“If you’re doing this for a quick roll on the linoleum,” she managed, “that’s not going to happen. Ever.”
Landon’s eyes dropped to the linoleum beneath their feet and then rose slowly up her slim body to her flushed face. He hadn’t turned Rathskeller into an 800 million dollar franchise or made James Investments a billion-dollar company by running away from a challenge. And if she knew men at all, she’d know that the hot, screw you look in her eye was a mistake.
“No quickies. Got it.” He set his wine glass down on the counter beside them and hauled her up against him. “Why don’t we start with this.”
“Don’t even—” Kait started to say, but then his mouth was on hers, hard and demanding. He tasted like expensive wine, smelled like expensive cologne, and felt like a fortress surrounding her. His hand tangled in her hair and dragged her head back, deepening the kiss.
Kaitlyn resisted for as long as she could, and then she opened her mouth helplessly and gave into the kiss. His mouth was hot on hers, erasing her ability to think straight. And that was good because some distant part of her brain was screaming at her that kissing a man like Landon James was dangerous. He’d capriciously decided to help LeClarks, but he could just as easily destroy it. And getting tangled up with him like this would give him the ability to destroy her, too.
Then, just as suddenly as the kiss had begun, he released her. Kaitlyn stepped back, head spinning, and reached for the counter. Dazed, she looked up at him, unsurprised to see he looked as cool and unaffected as ever.
He tilted her chin up, rubbed the pad of his thumb over her swollen lower lip, and smirked down at her. “I’ll see you tomorrow, partner.”
Chapter Six
The next morning, Gray was less than pleased to find Kaitlyn at his door an hour before he’d planned to wake up.
“This is a controlled access building,” he complained. “Who let you in?”
“Rich people get up early,” she said, pushing past him and going straight to the kitchen to make a strong cup of coffee with the fancy machine she hadn’t gotten a chance to use during her brief stay. “And they’re weirdly trusting.”
“I’m going to have to register a complaint with the owner,” he sagged into the barstool at the end of the island and rubbed his tired eyes. “I just went to bed five hours ago, Kait!”
“While you’re complaining to the owner,” she said, ignoring the second part of his statement, “tell him LeClarks doesn’t want his money.” She’d spent half the night awake, unable to erase Landon’s kiss from her memory. If he didn’t leave her alone, she would give in to him eventually, and they both knew it. The only answer was to disentangle from him completely.
He dropped his head onto the glistening quartz countertop and said indistinctly, “Why would I do that when LeClarks does want his money?”
“You don’t think it’s spitting in the face of mom and dad’s legacy?” Kaitlyn asked, filling the water reservoir and beginning to flip switches at random. “The James family is why LeClarks has to be revived in the first place. His parents basically killed ours.”
“That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?” Grayson raised his head now to see if she was serious.
Kaitlyn kept her back to him, partly because she didn’t want him to see her hesitation—did she really believe that?—and partly because the machine had begun to make a low, ominous hissing sound. “Think about it,” she reasoned for both of them. “It was his mom who started it all. And even if they didn’t physically kill them, they died because they lost LeClarks. They were never the same.”
A baffling series of food poisonings fifteen years ago was what ran LeClarks into the ground. They might have recovered from the unfortunate incidents if not for Martha James getting sick. She spread the news all over town, claimed to have been at death’s door and would never, ever risk eating at LeClarks again. Then Randolph James got involved. He paid for a specialist to come in who traced the illnesses back to bad mushrooms. Articles about how careless the LeClarks were ended up on the front page of the newspapers. They were peppered with quotes from anonymous sources that claimed the only surprise about the food poisonings was that they hadn’t happened sooner. Their insurance went up.
“We’ll survive it,” her father had said grimly. But they hadn’t been able to. The James family had brought a lawsuit against them, and they’d had to mortgage the restaurant and land just to pay the lawyers. Losing had put the final nail in the LeClarks’ coffin.
Grayson couldn’t argue any of those points, but he couldn’t quite equate them to her ugly conclusion. “Mom and Dad were never the same because they never tried to be the same,” he said so quietly she almost couldn’t hear him over the angry grinding the machine was now making. “If they’d been strong, they’d have at least tried to get back on their feet instead of just licking their wounds for the rest of their lives.”
“They didn’t have to be strong,” Kaitlyn said, giving up on the machine and moving what she hoped was a safe distance from it. Now she did turn to face Gray because she believed wholeheartedly in every word she was saying. “They were good. They fed people, even people who couldn’t afford a fancy dinner. Remember Thanksgiving? They lost thousands every year closing the restaurant to cook at the shelter.”
“Of course they were good. I’m not saying—”
“You want them to be strong like the James family?” Kaitlyn scoffed. “All stiff upper lips, iron backsides, and no heart?”
“Strength isn’t a bad thing, Kait. You can be strong and good.” Grayson was starting to get a little pissed now. It was really early, he was really tired, and Kait had more than
