Page 29 of Haunted By You
“I don’t know, after nine.” He stepped back and motioned toward the house. “You want to go in?”
He noticed her hesitation, then she drew in a deep breath and nodded. He followed her up to the front door. She pushed it open, hesitated, and again he wondered what had spooked her. She entered, almost on tiptoe, past the painting of the bayou she’d planned to hit him with, hanging on the wall just beyond the door.
He looked around, saw the boxes lined up to the right of the entrance, looked through the door to the living room and saw the furniture had all been pushed back against the walls, the rug unfurled on the now-clean floor.
Nothing that could have scared her enough to spend the night in her car.
She led the way to the kitchen, blanket dragging behind her. “Want some coffee? It’s just a cheap coffee maker, but it serves up the caffeine.”
“Yeah, I’ll have some. Oven working okay?” Maybe once she had her coffee, she’d feel like she could tell him what happened here last night.
“Yes, for now. Thank you.” She started the coffee, then tucked two slices of bread into the toaster.
“That all you eat in the mornings?” It didn’t seem enough to fuel her for all the work she had to do to this house, much less her late nights at the bar.
“Yeah, I don’t really like breakfast foods, so I just have toast, and then I eat a decent lunch. I never used to wake up much before lunchtime, anyway, when I lived in the city. Restaurants are late-night work.”
He gave her a skeptical look.
“You want some toast?” she asked.
“No, thank you, I had a good breakfast. You’re not—you’re not telling me you don’t like bacon, are you?”
She gave a dismissive wave, and the blanket slipped off her shoulder before she readjusted it. “I mean, it’s fine, but not worth going to all the trouble for, just for myself, you know?”
“I suppose? But I thought you were a chef.”
“It’s too much hassle to cook for just one person. That’s why I got those oven meals, remember? Besides, when I worked at a restaurant, I had dishwashers. I do not enjoy doing dishes, especially greasy ones.” She poured the coffee, then turned and offered him one. “The cups are new. I just bought them.”
He nodded and took the mug from her. The coffee was okay, but he’d expected better, even from the cheap little brewer on the counter.. Shouldn’t a chef be able to make good coffee? But he didn’t ask.
“When are you working with Hattie again?”
“I don’t know. I need to go down and talk to her.” She gave a delicate shiver. “I don’t know why I hesitate. I liked doing it, and it feels nice to be part of the community, but she scares me.”
He laughed—he couldn’t help himself. Yes, the woman was a force of nature, but she was barely five feet tall. “Didn’t you face off with that chef who called you a fake?”
She pressed her lips together as she looked at him, like she was trying to figure out how he knew that. “Yes, but I didn’t have to see him every day after that. And mostly that was trash talk, anyway.”
He grinned. “What’s this? A behind-the-scenes look at the true lives of chefs?”
“Well, let’s be clear. None of us were great friends. We were always competing for something, on the show or not.”
She dropped her gaze to the coffee, regret tinging her voice.
“Are you planning to be Hattie’s competition? I mean, do you have something in the works?”
She lifted a hand in the direction of the town. “Does this place look like it could handle another restaurant? Hattie’s place is mostly empty every time I go by. And no. While I miss cooking for people, I don’t think I have it in me to start another restaurant. Not for a long time, anyway.”
She carried her cup to the sink, dumped out the remaining coffee, rinsed it and set it aside. He didn’t think she’d taken more than a few sips.
She turned back to look at him. “I am trying to figure out if I can lure more businesses in, so I can have the income from the rents. You have any ideas?”
“Of businesses that would come here? Or that people could afford to go to?”
“I mean, there were businesses here before. When we were kids.”
“When the factory was open.”
