Whiskey Sharp: Torn. Lauren Dane

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СКАЧАТЬ lines around his eyes begged for a kiss.

      “You guys know each other? I mean, duh. Obviously as you just said her name and there was a hug and stuff.” Maybe smiled brightly, fishing for details in her cheerful, relentless way.

      “First champagne and introductions, and then we will hear that story,” Gregori said, interrupting Maybe’s nosiness long enough to hand out glasses.

      * * *

      HE’D KNOWN BACK then that she’d had a crush on him, but she was still a kid. Then. Now? She still carried herself as if a secret song played in her head. But there was nothing girlish about her now.

      Her hair—shades of brunette from milk chocolate to red wine—was captured back from her face in a ponytail, tied with a scarf that managed to look artsy and retro instead of silly. It only accentuated how big her eyes were, how high her cheekbones, the swell of her bottom lip that looked so juicy he wanted to bite it.

      “Get started, if you’re hungry.” He indicated the long butcher-block counter where he’d set up some appetizers. “I was down at Pike Place earlier so the oysters are sweet and fresh. That’s also where the octopus in the salad came from, caught today. Just a quick grill with lemon and olive oil and pickled red onions.”

      “Oh my god, really?” Cora cruised straight over and grabbed a plate.

      A woman with an appreciation for food was sexy as hell.

      “Update me on your life. What are you doing here in Seattle?” she asked, after eating two of the oysters and humming her satisfaction. “So good. This octopus is ridiculous. Is that jalapeño?”

      “Good catch. Yes, in the olive oil I used to dress it.”

      “I like it. What else are you making? Not that this isn’t really good, but I’m greedy.”

      Watching her enjoy his food was a carnal shot to his gut. It set him off balance enough that he focused on the food for a few beats.

      “I’m working on a new cookbook so I’m trying out some seafood recipes. Scallop and crab cakes with a couscous salad,” he said, pointing at the food.

      “Yum! Ah, that’s why you’re in town?”

      “I’ve been in Los Angeles for a long time.” Feeling antsy. He had houses, but no home. “I felt a change would be good. A friend who owns a number of restaurants in the area has given me access to his kitchens so I can try my ideas out there, as well.” He liked working around other chefs, found creative challenge in that atmosphere in a kitchen where the whole team loved to cook.

      It was a good sort of competitive spirit. Pushed him to up his game, to be better. Far healthier for his liver and heart than all the drugs and alcohol that’d fueled his early twenties.

      “That’s excellent,” she said. “Sometimes a change in surroundings is what you need to hit the reset button. Congratulations on your success. Every time I see your face on a cookbook or on television it makes me smile.”

      He’d come a long way since he’d left the religious group many called a cult back when he was just seventeen. When he’d met Cora he’d only been out of Road to Glory for three years. Barely more than a legal adult. Modeling and wasting his money on drugs and private investigators, trying to find the children that had been stolen from him when the remaining cult members not yet arrested had gone on the run.

      Seventeen years and it had been more than one lifetime. And he still hadn’t found his sons, who were adults by that point. Wherever they were now, all Beau could do was hope they were all right.

      He shoved it away, into that well-worn place he kept his past, and went back to her compliments. “Thanks. What are you up to these days? I know your mom is still working because I listen to her stuff a lot when I cook.”

      “She and I just got back from three months in London as she finished up a project.”

      Rachel wandered over to them to add her two cents. “And she pretty much runs the gallery. Plus she holds the tattoo shop together. And keeps Walda out of trouble, which is a full-time job. She writes poetry and takes amazing photographs. Oh, and she’s an amazing knitter.”

      “I keep books for my sister from time to time. That’s hardly holding the shop together,” Cora said with affection clear in her tone.

      “And the marketing. You set up the new network too. So, yeah, holding things together. It’s what she does. How do you and Cora know one another?” Rachel repeated Maybe’s earlier question more firmly, clearly taking his measure.

      “At first glance you think it’s Maybe who’s the pushiest. But Rachel is way sneakier,” Cora told him with a shrug. “Beau and I met when he and Walda lived in the same building in Santa Monica. I was fifteen or sixteen at the time. He was a model so Mom kept herself between us. As if he even noticed me when he was surrounded by gorgeous models.”

      He hadn’t noticed Walda getting between him and Cora, but Cora had been correct that he hadn’t seen her in that way. For a whole host of reasons, chiefly that she was simply too young.

      Then. Not so much now.

      “We were there a year so I had a tutor, who, if I recall correctly, Beau definitely noticed.” Cora snickered.

      Beau hadn’t learned algebra until he was an adult. Hadn’t read a single classic literary novel until he was twenty-one. Education was a tool, something to dig yourself out of a bad spot—especially if you didn’t have the face and fortune to be a model while you got your education—so he was glad Walda snapped to it when it came to being sure her daughter got what she needed.

      He honestly couldn’t even remember the tutor, just the sweet kid who’d grown up well.

      “Anyway, that’s how we met, and in the intervening years he’s been a supermodel and now a celebrity chef and cookbook author.” Cora smiled at him. “Go you.”

      “How do you know Gregori?” Rachel asked once they’d settled in at the long table in the main room.

      “Beau and I were young men with more money than sense in the art scene,” Gregori said. “He was one of the first friends I made here in the US. We’ve been in contact on and off since. I had no idea of the connection between him and Cora.”

      “It was a pleasant surprise,” Beau told them with a shrug. “I know many people. I’m friends with very few, so those I like to keep around.”

      “I didn’t even know crab and scallop cakes were an actual thing. I vote yay,” Cora said as she put another two on her plate.

      In addition, there were brussels sprout leaves roasted with parmesan and walnuts, fruit and cheese with honey, wine, champagne and at the end, not just one cake, but two.

      Not a lot satisfied Beau more than seeing people enjoy food he’d made. Cooking was his way of pleasing others. Of being worthy.

      Even as fucked-up as he was, he’d managed to substitute out the most harmful ways of feeling worthy and pleasing others. His life was his own now. No one made his choices. He owed no one anything he didn’t want to give.

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