Hadley becketts next dis.., p.15
Hadley Beckett's Next Dish, page 15
“When do I get to prepare my signature dish, Hadley?”
“What do you—”
“From the moment Marshall Simons got here tonight, he was pitting us against each other.” He turned to face me. “Think about it. If you think about it, you’ll realize I’m right.”
I thought about it. Or I tried. But staring at Max, I wasn’t going to be able to think about anything except how far away he was, there on the other side of the room, and how lonely my lips had gotten.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I can’t look at you right now,” I replied softly, with a quick peek through my fingers, which were covering my eyes.
A warm laugh filled the space between us. “Why? What did I do this time?”
I sighed and muttered, “You know what you did.”
“No, I really don’t.” When my hands dropped from my eyes to my lap in exasperation, I spotted his mischievous grin. “You might need to remind me.”
Uh-oh. My hands flew back to my eyes and I got up and turned away from him. I heard him chuckle lightly, but I decided I’d just have to ignore that too. There was something I was supposed to be thinking about. What was it . . . ?
Nope. Thinking wasn’t going to happen.
I felt him before I heard him. He brushed my hair away from my neck and over my left shoulder, as he began planting soft kisses where my neck and shoulder met on the right. His skilled, expert hands—that had climbed Kilimanjaro, caught scallops during a free-dive in Scotland, and prepared dinner for presidents and kings—wrapped around my waist.
“I’m supposed to be thinking,” I whispered as I melted into him.
“So, think,” he breathed against my skin.
Suddenly my eyes widened and I pulled away. “When are you going to prepare your signature dish?”
Max ran his hand through his hair. “Or maybe don’t think . . .”
“No, you’re right! They had me make mine. When are you supposed to make yours?” The thoughts were running wild and rampant all of a sudden—and in a decidedly less romantic direction. “What is your signature dish?”
“Beef Wellington. Well, and my wild mushroom risotto.”
“Sheesh. Maybe they just didn’t want us to be here all night. Maybe if your signature dish was meatloaf . . .”
“But no one even mentioned—”
“No one even mentioned it!” I exclaimed, every thought I was having totally original, of course. “And . . . hey! The way Chef Simons was practically ignoring you? I mean, I just thought he liked me better than you, and let’s face it, he probably does—”
“Thanks for that.”
“But it was a little weird, now that I think about it.”
He nodded. “It was just pushing buttons. Wanting us to talk about our ‘shared history,’ two hours into this whole thing? I mean, c’mon. They definitely know how to push the right buttons to get us to act the way they think we need to, in order to get the show they want.”
I decided to embrace the hopeful glimmer in my mind. “And that’s why you were such a jerk?”
One corner of his mouth inched upward. “Doubt it. But it sure didn’t help.”
17. Allow to cool.
MAX
“So, what do we do?” Hadley asked as she walked into her dark kitchen and began rummaging through a drawer.
Max smiled at her as she fumbled around, unable to find what she was looking for in the drawer, but also unable to remember where the light switch was. Finally, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and turned on its light.
“Well, here’s an idea. Just thought of this. We could practice.”
She pulled two forks out and held them up, and Max went hurrying in to grab one of them. He hadn’t been kidding about needing more Bouille Hadley. She had an uncanny way of making him throw self-control out the window.
He hadn’t meant to kiss her, after all. And he hadn’t even been thinking about it. But there was something about the sight of her in the open door, furious with him for reasons he didn’t even understand, shaking her phone at him. He’d just needed her. That’s all there was to it.
“Give me that,” he insisted, pulling the plate of cake away from her.
“Okay,” she began, cake still in her mouth. “What do you mean? Practice how? Practice what?”
He stuffed another bite in before he had swallowed the last. The woman was a dessert genius. “Being in the kitchen together. I think if we refuse to let them manipulate the situation—”
Hadley pointed her fork at him. “See, that’s the thing. Don’t you think we can just agree to not let them manipulate the situation . . . and then they won’t be able to manipulate the situation? Do you really think we need to practice that?”
The last crumb of the dessert was lingering on her bottom lip, and Max wasn’t sure if it was a final taste of Bouille Hadley or its creator’s mouth that he was more eager to capture. She licked the crumb away before he had the chance to attack, but when the eagerness didn’t go away, he figured his question about preference had been answered.
For heaven’s sake, Max. At least show enough self-control to get through this conversation.
He cleared his throat and scratched his neck at the spot where the beard began. “We walked into this kitchen as friends today. And it took . . . what? Ten minutes? We were at each other’s throats in ten minutes.”
“That’s just because you turn into a jerk on air.”
“And you turn into an episode of Designing Women.”
“Excuse me?”
Max looked into her eyes and saw the humor behind them, and he understood it was okay to tease.
He took on a dialect that was, admittedly, more Deliverance than Designing Women. “Let’s see . . . a pinch of salt . . . a smidge of cream . . .”
She laughed a deep, throaty laugh. “I would never say a smidge of cream!”
“And more sugar than you can shake a stick at, y’all. Oh, that looks about right, I’d say . . .”
“I cook from the heart!”
“Oh, is that it?”
