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  “Where you going, Darla?” he demanded as he shoved at me from behind. “Where you going? You going to go meet Trey before you go? Huh, Dar?”

  I ignored his antagonizing and found my bag on the counter in the kitchen, and my coat was slung over the back of a chair. As I pulled it on, Cade’s anger surged.

  “Where the fuck are you going, Darla?”

  He snatched my bag from me and held it out of my reach.

  “Give me my bag,” I said through gritted teeth as I reached for it.

  He shoved me back. When I retaliated by kicking him in the shin, he cussed and hurled the satchel across the kitchen. It landed several feet away, and various items exploded out of it in all directions across the floor.

  “Bastard!” I pushed him away from me and hurried to retrieve my things.

  I fell to my hands and knees and desperately tried to gather it all, but I let out a cry of alarm and anger when Caden’s bare feet began to kick the contents out of my reach.

  “Where the fuck you going, Darla?” he continued to repeat, as his feet just barely missed my fingers.

  Fuck this.

  I was thankful that my keys were in my coat pocket as I made a grab for my wallet. I scrambled to my feet and ran out of the kitchen. Like a monster in a movie, Caden chased after me at an amble but was still able to catch up to me before I reached the door. He shoved me hard from behind. I tripped and fell head first against the door. Pain exploded in my forehead and for several long seconds, I only saw brilliant bursts of light in my vision.

  I didn’t even know that I had fallen to my knees until I felt Cade’s hands pulling me up. I tasted blood, and my lip throbbed. I probably hit it again when I hit the door.

  “Dar,” he said my name worriedly, without a trace of the rage he had just been in. Gently, gently he turned me around to face him. His face was etched with remorse. “Dar, are you alright?”

  Gingerly, he touched my head. When I winced, he withdrew his hand.

  “I’m sorry, babe,” he whispered. His voice shook as it dawned on him what he’d done. “I’m so sorry. I was so jealous and mad and…shit, Darla. I’m so fucking sorry.”

  I believed him. I knew he was really sorry, but I wanted nothing more than to be away from him at that moment, or to spit in his face, or both.

  “Babe, I’m so sorry.” His eyes pleaded with me as he cupped my face in his hands.

  I closed my eyes for a moment, and felt tears fall and slide down my cheeks. Caden continued to apologize as he carefully touched my bleeding mouth and sore head. I heard a rustle of clothing and a second later I felt something that must have been his shirt blot my mouth and wipe my chin.

  My eyes opened. He was shirtless, as I suspected. His blue eyes were so soft, so loving, so opposite of what they had been minutes before.

  How many times have we been here? How many more times will be here again?

  I reached for his hands. He resisted at first but finally allowed me to pull his hands away from my face.

  “I have to go,” I whispered.

  He stooped low to look in my eyes.

  “Darla,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”

  I was so tired, so damn sick of hearing those words. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. He was always so fucking sorry.

  “You’re always sorry!” I screamed it as I put my hands on his chest and pushed hard. My hands fisted on my eyes out of sheer frustration. “You’re always fucking sorry.” I dropped my hands and pushed him again. “You can take your sorry and go to hell!”

  When I turned away from him and walked out the door, Caden didn’t stop me.

  Chapter Three

  I came from a small town whose populous barely reached one thousand souls. Hardly anyone ever moved away, almost every family has been there for generations, including my own. My older brother Perry had gone as far as UVA for school but had returned home right after graduation.

  McKenzie married her childhood sweetheart and didn’t even leave Augusta County for her honeymoon. As far as I knew, my sister had never left the state of Virginia, not even to visit me.

  My mother had a sister that had “run off with that city boy” when she was only sixteen years old. Aunt Evelyn had only returned once in the twenty-eight years since she’d eloped with a man from New York City, and that was when my grandmother died.

