“I do. I’ve always known what I wanted.” He turned away from her. This was a bad idea. But then again, it was Leona—she’d always been a bad idea. “But I’m used to not getting it.”
She gasped, but he kept walking back toward the soon-to-be-kitchen. He couldn’t let her get under his skin. He never should have asked her here. He was safer in Spain, where she was nothing but a memory—not a flesh and blood woman who would always push him past the point of reason.
The reasonable thing to do was to keep as much space between the Beaumonts and the Harpers as possible. That’s the way it’d always been, before he’d unwittingly crossed that line. That’s the way it should have stayed.
He dragged open the doors to the workroom and flipped on all the lights. “This needs to be upgraded considerably,” he said. He couldn’t fix the past, couldn’t undo his great mistake. But he could stop making it over again. He just had to focus on the job—it was the reason they were both here. He needed to find a way to be Byron Beaumont in a place where his last name permanently branded him, and he needed to make sure that Leona Harper knew she would never exert any power over him ever again.
She followed him into the cleaner space. “I see.” She took several pictures with her tablet. “Do you have a menu yet?”
“No. I only agreed to do this yesterday. I thought I’d be on my way back to Madrid by now.”
“Madrid? Is that where you went?”
Of course she wouldn’t know. She probably hadn’t bothered to look him up at all.
But there was something in the way she said it—as if she couldn’t believe that was the answer—that made him turn back to her. She stared at him with big eyes and this time, there was no hiding that look. She was stunned—confused? She was hurt.
Well, that made two of them “Yes. Well, I spent six months in France first. Then Spain.”
Her eyes cut down to his left hand—his ring finger. “Did you...”
He tensed. “No. I was working.”
She exhaled. “Ah.” But that was all she said. He was about to turn away when she added, “Where did you work?”
“George, you remember him?”
“Your father’s old chef?”
For some reason, the fact that she remembered who George was made Byron relax a little. It wasn’t like she’d forgotten him. Not entirely, anyway. “Yes. One of his old friends from Le Cordon Bleu gave me a job in Paris. Then I heard about an opening at El Gallio in Madrid and took the job.”
Her eyes widened again. “You were at El Gallio? That’s a three-star restaurant!”
He relaxed more. She remembered. Even though her reaction was probably all part of the same ruse to undermine the Beaumont family, he couldn’t help himself.
For months, he and Leona had talked about restaurants—how they’d love to travel and dine at the world’s best establishments and then open up their own. She’d design everything and Byron would handle the food, and it’d be so much better than working for Rory McMaken, the egotistical bastard.
Leona spoke, pulling him out of the past. “You’re leaving behind El Gallio to open your own restaurant here?”
“Crazy, right?” He looked around the workroom. “Don’t get me wrong. I loved Europe. No one there knew or cared that I was a Beaumont. I could just be Byron, a chef. That was...” Freeing.
He’d been free of the family drama, free of the long-standing feud between the Beaumonts and the Harpers.
“That must have been amazing,” she said in a wistful tone. Which was so at odds with how he remembered the way things had gone down that he turned back to her in surprise.
“Yeah. I wasn’t sure I wanted to come back to all of this. But this is an opportunity I can’t pass up. It’s a chance to be a part of the family business on my terms.”
“I see. So you’ve decided to be a Beaumont, then.” Her voice was quiet, as if he’d somehow confirmed her worst fears.
He would not let her get away with using guilt on him. Guilt? For what? He was the injured party here. She’d lied about who she was—not once, but for almost a year. And then she’d cast him aside the moment her father asked her to. Hell, for all he knew, that had always been the plan. It’d only been after he’d left the country that Leon Harper had managed to sell the Beaumont Brewery out from under the Beaumonts. Maybe he’d told Leona to split one of them off—divide and then conquer.
Right. If anyone should be feeling guilty here, it was her. He’d never lied about his last name or his family. He’d never made promises and then broken them. Thank God he hadn’t actually asked her to marry him before she betrayed him.
“I’ve always been a Beaumont,” he answered decisively. “And we are not to be trifled with.”
He shouldn’t have said that last bit, but he couldn’t help it. He was the boss here. She worked for him. Emotionally, he didn’t need her. If she was getting any ideas about turning the tables on him, she’d best forget them now.
She looked away.
“Anyway,” he went on, focusing on the job. His restaurant. “I’m starting from scratch and I wanted...” Unexpectedly, his words dried up. He wanted so much, but like he’d said, he’d gotten used to disappointment. “I know there was a time in our past when we talked about a restaurant.”
Even though she was studying the tips of her shoes very closely, he still saw her eyes close.
He remembered that look of defeat—he’d only seen it one other time—when her father, Leon Harper himself, had shown up at Sauce and gotten Byron fired and demanded that Leona come home with her parents right now or else. Leona had looked at the ground and closed her eyes and Byron had said “babe” and...
Well. And here they were.
“If you don’t want the job, that’s fine. I know that Harpers and Beaumonts don’t work well together and I wouldn’t want to make your father mad.” He didn’t quite manage to say father without sneering.
He watched her chest rise and fall with a deep breath. “I want...”
Her words were so quiet that he couldn’t hear her. He stepped in closer and took a deep breath.
Which was a mistake. The scent of Leona—sweet and soft, roses and vanilla—was all it took to transport him to another time and place, before he’d realized that she wasn’t just someone with the last name of Harper, but one of those Harpers.
He leaned forward, unable to stop himself. He’d never been able to stay away from her, not from the first moment she’d been hired at Sauce as a hostess. “What do you want, Leona?”
“I need to tell you...” Her words were still little more than a whisper.
He touched her then, which was another mistake. But she took what control he had and blew it to bits. He cupped her face in his hand and lifted her chin until he could look into her hazel eyes. “What do you need?”
Her eyes widened again as his face moved within inches of hers, and she exhaled, something that sounded a hell of a lot like satisfaction. His gut clenched. Despite her lies and betrayal, the messy ending to their relationship and the long year on a different continent—despite it all—he wanted her.
“The job,” she said in a voice that didn’t even make it to a whisper. “I need the job, Byron.”
She didn’t kiss him, didn’t tell him