Page 8 of Now That It’s You (The Can’t Have Hearts Club #5)

“Yeah.” Kyle’s throat felt tight, but he cleared it and kept going.

“Matt and I always had a hard time relating unless it was over some bullshit testosterone-fueled competition. Then you came along and—” he swallowed again, sidetracked by the memory his first glimpse of Meg with the sunlight in her hair and bare feet in the grass and her hand linked with his brother’s.

“You connected us,” he said at last. “Matt and me.”

Meg nodded. “I’m glad.” She blinked hard. “I just wish... never mind.”

He watched her left hand start to lift, but she dropped it back to her side. He wondered if it had been en route to her earlobe, and felt bad for making her self-conscious.

“I wish things hadn’t ended the way they did,” she said at last.

“With you and Matt?”

“That, too. I shouldn’t have cut and run. But I also regret losing friendships. I know that’s how breakups go, but it was still hard. Having your family punish me by cutting me out like a bruise on a pear. I guess my family did the same, punishing Matt for cheating in the first place?—”

“You took it as punishment?”

“Of course.” She blinked. “How did you see it?”

Kyle shoved his hands in his pockets, not sure how they’d gone from lighthearted banter about tortoise penises to adultery and forgiveness and death.

But maybe this conversation was long overdue. Two years overdue, to be exact.

“I guess I saw it as making a choice to have your family member’s back.” He swallowed, remembering the dark spiral of depression that gripped his brother after the breakup. He’d promised Matt he’d never breathe a word about it to anyone, and he hadn’t. He still wouldn’t, not even now.

He cleared his throat and met Meg’s gaze again. “Being there for your family is important, even if that comes at the expense of another friendship.”

The words hung there between them for a moment, and Meg studied him so intently he had to fight the urge to look away. He watched her digest the words, and he braced for an argument or a flash of defensiveness.

But that wasn’t Meg’s style. It never had been. When she finally spoke, it was a single word. “Interesting.”

“That’s it?”

“I’m not sure what else to say.” She wiped her hands down the legs of gray yoga pants that hugged her thighs, and Kyle tried not to imagine that softness against his own palms. “How about a peace offering?”

He nodded at the flowers. “You mean besides secondhand daisies?”

Meg smiled. “Did your mother really ask you to bring them?”

“Not in so many words. But she asked where I was taking them, and when I told her, she said it was a good idea. And she did tell me to take these ones, instead of the ones in a tacky plastic pot. Does that count?”

“Close enough,” Meg said and turned away. “Follow me.”

Kyle would have followed her off the end of a dock with his pockets full of rocks, but he guessed that wasn’t her plan. He wasn’t surprised when she trudged toward the kitchen, her bare feet making a soft slap against the wood floor.

She surprised him by spinning around with a red flowered apron and began tying it around his waist. He looked down, conscious of Meg’s hands fluttering near his belt buckle.

“Your idea of a peace offering involves dressing me in ruffles?”

“Doesn’t yours?”

Kyle smiled. “What are we making?”

“A coconut lime tart. It was Matt’s favorite.”

Kyle nodded, annoyed with himself for feeling jealous of a dead guy who still had the power to dictate dessert from beyond the grave. “What can I do?”

“Wash your hands first,” she said, moving past him toward the kitchen sink. “Then I’m going to have you grind up those graham crackers for the crust.”

He watched her flip the water on, then grab a plastic bottle of dish soap to lather her hands. “Why don’t you use that little built-in soap dispenser thing next to the faucet?”

“It’s broken,” she said. “Hasn’t worked since I moved in.”

“Let me see.”

He put a hand on her waist and nudged her aside, then dropped to his knees and crawled under the kitchen sink. “Do you have a screwdriver?”

“Flathead or Phillips?”

“Phillips.”

“No.”

“Flathead?”

“No.”

Kyle rolled his eyes. “How about a butter knife?”

She handed one under the sink while Kyle fiddled with the soap dispenser.

“Sorry,” she called from above. “I left all the tools with Matt when we split, and I never got around to buying my own.”

“It’s fine.” Kyle twisted the knife into the screw head, careful not to bust the tip.

He pried off the dispenser, checking for air leaks and clogs.

He adjusted one of the valves, then used his shirt-sleeve to wipe some goopy green residue from the mouth of the bottle.

He screwed the whole thing back into place and crawled out from under the sink, wiping his hands on his pants before giving the dispenser a good pump.

“Holy cow, it works!” Meg turned to him, beaming. “Thank you.”

“No sweat.”

She bit her lip. “That’s one thing I always liked about you.”

“That I fix soap dispensers with a butter knife?”

She laughed. “No, that you don’t give me a chance to argue that I don’t need help or I can do it myself. You don’t shout at me from the couch asking ‘Need help?’ in that way most guys do when they’re hoping the answer is no. You just jump right in and make yourself useful.”

“Wow.” Kyle ran his hands under the water and worked up a good lather. “That’s a whole lot of psychoanalysis for a soap dispenser.”

“It’s a compliment, jackass. Take it like one.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“Sure.” She handed him a dish towel. “Really, thanks. To be honest, I forgot that thing didn’t work.”

“Glad to help.”

Kyle turned his attention to the graham crackers while Meg scrubbed her own hands and then began digging through the fridge. They worked in companionable silence for a while, with Kyle grinding graham crackers in the food processor and Meg moving close beside him to splash in some melted butter.