“Yes!” And then her laughter abruptly ended. “I guess we both have our on-air personas, don’t we?”
Max let that register as he sank down onto a stool at the counter.
“Too bad mine isn’t as nice as yours.” All of the joviality was gone, but it was no less comfortable. At least, between the two of them. Within himself he was a lot less comfortable than he had been when they’d just been talking about Hadley. “I don’t know when that started.”
“When what started?”
He sighed. “My persona.”
“Well, I don’t know when it started, either, but it’s not hard to figure out why it stuck around.”
With a helpless shrug, he acknowledged, “Millions of people tuned in every week to see if I’d yell at a cook or curse at a fisherman.”
“Did you ever curse at a fisherman?”
“Quite a few times, yes. But I knew what I was doing. I always knew. It was unscripted television, but I always knew exactly what I was supposed to say. Exactly what I was supposed to do.”
“Same here, y’all. Same here.” She stood behind him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and rested her head against his, and Max tensed up, just for a moment. He’d held her body tight to his and kissed her as passionately as he’d ever kissed any woman in his life, but none of it had felt as intimate as her comforting embrace.
He wasn’t sure if he was ready for this. Ready for her. But he had to try.
“Can I be honest?” he asked, knowing that she would be fine with it. Maybe he needed to be asking himself.
“Of course.”
“I did get that waitress’s number.”
Hadley tilted her face to look at him. “What waitress?”
“At the Pancake Pantry. The one I told you I was apologizing to. And I did apologize, by the way. That just . . . wasn’t all.”
She pulled away, and as much as he hated to admit it even to himself, he was glad. He could breathe again. And yet, at the same time, he wanted her arms back around him, making him uncomfortable again.
“I knew it! I . . . I mean, I didn’t care. But I knew it!” She smiled. “Frankly, it just seemed like a very Max Cavanagh sort of move.”
“It was. So was the fact that I never called her.”
She took a deep breath and slowly—carefully, he thought—stepped around to the other side of the counter.
“I don’t date, Max.”
He laughed, until he realized she wasn’t kidding. “What do you mean, you don’t date?”
There wasn’t a single trace of embarrassment or self-doubt on her face. “It’s not that I ever intentionally chose my career over love or romance or any of that. It just kind of happened that way.” She scrunched up her nose and added, “My last relationship was with Stuart.”
“The director!” he exclaimed, proud of himself for remembering. But then understanding began to dawn. “Ah. That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Why he hated me from the beginning.”
She laughed so hard she had to hold on to the counter for support. “That wasn’t because of me!” The laughter subsided a touch as she seemed to reconsider. “Well, not just because of me. He had to serve you drinks and clean up the Wagyu beef you threw on the floor!”
He’d thrown Wagyu beef on the floor?
“And sure,” she continued, “he’s protective of me. He’s my closest friend. But we dated in college. For about two months. We weren’t very good as a couple, but we worked together really well. And we’re pretty great as friends.”
Hang on. “You haven’t dated since college?”
She shrugged. “I’ve dated. Not a ton. But no relationships. You, meanwhile . . .”
There it was. The whole “Playboy Gourmet” thing. How could he convince her it wasn’t all as bad as the tabloids made it seem? Hadley hadn’t been in a relationship since college. How many women had he dated and forgotten about since then?
“Ah. Yes. I’ve dated the US women’s soccer team, if certain sources are to be believed.”
“All at once?” she chimed in with a wink.
Max rolled his eyes. “I’m sure that’s some magazine’s version of it. I have been seen with a lot of women, I guess. But . . .” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, and his eyes darted downward, away from hers. What should he say? He was pretty sure he had never talked about his social life with anyone who was actually interested in hearing the truth.
As if reading his thoughts, or at least the uncertainty that was probably etched all over his face, Hadley leaned across the counter, so that her face was below his, and he couldn’t avoid her eyes any longer. “You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”
“It’s not that. It’s just . . . I don’t know. It’s just part of this life. There’s an expectation that I’ll walk into an event with a beautiful woman on my arm, so I do. The truth is, nine times out of ten it’s an unofficial business arrangement. They get their name and photo in People or on Page Six, and I get—”
“To be the Playboy Gourmet.”
“Exactly. I usually don’t know those women. I literally don’t know their names sometimes. More often than not, I meet them when I step into the car my manager sends to pick me up. And then the minute we walk into whatever venue we’re going to, they go talk to Leonardo DiCaprio or Andy Cohen, or one of the Desperate Housewives—”
“Do you mean the Real Housewives?” she asked as an impish smile overtook her face. “I mean, maybe they’re snubbing you to go talk to Teri Hatcher . . .”
“Whatever!” He laughed. “The point is, they find someone who’s more interesting than I am.”
“Oh.” She shook her head and waved her hands dismissively. “You are a lot of things, Max Cavanagh. But no one can say you aren’t interesting.”
“At a party, I’m not. I really hate going to those things.”
“Then why do you go?”
Her blunt tone made it perfectly clear that she thought not going was the easy, obvious answer, and he’d just never considered it. And, while his gut reaction was to spurn her simplistic comprehension of it all, he quickly realized that maybe he never had considered it. That realization knocked the wind out of him and took away the certainty with which he’d been about to say, “It’s just what I have to do.”
