Page 68 of Stirring Up Love
His curiosity got the best of him. “Plotting my murder?”
“Nope,” she said, not looking up. “Finished that during your nap. Now I’m deciding how to spend two hundred thousand dollars split zero ways.”
“Kinda thought we were supposed to do that before appearing on the show.” He figured she would’ve had a plan for that money spanning back years.
“I did.” She stopped writing. “But that was before. Now there’s the franchise and ...”
And him.
“And now you’ve been offered more than what you asked for.” He hadn’t meant to bite out the words, but her contemplating turning down a better offer just because she didn’t want to share it with him? That stung.
“I get it. You think I’m being spoiled. But you don’t know ...” She trailed off.
“Don’t know what? Tell me, Simone.”Let me know you.
She licked her lips, then took a deep breath. Closed her notebook, finger in the pages. “You know the Hawksburg market? The one you insisted on crashing?”
“Again, it’s not crashing if you’re invited to the party,” he teased. Who knew six months later their fraught first meeting would no longer be a source of pain but of connection?
Her lips tightened to hold back a smile, but her eyes crinkled, and the urge to kiss her awoke so suddenly the blankets bunched in his fists.
“Well, I want to create a sort of permanent, year-round market in Hawksburg with places to eat and shop. Entertainment venues. Build off Honey and Hickory and create a marketplace for artisans, crafters, musicians, and performers. Diversify the job market, make the town somewhere everyone can feel at home, regardless of where they come from.” Her eyes sparked with excitement, passion. “Honey and Hickory is the starting point but not my whole vision.”
That sounded amazing. And the exact opposite of what Keith and Constance had offered. Her hesitancy began to make more sense. “So why go onThe Executivesat all?”
“Because I’ll never get there on my own.” Which explained why she hadn’t turned them down flat out. Trapped like him, both chasing second best, they were more alike than he’d thought.
“What about you?” She got up and poured bottled water into a teakettle, set it on the wood-burning stove. “Is a barbecue empire your dream?”
Finn scoffed, which turned into a cough. “Heck no. I wouldn’t have even created a line of sauces if I’d had a blank check.”
“So you’re just in this to make money?” Simone sounded disgusted, like he’d failed a test.
This might be his last shot to get her to take the deal, and he’d gotten off on the wrong foot. “Yes, and no. The profits are a means to an end.”
“And I’m guessing that end isn’t early retirement and a yacht anchored in the Caribbean?” She opened a tea tin, and he recognized the earthy notes of bergamot. Earl Grey.
He shook his head. “Can’t swim, remember? A yacht would be a terrible choice,” he said, earning a laugh. He could make a currency of those laughs. Dole them out on rainy afternoons and disappointing Monday mornings. Drink them down like hot chocolate on a winter night.
Steam was curling through the air, loosening his lungs. Unstacking the weight from his chest, and the words flowed out of him, swept along by a sudden urgency not to explain himself but to share his dream with her.
“I want to make money to fund a cooking school for people who need a fresh start. People who are experiencing homelessness or have a criminal record holding them back from employment. Sober addicts looking for a second chance. I’d love to make real-world fine-dining experience accessible for those who couldn’t attend a traditional program. Give them a chance for a future that’s a one-eighty from their past.”
Simone put her hands on her hips, eyes narrowed. “Stop it with that nonsense.”
“What?”
She ripped open a tea bag packet and gestured with the torn wrapper. “Now I’ve gotta scrap my whole murder plot. I can’t kill a freaking philanthropist.”
A philanthropist.More like someone in dire need of a reality check who should be more focused on making his business profitable enough to put a roof over his own head than building a pie-in-the-sky culinary institute.
“Never have I ever been called a philanthropist, but if it saves me from imminent death, I’ll take it,” he said.
“Now it’s my turn to ask: Why the heck didn’t you pitch your idea for a cooking school onThe Executives? Keith would’ve eaten that up.”
He bristled. “I don’t need a pity win. And just because he’d admire the idea doesn’t mean he’d want to invest, let alone Constance and the audience.” The idea of subjecting his dream to their scrutiny left him feeling strangled with more than congestion.
“And I guess ...” He blew out a breath and let his head fall back on the pillow. “Is it cowardly to say I didn’t trust them with it?”
