“Even if you weren’t involved, he probably wouldn’t come. My career doesn’t exactly make him proud.” Alec shoved his hands in his pockets because he didn’t know what else to do with them.
“You’re a celebrated chef. How could he not be proud?”
He smiled at the perplexed look on her beautiful face. The depth of emotion in her voice might as well have been a kiss for how it ignited his heart.
“I’m not a cop like him and Joe, or a first responder, soldier, or pro athlete. Those are pretty much the only jobs he admires.” Alec shrugged and then joked, “Maybe he’d have accepted me as a doctor or a billionaire tech geek.”
“Well, I love that you followed your passion, come what may. That makes you very brave and committed.” She smiled—a gentle, compassionate smile meant just for him. One he’d tuck away in his memory to revisit again.
“Thanks.” He wished she were still snuggled against his chest. What if he tossed her papers off the desk, set her on top of it, and kissed her? The mere thought sent a potent shiver through him, so he gave himself a mental headshake. “Guess I’ll get back to the kitchen.”
“We have lots of work to help us forget about Melissa.” A tired grin spread across her face.
Burying pain behind a mountain of work hadn’t done the trick for him in the past, and he doubted it would help Colby now. She needed more than this restaurant if she wanted to rebuild a normal, happy life. He’d love to be the guy to get her to remove Mark’s wedding band, but he couldn’t without coming clean. Her earlier reaction to talking about Mark quieted the doubts he’d had about whether confessing might do more harm than good. Besides, he couldn’t help her or his family if he got fired.
“You should go out with that lawyer.” Hell. That’d come out without thinking it through.
“What?” She set down her pencil.
Alec gestured around the room. “This isn’t enough, Colby. Not if you really want to reclaim your life. You need more than work.”
She sat back, staring at him. “I could say the same to you—he who spends his nights in the company of puzzles.”
He’d finished the recent one, actually. Not that she’d be impressed by that particular boast. “And you’d be right.”
“Yet I don’t see you dating.”
Because I want you. “We’re talking about you.”
“You’re talking about me. And I’m not interested. Even if I were, it wouldn’t be with Todd. He’s a good man, but we’ve been friends for too long. I doubt I could ever see him as more than that.” She pressed her lips together and looked away.
Alec’s heart slowed. In fact, his body suddenly seemed ten times heavier and wilting. Against all odds, somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d apparently clung to a childlike wish that someday, in some way, she might choose him.
But he’d been her friend even longer than Todd, so she’d likely also relegate him to that sexless zone. He should count himself lucky that he’d never be forced to tell her about Mark’s letter. He didn’t feel lucky, though. He felt deprived of the one thing that might eclipse a family reconciliation.
That must be why his next thought slipped past his lips. “Maybe a man who’s been your friend for a long time is the perfect man for you.”
He willed himself not to look away while she weighed her words in heavy silence. His heart pounded out each second until her reply.
In a voice as soft as a summer breeze, she uttered, “I don’t know much, but I do know that there’s no such thing as a perfect man.”
Everything in him rebelled against the door she’d just closed. “That sounds almost like a challenge.”
She hesitated, her eyes filling with questions he hoped she wouldn’t ask. Apparently, she thought better of them, too, and simply ended the discussion by saying, “One I know I’d win.”
Chapter Eight
“The hostess said you wanted to see me?” Alec stood in the door to her office looking formidable in his freshly pressed chef’s coat. Shoulders back, spine arched, tautly strung like a crossbow. Faint circles beneath his eyes revealed the eighteen-hour workdays he’d been clocking all week in a feverish quest to make the soft opening perfect. “Doors open in less than an hour, so I don’t have much time.”
Colby had battled the butterflies of excited anticipation all afternoon. The renewed flutter in her stomach, however, had nothing to do with the soft opening and everything to do with the man in front of her. The bewildering man who’d reawakened feelings she’d rather lie dormant.