Forbidden Bride - Penny Wylder Page 0,29
wants, and I want Tristan with everything that I have in me.
“I have a question for you,” Tristan says.
“Sure.”
“You like this job, right?”
I nod. “I really do. Why?”
“I don’t remember this being what you wanted to do.”
“Well, I never really had a solid plan for a dream job. I wanted culinary school, so that’s what I did. And that’s perfect training for this, and it’s so much fun.”
He looks at me in that way he has. The way that tells me he knows that I’m not saying everything. “But?”
I press my lips together without saying anything. There are a lot of thoughts that have been brewing in my head since he’s been back, and I haven’t fully thought through everything. This is dangerous territory that we’re in.
“What’s your favorite thing to cook?”
“I don’t have a favorite thing,” I say, “because my cooking is a lot like this. I love to experiment until I get the perfect result, and then I write it down. I love to cook for people because it’s always a little different, and you get to have that journey with them, whether or not it’s good or bad.”
He nods. “That’s why you like the focus groups.”
“Exactly.”
“But in this setting I imagine you don’t get nearly as much a reaction to your creations as you would like.”
“That’s not true,” I say, immediately protesting. “We get a lot of really lovely letters from people. And some not-so-lovely letters too.”
Tristan crosses his arms. “You and I both know that that’s not the same.”
I sigh, taking another sip of water. “What are you getting at? It’s not exactly like you to beat around the bush.”
“I just want to know if you’re happy here.”
I’m not sure that this is a path that I want to go down right now, but I take a couple seconds to think about it. I definitely enjoy my job, and not everyone can say that. That’s a good thing. But am I happy? Sure. “I’m happy enough. I like being here with you.”
Tristan just cocks his head. “What does that mean?”
“I mean…” I sigh. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about this too much, so I’m struggling with the words. I do like my job, and I do like the work I do. But now that you’re here, and now that this might actually happen…” I trail off, not sure where I’m going but choosing to push forward anyway. “I feel really lucky that I was in a position to have this opportunity. But I might have been looking for a reason to stay in Leighton City.”
He winces. “Because of me?”
“I was holding on to hope, and I didn’t want to give that up.”
Tristan is very quiet. “I don’t think I’ve said it properly. I am so sorry, Nicola. Walking away like that—even if it was what I felt I had to do—it was wrong. You deserved so much better than that, and I was a selfish asshole not telling you to move on without me. You could have been far away from here by now.”
I frown. “Do you think I regret it?”
“I think that I’m going to continue to find out all the ways that my selfishness affected you.”
Shaking my head, I stand and cross to him. “Don’t take all of that on yourself. It was you, but it wasn’t only you. I was in school for a couple of years after you left, and after, I wasn’t ready to leave. Even if I had known that I would never have a chance with you, I don’t know that I could have gone. This is the place that I’ve always known, and it would have taken me a while to figure this out anyway.”
I lean up on my tiptoes to kiss him lightly, throwing caution to the wind, and the chime on the machine buzzes, startling us both. He smiles then, though it’s still a bit haunted. “Shall we try it?”
“Bottoms up.” I pour two samples from the dispenser and hand one to him. We taste it at the same time. At first it’s the same familiar orange flavor that I’ve perfected—both sharp and creamy, like the orange you might taste in a creamsicle. But then it’s different, the flavor lightens into more citrus, lemony and bright before it fades into the basil.
It’s not perfect, but it’s well on its way. “Holy shit,” I say, beaming at Tristan. “What did you do?”
“Added lemon as the secondary flavor. You need something in the transition, otherwise the two