  I was often—and unfairly—compared to my long-gone auntie. I hadn’t run off with anyone, but I had run, and as fast as I could, before the ink was even dry on my high school diploma. I loved my family, but I wasn’t a country girl in my heart. I had spent countless hours on the internet and watching movies. They were my windows to the world outside of my small town and Augusta County, Virginia. I didn’t want to work on a farm, or in the old, decrepit Tilda’s grocery store, or at the prison where my brother, father, and brother-in-law worked.

  Without having any idea what was ahead of me or what I would be getting myself into, I left home at the age of eighteen, started culinary school in Philadelphia, and began a whole new life. There had been culture shock in the beginning, and more than once I’d longed for home so badly that my stomach had hurt, but I’d stuck it out. I’d found my way, found my own little niche with new friends and in a whole new world.

  I first met Caden a few weeks after I started culinary school when I began to apply at restaurants and bakeries in the area. I wanted to work directly under a pastry chef to gain knowledge and experience in a way that couldn’t be achieved in school alone. I already knew how to bake and make other sweet treats. I had been making cakes, cookies, bread and other baked goods since I was five years old when I started helping my mom make her tiramisu, but there was a lot I didn’t know.

  Cade was only twenty-six years old and his restaurant M.J.s—named for his mother, Mary Jane—had been open for the better part of a year and was already doing phenomenal. I’d heard good things about it, and I’d heard that their desserts were to die for.

  Caden met with me himself late one morning. I tried not to stare too hard as he approached me where I sat at the bar sipping a glass of water. A few people in my hometown had tattoos, but usually, only one or two, never more than four or five. Their arms weren’t covered in colorful ink, and no one’s face had any more holes in it than what they’d been born with. Had he walked into any establishment within my town, they would have automatically known that he was an outsider. They may have even wondered if he had escaped from the Augusta County Correctional Facility.

  “My manager said you’re interested in working in my kitchen,” he said as he stopped in front of me.

  That was something I had to get used to up north. People mostly didn’t say hello before they started a conversation like they just didn’t have time for that small formality. I made a point to say it anyway, even if the other person didn’t.

  I cleared my throat nervously. Meeting any executive chef was like meeting a rock star in my book, but this chef, in particular, reminded me of actual rock stars. He had that bad ass look about him. He had untidy blond hair and piercing blue eyes that seemed to have undressed me in the few seconds it had taken him to cross the room.

  “Hello, yes. I am actually interested in working with your pastry chef.” I cleared my throat again and awkwardly stuck out my hand. “I’m…I’m Darla.”

  Something changed in those blue eyes as he assessed me. One pierced eyebrow rose, but he reached out his hand and connected it with mine. I liked his touch instantly. I had expected his hand to be rough and the handshake hard, but his hand was soft, and he’d shaken my hand delicately as if he were afraid to break me.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you, Darla. I’m—”

  “Caden Hanes, I know,” I said abruptly, and then bit my lip as embarrassment flooded my face. “I’m sorry. It’s just you’re a hot name in the Philly culinary world right now.”

  He smiled widely. It was a beautiful smile and made my chest flutter. He was still holding my hand, and I had no desire to pull out of
his grasp.

  “Right,” he said and paused as he continued to stare at me and smile. “I appreciate you coming down here, Darla, but we already have plenty of people in the kitchen right now.”

  I blinked at the flash of silver I saw inside his mouth. I realized that it was a tongue ring, but refocused on the subject at hand. I opened my mouth to object, but he cut me off as he raised his other hand to stop me.

  “I don’t want or need anyone else in my kitchen right now, and being in my kitchen is a fucking rite of passage. You can earn your way in. You can bus tables, and then maybe after a year or two you can move up to dishwashing.”

  “I could take the job busing tables and never go beyond that,” I argued. “There’s no guarantee I’ll actually get what I want.”

  “Or you could take the risk and bus tables and be in the kitchen in six months,” he countered. “You don’t know what can happen. I’ve looked at your resume, Miss Simpson. The only experience you have is a few years at some small diner in some no-name town in some mountain valley of Virginia.”

