“Apparently, she just inked a deal to come run the kitchen in the restaurant they’re rebuilding on the west side of the resort,” Jenna said. “It’s part of some mission to restore the place to its former glory. I guess the old one was as bad as the room service, so the resort is overhauling the everything in the lull between ski season and the summer rush. Did you know a lot of people come for the spa and the lake when it’s nice out?”
Bellamy shook her head. She’d thought Pine Mountain Resort was exclusively for skiing.
Jenna continued. “Anyhow. This little soiree tonight is like an added bonus, sort of a kickoff party for her to introduce the new menu she’s planning to incorporate. But she wanted to keep her move on the down-low for some reason, so there was practically no publicity. Apparently, her husband…uh…what’s-his-name…”
“Travis,” Bellamy supplied. “They do the show together.”
“Well, apparently not anymore. The event coordinator said Travis is staying behind to run the restaurant in New York and Carly is coming here.”
“Whoa,” Bellamy said. That was huge. “Maybe that’s why it’s still hush-hush. Unless they’re going to maybe do a shorter season of the show.”
Holly shrugged. “Maybe. All we know is that it’s been billed as a private event up until last night. And we are going!”
Bellamy blinked back her shock, convinced she’d taken up residence in some alternate universe where the world included things like tasting Carly di Matisse’s minestrone soup. Not just her recipe, mind you. But food the chef herself had prepared with her own two hands.
“Oh, my God.” Bellamy’s heart raced beneath her hoodie. “Do you realize that right now it’s quite possible I am breathing the same air as Carly-fricking-di Matisse?”
Holly laughed and looked at Jenna. “Okay, so you weren’t kidding about the fangirl thing.”
Tears sprang into Bellamy’s eyes, sudden and hot, and she split her gaze between her two best friends. “This is seriously perfect. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank us,” Jenna said, hugging Bellamy from one side while Holly closed in on the other for a great, big group hug. “We wanted to do something to help you forget the horrible week you’ve had.”
“If anything will distract me from Shane’s kiss and run, it’s definitely this.”
She went to hold up the tickets in a jubilant wave, only to see both of her friends staring at her with enough wide-eyed surprise to sink a ship.
Well, crap.
“Looks like the boss from hell isn’t the only thing putting your panties in a kink,” Jenna noted, waiting. The irony of her words caught in Bellamy’s chest. Forget a kink, her panties had been downright double-knotted. In the best possible way.
Right up until Shane lame-excused her all the way home.
As much as she didn’t want to admit it, she hadn’t been able to stop her mind from wandering back to Shane since she’d walked away from him in a huff last night. A well-deserved huff, but still. Maybe if she talked about it, she’d be able to forget him, once and for all.
Twenty minutes and a giant bag of chocolate chip cookies later, she’d gotten the whole story out, and the only thing she felt was sugar high.
“Wow. He really used the ‘it’s not you’ line?” Holly shook her head in a wordless paraphrase of what a dumbass.
Bellamy’s nod sent a wisp of hair from the loose knot on top of her head. “Yup. Not that it really matters in the grander scheme of things.”
“Except for the fact that you like him.”
Jenna’s weird sixth sense for this kind of thing reared its perceptive little head, and Bellamy gave herself a mental kick in the ass for opening her yap in the first place.
“I don’t like him,” she countered.
But Jenna wasn’t going down without a fight. “You’re more upset about him than Derek.”
“I still don’t like him,” her pride made her say. “And the feeling is mutual, obviously. So, now that we’re all up to speed on my abysmal love life, or lack thereof, can we drop the whole thing? In fact, it would really make my day if I could just pretend that Shane Griffin didn’t exist.”
As Bellamy brushed the cookie crumbs from her hands and marched her no-nonsense self to the bathroom to start getting ready for her evening, she came to the realization that just because you liked to lay it all out on the table didn’t mean you couldn’t bend the truth while you were doing it.
Shane had been awake and ignoring Monday morning for twenty minutes before the alarm on his cell phone went off, and he brushed his palm over it to silence the beeping. He thought about going for a good, long run to boil off some of the frustration that had been mounting for days now, but the one he’d taken last night had done nothing but move his blood through his body, and given the state of things, he wasn’t sure that was the best plan.
God, he’d wanted to do more than kiss Bellamy. A lot more. And didn’t that just make lying in bed all by his lonesome nice and uncomfortable. He needed to get up and get in the shower before he admitted that what he really needed was to get laid.
Maybe that run wasn’t such a bad idea, after all.
His boxers and T-shirt offered little protection from the January cold lingering inside the walls of the log cabin he’d rented since moving to Pine Mountain. The place was small, just the one bedroom and what Shane guessed qualified as mostly a kitchen, although it was really more like a stove, an ancient fridge, and a sink crammed into one corner of the living space. He crossed the threshold of his bedroom and made it to the coffeepot in less than five strides, scooping enough grinds to jump-start a rhino into the filter before filling the pot to brew.
There was no room for a couch in the cramped living space, but he had the well-worn recliner and a TV, which suited him just fine. With all the time Shane spent at the garage or running on the trails around the cabin, everything else was basically an afterthought, anyway. Except for the particular afterthought that had set up residence in his frontal lobe and refused to budge, leaving sultry memories of a velvet laugh and a pair of oh-so provocative lips on his…
Strike the run. What Shane needed was a nice, cold shower. One that lasted until Bellamy Blake had her keys in her hand and her body behind the wheel of her runs-like-a-dream sports car. Because both times he’d kissed her, it had proven that his gut instinct was spot-on. A girl like her was bad for him, period.
No matter how good of a kisser she was.
Shane compromised with his dick and took a lukewarm shower, but promised himself to keep the image of Bellamy out of his head, especially when he wasn’t dressed. He didn’t seem to have much control over his parts when it came to the thought of her, and he knew if even one tiny flicker snuck its way into the shower with him, his resolve to not call her or see her would resemble burnt toast.
After getting dressed, he rummaged through the pitiful contents of the lone cupboard over the sink. A couple of apples went into a bag, and he grabbed a premade turkey sub, courtesy of the deli at Joe’s, from the fridge. It wasn’t much, but it’d do for him and Grady. Shane turned up the collar of his jacket, but he was greeted with a blast of icy air that shot right through him as if he were wearing nothing but swim trunks and a smile.