grimaced. “Learning. I think I make a decent eggplant parmesan, though,” he added, nodding at the dish.
“Smells like it,” Meg said, then turned the dials of the stove. No preheat light came on. She pulled open the door and there wasn’t a hint of warmth. With a little sigh, she played with the dials again, trying different combinations: Bake, Broil, Roast. Nothing woke up the uncooperative oven.
Frowning, she glanced at him over her shoulder. “Can you ‘fridge that food? I’m sure I can get this fixed tomorrow. For tonight, we’ll pick up your dinner tab at Captain Crow’s, or anywhere else you’d like to eat. Just bring me the receipt tomorrow and I’ll reimburse you.”
“What were you planning for dinner?”
“Me?”
His smile was charming. “I could bring the casserole to your kitchen. Use your oven. Feed us both.”
Bitzer pushed his nose into her hand as if he thought it a good idea as well. “I don’t…uh…” More girlish flutters in her midsection embarrassed her.
“I could use a critique of my recipe,” Caleb said. “You’d be my first.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“To eat my home cooking,” he clarified, a laugh sparking glints in his dark eyes.
It was the laughter that got to her. Meh Meg needed a little more of that in her life, especially now. Especially at Crescent Cove. Caleb could be the distraction she needed.
So that’s how she found herself pouring a second glass of merlot as the delicious scent of herbs, onion and tomato sauce filled the air at the house where she’d grown up. They took the wine to the front porch and the pair of generous-size chairs that sat side-by-side. Bitzer collapsed at their feet with a happy sigh.
Meg slid a look at Caleb. His expression gave nothing away beyond a simple contentment with the moment, not unlike the dog’s. “So…what exactly brings you to the cove?” she asked, working herself up to what she knew needed to be addressed, now that they were sharing a meal. It likely wasn’t mere serendipity that brought Peter’s cousin to this particular stretch of beach.
Caleb’s long legs stretched out, then crossed at the ankle. “Needed a break. The thought of here, it sort of…came to me.”
“So you’re familiar with Crescent Cove?”
He turned his head, a rueful smile curving his lips. “I didn’t think you noticed me then.”
Then? Suddenly she recalled earlier that afternoon, when they were at No. 9 and he’d asked if she remembered him. The question hadn’t processed, rocked as she was by that moment of mistaking him for his cousin and by the sound of her former first name on his lips. “You…you were here before?”
“I was the skinny kid who came to visit my aunt, uncle and cousin a couple of weekends that summer.”
She had the vague memory of a flop of hair and baggy board shorts. “That was you?”
“I’ll take your surprise as a compliment.” He smiled again. “I grew a lot in my early 20s.”
“And now you’re…?”
“Thirty.”
Just a few months older than Meg.
They exchanged more life details then. He had spent the last four years with a cell phone app start-up, working insane hours but enjoying himself immensely. Meg realized he didn’t live far from her in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she worked for a large accounting firm that sent her out to smaller companies for independent audits.
“So you left Southern California?” Caleb asked.
“First time I’ve been back in a decade,” she said lightly, and explained about her parents relocating to Provence and her sister attending a wedding in Arizona.
Caleb slowly straightened in his chair, then shot her a considering look. “What happened here a decade ago—losing Peter—that was a tremendous blow.”
A fatal blow to Meg’s heart. Still, even now, something inside her chest gave a painful, ghostly squeeze. Resisting the urge to rub the spot, she turned her thoughts to Peter’s family. They’d lost someone vital to them as well. “Your aunt and uncle were devastated, I know.”
“They were,” Caleb agreed. “Me, too. Peter was the big brother I never had. I missed him so much that his parents gave me Bitzer.”
At the sound of his name, the dog raised his head. Caleb fondled a soft ear, his gaze on his pet. “We’ve been good company for each other, haven’t we, boy?”
Then his eyes shifted to Meg’s face. “How did you get through your grief?”
By running from that summer and from this place. But no one wanted to hear those kinds of truths. “One day at a time,” she said instead. Noting the sober look in Caleb’s eyes, she hastened to add more, not wanting him to think she was mired in the past. “It was ten years ago. Of course I’ll always feel sad about it, but I’m not pining away.”
“Good,” he said softly. “Good to know.”
“I’m not even that same person anymore.”
“Hence the Meg.”
She nodded. “Starr still had stars in her eyes. When I left the cove, I felt like I was different, more of a down-to-earth woman than that sentimental, romantic girl.”
“Why does ‘down-to-earth’ sound like a synonym for pessimistic?”
Meg swiveled on her cushion to face him. “I’m not. I just don’t believe in fairy tales anymore.”
Before he could reply, the oven timer dinged. They got to their feet and trooped to the kitchen. Bitzer padded behind, exuding enthusiasm. “Still likes to eat, huh?” Meg asked.
“Likes to be part of the crowd. I even take him to the office.”
As they dished up the eggplant parmesan, Meg discovered that the start-up Caleb worked for was actually his start-up, and the apps his company developed were software products used by the triathlete crowd, from route analyzers to workout logs. As they sat at the kitchen table, plates accompanied by a bowl of tossed salad, the wine and a pitcher of water with a second set of glasses, she again sized up his broad shoulders and lean-muscled torso…for informational purposes only, naturally.
Ignoring the little heated pulse of reaction she experienced just looking at him, she picked up her fork. “Triathlons, huh? I take it that’s your competition of choice.”
He glanced up from his serving of casserole. “I’ve cut back, actually,” he said. “I’m trying for a…tamer lifestyle, I’d guess you’d say.”
Tamer? A man like this, self-made, self-possessed, flat-out sexy, didn’t have a tame bone in his body. Not even his pinkie was domesticated. Not even his little toe.
He laughed. “You look like you don’t believe me.”
