“I mean, of course I don’t. But you have to admit, the weather’s been pretty calm until he showed up.”
“Maybe that means wearebreaking the bad luck of this town. I mean, he’s here,” she said, moving back to her station to start cooking the bacon. She hadn’t thought Nola was as invested in the curse as the others, but it seemed that not just the clam chowder was tradition.
The people of Gilbert Corners were going to read all kinds of bad omens into the storm. It made her realize why Conrad and his cousin Dashiell might not want to live here. But still, she thought, weather wasn’t dictated by curses.
She felt someone watching her and glanced over at Conrad. Their stations were close enough for her to see his raised eyebrow and the frown that made the scar on the side of his face more pronounced. She caught her breath at how sexy he looked in his element. He might have been watching her, but his hands were still moving on the cutting board. There was a power in his movements and the way her watched her made her shiver with sensual awareness as he tossed something into his stockpot.
“Get busy,” he said to her. “Unless you’re that eager to be mine for a weekend that you’re going to forfeit.”
She realized she was just staring at him. “I’m right on track. Are you worried?”
“No.”
She laughed at his comment.
“You should be. Indy is bringing some Southern heat to her dish,” Ophelia said.
“Is she?”
“What, don’t you think I can bring the heat?”
“Oh you’re hot alright,” he said.
She wasn’t sure what he meant by that. She just went back to cooking, and the words continued drifting in and out of her mind as she tried to concentrate on her recipe. She’d felt a spark between them; she knew he had too. But she’d been trying to convince herself that when he’d asked for a weekend with her, it wasn’t really going to be an intimate weekend. Now she wasn’t so sure.
Conrad cooked on autopilot, which he knew wasn’t a great idea when there were high stakes and a weekend with Indy was on the line, but he was distracted. He could blame it on being back in the one place he’d sworn to never return to, but he knew it was more than that.
Gilbert Manor was the problem.
No one had lived in the house for years, but the trust they’d dumped the inheritance they’d received from their grandfather into maintained the lawn and the house. He felt the stirring of anger, which he had always struggled to control when he was here. He might hate being back here but once he was cooking that all faded.
But he needed the distraction from Indy. She wasn’t what he’d expected, and she had rattled him. He knew that he was coarse at times. He justified it by looking in the mirror, reminding himself of the jagged scar and the path he’d been on that had been taken from him in an instant.
But it wasn’t the scar on his face that had changed him from the happy boy he’d been into this man. Gilbert Corners made him morose, and he hated that.
He dumped the ingredients into the stockpot and noticed that Rita was watching him.
“What?”
“You seem...”
He arched one eyebrow at her.
“Never mind.”
Well, hell. He was distracted and he couldn’t allow himself to be. Not today. He noticed some of the local judges were the Hammond sisters; Martha and Jean-Marie. They’d run the kitchens here at Gilbert Manor. Conrad knew he’d turned to cooking after the accident in part because of them.
“Ladies, it’s nice to see you.”
“You too, Con,” Martha said. “It’s been too long since a Gilbert was on these grounds.”
“I’m not sure about that,” he said drily.
“We’ve both missed you,” Jean-Marie said.
“You two are part of the reason I’m a chef.”
“We’re flattered,” Jean-Marie said with one of those sweet, sad smiles that he sometimes received from people who knew his past.