Gray squinted at her suspiciously. “Are you just saying words?”
Yes.
“No,” Kait said. “I just don’t remember what it was. I guarantee you it was probably really boring though.” Definitely nothing for us to keep talking about.
“Are you sure?” Gray pressed. “Because you both seemed…”
Kait narrowed her eyes. “Seemed what, Gray?”
“Pissed off.”
Kait drank her coffee and tried to remember exactly what had happened when Gray had walked into the kitchen. “I was being nice. I told him I thought he’d wanted to be a chef when we were younger, that he was good at it. And he acted like that was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard because he was a billionaire, not some lowly restaurateur like us.”
Gray looked surprised. “That doesn’t sound like Landon.”
Kaitlyn scoffed, “Are you kidding? It sounds exactly like him. You bring out his best side, Gray. You’re like Dad in that way. But I’m telling you, he’s a James through and through. Arrogant, conceited, and rude.”
“Okay, okay.” Gray held up his hands. “I just thought maybe something had happened between the two of you. I’m glad it didn’t because then I would have to be pissed off at him.”
“I’m a big girl, Gray.” Kait put down her coffee with a sloshing thunk. “If something happened between us, it wouldn’t be any of your business.”
“I don’t care if something happens between you,” Gray said, surprising her. “But it would have been shitty of him to leave this morning without telling you if something had.”
Kait tried to hide her surprise. “He left? For where?”
“New York. Some business stuff came up.” Gray shrugged. “I don’t know the details. His assistant just sent me an email about it, told me to let him know if we needed anything.”
“Did he say when he’d be back?”
Gray shook his head. “No, why?”
“No reason.” Kait stared pensively at the Atlantic Ocean tossing in the wide frame of the picture window. She wasn’t sure how to feel about the information that he was no longer in town. As was so often the case when it came to Landon James, an irritating, contradictory mixture of relief and disappointment was churning in her chest. “This is good,” she said aloud to convince herself. “We can get back to focusing on LeClarks.”
Gray gave her a strange look as though to say, Haven’t we been all along?
It should have been a very good week. Without Landon around, Kaitlyn threw herself even more wholeheartedly into the restaurant. She and Gray spent up to 12 hours a day at what she was finally beginning to think of as LeClarks. When Marjorie got to town, she alternated between being Marjorie’s photography assistant, working on her part of the cookbook, and helping Gray.
One day, Marjorie and Kaitlyn took a break from photography to go check out what was salvageable in the LeClarks’ warehouse. Having Marjorie’s artistic eye was an advantage Kait hadn’t considered when she initially asked her friend to come, and she was grateful for it. She and Gray were artists in their own way, but when it came to mixing the old LeClarks decor with the stylings of the new building—they were clueless. It was Marjorie who determined what worked and what wouldn’t, what could be altered to fit, and what needed to be thrown away.
“Or,” she said, exasperated by Kait’s refusal to throw anything away, “put it back in the warehouse at least.”
“They’re heirlooms,” Kait said, stroking the old, worn tablecloth that had once been a rich brick red.
“They’re motheaten,” Marjorie said unsentimentally. “We’re getting new ones, and they’re going to complement the brass finishings much better.”
Kait didn’t know how one tablecloth set off a brass finish better than another, but she folded the tablecloth back anyway. “What about the plates?”
“Sure,” Marjorie said critically. “These are classic, but we need to get online and see if we can still buy this pattern. Otherwise, we have to buy complementary dishware.”
“Does everything need to complement everything?” Kait asked, rolling her eyes. “In cooking, if the food is going to be any good, there’s got to be contrast.”
“Well, in interior design,” Marjorie said, imitating her lofty tone, “there has to be symmetry.” She dragged her masses of long, dark hair into a ponytail and blew out her breath. “Ready to start loading up the car?”
They packed the sagging Honda as full as they dared and drove the plates back to the restaurant. Gray had carefully cleaned off the shelves, and he unpacked them while they drove back for more boxes.
When Kait and Marjorie came through the door for the second time, they found him in the kitchen, staring at the half-full cupboards.
“Something wrong?” Kait asked, coming to stand beside him.
Gray shook his head. “No. It just finally looks like LeClarks to me.”
“Yeah,” Kait said quietly, looking up at them. “I see what you mean.”
Landon spent two long weeks in New York, wondering how it had managed to change so quickly in the short time he had been gone. The city had become what he thought it could never be—repetitive. He was at another private club with Carter that catered to the extremely wealthy and/or the extremely beautiful. A popular artist was performing, the bartender was keeping his drink fresh, an actress he recognized had made eye contact with him more than once, and he was still bored.
“Jesus Christ,” Carter observed. “You look like you’re at a funeral.” When Landon only grunted, he went on: “And not the funeral of say, your dad. The funeral of someone you actually give a shit about.”
Landon shot him a dark look that didn’t bother Carter at all.
“Lucky for you, I have a surprise coming.”
That did nothing for Landon’s mood. Carter’s surprises generally involved strippers or midgets or some combination of the two.
“You don’t call them midgets,” Carter informed him when he said so. “They’re dwarves or little people.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Landon said, rubbing his eyes tiredly. Maybe he should just go home before he really offended someone. He never thought he’d
