All the Romance You Need This Christmas: 5-Book Festive Collection. Romy Sommer
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‘Three drawers to the left of the sink,’ he called back.
Dory counted handles along from the sink and found, lo and behold, a whole drawer full of forks. Pastry forks, cake forks, smaller forks for starters, and full-sized dining forks. Mind slightly boggled, she pulled open the next drawer. Knives. Lots of knives. Fish knives, steak knives, knives for every possible conceivable occasion. At that point, she couldn’t leave the last drawer unopened. Inside, neatly ordered into sections, were spoons varying in size from tiny coffee spoons, all the way up to serving spoons, via a number of different sizes she couldn’t even have guessed names or uses for.
‘You casing the silver?’ Dory jumped at Lucas’s words. ‘Because I’ll give you a tip. The really expensive stuff is in the chest in the main hall.’
Dory slammed the drawers shut, keeping only the two cake forks she’d picked out in the first place. ‘Just wondering who really needs that much cutlery.’ She shook her head as she joined him at the table. He hadn’t bothered with separate plates, just brought the chocolate and pistachio gateau on the serving plate Freya had left it on. ‘It’s a different world.’
‘You’re telling me,’ Lucas said, taking the fork she offered him. ‘I grew up here, and it still baffles me. Especially since I think I might be the only family member who knows where anything is in this kitchen.’
‘Yeah, I was kinda surprised by that.’ Dory cut off the tiniest sliver of chocolate cake with the edge of her fork. She wanted to savour this…
‘My room is just upstairs,’ Lucas explained. ‘And I like to save the family dining for special occasions. Which means if I want to eat the rest of the time, I had to figure out where things are.’ He shrugged. ‘Besides, Duncan and Freya are more fun to hang out with, anyway. We usually play poker in the evenings, when I’m here, but apparently party prep has taken over tonight.’
Tilting her head, Dory considered Tyler’s older brother. From his short cropped hair, lighter than Tyler’s messy style, to the stubble that was just a millimetre too long to be truly designer, he didn’t look like an Alexander. Didn’t embrace the name and all it brought with it, the way Tyler did. And here, now, she wanted to ask why.
‘You’re not comfortable here, are you?’ she said, then winced. Too blunt, again, Dory. She could almost hear her father whispering ‘a little subtlety, maybe?’ in her ear. ‘Sorry. I just mean…’
‘That I’d obviously rather be somewhere else?’ Lucas finished for her. ‘It’s okay; you’re right.’
‘So, where would you rather be?’
‘Honestly? Pretty much anywhere.’ He sighed. ‘But right now, given the choice, I’d be home on my farm.’
Dory blinked. ‘You own a farm?’
‘Kinda. But probably not the sort you’re thinking of.’
‘Pigs? Sheep? That kind of thing?’
‘Well… yeah. But to be honest, I’m not that involved with the actually farming side of things. I rent out the land to local farmers, mostly.’
‘So… what do you do, then?’
‘Enjoy the peace and quiet?’ Dory raised her eyebrows at him, and he sighed. ‘Yeah, you’re not going to accept that answer, are you?’
‘Somehow I can’t imagine you sitting in a rocking chair on a porch somewhere, while other people do all the fun stuff.’
‘Fair enough.’ He dropped his cake fork onto the plate. There wasn’t much cake left now, anyway. ‘How much do you know about me?’
Dory shrugged. ‘Only what it says in your Wikipedia entry.’
‘I have a…’ He shook his head. ‘Never mind. I’m sure it told you that I kinda… dropped out of society a couple of years ago.’
‘When you got divorced,’ Dory said, then bit her lip. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘Don’t be,’ Lucas said, absently. ‘Besides, that’s the wrong way round. Cheryl left me because I wasn’t living the life she married me for anymore.’
‘Why not?’ Dory asked, curious. ‘I mean, most people would kill for this sort of existence.’
‘Would you?’
‘Well… no. But lots of people.’
‘Yeah, well, not me either.’
‘But you did,’ Dory said. ‘You ran the company before Tyler took it over.’
‘And I ran it damn well. But then…’ Lucas paused, as if trying to find the words. ‘You know how, sometimes, something happens that changes your whole life. The whole way you see the world.’
‘I guess,’ Dory said. Losing her job, she supposed. Or agreeing to move to New York. Or the day she came home to find Ewen in bed with the hot, blonde, Manhattan socialite. That was a big one.
‘There was an accident.’ Lucas looked down at his empty hands. ‘My best friend… he died. He was showing off, living the high life, fooling around on his speedboat to impress his fiancée. Except it went wrong. I was in hospital for weeks, unconscious for most of it. And when I woke up, he was gone.’
Dory’s heart clenched at the matter-of-fact way he told the story. However hard he tried to sound unemotional about it, the tension in his jaw, the way his fingers flexed, told her otherwise. ‘That’s… God, Lucas, that’s awful.’ Without thinking, she reached across and grabbed his hand, holding those tight, tense fingers in hers.
Lucas looked up, giving her a half smile. ‘Yeah. It was. Tyler never told you about this?’
Dory shook her head. ‘Tyler doesn’t really talk about… well, you.’
‘The black sheep, huh?’
‘Pretty much.’
He squeezed her fingers, then let go of her hand. ‘Well, at least it was my choice. I took my money – not the business’s money, or the family’s, just what I’d earned myself over the last however many years – and I left. I bought my farm, holed up there for a while. And then, well, I got bored.’
‘Thought as much.’ Dory took one last mouthful of cake from the plate. ‘So, back to my original question. What do you do now?’
Lucas shrugged and picked up his fork again. ‘I wanted to do something new, but using what I’d learnt in the family business. Something I could get in on the ground floor of, not be stuck up in some office somewhere. So I set up my own restaurant, in one of the old barns at the edge of the farm, closest to the road into the nearest town.’
‘I’m guessing this restaurant is not another Alexander’s.’
‘No.’ Lucas laughed. ‘My father would hate it. It’s all organic, local food on the menu, for locals to eat. We grow or rear most of it on my farm.’
‘Sounds wonderful.’ And totally unlike the corporate, establishment Alexander Corporation and its identikit chain restaurants.
‘We’ll see. It’s still just starting out. I guess I was just looking for something that’s mine. That I can build up myself.’
Dory thought about how she’d followed Ewen across an ocean, only to be cut adrift. And now she was at Tyler’s beck and call instead. ‘I can understand that.’
‘Yeah,’ Lucas said, staring at her, an odd look in his eye. ‘Somehow, I thought you might.’
***
Lucas tore his gaze away from Dory, from the way her lips wrapped around that last mouthful of chocolate cake, and how her shoulders wriggled under her strappy pyjama top at the taste. It took considerably more effort than it should. Was that why he couldn’t shake the feeling he