“Is that what you wanted?” Kaitlyn asked. “It didn’t seem like it at the time. You liked cooking. I thought you wanted to be a chef.” She tilted her head challengingly. “I think you still want to be a chef. Why else would you have started Rathskeller?”
Landon laughed scornfully. “Look at me, Kait. I’m one of the richest men in New York. I run a billion-dollar business. Why the hell would I rather have been a chef?” He hadn’t meant to get angry—he wasn’t angry, why would he be? Like he’d just told her, he had everything. And he could have her, too, if last night was any indication.
Infuriated by his dismissal of her family’s business, she started to turn away, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her back to him. He’d meant only to keep her from turning away, but he caught her off balance and she stumbled back against him. Landon considered the repercussions for a split second, but he was an opportunist. Born and bred to turn any situation to his advantage. When she opened her mouth to let loose the furious words on her tongue, he cut them off with a hard, searing kiss.
Kaitlyn considered the curved, 10-inch blade in her hand, but then Landon deepened the kiss, and she fell into it. She barely noticed when he slid his hand down her arm and deftly removed the knife from her grip.
She’d never kissed anyone like this—someone with a hard mouth and a clever tongue, who nipped at her lower lip and made her want to bite back. She was raising her hands to his hair—unsure whether she was planning to twist her fingers in it or rip it out—when the front door bell jingled and icy cold reality was thrown in her face. She was kissing Landon James again. Worse, she was doing it in what was supposed to be a fresh start for LeClarks. And worse still, Gray was about to walk in on them.
She wrenched away just in time and was chopping the beef in large, irregular pieces when her brother walked in, holding a carton of mushrooms aloft. He looked around at all the ingredients on the counter curiously and joked to Landon, “Are you making your famous gratin dauphinois?”
Landon suspected his smile was more a baring of teeth, but before he could speak, Kaitlyn said, “I’m making it. Landon has to go.”
Gray’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re not staying for dinner?”
“He’s a very important man, Gray,” Kaitlyn said, feverishly chopping. “Didn’t you know? He has an empire to run. He’s not some chef.”
“Okay,” Gray said slowly, wondering what he had missed in the half hour it had taken to get back with the mushrooms. “Are you sure?”
Landon’s eyes were on Kaitlyn as he nodded slowly. “For now,” he said with a bright, savage note to his voice that Gray had never heard before. “But I’ll be back. You can count on it.”
Chapter Seven
On his drive home, Landon decided that he was going to get Kaitlyn LeClark into bed, fuck their history. That second kiss had dispelled any squeamish remnants of ever having felt like a surrogate big brother toward her. She was no child, and he was no relation. But he wasn’t going to chase after her. He would wait for her to come to him.
But what was he going to do while he was waiting? Landon took the long way home and considered his options. He’d already dated or slept with the eligible single women in town, though he supposed the turnover rate of marriages could have freed up a few. Not that a ring mattered much to him. It wasn’t on his finger, after all. But married women came with complications, especially in a small town. Now, New York—that was a different story. You could go out every single night and never run out of exquisitely beautiful, available women. Married, single, polyamorous, it didn’t fucking matter because the odds that you’d ever see them again were minuscule.
So why not go back to New York, the inner voice that sounded like Carter suggested. Landon found himself nodding in agreement. Why not, indeed? It would be easier to work out of the New York office for the next week with the merger coming up. If Gray needed anything, Landon could handle it with a phone call. And if Kaitlyn needed anything...well, it would do Kaitlyn LeClark good to have to wait.
Kaitlyn sat in her living room, the TV on to some mindless reality show, waiting for Landon. He’d said he would be back, and he wasn’t the patient type. Every time headlights swept across the living room window and a car door slammed shut, she gripped the stem of her wineglass tighter, expecting to hear his imperious knock any moment.
Time after time, the footsteps passed her door and faded into the distance. Kaitlyn’s heart finally stopped leaping at the sound, and the wine dragged her eyelids lower. Pulling the afghan off the back, she curled up on the couch and closed her eyes.
She was grappling with a strange sense of relief and disappointment. It was good that he was staying away, but she’d had more things to say to him—for starters, to never try anything like that again. But time and time again, her unconscious mind tugged her back into the memory of his arms closing around her, his mouth coming down on hers. Kait buried her face in the rough couch cushion to erase the memory of his lips, the way his tongue deftly parted hers, and the heat that shot through her from head to toe when it did.
How long
