added to the list of his conquests. Why hadn’t Sandy warned her Jesse had made an unscheduled visit home? That he’d be working on the café? It would be almost impossible to avoid him.
As Jesse reached out to touch the dolphin carvings, she jerked away from him to avoid any possible contact. He raised a dark eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Which made her feel even more ill at ease.
‘They’re by the same Balinese carvers as the fittings next door in Bay Books,’ he said, stroking the dolphin. She couldn’t look, couldn’t let herself remember how good his hands had felt on the bare skin of her back in her strapless bridesmaid dress. ‘Sandy had the countertop custom-made and then imported it. I only finished installing it yesterday.’
‘So you’ve completed work on the fit-out now?’ She spoke through gritted teeth. Please, please, please let him be on his way back to his job in the Philippines.
‘Just about.’
She sighed with too-obvious relief. ‘So you won’t be around much longer.’
Only a tightening of his beautifully chiselled lips betrayed he’d noticed her tone.
‘There’s the unpacking to do. And I still have to finish off some tiling upstairs in your apartment,’ he said.
‘You’ve been working up there?’ She regretted the squawk of alarm as soon as it had escaped from her mouth. Jesse in her bathroom; maybe in her bedroom? The thought was disconcerting, to say the least.
But she couldn’t let him know she was worried he would invade her private thoughts when she was alone in those rooms. She mustn’t let that happen.
‘Sandy wanted the bathroom remodelled to be as comfortable as possible for you and your little girl,’ he said.
‘Thank you for your help,’ she managed politely. ‘It was a big order to get it ready in time for us to move in.’
Her real gratitude was to Sandy. How many other down-on-their-luck chefs had a sister who had offered not only a job but also a place to live, rent-free?
But having Jesse Morgan around hadn’t been part of the deal. She didn’t want to be reminded of her lack of judgement on the night of the wedding. Of the folly of being in his arms. She should have known better than to fall for that kind of guy again.
Because, no matter how many times over the last six months she’d told herself that Jesse was bad news, seeing him again made her aware she’d be lying if she thought she was immune to him. He was still out-and-out the most attractive man she’d ever met. She would have to fight that attraction every moment she found herself in his company. Dear heaven, let there not be too many of those moments.
She looked purposefully around her again. ‘I’d hate for the building work here to delay your recuperation.’
Jesse’s deep blue eyes narrowed. ‘So I can get the hell out of Dolphin Bay, you mean?’
She struggled to meet his gaze. ‘I...I didn’t mean it like that,’ she lied.
His face set in grim lines. ‘You might not like it but you’d better get used to me being around. I’m going to be here for at least another month while my shoulder heals.’
She couldn’t help her little gasp of horror. ‘What?’
Only the twist of his mouth indicated he’d heard. ‘Sandy needs help to get this venture up and running and I intend to give it to her. The Morgan family is grateful to Sandy. Heaven knows where Ben would be if she hadn’t come back into his life after all those years.’
‘Of course,’ she said, suddenly feeling shamefaced that all she was thinking about was herself.
Lizzie and Sandy had first visited Dolphin Bay on a family vacation as teenagers. They’d stayed in the Morgan family’s character-filled old guest house. Lizzie remembered Jesse from that time as an arrogant show-off, flexing his well-developed teenage muscles at any opportunity. But Sandy had fallen in love with Ben. They hadn’t met again until twelve years later, after Ben had lost his first wife and baby son in the fire that had destroyed the guest house. Together they’d taken a second chance on love.
‘I want to make this café a success for Sandy as well,’ Lizzie continued. ‘And for Ben, too—he’s a marvellous brother-in-law. They’ve both been very good to me.’
Sandy was the only person she felt she could really trust. They’d been allies in the battleground that had been their family, led by their bully of a father. Her older sister had always watched out for her. Just like she was watching out for her and Amy now. Lizzie owed her.
‘Then we’re on the same page,’ Jesse said.
‘Right,’ she said, unable to keep the anxiety from her voice.
‘Bay Bites opens in a week’s time. We don’t have time to waste bickering,’ Jesse said.
He took a few steps towards her until she was back up against that dolphin fin again and she couldn’t back away from him any further. She felt breathless at his proximity, the memories of how good it had felt to be in his arms treacherously near the surface.
But this wasn’t the fun, charming Jesse she’d known at the wedding bearing down on her. This Jesse looked tough, implacable and she didn’t think it was her imagination that he seemed suddenly contemptuous of her.
‘So better grit your teeth and bear being in my company for as long as it takes,’ he said.
She’d had no idea his voice could sound so harsh.
