Oh God. Are they really leaving? Is this slice of paradise really over? She’s breathless, faint, heady with the knowledge that soon they’ll part ways.
The clink of a dish snags her attention. “Tess.” Solomon nods as he sets a plate in front of her.
What she sees has her heart beating wildly in her chest. Every craving she’s had this pregnancy laid out for her on the plate. The most random meal, gourmet style—Chicken sliders with hot sauce and salted fries and bread and ricotta and candied lemons and strange vegetables and pineapple cream on meringue—but it’s hers.
Heart in her throat, Tessie examines the plate with reverence. Solomon crafts a plate like she designs a house. With purpose. With love. Solomon cooking for her is more intimate than sex. He’s letting her into his world. He’s telling her something.
In that instant, she wants, more than anything, for Solomon to be the only one to ever feed her.
She picks up her fork, and when she realizes he’s still standing, she shakes her head. Stretching out a hand, she says, “You have to eat with me. You can’t stare at me like I’m a zoo animal or else I’ll charge you admission.”
With a husky chuckle, he sits across from her, but he doesn’t touch his food. Solomon waits for her, his expression towing a line between nerves and an eagerness she’s never seen from him before.
So she picks up her fork and digs in. First, a fry. Salty and herbed flavors burst in her mouth. Crispy, not greasy. Then the bread. Candied lemons smeared with ricotta on top of a tender grain bread. The soft dough has a perfect chew, a mellow sweetness, and it takes all she has not to devour it.
“Oh my God, Solomon.”
He’s grinning, his watchful gaze taking in her reaction.
“I take it back. You can’t watch me eat. This is embarrassing.” She laughs. Lifts her fork and examines a purple carrot drizzled in honey. The most beautifully strange color she’s ever seen.
Solomon arches a brow. “What color is it?”
“What?”
A lift of his fork. “The carrot.”
She laughs and appraises her food with a knitted brow. “Parachute Purple.” Her nose wrinkles. “Or it could be Cactus Flower.”
“Stumped by a carrot.”
She gasps. “Never.” She breaks off a piece of it, takes a bite. Then she looks up at him. “Solomon,” she begins, shielding her mouth with her hand so she has some semblance of manners. “What made you want to be a chef?”
He scrubs a hand over his face, the bristly whisk of his beard rasping beneath his palm.
“Food was always important in my house. My mother had a garden, and she ran the agriculture program at our local high school. My father fished and hunted. We lived on and ate off the land. My parents taught us that.” He pauses, taking a long sip of his beer. “I stumbled into it. Like everything in my life. I didn’t want to go to college. I wanted to stay in Chinook. Do something local. Howler and me, our dream had always been to own a bar. But when we bought it, I figured out pretty damn fast I was a shit bartender. I couldn’t move fast enough. I dropped every damn thing. Howler was better at it than I was. He wants to talk to people. I don’t.”
“You talked to me,” she says.
He looks her straight in the eyes and says evenly, “I wanted you.”
His directness has her core pulsing. Tessie takes a gulp of her sparkling wine to cool down.
“One day when we were young, we were hanging around after hours, drunk on beer. We were hungry. It was late, midnight, everything in Chinook was closed, so I went back into the kitchen and whipped up what I could from the herbs for the cocktails and leftovers we had in the fridge. I was twenty, maybe twenty-one. The food was good, and it was like a light went on. Having a job where I could hang with my best friend every day and try new things in the kitchen seemed perfect. I didn’t take myself too seriously. Plus, I didn’t have to talk to anyone if I didn’t want to.”
Solomon swallows a sip of his beer, says, “I don’t have a degree. I never went to culinary school. But—”
“You’re good at it,” Tessie finishes.
“Damn good at it,” he says, no arrogance in his tone, just confidence. It turns her on.
In the distance, the call of a seabird. The crash of the waves on the beach.
“Using the land to feed us is important. Making trips to the shore to collect scallops. Hunting wild boar. Using local produce and paying the farmer. If it’s gone, it’s gone. There will never be a dish like it again.”
“I love that, Solomon,” she says, scooping up a dollop of crema.
There’s so much passion in his voice, so much heart. His love for his home is pure and tangible. Unlike Los Angeles, Chinook is not just a town. It’s Solomon’s soul.
“How long has it been since you cooked?” she asks after finishing a bite of chicken slider.
He cocks an eyebrow. “It’s that evident?”
She laughs. “No. The food is delicious. It is. But the way you talked about it. . .It sounds like you haven’t been in the kitchen in a long time.” She shakes her head. “Not like I’m one to talk. I eat takeout most nights.” She palms her belly. “Bear will have to get used to it.”
Solomon’s expression clouds, and a silence falls between them, an awkward reminder of their divergent paths in less than twenty-four hours.
“You’re right.” Solomon’s gruff voice rumbles out as he picks up the dropped conversation. “I haven’t been in the kitchen since Serena died.”
“Do you miss it? Cooking?”
“I tried not to.” He sets his fork down. “I sold our house. Walked away. From everything. From my bar, my friends, my family. I holed myself up in that cabin and made furniture. It was a living. But not a life.”
Tessie’s eyes light on his hands. Broad palms, long, callused fingers, veins standing out like lines on a map, dark hair on his wrists. Strong hands. Builder’s hands. Hands that have spread her thighs and made her moan.
“I didn’t wake up for a long goddamn time. But that’s all changing.” He inhales a breath. “I’m going back to the bar.”
Tessie’s head snaps up.
Solomon’s eyes are glued to her face. “I called Howler and told him I want to come back to work.” A grunt of a laugh. “He’s in the shit with the Roost. It’s falling apart and needs a revamp. Thinking food will help. Thinking it will help me too.”
Her heart feels fluttery, dizzy from his revelation. Because she’s happy. Happy he’s happy.
“Oh, Solomon. That’s amazing. What made you decide to—”
“Rejoin the land of the living?” he asks. With a shake of his head, he says, “I’ve been away too long. I needed to wake up.” He takes a fortifying breath before continuing. “You did that.”
She stills in her chair, unsure if she’s heard him correctly. “Me?”
“Yes, you, Tess.”
She shivers at her name in his mouth. Laced with gravel and fire and heat. Rugged and intense.
“You remember that night we met, I had a ring on?”
Slowly, she nods.
“I took it off because of you, Tessie.”
His words have her heart dropping into her stomach. But she waits. Ready for his explanation. Because she needs to know.
“I barely knew you, but you did something to me that night. Changed my world, shook me up, opened my eyes.” Solomon drags a hand through his dark hair, his expression tortured. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
“Same,” she breathes. “I thought about you all the time.”
The admission leaves her aching, has Solomon’s eyes closing, then opening.
“Remember what I said to you the night we met? About the stars?”
She nods. She’d never forget. “You said they shine the brightest in your hometown.”
“Not anymore. You’re my star, Tess.” He places a hand over his chest. “You shine here. In my heart.”
Before she can process what’s happening, Solomon’s out of his chair and kneeling at her feet. His expression filled with so much reverence she feels faint.
Wrapping muscular arms around her waist, he pulls her to the edge of her chair, toward him. “What if we make a new deal?” he rumbles.
“A new deal?”
“Yes. We try.”
“Try what?” She scans the table, picks up a spoon. “The dessert?”