who’d ever met the man insisted he wasn’t right for her.
It was the one and only reason it had taken her so long to break up with Ben. Even when she finally found out that he wasn’t as interested in Meg the person as he was in Meg the chef, the woman who could make him—and his chi-chi Baltimore restaurant—a five-star hit.
Meg had never backed down from a challenge in her life.
And Maisie knew it.
“All right. You want proof. I’ll give you proof.” Meg raised her chin in the kind of I’m-not-budging-an-inch-on-this-look she’d learned at Maisie’s knee. She put down the coffeepot long enough to pull the elastic band out of her hair and combed through her ponytail with her fingers. When she was done, she shook her curls loose and grabbed the silver pot again. “I’m going in there and I’m going to flirt with Gabe Morrison. And it’s going to get me nowhere. Guaranteed.”
“We’ll see.” Maisie nodded. “And if I lose—”
“You will,” Meg assured her.
“If I lose and he’s not attracted to you…well, I’ll cook dinner for you one night. How about that? And if I win…”
“You won’t.”
“If I win…” She winked at Meg and, reaching for her, turned her toward the door. “If I win, you win, too. Now go get him,” she said, and nudged her out of the kitchen.
“Fine. Good.” Meg paused just outside the dining-room door, fighting the sudden urge to run.
She might have done it, too, if behind her, she didn’t hear the kitchen door open just enough to allow Maisie to peek out. “Remember, be subtle. Bet he’ll fall head over heels,” Maisie whispered.
“Bet he won’t,” Meg insisted, and because she knew she’d talked herself into something she couldn’t talk herself out of, she figured she had no choice but to get it over with.
Her shoulders squared, her jaw steady, her insides jumping like a fish at the wrong end of a hook, she marched back into the dining room to face Gabe Morrison.
And her own nagging insecurities.
Chapter Three
Gabe was drawing buildings.
Again.
Shaking himself back to reality, he studied the drawing that had somehow taken shape on the legal pad in front of him while he was lost in thought.
A facade that combined classical elements and post-modernist pizzazz. A frieze on the entablature. One that completely broke the rules when it came to horizontal bands of relief sculpture, dispensing with them altogether and replacing them instead with a loose pattern of lines that was less traditional carving and more like the empty staffs in an even emptier line of—
“Music.”
Gabe grumbled the word and glanced down at the drawing that was staring back up at him.
Kind of like the other guests around the breakfast table were staring at him.
He felt their eyes before he saw them, and because he knew that doing anything else would only make him seem crazier and more conspicuous, he forced himself to look up. Six pairs of eyes were trained on him, six expressions both cautious and curious. Six people were gawking at him as if he’d been talking to himself.
Which he had been.
Gabe made a sound that might have been a mumbled excuse. Or a growl of discontent. In keeping with the peaceful atmosphere of the Hideaway and the feelings of love that were as conspicuous as the swarm of chubby cupids that decorated the Christmas tree in the far corner, his fellow guests apparently decided it was an apology.
The fresh-faced, starry-eyed honeymooners across the lace tablecloth grinned in unison. The other two couples smiled and nodded and finished their meals. Watching them eat, Gabe noticed for the first time that there was food on the plate in front of him. And he hadn’t touched it.
“That’s right. You would like music.” The newlywed groom was done eating. He stood and because he was holding her hand, his bride popped out of her chair right along with him. “You’re staying in Love Me Tender. The music room. We haven’t seen it, but we hear it’s really cool.”
“We could switch. Rooms, I mean.” Gabe sounded a little too desperate, even to himself. He knew it. He didn’t like it. He couldn’t stop. The other rooms at the Hideaway might be heavy on the lace and light on the guy-all-alone-so-what’s-he-doing-in-a-place-like-this factor, but they wouldn’t remind him of the music he couldn’t compose or the lyrics that refused to form in his head. No matter how hard he tried.
At least they weren’t Love Me Tender.
This was his chance, and it might be his only one. He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t have much to pack. I could be out in less than ten minutes. If you’d like to check out Love Me Tender for the rest of your stay—”
“No way!” The groom might be a quicker eater than his blushing bride, but it was clear from the start who was going to make the decisions in the family. “Pink Cadillacs and Elvis pictures?” She barked out a laugh. “No—thank—you. Not exactly my idea of romantic!”
“That’s not what the Crawfords thought!” Chuckling, one of the other couples got up from the table. They were apparently regulars at the Hideaway and knew something Gabe didn’t know. He didn’t care, either, not if it meant he might get them to bite at his juicy offer.
He turned to them. “If you think Love Me Tender is romantic—”
Before he could even finish, both the man and the woman were shaking their heads. “Happy where we are,” the man told him. He looped an arm around his wife’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze before they walked out of the room. “‘Smooth Operator’ is our idea of romance, and besides, James Bond never visited Graceland.”
Gabe couldn’t argue with that. He turned his attention to the only couple left.
“Not us.” The man held up one hand, instantly rejecting the plan. “We love ‘Almost Paradise.’ The plants, the waterfall, even the jungle noises piped in through the sound system. That’s romance as far as we’re concerned. Besides, I hear the bar stools in Love Me Tender have vinyl seats and frankly, vinyl and nudists…” Even fully clothed, he squirmed in his chair. As if the suggestion was too much to take, both he and his wife got up and scurried out of the dining room as quickly as they could.
“Great.” Gabe mumbled the word. Even though he was feeling anything but. “Strike three. Me and Elvis. At least I don’t have to worry about the romance.”
“What’s the matter, Mr. Morrison? You don’t like romance?”
Gabe hadn’t noticed that Meg had come back into the room. A warm rush of awareness flooded the space between his heart and his stomach when her voice snuck up from somewhere behind him. Funny, although he’d been more than aware of Meg the day before, when she’d showed him to the fiasco that passed for his room, he’d missed the husky note in her voice. Ready to answer her—except that he wasn’t quite sure
