sighed and palmed her phone, tapping at the screen since apparently she couldn’t just stand there and drink the fantastic coffee he’d made for her. “My cell gets really bad reception here. Do you know where I can get better service?”
“The world can’t function for a day without your input?” He glanced up at her as he finished off the glaze.
“That wasn’t the question.”
“Try outside. A high place, a hill, a barn. Horse.” He handed her the roll and she took it without protest.
“Thank you. So helpful.”
He had to grin. Her mouth was something else. He liked watching her eat his cinnamon rolls. She took a small bite the way a kid does when he isn’t sure he wants what his mother put in front of him, testing it out before fully committing.
“Well?” he couldn’t help but ask. He wanted her to like what he cooked. Otherwise there was no point in doing it.
“It’s not terrible,” she allowed graciously.
That was likely the highest praise he would get. But she did like it, he could tell. The bliss stealing over her features was a dead giveaway. With a knowing smile, he turned to close the oven. While he was distracted, she chose that moment to really bite into it in the way a roll of that stature was meant to be eaten.
He let her have her fun and pretended to be occupied so she could enjoy in peace, but when he turned around a few beats later, she’d vanished. There was a telltale hole in the pan of rolls where she’d snagged a second one, though.
“Not terrible,” he repeated to the empty kitchen and that put a smile on his face he wouldn’t be able to wipe off for some time.
Hurricane Fiona had blown through his kitchen and he had a feeling she’d rain on his menus a few more times before she went back to New York.
Fiona ran until she thought she might have worked off a quarter of one of Derek’s amazing sticky-sweet cinnamon rolls, then ran more to try for another quarter. Running in Vermont was nothing like running in New York. It was all the same: white, white, more white, oh look a tree, more white.
And no amount of running had worked off the distinct awareness she’d had of Derek back there in the kitchen. What was that? She didn’t even like him. Okay, he was good-looking with those New England cheekbones and long lean body that didn’t suck to watch when he moved. But other than that, he had cocky smugness down to a science. An answer for everything. Little respect for healthy eating.
But he did have charm to spare and, holy cow, could that man bake.
Pausing to catch her breath—and no, she was not stopping to examine whether Derek had something to do with why she was out of breath either—she put a hand on a blue tractor that was parked outside of a dilapidated old barn. The tractor didn’t seem to be much newer or in any better condition. When she looked into the adjacent field, an equally old man stood just inside the gate with a bale of hay. Grizzled and at one with the land, he wore plaid like it had been invented for him and a fierce scowl on his face.
Fiona waved. “Hello.”
The man paused long enough to acknowledge that someone had spoken to him but the look he gave her held no warmth at all. And then he turned back to his task without uttering a word.
“Good morning to you too,” she muttered and held up her cell phone in search of those elusive bars. “Come on, signal… signal… Oooh, signal!”
The screen lit up with text messages and missed calls, which she ignored in favor of dialing. When Andy answered, she spilled a litany of instructions at the poor man in fear of not getting something out before she lost the signal. Which is what happened. In the middle of her spiel. With a sad beep, the phone died, cutting her off mid-stream.
“Andy!” No Andy.
So much for that. She pocketed the phone and ran back to the inn. In the latest in a long string of unfortunately-timed meetings, Derek came out of the house right when she got there.
“Hey,” he called as if he was actually happy to see her, which was a nice change from the chilly non-greeting she’d just gotten up the road. “Help me out a second. I’m late on brunch.”
He handed her a basket lined with a dishtowel and that was so intriguing, she followed him. And then she caught sight of the brown and red bird standing on a hay bale outside the house. That looked suspiciously like the other half of her wakeup call.
“Is this where that rooster lives?” She pointed at the offending bird. “’Cause he and I are having a talk.”
“Yeah, I named him Swatch,” Derek said easily. “He thinks he’s a clock.”
This was almost a pleasant conversation. She could stand a bit more of nice Derek. “Do you think he knows how to get a cell phone signal? This is Vermont, not Timbuktu.”
Derek led her into a greenhouse full of vibrant plants that shouldn’t be thriving with snow still on the ground. But the explosion of green told a different story. Clearly someone took very good care of the plants in here. Derek, unless she missed her guess. He had that no-one-touches-my-stuff vibe about him, all right.
“The signal is pretty sketchy up here.” He turned his attention to a small-leafed plant in the corner, but then glanced slyly over his shoulder. “Anyway, aren’t you supposed to be relaxing after that breakup of yours?”
The squeak that came out of Fiona’s mouth wasn’t entirely human. So much for civil conversation. He could have gone all day without mentioning that, and how had he heard that anyway? Surely Delia hadn’t—
“The staff gossips.” Derek cut some of the small leaves from the plant and put them in her basket. “Probably wise that you learn that now.”
Well, someone had overheard her talking to Delia then and should definitely be fired, whoever it was. “It’s no wonder. There’s absolutely nothing to do up here.”
Derek scoffed. “There’s plenty to do up here.”
“Oh really, like what? Growing your own herbs? Because that looks really entertaining.”
What was it about this man? He got under her skin like nobody’s business. She was never this catty with Nate. Of course, Nate did nothing to elicit such a response. All Derek had to do was stand there and all of these things welled up from inside her…
“Exactly,” he said as if he hadn’t noticed her sarcasm. “Everything I serve is locally sourced. And what I can’t grow, I buy from local farms. Mostly.”
He rubbed some of the plant leaves between his fingers and held them out for her to inhale. Smelled like fresh herbs to her, not that she had any hope of identifying the slightly spicy scent.
Then she made the mistake of glancing up. And immediately fell into Derek’s enigmatic silvery gaze. It bored through her, tripping her pulse as they stared at each other, and she did not like how easily he affected her. How easily it seemed like he saw right through her into the inside parts that no one had access to.
“Mostly?”
