“Okay, okay.” He held his hands up, laughing with her. “But you do, you know.” He took a step back from her, and she felt a pang of disappointment mixed in with the rush of anticipation of what she was in for later as he washed his hands and reached for the knife and the sweet potatoes.
“What, look happy around food?” She got to work taking the pork chops out so she could season them.
Shane nodded. “Everything about you changes a little when you look at it. How do you want me to cut these?” he asked, motioning to the counter.
“Chopped would be perfect. They’re kind of a pain, so be careful.” Bellamy tilted her head at the pork chops and got to work.
He chuckled. “You say chopped like it means something other than ‘cut in half.’ You want to be more specific for those of us who are culinarily challenged?”
The edges of Bellamy’s lips curved into a smile. “Sorry. Pieces about this big, give or take.” She held up her fingers about two inches apart.
“Now we’re talkin’.” He started to wash the sweet potatoes, laid back as ever next to her in the kitchen. “So, can I ask you a personal question?”
Bellamy thought of what they’d just been doing and fought off the urge to giggle. If Shane wanted to get personal, she was all for it. “Sure.”
“Why are you really afraid to go to culinary school?”
Her head snapped up. “I’m not.”
He slipped a dubious glance at her, but didn’t argue. “I’m just asking because it’s obvious, even to a gearhead like me, that you’d be great at it. It doesn’t make any sense to skip out on what you’re really made for unless you’ve got a damned good reason. Especially when it’s right in front of you.”
Bellamy hedged, starting to chop the apples with the knife he passed her way. “I was thinking maybe I could use my MBA to go into management for a catering company or a restaurant or something,” she admitted. She’d done a casual Internet search after she’d gotten off the phone with the head of HR at the bank and found that she was pretty qualified to do both of those things, although she’d need to really do her homework about the industry to make it work.
“Yeah, but that’s only half the brass ring. Are you really going to be able to watch chefs do their job while you do yours in a power suit on the sidelines?”
“Ouch,” she said, frowning at him. “I’m not sure I like the whole skip-the-pleasantries thing when it comes to stuff like this.”
“Look, all I’m saying is that you’ve got this crossroads in front of you. What would it hurt to try culinary school?”
She opened her mouth to protest, but Shane cut her off with a smoldering quirk of his lips, putting a hand on her arm that sent a little thrill of contact all the way up to her shoulder. “And I’m not buying that line about how it might wreck it for you. You’re not going to hate it, darlin’. That much is crystal clear.”
Bellamy wanted nothing more in that moment than to tell him that he’d known her for only a week, thank you very much. He couldn’t possibly give her sound advice on something as big or impulsive as a sudden career change.
Except that, goddamn him and his sexy little smile, he saw right through her. And he was right.
“There’s a little more to it than that.” She kept working on dinner, and the fact that she was in Shane’s kitchen, making a casual meal just like she would at home, went a long way toward chilling her out. “I know it sounds stupid, because I’m twenty-seven, but what my parents think is kind of a big deal to me, and I don’t think they’d approve.”
Shane’s movements jerked to a halt, freezing him to the spot where he stood next to her. Well, who could blame him for thinking it was weird? Most adults didn’t really worry about what their parents thought about their career, unless they were doing something deranged or illegal.
Bellamy bit her lip, then figured she’d opened the bag, so she might as well let the cat prance right on out. “My parents have owned their own realty business since I was a little girl. They started it from the ground up, just the two of them.” She prepared the food while she spoke, and Shane stepped out of her way, just giving her space to move and talk.
“So, when other girls were dressing their Barbies in ball gowns, mine was bossing Ken around in board meetings. I always thought I’d be this powerful executive, because running a business looked so exciting and cool, and for my parents, it was. I don’t mean that there weren’t difficult times, because they both worked their fingers to the bone for what they built. But they love every second of it. And I know it’ll disappoint them that I don’t, so this is hard for me.”
A muscle ticked in Shane’s jaw as he stood, stock still, next to her at the counter. Wow, she knew it wasn’t casual conversation, but he looked like someone just ran over his dog. She should’ve just kept her trap shut.
“In the end, you’re the only one who can decide what’s right for you. I just thought you should know how it looks from the outside, that’s all,” he said, his voice tight.
Confusion tumbled in Bellamy’s brain before finally, something clicked into place. His expression wasn’t about her at all. “You feel like talking about it?”
Shane’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second before landing on the food in front of them. “There isn’t really anything to talk about.”
He shrugged and took a sip of his wine. The tension that had masked his face just moments earlier was gone as if it had never existed, leaving Bellamy to wonder if she was projecting her anxiety out into the world and poor Shane had just gotten caught in the crossfire.
“Oh. Well, sorry for laying all of this on you. Like I said, I know it’s kind of weird.” She reached deep into the bottom cupboard for a sheet pan that looked like it had doubled as a snow sled. More than once. Bent and wavy was better than nothing, she supposed.
“It’s not weird.” Shane glanced at the cookie sheet. “Hey, I have one of those?” His nod was akin to a big, fat who knew?
Bellamy laughed, the strain of a couple of minutes ago swept under the rug that was her issues. “You think you’re surprised now, wait ’til you see what you can actually do with one of these babies,” she said, spinning it around.
His laughter joined hers, and the sound of it warmed her, not just with its sexual heat, but with something else, something even more provocative.
She felt right, like she wanted to be here with him, just like this, indefinitely.
Ooookay, just because she was chefing it up in the guy’s kitchen was no reason to go thinking she was falling for him or anything. Sure, the chemistry between them would put most science experiments to shame, but it would be silly to believe that raw attraction was the same thing as a straight shot to the L-word.
“So, tell me about Pine Mountain,” she said, in an effort to move her mind from the land of the utterly ridiculous.
Shane’s dark brows popped, as if it was the last thing he’d expected her to say.
Which made two of them.
“What do you want to know?”
Bellamy shrugged, focusing on the food in front of her. “I don’t know. Surprise me.”