Instead he murmured, “I don’t know.”
Hadley sighed. “Well, regardless, it’s pretty obvious that we’re very different, you and I.”
He nodded. “We are.”
“And the fact is, if you’d walked into my life and kissed me like that at pretty much any other time in my life, I probably would have been happy pursuing a career making lunches in a school cafeteria. But right now . . .”
He understood what she was saying, like it or not. “But right now, you’re holding on to the brass ring. And everyone likes you better when you don’t like me.”
Hadley stood up straight. “That has nothing to do with it. I don’t care what anyone thinks. It’s just that I’ve worked too hard and come too far. And if I tried to live your type of life right now, Max . . . if I tried to keep up . . . I’m just not sure I could. I’m Nashville, through and through. I’m a homebody. I eat at home pretty much every night. You love adventure and travel.” She chuckled. “You jumped in your car and drove here from New York on a whim. I don’t do much of anything on a whim.”
As if needing to prove her wrong—because something inside of him felt as if he did—Max stood up from his stool and walked around to her side of the counter. Slowly and deliberately. Waves of pink began rushing up her neck and he had a gratifying epiphany.
So I’m the cause of that shade.
Although, really, he knew he was the cause of all the shades. But he sure liked that one best.
“I don’t know, Hadley. I think it’s been a pretty whimsical night.”
Her lips curled up in acknowledgment. “This has all been very unlike me. But that doesn’t change the fact that down the road, beyond right now—”
He leaned down so they were eye-to-eye and whispered, “Who said anything about beyond right now?”
Max moved to kiss her again, but she placed her hands on his chest and stopped him before he could. She didn’t push him away but rather clinched his T-shirt into her fists and took a deep breath. And released it with slow deliberation.
“That’s what I mean, Max. I don’t . . . I don’t live in the moment. At least, I don’t live just in the moment. And I can’t be your next Miss Fancy Pants Kitty Cat.”
“I’m sorry. My what?”
She closed her eyes tightly. “Forget I said that.”
That would probably be easy to do, since it had just sounded like a string of random words. Candle Bluetooth Winnebago artichoke dip.
“The point is,” she continued as she rolled her eyes—at herself, he was pretty sure. “You confuse me. You distract me. And don’t get me wrong . . .” She released his shirt from her fists and gently smoothed out the creases she had created. “You’re a very nice distraction at the moment. But I’m on Renowned. We’re on Renowned. I just launched a magazine, and I really want a third Michelin star. And yes, I want to be number one on the network. I just don’t think I can afford to be any more confused than I already am.”
She was driven. Competitive. Hardworking. Focused. Determined. If he was honest with himself, those weren’t usually the personality traits he found attractive in a woman. Not that he had a problem with any of those things. They just hadn’t ever been important. Very little had ever mattered beyond how the woman would look on his arm at a nightclub opening.
Hadley would look strange on his arm. Beautiful, no doubt. Absolutely breathtaking. But strange. She didn’t seem to care about fashion—not that she wasn’t stylish, but she wasn’t trendy hotspot stylish. Max didn’t care about fashion either. He’d found an outfit that worked for him and he’d stuck with it. But the women on his arm always cared. And Hadley barely wore any makeup. She didn’t need to. But he’d dated women he knew he wouldn’t even recognize on the street if he ever saw them with a natural face. For that matter, there were a lot of women he probably wouldn’t recognize if they were wearing a “Hello, my name is . . .” badge. Even if the badge added helpful information like, “We went on three dates in 2015,” or “You left me for that supermodel.” Nope. Not specific enough.
“I’m sure you’re right,” Max finally said. He wasn’t sure she was right, and he wasn’t even sure what he was saying he thought she was right about. But he liked Hadley. He liked her a lot. Maybe he liked her a little too much. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he definitely liked her too much to date her.
He wouldn’t do that to someone he actually cared about.
Her hands dropped from his chest. “So that’s that, I guess.” She stepped back from him.
“I guess so.”
That was all that was needed. Now was the time when he could just calmly walk over to her, kiss her on the cheek, and say, “Tonight sure was fun, though,” or something like that. He would be cool and distant, say goodbye, and then he’d head out to a bar for a drink. There he’d meet someone else and have a conversation that would probably be a lot less complicated than any he had ever had with Hadley Beckett.
Except he wasn’t going to do any of that. Not a chance. Not this time.
“Hadley, I . . .” He chuckled uneasily and scratched his cheek. The facial hair was driving him nuts, but he knew he’d keep it awhile longer because she liked it. “I just want to say . . .” Cool and distant would be so much easier. “I probably said all the wrong things. I don’t know. But I just need you to know that whatever we’ve got going here . . . being friends, or whatever . . . it . . . well, it matters to me. I’m not sorry I kissed you. But if it messed things up, well . . .” Just end the blasted thought already. “I just hope it didn’t. Mess things up, I mean. That’s all.”
She looked at him for what felt like an eternity. Not moving. Not speaking. But finally, the trace of a smile appeared, and he breathed again.