“So tell me about this cookbook,” Kyle said. “The one Matt took pictures for?”

“What do you want to know?”

“I remember hearing something about it that year before the wedding, but that’s when I was spending most of my time in Montana.”

He kept his voice even, hoping she didn’t ask about his year out-of-state. About the reason he’d looked for the first excuse to get out of town the moment she and Matt announced their engagement.

“Right.” Meg blew the curl off her face again and sighed. “You weren’t around to witness the whole fiasco.”

“What do you mean?”

Meg shrugged and began squeezing lime halves in a funny contraption. She was doing it with more force than the job seemed to require, but what the hell did he know?

“It was stupid, really. I had this big dream to put out an aphrodisiac cookbook with all these cool recipes I created and a lot of fun stories about ingredients that boost libido.”

Kyle felt himself getting a little dizzy, but he focused on pressing his graham cracker crust into the tart pan she’d handed him. “So what happened?”

“Zilch. None of the agents or editors I queried had any interest in the project.”

“Fools.”

“Thank you.” Meg sighed. “Anyway, I decided to self-publish it.”

“Ah. So that’s why Matt took the photos?”

“Yeah. A friend of mine who’s a graphic designer laid the whole thing out in exchange for me doing the catering at her family reunion, and Matt volunteered to take all the food pictures.”

“Volunteered?” He thought about his mother’s accusations and wondered how Matt might tell the story differently.

“We were a few months from getting married,” Meg said. “It wasn’t a big deal for my photographer husband to take photos for my cookbook any more than it was a big deal for me to volunteer to cater his office Christmas party. It’s just the sort of thing couples do, you know?”

“But then the wedding didn’t happen.”

“Right.” She let out a shuddery breath. “And the book sold a whopping twelve copies, two of which were for my mother.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It was a dumb idea anyway.”

The sadness in her voice made Kyle turn to look at her, but she kept her eyes averted, focusing now on beating an egg with enough force to set her whole body in motion, which wasn’t unpleasant to watch. But the rigid set of her jaw gave him a stronger urge to hug her than ogle her.

Neither seemed like the right thing to do, so he settled for pressing the butter-damp graham cracker crumbs into the edges of the tart plate.

“I remember that feeling,” he said. “Back when I was starting out as an artist. I’d have this awesome, spectacular idea for a sculpture and I’d stay up all night for weeks on end getting it just right, only to have one gallery owner after another tell me it just wasn’t what they were looking for. ”

“Probably didn’t help having a brother who was this super-famous sports photographer making it all look so easy.”

“You’re right,” he agreed. “Though commercial photography was always a lot different from the sort of art I wanted to create.”

Meg nodded. “I remember you talking about that. Everyone kept telling you to give it up and go get a desk job.”

Kyle laughed. “Yeah, I probably should have listened. Would have spent a lot less time eating Ramen noodles and sleeping on friends’ couches.”

“But look at you now.” She looked up and smiled, curls falling around her face. “You have your own gallery and sculptures in rich people’s houses all over the world.”

“You’ve been reading too many art magazines.” He felt oddly self-conscious, so he slid the tart plate in front of her. “Does this look okay?”

Meg nodded. “Could you stick it in the oven and set the timer for ten minutes?”

“Yep.” Kyle turned to the stainless-steel monstrosity on the other side of the kitchen and opened the door to slide the crust into the pre-heated depths. Something caught his eye on the bookshelf overhead, and he pushed the oven door shut so he could take a closer look.

“Is this your aphrodisiac cookbook?”

Meg turned and glanced at the glossy book he’d pulled off the shelf lined with all her other cookbooks. Her cheeks went a little pinker as she nodded. “Yeah, that’s it.”

She sounded a little shy about it, but Kyle flipped the cover open anyway and began to skim. Food descriptions and photos lined each glossy page, with a beaming picture of Meg chopping parsley catching Kyle’s attention more than it ought to. “This is amazing.”

“Yeah. I know sports photography was his thing, but Matt used to take pretty great food photos.”

“I meant all these recipes. ‘Blood orange-roasted asparagus with blackened Anaheim peppers and pine nuts?’ That sounds incredible.”

Meg smiled. “The capsaicin in the peppers gets the blood flowing and stimulates nerve endings, and the vitamin E in asparagus can help boost testosterone, while?—”

“You came up with all of these recipes?”

She nodded, using a spatula to point to a page he’d just flipped to. “That section with the lavender is my favorite.”

“Can we make some of these?”

Meg raised an eyebrow. “Right now?”

“Sure, why not?”

There were a million reasons why not, and Kyle damn well knew it. But he waited anyway, hoping maybe she didn’t see it the same way he did. Or maybe that she did.

“You want to make dinner together from my aphrodisiac cookbook?”

“Sure.” He closed the book, and set it on the counter. “Whenever you have time, I mean.”

“Now’s good.”

“Really?”

“Sure. It can be like our own memorial to Matt or something.”

“Absolutely,” Kyle said, though that wasn’t at all what he’d had in mind.

He picked up the book again, turning more slowly past the photos.

They really were beautiful. His brother had been a damn fine photographer, though it was Meg’s words that grabbed him.

Her descriptions of succulent lamb and avocado drizzled with honey were making his mouth water, or maybe that wasn’t the food at all.

He looked up at Meg and knew damn sure it wasn’t the food. “Let’s do it.”