She was halfway through the first recipe when she heard the doorbell jingle. We need to get rid of that, she thought irritably, her concentration broken. What kind of restaurant put a bell on their door? Were the previous owners trying to create some sort of Pavlovian reaction in their customers? Whenever they heard a bell ring, they’d begin to crave overcooked pasta and cheap wine? If so, it clearly hadn’t worked.
Sensing that someone had come into the dining room, she said, “Gray, can you kill that bell? Like immediately?”
Instead of answering, he came to stand over her. The hairs on the back of her neck lifted, and her heart began to beat faster. Slowly, she raised her eyes up the length of his body and met Landon’s dark eyes. With effort, she kept her face impassive and said, “It’s been a long time since you kept restaurant hours, hasn’t it?”
He smiled disturbingly. “Did you miss me?”
“No.” She dropped her eyes back to her work and waved dismissively toward the bar. “Gray’s over there.”
“I know where Gray is.”
Rather than sitting down across from her at the four-person booth, he sat beside her, forcing Kaitlyn to scoot toward the wall. Why did she always find herself boxed in by him?
“If you’re so worried about your investment,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “Why don’t you help? Gray’s been trying to get a delivery service on the phone all day. We need ovens.”
Landon pulled out his phone—a considerably nicer and new model, she noted—and tapped out a quick text.
“Or you could do absolutely nothing,” Kaitlyn said, unable to keep the annoyance out of her voice now.
Pleased to have finally gotten a reaction out of her, he slid the phone back into his pocket and pulled the recipe card she was translating closer.
“Hey.”
“French Lemon Apricot Tart,” he read.
Kait remembered he’d taken French in high school. An unusual choice—most of the clique of rich, popular kids took Spanish so they could order the help around in their native tongue. She and Gray had taken French, too, but clearly, Landon had retained more of his.
“You’re translating this line?” Landon asked, reading over her shoulder.
“Obviously,” Kaitlyn snapped because his nearness was making her heart beat in an irregular staccato. She scooted closer to the wall. “This booth has another side, you know.”
“Haven’t we spent enough time on opposite sides?” Landon asked, and his breath was warm on her temple. He was still too close. If she leaned toward him just a little bit, he would be kissing her hair. No, he wouldn’t be, she corrected herself. Because she would never lean toward him, not even just a little bit. Last night had been a mistake. He was a James. His parents were monsters, and he was no better. He was the reason that she and Gray were in this fix in the first place. If he hadn’t stolen the old LeClarks, they would be there right now instead of trying to make Baratellis into something she was starting to wonder if it could ever be.
“I could help you, you know,” Landon said, as though reading her mind.
“We don’t need your help,” Kaitlyn said, refusing to give him the satisfaction of looking at him. She had a feeling her anger amused him a little too much. “We don’t need your money, or your connections, or your permission to—”
“I meant with these recipes,” Landon interrupted. “I’m fluent in French.”
Landon hadn’t just taken French in high school—he’d taken it in college and then done an immersion program in Nice his junior year at Princeton. He hadn’t done it to become fluent, exactly, he’d done it more because he knew his parents would hate it. They wanted him to learn Spanish or Mandarin or something useful to the business, but in a rare victory, they’d capitulated.
Landon hated the word Francophile—and associated it with pompous, poetry-reading, beret-wearing jackasses—but he couldn’t deny that he’d come dangerously close to being mistaken for one. He’d gone back to France for a year after he’d graduated, and he’d even brought a nice French girl back when the family business called him home. After he sent her packing, he kept up his fluency by watching movies and listening to books in French. He wasn’t entirely sure why. His parents had been right—it hadn’t been very useful in business. Carter thought it was because it was sure to get even the hardest-to-get girl, and Landon had certainly employed it for such purposes, but that hadn’t been the reason.
But when Kaitlyn’s head shot up and she stared at him in disbelief—he didn’t care why. Forget getting a girl into bed, shocking Kaitlyn LeClark speechless was reason enough for him. And, oh, it was about to get sweeter.
“Gray,” he called over to the bar. “How about I take these cookbooks home and translate them for you?”
“I don’t think so,” Kaitlyn snapped, pulling the old, battered cookbook back in front of her and guarding it possessively with both arms. “You’re not taking these anywhere.”
“You’re fluent in French?” Gray asked, wiping his hands on an already dirty dish towel and coming over.
“Studied it for eight years, lived there for two,” Landon said. “It’ll take me some time, but I can do it.”
“Except he can’t,” Kaitlyn corrected. “Because I’m not letting anyone, much less a James, take these cookbooks out of my sight.”
Gray sighed. “How long is it going to take you by yourself, Kait?”
“No time at all,” she snapped and tried to hide the half-written recipe.
“How long did that take you?” he asked, spotting it anyway.
“Thirty seconds.”
“Then do the rest in thirty seconds,” Landon challenged. The look Kaitlyn gave him should have frozen his bones, not induced that flash of heat in his groin.
“It’s going to take you weeks,” Gray was saying. “If Landon’s willing to help…”
Landon cut off Kaitlyn’s angry retort, “I have an idea. How about we work on them together, Kait?”
She didn’t like the
