wouldn’t be improving on my pasty complexion today. I can’t remember the last time I took this much time away from my desk on a workday.”
“Really?” The Smith family owned an expansive and successful avocado ranch and, according to her mother, had their hand in other businesses, as well. “Don’t you regularly go out and, I don’t know, walk among the trees?”
He shook his head. “It’s not really necessary for me to do my job. Avocados are no different to me and my sixteen-hour workdays than if they were sponges or soap or birthday candles.”
Addy could smell that enticing sandalwood scent of his again, so she was taking shallow breaths that made her head a little woozy. “Sixteen-hour days,” she murmured. “You must enjoy your work.”
“Sure,” he agreed, and he lifted his hand to again play with the ends of her hair. “But I don’t have the passion for it that you express about the movies.”
Addy walked right into it. “What do you feel passionate about?”
Baxter’s white smile grew slowly.
She hastened to step back, but he wasn’t having that. Instead, he cupped her face between his hands. “I remember a passionate night,” he said quietly. “Have you really forgotten it?”
“I...” Her heart was in her throat, thrumming fast. She was supposed to be maintaining her dignity, she knew that, but suddenly every instinct she had was urging her to break free. Leaping back, she slammed her hip into the table. Its legs screeched against the floor, but she ignored the sound to grab up her backpack and flee for the door.
Yet when she reached it, she paused. To hell with pretending. She had to make sure that Baxter understood where things were between them. “Look,” she said without turning around. “The past is past. I know there’s no future between us.”
“Oh, good,” Baxter said.
She barreled through the door, but the rest of his remark followed her out into the narrow hall.
“Because that leaves the present wide-open.”
* * *
LAYLA LINED UP THE CUPCAKE ingredients on the small counter in the food truck, hoping to find inspiration for a new recipe. Getting lost in the creative process would be a welcome diversion and she’d left off her usual food prep gloves in order to touch the silky smoothness of the flour and rub the fine granules of sugar between her fingertips. The results of this baking session wouldn’t be sold to the public, so she could “play” with the food, and now she took hold of a sunny lemon. She rolled its cool skin between her palms, trying to focus. Lemon cakes with coconut icing? Strawberry lemonade topped with a clear glaze?
She moved to her laptop, thinking to locate her Ideas file, but when it came to life, her email program popped on-screen. It displayed the message she’d started typing in the middle of the night.
The door to the food truck squeaked open and Uncle Phil stepped inside. Layla clapped her laptop closed and swung back to contemplation of her ingredient row.
“Uh-oh,” Uncle Phil said.
Uh-oh. That’s what Layla had said on the deck of Beach House No. 9 as she moved out of Vance’s arms the previous evening. And the why of those two syllables was what she’d been trying to distract herself from thinking about now. Vance had kissed her. They’d kissed.
Oh, how they had kissed.
At the memory of how quickly things had escalated, her skin flushed and felt stretched too tight. It had been no tentative experiment, no first-time fumbling to find the right fit. His lips had touched hers and she’d thrown herself into the wonder and the heat without worrying for an instant about the subsequent burn.
That, she’d done for about half the night afterward, reliving those moments.
“Let go,” Uncle Phil murmured.
Startled, she blinked, noticing he was trying to wrestle the lemon from her grasp.
“You’re going to strangle the innocent thing,” her uncle said. When she still didn’t release it, he tugged again and her fingers finally loosened. He glanced down at the rescued fruit, then cocked a brow at her, his expression half-humorous. “You know what Buddha would say.”
Reading the direction of his mind, she made a face at him, then glanced up at the statue of the spiritual leader sitting high on a shelf above them. “I was lost in thought—lost in thinking up a recipe. I don’t have an attachment to that lemon, Uncle Phil.”
“Buddha tells us it’s not good to have an exaggerated attachment to anything...or anyone.”