‘He’s good?’
Luke shrugged. He wished he hadn’t mentioned Chase, or anything to do with his family. He preferred not to dredge those dark memories up; he’d determinedly pushed them way, way down. Yet something about this woman—her fragility, perhaps—brought them swimming up again. ‘He’s good at most things,’ he replied with a shrug. He reached for some vinaigrette. ‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’
‘No.’ From the flat way she spoke Luke guessed she was as reluctant to talk about her family as he was to talk about his. Fine with him.
He finished tossing the salad. ‘Everything should be ready in a few minutes.’
Aurelie slid off her stool to get the plates. ‘It smells pretty good.’
He glanced up, smiling wryly. ‘Are we actually having a civil conversation?’
‘Sounds like it.’ She didn’t smile back, just took a deep breath, the plates held to her chest. ‘Look, if you came here on some kind of mercy mission, just forget it. I don’t need your pity.’
He stilled. ‘I don’t pity you.’
‘If not pity, then what?’
A muscle bunched in his jaw. ‘What are you saying?’
She lifted her chin. ‘I find it hard to believe you came all the way to Vermont to ask me to sing. You hadn’t even heard that song. It could have sucked. Maybe it does.’
‘I admit, it was a risk.’
‘So why did you come? What’s the real reason?’ Suspicion sharpened her voice, twisted inside him like a knife. Did she actually think he’d come here to get her into bed?
Had he?
No, damn it, this was about business. About helping the store and helping Aurelie. The ultimate reinvention. Luke laid his hands flat on the counter. ‘I don’t have some sexual agenda, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
She cocked her head. ‘You’re sure about that?’
He shook his head slowly. ‘What kind of men have you known?’
‘Lots. And they’re all the same.’
‘I’m different.’ And he’d prove it to her. He took the plates from her, his gaze steady on her own stormy one. ‘Let’s eat.’
Luke dished out the meal and carried it over to the table in the alcove of the kitchen. Twilight was settling softly outside, the sky awash in violet. Used to the frantic sounds of the city, he felt the silence all around him, just like he felt Aurelie’s loneliness and suspicion. ‘Do you live here most of the time?’ he asked.
‘I do now.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘It’d be a pretty sad life if I didn’t.’
He sat opposite her and picked up his fork and knife. ‘You’re not much of a one for straight answers, are you?’
She met his gaze squarely, gave a small nod of acknowledgement. ‘I guess not.’
‘All right. Business.’ Luke forced himself to focus on the one thing he’d always focused on, and was now finding so bizarrely hard. He wanted to ask her questions about the house, her life, how she’d got to where she was. He wanted to go back in the hallway and look at the photographs on the walls, he wanted to hear her play that song, he wanted—
Business.
‘It’s pretty simple,’ he said. ‘Four engagements over a period of ten days. You sing one or two of your new songs.’
‘The audience won’t be expecting that.’
‘I know.’
‘And you’re okay with that?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Because your Head of PR definitely wasn’t.’
‘Good thing I’m CEO of the company, then,’ Luke said evenly.
‘You know,’ Aurelie said slowly, ‘people want things to be how they expect. They want me to be what they expect. What they think I am.’
‘Which is exactly why I want you to be different,’ Luke countered. ‘Bryant’s is an institution in America and other parts of the world. So are you.’
‘Now that’s something I haven’t been compared to before.’
‘If you can change your image, then anyone can.’
‘Judging by the papers, you’ve already changed the store’s image successfully. You don’t need me.’
Luke hesitated because he knew she was right, at least in part. ‘I didn’t like the way the press spun it,’ he said after a moment.
‘The whole self-deprecating thing?’ she said with a twisted smile. ‘Former celebrity?’
‘Exactly. I want a clean sweep, home run. No backhanded compliments.’
‘Maybe you should just take what you can get.’
He shook his head. ‘That’s not how I do business.’
She glanced away. When she spoke, her voice was low. ‘What if I can’t change?’
‘There’s only one way to find out.’ Aurelie didn’t say anything, but he could see her thinking about it. Wondering. Hoping, even. He decided to let her mull it over. Briskly, he continued, ‘Your accommodation will be provided, and we can negotiate a new rate for the—’
‘I don’t care about the money.’
‘I want to be fair.’
She toyed with her fork, pushing the food around on her plate. He saw she hadn’t eaten much. ‘This still feels like pity.’
‘It isn’t.’
She glanced up and he saw the ghost of a smile on her face, like a remnant of who she had once been, a whisper of who she could be, if she smiled more. If she were happy. ‘And you can’t tell a lie, can you?’
‘I won’t tell a lie.’
She eyed him narrowly. ‘But it’s something close to pity.’
‘Sympathy, perhaps.’
‘Which is just a nicer word for pity.’
‘Semantics.’
‘Exactly.’
His lips twitched in a smile of his own. ‘Okay, look. I told you, I don’t pity you. I feel—’
‘Sorry for me.’
‘Stop putting words in my mouth. I feel …’ He let out a whoosh of exasperated breath. He didn’t like talking about feelings. He never did. His mother had died when he was thirteen, his father had never got close, and his brothers didn’t ask. But here he was, and she was right, he couldn’t lie. Not to her. ‘I know how you feel,’ he said at last, and she raised her eyebrows, clearly surprised by that admission. Hell, he was surprised too.
‘How so?’
‘I know what it feels like to want to change.’
‘You’ve wanted to change?’
‘Hasn’t everybody?’
‘That’s no answer.’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve had my own obstacles to overcome.’
‘Like what?’
He should never have started this. The last thing he wanted to do was rake up his own tortured memories. ‘A difficult childhood.’
Her mouth pursed. ‘Poor little