Jasmine Cresswell - Payback

By a significant effort of will, she brought her feelings under control. She was cool, she was calm, and there was no reason to suppose she’d embarrass herself. Provided she didn’t allow her fears about her father and her worries about her mother to bleed over into what should be a brief, polite conversation, all would be well. God knew, Luke was likely to be as anxious to end the discussion as she was. Neither of them had any interest in reigniting a flame that had caused burns of life-threatening severity without providing either warmth or light.

The hostess waiting by the door was new, which was a relief. Kate spoke her carefully rehearsed piece before her courage ran away and died. “Hi, I understand from the executive sous-chef at Luciano’s on Chestnut that Luke Savarini is working here this evening. Would you tell him that Kate Fairfax would like to speak with him? I realize this is a busy time and I can come back later if that would be more convenient.”

“Kate Fairfax, did you say?” The hostess smiled, giving no hint that she’d ever heard Kate’s name before. The TV coverage had been so blistering when her father disappeared that Kate still half expected to be recognized everywhere she went. The gradual return of anonymity was a blessing she appreciated every day.

“Yes, that’s right. Luke and I are old friends.” A slight misrepresentation, but she could hardly announce she was a former lover who, in normal circumstances, would prefer being locked in a small cage with a large crocodile rather than spend time with him.

“I’ll let him know you’re here.”

“Thanks so much.”

The hostess headed toward the kitchens and Kate gratefully stopped smiling. She picked up one of the heavy, leather-bound menus to check what was new since her last visit. She soon realized she was only pretending to read and put the menu down again. Her stomach continued to whirl. She strove to ignore it. For the past several months, it sometimes seemed that denial had become her default state of being.

The hostess returned. “Luke says he’ll be right out. He asked me to bring you a glass of wine from the bar while you’re waiting. Our house white is a Garofoli and the house red is a Valpolicella—”

“I appreciate the offer, but I’m fine, thanks.” Sipping a glass of wine struck Kate as an invitation to disaster. She’d changed into dress pants, a cream silk blouse and a cropped, brass-buttoned black jacket before coming in search of Luke, and she hoped she looked reasonably put together. Sadly, the aura of a woman in charge of her life was sheer illusion. Unlike her mother, who had clearly been a princess in a previous incarnation, Kate often felt that her social graces were no more than a paper-thin layer stretched over a seething swamp of klutziness.

She heard a slight stir in the dining room and looked up. Luke had come out from the kitchen and was walking toward her, leaving little ripples of interested conversation in his wake. The seven months since she’d last seen him had clearly done nothing to dim his charisma. Kate accepted, almost with resignation, that her skin pricked and her nipples tingled in automatic response to his approach. Even her stomach stopped whirling long enough to clench with sexual tension.

She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised by the instant tug of desire. Somehow, though, she’d managed to forget the power of Luke’s sexual magnetism. Still, they hadn’t broken up because they’d fallen out of lust, she reminded herself. Lust had worked well for them, right up to the end.

What the two of them had lost was mutual respect and any vestige of trust. Which made for a pretty comprehensive indictment of their relationship, she thought wryly. Her own final act of betrayal had simply been an exclamation point to punctuate the end of a relationship that had already died.

Luke was wearing the traditional starched white chef’s jacket and black cotton pants. The jacket was pristine, presumably because he’d changed before leaving the kitchen. He’d discarded the mandatory head gear and his short-cropped hair stood up in a thick, dark crest above his tanned complexion and smoke-gray eyes. Despite spending twelve-hour working days inside various kitchens, Luke looked as if he made his living outdoors. She knew he started each morning, almost regardless of the weather, with a five-mile run along the lakeshore, which partly explained the permanent tan and the impressive physique. She admired his self-discipline, but even when they first started dating and the gloss was still pretty blinding, she’d wished he could be a little less perfect.

They’d needed to break up before Kate was willing to admit the extent to which she’d been intimidated by Luke’s assets. He had so darn many, aside from self-made wealth and good looks: his warmth, his friendliness, his easy sense of humor and his ability to roll with the punches while still working at a fiendish pace.

Then there was his storybook Italian family. She’d loved hearing tales about his brothers and sisters, not to mention his ever-expanding crop of nieces and nephews. She’d envied him the casual camaraderie of his five siblings and the general aura of controlled chaos surrounding his family life, although toward the end of their relationship she’d begun to wonder why she’d never met any of his relatives face-to-face. She knew Luke well enough to realize that any girlfriend he was serious about would be required to get along with his family.

Even more than his family, she’d envied the ease with which Luke showed his emotions. If he was happy, he laughed. When he cooked for her, he hummed as he worked, completely indifferent to the fact that he was always off-key. When they made love, his passion was all-consuming, his attention totally devoted to her. If he was angry, he yelled. And when the anger passed, it was forgotten, with no lingering bitterness or need to prove he’d been right all along.

She’d been with Luke the night he learned that his maternal grandfather had died from complications after supposedly routine surgery, and he’d cried as he heard the news. Apparently he’d never received the memo informing him that macho men were required to keep a stiff upper lip at all times. Kate’s grandparents, Southern aristocrats who believed that gentlemen and ladies should avoid behaving like men and women whenever possible, would have been appalled by Luke’s emotionalism. She had simply loved him more for his lack of inhibitions.

Luke’s ability to grieve openly had haunted her in the aftermath of her father’s disappearance. He had seemed to know instinctively how to integrate death and mourning into the natural order of his life. Kate, by contrast, had floundered. Her father’s death brought nothing but unanswered questions and the hurt of issues left permanently unresolved. Her sadness at his loss seemed too complicated to grasp, let alone to express in something as mundane as tears.

Kate instructed herself to stop wallowing in the past and focus on coping with the present. Luke had paused to chat at several tables as he crossed the dining room, but now he was only steps away from the hostess station. Steps away from her. Kate wished she could greet him with a casual smile and a throwaway comment about…something. Unfortunately, when your last encounter involved the sort of brutal betrayal that left you internally bleeding, it was a bit difficult to come up with anything that didn’t sound either snide or demented.

Luke halted a couple of feet away and simply stood there, saying nothing. She pretended to look at him but was actually careful to avoid meeting his gaze. Her brain was a blank, but eventually she managed to manipulate her mouth into a smile. At least, she hoped it was a smile and not a grimace.

She held out her hand. “Luke, thank you for meeting with me on such short notice.”