slipped his arms around her waist and held her there. “Seems to me you’re making me dinner. Little enough to do in return.”
“Cooking in this wonderful old kitchen is a treat. I love it. I can almost taste all the amazing meals that have been cooked here.”
“Doubtful. My mother loves her vegetable garden. Then she boils the heck out of every harvest. My father used to sneak behind her and turn off burners.”
“I know you miss him. I miss mine.”
He kissed the tip of her nose, then released her. “Having you here makes all the difference.”
“For the record, this is the best Christmas I remember in a long time.”
“Because?”
He was clearly fishing for a compliment. “I’m not working, of course. At least not very much.”
“And?”
“And I guess I love winter. The snow and the cold remind me of my childhood, before we pulled up stakes and headed for California.”
“And?”
She cocked her head. “Well, being with you is nice.”
“Nice?”
“Maybe that’s a bit of an understatement.”
“It had better be.” He pulled her close again, and this time the kiss went on and on—and the man did know how to kiss. When she finally stepped away, the room was cartwheeling around her.
She shook her head. “You expect me to cook after that?”
“You promised me dinner. And I just hauled in at least a ton of groceries.”
She sent him her most seductive smile, then she turned away before he could respond to the message in it. “No problem, I’ll just boil the heck out of everything in these bags and you’ll feel right at home.”
* * *
OF COURSE SHE didn’t. She had gone into debt for the rib roast, and she cooked it with potatoes, simmering them first so they would crisp up in the oven nestled against the roast. She served both with a spinach and artichoke casserole, fresh green beans, a cranberry, apple and walnut salad, and yeast rolls she had baked at Hollymeade that morning. For his part Brody opened a bottle of Merlot from a friend’s vineyard on Long Island.
When she set everything on the table, decorated with a red tablecloth from Hollymeade, evergreen boughs and white candles, Brody looked like a man who had died and reawakened to his first heavenly banquet.
“I’m going to be rude and ask if there’s dessert,” he said.
“Doesn’t this look like enough?”
“I have to know how much I can eat. If there’s dessert, too, I might be able to rein myself in, just a bit, in preparation.”
“Homemade gingerbread, and there’s maple whipped cream to go with it.”
He looked up from his plate. “Thank you. More than I can say.”
She heard so much in his voice. Thanks for the food. Thanks for cooking for me. Thanks for making a holiday special that would have been lonely and desolate.
If there was more, she didn’t want to think about it.
The food was as good as she had hoped. Clearly Brody thought so, too.
“You ought to be a pro, a chef,” he said, as he reached for another helping of potatoes. “This is better than any restaurant meal I’ve ever had.”
She was flattered. “Cooking’s my only real hobby. I would hate to ruin it.”
“You haven’t talked much about your job.”
She found herself telling him more about the man she worked for. “I know it’s not just my fault when things go wrong,” she said, “but it’s hard to remember that when Frank crowns me scapegoat of the year.”
“Do you have to stay there?”
She didn’t know. She did know she would be in demand if she ever looked for another job. She had a large network of leads and a standing offer or two. That sounded like bragging, though, so she just shrugged. “I’ve invested a lot in this job. I would hate to walk away.”
“You like what you do?”
“I love helping companies become more efficient. That’s my main function. If we can get just the right system in place, their productivity soars and everybody’s happy. It’s a great feeling.”
“You work with the big guys, I guess.”
“Usually, but the right system, computers, software, et cetera, customized for small businesses, can make all the difference, too. And sometimes it’s the difference between closing up shop or opening up markets.” She pushed back from the table a little, because she couldn’t eat another bite. “I’m sure you have a good system here, tailored to your needs, right?”
“I don’t have the time to fool with anything new.”
Or the money, she thought. The more time she spent with Brody, the more she suspected Ryan Vineyards was, at best, holding its own. Most of the land was planted with Concord grapes for juice, and Brody’s passion for making wine was on a back burner. She had seen his equipment, and California girl that she was, she knew what he had wasn’t state-of-the-art, as it should be to compete. The house needed attention inside and out, and one day, when she had dropped by unannounced, the temperature inside hadn’t been much different from the one outside.
“I could fix you up.” She said this as casually as she could, as if having a highly paid consultant revamp his entire business strategy wasn’t any big deal. “Get the right technology in place without a lot of fuss and bother. And with my contacts, I could do it in a way that wouldn’t break the bank. I could set up everything you need. Invoices, purchasing orders, follow-ups with potential clients, analysis of marketing campaigns. How’s your website?”
She had asked the last question in her most innocent tone, but she already knew the answer. The Ryan Vineyards website, if it could be called that, was pathetic, one page that looked as if it had been constructed by a middle school student for his first computer class.
“I can tell you’ve seen it already,” Brody said.
She nodded sheepishly. “I think I could do a thousand percent better with a minimum of work.”
He didn’t answer directly. “It’s a lot to think about tonight, and we ought to be celebrating. Would you like to try some of Ryan Vineyards’ own ice wine with dessert?”
Last week she’d had a glass of Ryan’s best Reisling, and it had compared favorably with German Reislings she’d been served on business trips. She said an enthusiastic yes.
They cleared off the table together and stacked the dishes in the ancient dishwasher. Then, while she dished up the gingerbread
