“You said you were a beekeeper.”
“I am. When I got divorced, Sandy took the restaurant. I signed a noncompete agreement that says I can’t open another one.”
“She can do that? Keep you from being a chef forever?”
“No, I could open a pizzeria in Fargo if I wanted, but I agreed not to open another real restaurant in New York or the boroughs for two years.”
“How long ago was that?”
“A year next month.”
“So you’re … what? Just biding your time with the bees and the gardening?”
“Something like that.”
“And then you’re going to open another restaurant?”
“If I can find some backers, yeah.”
May stopped herself from asking how likely that was. It seemed as if it might be a rude question, like asking someone who they’d voted for or how much they earned. Like saying, Are you a good chef or a mediocre one?
“Does that mean you’re making me breakfast again?” she asked instead.
“It could mean that.”
“If you make me breakfast, I’ll stay.”
“And the kiss?”
He didn’t change his tone or move closer. When he reached for a T-shirt, his elbow brushed her arm, and her chest broke out in goose bumps.
From his elbow.
“Another rain check, I think.”
They folded laundry together. He got the basket and set it onto the counter, and they piled the warm clothes inside. When they’d finished, she turned to get her purse and found him where she hadn’t expected to, and they moved into each other—a slow-motion collision that wasn’t precisely an accident.
At least, not on her part.
Her hands lifted to investigate the rigid sculpture of his biceps just beneath the sleeves of his T-shirt. His palms spanned her waist. Then her hips. When he pulled her toward him, his thigh came between her legs, and the heat spread with a slow pulse, up and out, across her stomach and her thighs. Into her breasts, her neck. Her face.
The detergent smell of the laundry room, the tumbling clothes, her new panties drying over the edge of his green plastic laundry basket—none of this had been part of her fantasies. She’d never intended to run from Dan and end up with this divorced farming beekeeper ex-chef, with his surly attitude and his crooked smile. His secrets.
She had never imagined the feel of Ben hard against her hip, his quiet breath on her face.
She couldn’t have, even if she’d known to want to.
“I’m cool with a rain check,” he said. “But tomorrow, your vacation starts.”
“You’re going to make me fall for New York.”
“That’s the plan.”
He didn’t move his hands. He didn’t have to—she was melting just from their weight and heat at her hips. Her fingertips took tiny excursions on his arms. Up and down. Over the swell of his bicep, along the groove between bicep and tricep.
“And we’ll find you an apartment, somehow,” she said.
“And visit some bees.”
“What if they don’t like me?”
“They’re going to love you,” he said. “How could they not? You’re exactly the right height.”
She smiled, and he ducked his head and laid it against her neck. His strong arms gathered her close and wrapped around her, possessive and comforting.
She stroked her fingers along his hairline and up and down his neck, letting herself touch him. She wanted to know all the shapes of him, all the secrets he was made of.
But one at a time. Shape by shape. Secret by secret.
“When the laundry’s done, can we watch a movie?” she asked.
“I do fantastic popcorn.”
He kissed the patch of her skin that was closest to his mouth, and she closed her eyes again and let him hold her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
In the morning, he offered her a tour of the garden at Figs.
It was a short tour. The restaurant’s rooftop was small, and its garden consisted of a series of low raised beds, each sporting tidy rows of green at various heights. Ben told her the restaurant was coming to the end of its first growing season.
He talked about both the garden and the restaurant as though they belonged to him, but when she asked him if they did, he said no. She hoped he’d volunteer more information about how he knew Cecily and Sam and how deeply he was involved with Figs, but he didn’t.
Still, he seemed cheerful as he harvested a few dozen tomatoes, some squash, and fresh herbs. He told her the names of things with a certain measure of pride, teasing her when he asked her to pick some basil and she revealed that she didn’t know which part to pick—the leaves alone, or the whole stalk? She’d never had a garden.