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was lovely, I’m just not that hungry,” Audrey sputtered like she was making an excuse.
Shane served his entrée.
“Have a seat with us,” Reg instructed, gesturing for Shane to pull a chair over from one of the other tables. Reg refilled his own sangria glass and slid it into position for Shane to have it. Audrey’s was barely touched.
For all of his brother’s annoyances, Shane respected Reg more than anyone in the world. Reg had provided the necessary foresight and know-how to lift Shane’s Table to fame. Shane could never have done any of it without him.
Reg had taught him that he had to play the game sometimes, had to make nice with people even when he’d rather be hiding in the kitchen. So he obeyed his brother, turned around a chair and straddled it backward to sit down with them.
“We need to have a discussion about the cookbook,” Reg said with a concerned look. Had they been spending the whole dinner talking about him? “You know we’ve committed to a date with the publisher and they, in turn, agreed to create a mock-up so we can do marketing with it.”
“If it’s a mock-up, then it could be filled with empty pages—what’s the difference?”
“Because you have a contract with them, saying that you’re going to deliver a cookbook,” Audrey added. “They’re not going to go forward if you’re not going to meet the deadline.”
“The TV taping is going to bring you and the restaurant into the living room of millions of viewers,” Reg said.
“We’ll not only sell cookbooks,” Audrey said, “but it will bring people to Vegas to eat at Shane’s Table.”
“You know we all need this,” his brother added.
“The publicity could put us at capacity for a year,” Audrey stressed.
Reg and Audrey both paused to take bites of their tapado. Reg gestured his approval while Audrey stayed straight-faced and chewed slowly. Reg asked, “Have you even started it?”
“Enough already. I get it. I have to deliver the cookbook.” With that, Shane hitched up from the chair and stomped back into the kitchen.
Annoyed, he portioned the pastel de tres leches he had made this afternoon. He hated being ganged up on like that. Hated all of that aggressive sales-y behavior, even though he knew that was what it took to be successful. Just as he knew he wasn’t at all cut out for it. And as for that smart-talking bombshell Audrey... He’d like to show her how actions spoke louder than words.
Shane, he reprimanded himself, Audrey is going to be your sister-in-law. You do not kiss your sister-in-law. You do not even think about kissing your sister-in-law. For heaven’s sake.
Yet he lingered on a mental image of feeding her something delicious with his fingers.
After he and rock ’n’ roll had cleaned up the kitchen, he’d blown off enough steam to go serve the pastel.
Assuming this would be the fourth dish Audrey picked at but didn’t finish, he placed the plate in front of her without much enthusiasm even though he knew this dessert was always a hit.
She gawked at the cake. Took a small forkful. As she slipped it between lips that were as juicy as the plums Shane’d had for breakfast that morning, he could swear he saw her eyelashes flutter. After her bite, she managed, “Wow.”
“It’s called tres leches because it’s got condensed milk, evaporated milk and cream,” he said of the sponge cake soaked in the custardy milk mixture and topped with whipped cream to make it even richer.
She took another demure forkful. Which was quickly followed with another, not as ladylike in size as the previous. Both Shane and Reg couldn’t help but watch as she devoured one bite after the next.
The three chitchatted a bit about a successful New York bakery chain and how they went about their expansion.
Shane hadn’t seen Reg in a couple of weeks. Something more than his usual worries was bothering him. He’d thought his brother had been in favor of this friendly marriage to Audrey. Maybe something had changed. He needed to speak with him privately.
But in between snippets of conversation, Audrey took bite after bite of the cake. Until it was gone. She made a final swirl around the plate with her fork to capture any bits that might have been left behind.
Then she pointed to Reg’s plate. “Are you going to finish yours?”
Gotcha! A pirate grin slashed across Shane’s mouth. After she’d barely eaten the dinner, he finally had her. “Now we see what you like, Sugar.”
* * *
Audrey swiped the key card to her bungalow, opened the door and immediately eyed the cardboard cutout of Shane she had removed from the restaurant entrance earlier. “What are you looking at?” she snapped at the photo, which seemed to have a raised eyebrow she didn’t remember from earlier.
No sooner had she arrived in Vegas than three handsome men had overwhelmed her. One was her father. She knew Daniel wanted the best for her and his concern for her unmarried status was at least half of his motivation in the matchmaking. Two tall, dark and handsome brothers were the other players.
The idea of a marriage being arranged and handed to her in a neat organized file was a relief. At twenty-eight, she knew she had decades of work ahead of her to keep up the Girard legacy that her father, and his father before him, had worked so hard to build. Yet she knew that going it completely alone could be a hard path.
A distant and uncaring mother had cured her of any silly dreams about a love that takes a whole heart. She would never set herself up for that kind of hurt again. Words like allegiance and devotion had been removed from her dictionary. Sensible and logical were welcome.
Timing the wedding to coincide with the opening was a good move. Audrey hoped Reg felt the same way. He had never gotten around to telling her what he wanted to talk to her about tonight, partially because he became invisible every time his brother burst into the dining room.
Shane was a thunderstorm of a man, all mysterious dark skies and punishing rain. Obviously still not over the death of his wife, he hulked under a cloud. That obsession with what she was, and wasn’t, eating had been so annoying. Audrey snarked at the photo of him in the corner. How smug he had become when she couldn’t stop eating that unbelievably scrumptious tres leches cake.
Throwing one of her suitcases up on the bed, she started to unpack as she hadn’t had time to earlier. In a month she’d be married to Reg. There was no reason to care what the other Murphy brother thought of her. Yet when she unzipped the interior, she almost convinced herself that she had to open the flap in a direction that blocked Shane’s photo from seeing what was inside. Was she crazy?
Okay, Shane. Here it is, she thought defensively as she pulled the first item from the case. Cookies. Yes, she had brought package upon package of her favorite cookies from Philadelphia! She didn’t know if they would carry them in Vegas stores so she had stuffed as many as she could into her luggage. And not just cookies. There were boxes of candy from a famous Philadelphia chocolatier, too. There was no way she could live without those. When she ran out, she’d order more online.
“I like sweets. So what?” she challenged Shane’s disapproving expression. He had no business becoming the third man prying into her affairs. She should just get that six feet and two inches of cardboard out of the bungalow tonight and be done with it. Hopefully Reg would ask for it tomorrow.
Yet somehow she liked it right where it was. Those deep, dark eyes of Shane’s were magnets that pulled her in and wouldn’t let go. She wanted to dive into those eyes, to understand the complexity, agony and secrets she knew lay beneath them. As nice as the furnishings in the suite were, Shane was clearly the focal point.
Once she emptied her suitcases, she picked out a nightgown and went to change in the bathroom so as not to let Shane’s photo see her naked. Bonkers, she confirmed