  I opened my mouth again, rather outraged, but Caden continued and didn’t let me get more than a breath out.

  “Don’t try to make it something more than what it actually was because before I came out here, I Googled the town, the restaurant and then called them to check your references. To your credit, they did say that you were a ‘good kinda girl’ and ‘a hard worker’ and that you ‘made the best grits’ in town. I need someone who has worked in the actual industry, on the map somewhere, and who knows how to make more than hangover food.”

  Suddenly furious, I tried to pull my hand away, but the bastard grinned and held on tight. I didn’t bother hiding my exasperation as I scowled at him. The thick southern accent that I had been trying to curb since my arrival in the city suddenly made an appearance.

  “You coulda just said no. You didn’t hafta say all that.”

  His eyes gleamed with amusement. “Yes, I did ‘hafta’ say all that. You need to know where you are weakest so that you can fix it.”

  I glared at him. “Let go of my damn hand.”

  Cade smirked. “You should thank me for my honesty. At least I was straight with you.”

  I spoke through gritted teeth. “Thank you. Now let go of my damn hand.”

  He didn’t.

  “Are you going to take the position I offered you? You gotta start somewhere.”

  I sighed irritably. “I appreciate the offer, but no, thank you. I will start somewhere else.”

  His thumb began to stroke my hand. As pissed off as I was, I had to swallow my gasp when a tingling sensation spread through my hand.

  Maybe it was just going numb.

  “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”

  My eyes widened and my mouth opened. “What?”

  “Dinner. I’ll cook just for you, after hours, of course.”

  Flustered, my mouth opened and shut several times before I found my words. “No, I don’t want to have dinner with you!”

  He sighed, but his smile remained. “That’s too bad.”

  I gawked at him as he raised my hand to his lips and kissed it. It was a strange sensation to feel the hard metal of his lip ring with the softness of his mouth on my hand.

  “Good luck, Darla.”

  He released my hand, turned away, barked something at one of his staff and disappeared into the back.

  I eventually started working in a bakery across the bridge in New Jersey. The owner used to be the pastry chef at a popular fine cuisine restaurant in Manhattan, so it was probably a better position for me than working in M.J.’s anyway.

  About a year after our first meeting, I found myself at Cade’s restaurant, on the first date with a classmate. When I’d realized where we were going, I couldn’t come up with a good enough excuse not to go. I couldn’t complain about the food or the service because everyone knew that the food and service were fantastic.

  After we’d been seated at our table for some time, though, I began to realize how silly I was being. Cade wouldn’t remember me, and even if he did, so what? He wouldn’t care if I were there one way or another.

  With that thought in mind, I ordered my dessert and relaxed. A few minutes after my cake arrived, however, Caden strode out of the kitchen. He didn’t even glance in our direction before he stopped at a table on the other side of the room.

  “Oh, that’s him, isn’t it?” Steve, my date, asked in hushed awe. “You met him before, right?”

  I tried to sound bored with the idea of Caden Hanes. “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “Man, he looks scary. Was he scary?”

  Yes. Terrifying.

  “No. He was just a guy. How’s your Amaretto Cappuccino cake?”

  “It’s fantastic. Do you think he’ll remember you? Maybe he’ll come by our table, too.”

  I hoped not.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. So, tell me, where did your love of cooking come from?”

  It was a question that usually had a lengthy response. I only half listened to Steve as I covertly watched Cade, though. When he finally shook hands with the guests at the table and returned to the kitchen, I let out a long breath of relief. Definitely relief and not disappointment.

  “Sir?” Our waitress stood at Steve’s side and looked a little nervous. “There is a problem with your credit card. Can you come up front please?”

  Steve’s eyes narrowed with confusion, but he got to his feet.

  “I can pay,” I offered with reluctance. M.J.’s wasn’t cheap, and I was on a budget.

