Page 93 of A Chef's Kiss for Christmas

“Does your dad know you paid it off?”

“I don’t think so. I certainly never told him.”

“Don’t you feel like telling him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He sucked in a breath. “Because nothing I do will be good enough for them so I gave up on trying to get their approval. Anything I achieve, I’ll keep to myself rather than risk their opinions spoiling it for me.”

“That’s really sad.”

“It is what it is. I don’t agree with my parents, but I do think they want the best for me. We just have different ideas about what that is.”

A heaviness weighed on Anna’s chest. “I think you’re a brilliant chef,” she said eventually. “I’ll just be proud of what you’ve achieved instead of your family.”

She’d expected him to laugh at her, but he held her gaze and looked at her in earnest.

“Thank you,” he said, then looked over his shoulder at the bar. “Should I see if they’re still serving food? You probably didn’t eat much since you were so busy shouting at my parents.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m actually surprisingly hungry.”

They ordered chicken wings and chips to share, and stuck to lighter topics as they ate. Warren told her stories about the time he’d spent in the area as a kid and all his tricks for slipping away from the nanny to go off on adventures in the countryside.

By the time they set off back to the house, Anna’s anger had dissipated and she looped her arm through Warren’s, sticking close by his side to shelter from the freezing wind.

“I can’t go back in there,” she said when they reached the front door. “I’m too embarrassed.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine.”

She screwed her face up. “Ireally don’t want to go in.”

“Remember the night I argued with my dad and I told you it would just get forgotten and never mentioned again…”

“I really don’t think that in the last two hours they’ll have forgotten me shouting at them over the dinner table.”

“Maybe not forgotten, but I don’t think they’ll draw attention to it.”

“The atmosphere will be terrible.”

“If it is, you can go straight to bed, and we’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

“Okay,” she said, while looking at the door with trepidation.

Following him inside, Anna held her breath and had just begun to take her coat off when Selena stalked into the entrance hall.

“You should probably keep your coats on,” she called angrily.

Anna’s stomach twisted. So much for them pretending nothing had happened.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Anna’s heart was beating uncomfortably fast as Warren looked at his sister with a puzzled expression.

“What’s going on?” he asked, as Selena paced at the foot of the stairs with her phone pressed against her ear.

“I told you,” Anna hissed at Warren. “They don’t want me here when I was so awful to them.”