Lauren Dane - Whiskey Sharp - Torn

“Yum! Ah, that’s why you’re in town?”

“I’ve been in Los Angeles for a long time.” Feeling antsy. He had houses, but no home. “I felt a change would be good. A friend who owns a number of restaurants in the area has given me access to his kitchens so I can try my ideas out there, as well.” He liked working around other chefs, found creative challenge in that atmosphere in a kitchen where the whole team loved to cook.

It was a good sort of competitive spirit. Pushed him to up his game, to be better. Far healthier for his liver and heart than all the drugs and alcohol that’d fueled his early twenties.

“That’s excellent,” she said. “Sometimes a change in surroundings is what you need to hit the reset button. Congratulations on your success. Every time I see your face on a cookbook or on television it makes me smile.”

He’d come a long way since he’d left the religious group many called a cult back when he was just seventeen. When he’d met Cora he’d only been out of Road to Glory for three years. Barely more than a legal adult. Modeling and wasting his money on drugs and private investigators, trying to find the children that had been stolen from him when the remaining cult members not yet arrested had gone on the run.

Seventeen years and it had been more than one lifetime. And he still hadn’t found his sons, who were adults by that point. Wherever they were now, all Beau could do was hope they were all right.

He shoved it away, into that well-worn place he kept his past, and went back to her compliments. “Thanks. What are you up to these days? I know your mom is still working because I listen to her stuff a lot when I cook.”

“She and I just got back from three months in London as she finished up a project.”

Rachel wandered over to them to add her two cents. “ And she pretty much runs the gallery. Plus she holds the tattoo shop together. And keeps Walda out of trouble, which is a full-time job. She writes poetry and takes amazing photographs. Oh, and she’s an amazing knitter.”

“I keep books for my sister from time to time. That’s hardly holding the shop together,” Cora said with affection clear in her tone.

“And the marketing. You set up the new network too. So, yeah, holding things together. It’s what she does. How do you and Cora know one another?” Rachel repeated Maybe’s earlier question more firmly, clearly taking his measure.

“At first glance you think it’s Maybe who’s the pushiest. But Rachel is way sneakier,” Cora told him with a shrug. “Beau and I met when he and Walda lived in the same building in Santa Monica. I was fifteen or sixteen at the time. He was a model so Mom kept herself between us. As if he even noticed me when he was surrounded by gorgeous models.”

He hadn’t noticed Walda getting between him and Cora, but Cora had been correct that he hadn’t seen her in that way. For a whole host of reasons, chiefly that she was simply too young.

Then . Not so much now.

“We were there a year so I had a tutor, who, if I recall correctly, Beau definitely noticed.” Cora snickered.

Beau hadn’t learned algebra until he was an adult. Hadn’t read a single classic literary novel until he was twenty-one. Education was a tool, something to dig yourself out of a bad spot—especially if you didn’t have the face and fortune to be a model while you got your education—so he was glad Walda snapped to it when it came to being sure her daughter got what she needed.

He honestly couldn’t even remember the tutor, just the sweet kid who’d grown up well.

“Anyway, that’s how we met, and in the intervening years he’s been a supermodel and now a celebrity chef and cookbook author.” Cora smiled at him. “Go you.”

“How do you know Gregori?” Rachel asked once they’d settled in at the long table in the main room.

“Beau and I were young men with more money than sense in the art scene,” Gregori said. “He was one of the first friends I made here in the US. We’ve been in contact on and off since. I had no idea of the connection between him and Cora.”

“It was a pleasant surprise,” Beau told them with a shrug. “I know many people. I’m friends with very few, so those I like to keep around.”

“I didn’t even know crab and scallop cakes were an actual thing. I vote yay,” Cora said as she put another two on her plate.

In addition, there were brussels sprout leaves roasted with parmesan and walnuts, fruit and cheese with honey, wine, champagne and at the end, not just one cake, but two.

Not a lot satisfied Beau more than seeing people enjoy food he’d made. Cooking was his way of pleasing others. Of being worthy.

Even as fucked-up as he was, he’d managed to substitute out the most harmful ways of feeling worthy and pleasing others. His life was his own now. No one made his choices. He owed no one anything he didn’t want to give.

A far cry from his days in Road to Glory, when every bit of his life had been chosen for him and the others in the group.

“You’re having a very intense conversation in your head,” Cora said quietly.

He shrugged. “Not really,” he lied.

She sniffed, like she wanted him to know she saw right through him. Defensiveness rose in his gut, warring with fascination and no small amount of admiration that she would not only see the truth of it, but also let him know she got that he was evading.

But she let it go and he appreciated it a great deal.

A few hours in, Vic and Rachel peeled off. Gregori explained that Vic worked in a bakery, the same one that had provided some of the sweets they’d eaten that night, and had to be up by four-thirty.

He realized, as they cleaned up, that he didn’t really want his time with Cora to end. Which was unusual. Unusual enough that he paid attention to it. She was a gorgeous, creative, interesting woman and an old friend. That was it. Probably.

Still, when she headed to the door, he followed. “Hey, where are you off to?”

“Home. I’ve been up well over twenty-four hours at this point and the travel has just sort of smacked me in the head. Now that my belly is full and I’ve been loved up on by my friends, I’m going to head back to my place and sleep for many hours.”

“Where are you parked? Do you need a ride home?” Wren asked Cora, and then Gregori sighed. Clearly he’d noticed the chemistry between Cora and Beau all night.

Cora hadn’t seemed to hear Gregori’s sigh as she replied, “I’m just parked right around the corner at the lot near Ink Sisters. I’m good. Thank you though.” Cora hugged Wren, and then tiptoed up to do the same with Gregori.

“I’ll walk with you,” Beau said, grabbing his coat. “If that’s cool with you.”

Cora shrugged. “Sure. You don’t have to. It’s not that far.”

“And then you can give him a ride,” Gregori told her. “He’s staying in a flat in the Bay Vista Tower so he’s on your way home anyway.”

Gregori gave him a very slight smile. Beau owed his friend a beer for that little suggestion that allowed him more time with her.

“Ah! Yes, that’s totally on my way home. I can easily drop you off as a thanks for walking with me and defending my honor in case a drunken Pioneer Square reveler gives me any guff. Not that they would with an eleven-foot-tall dude, but you know what I mean,” Cora said.

“There are perks to being tall. And I’d appreciate the ride as I walked over earlier today.” And he’d get to be alone with her in the car, where he planned on asking her out.

He shouldn’t. He usually kept himself clear of getting involved with a friend or anyone in his social circle that he might have to see regularly in the wake of something unpleasant.