  Steve waved me away, though. “I’m sure it’s nothing. I have other ways to pay. I’ll be right back.”

  He followed the waitress, and they both disappeared out of my view. I swung my gaze back to the dining room and was startled to see Caden out of the kitchen again. And headed right toward me. There was no doubt about it, because when he met my eyes, he smiled slyly.

  I had the distinct feeling of a small, cornered animal facing down her predator.

  Casually, he took the seat beside me and leaned on his elbows as he looked at me.

  “How was your dessert?”

  I gaped at him. “What are you doing?”

  “I am asking you how was your dessert?”

  I shook my head once as I tried to pull it together. “Um, fine? Thank you? I’m kind of on a date.”

  “I know, but he’s having a ‘problem’ with his credit card right now. How’s your date going? Why did he bring you here instead of cooking for you?”

  “Um…I…don’t know.” That was a good question. Steve was a culinary student and should have been excited to show me what he could do.

  “Do you like to eat?”

  I blinked. “What?”

  He gestured impatiently. “Do you like to eat? I know you just ate, but would you be able to eat again in a few hours? You know, have a second dinner?”

  “Umm…most likely.”

  He grinned and said, “Good. I’ll see you tonight when you’re done with this guy.” He nodded his head in the direction Steve had gone.

  I narrowed my eyes. “What makes you think he’s not my boyfriend and he won’t be offended that you’re asking me out?”

  Suddenly, Cade was very close. His blue eyes, his mouth, his body. I could feel the warmth of his breath on my face.

  “He’s not your boyfriend. He looks at you like he wishes he were your boyfriend, but he’s not. I can tell by your body language. You’re both being very polite and careful. And…” He ran a finger over my hand under the table. “He hasn’t touched you. He’s not your boyfriend.”

  Abruptly, he stood up from the table.

  “I’ll see you tonight. Two a.m.,” he murmured, just as Steve returned to the table. “I hope you enjoyed everything,” Caden said to him before he winked at me. “Nice to see you again, Darla.”

  He walked away without looking back.

  Chapter Four

  “You came,” Caden said with a satis
fied smile after he’d opened the front door to M.J.’s. “Come inside.”

  I didn’t move to go in, but I held out the white box I was carrying.

  “I’m not coming in.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly. “What’s in the box?”

  “A cake. I made it tonight after my—after my date with Steve.”

  Amusement brightened his sapphire eyes. “You baked me a cake?”

  My eyebrows pulled together as I gave him a piercing glare. “You insulted my baking skills without ever experiencing them for yourself.”

  He leaned back against the door frame and propped the glass door open with his foot. As he crossed his arms, I realized for the first time since he’d come out that he didn’t have on his chef’s jacket. He was wearing a simple black T-Shirt and jeans, further amplifying his bad boy look.

  “I didn’t say you were a bad pastry chef, Darla.”

  I went on as if he hadn’t spoken, or distracted me with his body.

  “You insulted me, my home and its inhabitants—”

  “Hey. I wasn’t that far off the fucking mark about your little town. There’s not even one traffic light there!”

  “I don’t know how you know that,” I snapped, “But it don’t fucking matter. You were an asshole.”

  Shit! He had me cussing. Asshole.

  His mouth twisted as he tried not to laugh. “So, is this what you do for assholes? Bake them a fucking cake? Is that how you do it down south?”

  I was so tempted to kick him in the shins so that he would stop grinning at me.

  “I baked you a fucking cake so that you can fucking eat it and know how fucking amazing I am! And I am an amazing pastry chef, and I don’t need city-boy assholes like you to feel validated!”

  I thrust the cake at him, and he took it, which was a good thing because if he hadn’t, I might have thrown it at his face.

  “Enjoy,” I said without any warmth in my voice.

  I turned on my heel and walked only a few steps when Cade called after me. “How does this work? Is there a survey in the box or something? How will you know what I think about your skills if you leave before I taste it?”