“How can I forget?” He laughed ruefully. “My lavender bushes still haven’t recovered after the way you tore out of the driveway.”
Sera colored. “Yeah, well…” She looked down, hesitating.
“I’m only teasing you, Serafina. Please, continue.”
Hearing her full name coming from his lips stopped Sera short. Somehow it felt even more intimate than his nickname for her. It was an intimacy she desperately feared losing. “I want to tell you about my past, Asher—and there are some things you probably need to know—but I’m scared that after I do, you’ll… that you won’t…”
“Won’t what?” He stroked the back of her hand with featherlight fingers.
“Won’t want to be around me anymore,” she whispered. She looked away, blinking rapidly. It was times like these that Sera really regretted not being able to have a glass of wine—or ten—to take the edge off. But she knew that without her sobriety, she’d never have found herself in this moment—this potentially magical moment—with a man as wonderful as Asher. And she knew enough about herself to know that, even if he rejected her, she’d be okay—eventually. She wouldn’t need booze to help her get over the heartache. She’d just want it a whole lot.
She made herself look up and meet his gaze.
His angry gaze.
Not a lot angry, from what she could tell, but definitely a wee bit pissed. Or perhaps exasperated, she wasn’t quite sure. All she knew was that his green eyes were shimmering with turbulent emotions, tender and fierce by turns.
“Bliss,” he demanded, “do you think I’m a bad judge of character?”
“What?! No, of course not!”
He cocked his head to one side. “And do I strike you as self-destructive?”
Sera wasn’t sure where this was going. “Definitely not,” she said. Asher was the liveliest, most engaged man she had ever met. Nothing about him spoke of dark, twisty bits. Sadness, sure. Heartache, perhaps—in his past. But not in such a way that he would want to harm himself, or make bad choices.
“Then please, do me the courtesy of assuming that I would not ask a lady to dinner if I believed her to be of less than sterling character.”
“Oh,” she whispered. He thinks I have “sterling character.” Tears stung her eyes, and tenderness melted her heart. Remember that mascara, Sera! Keep it together. “Good point. Sorry about that, Ash. I didn’t mean to insult you. I just hope you don’t change your mind when I tell you the rest…”
Asher leaned in and kissed the hand he was holding. “After all the lovely qualities I have seen in you, Bliss—your courage, your kindness, your humor—I doubt there’s anything you could tell me about your past that would make me turn away from you. I’m not so faint of heart as all that—and you need to know that about me.” His hand tightened around hers, firm and urgent. “You must trust that about me, if we’re to make a go of what’s between us. And, Bliss, I very much want to make a go of things with you. So,” he challenged, “whatever it is, why don’t you try me?”
Sera could not deny him. After a speech like that, he could have demanded a kidney, and she’d have handed it over on her great-grandmother’s prized silver chafing dish. So she took a deep breath and, in a torrent of words, told Asher everything. How the famous Blake Austin had recruited her, wide-eyed and painfully shy, right out of culinary school. How she’d lost herself under his influence, lost herself even more under the influence of alcohol. How he’d found her wanting, how she’d found the solace of vodka. Sparing nothing, she described the humiliating Meltdown at the Maidstone, Blake’s vendetta, and her slow crawl back to respectability in the year since. She left out only Blake’s recent comments in the Chile Paper this week, not wanting to dump her drama on Asher lest he feel a need to get involved. Blake is my problem, not Asher’s, and I’ll be the one to face him down if it comes to that.
Appetizers came and went as Sera spilled her story, Asher refusing the wine list in an act of solidarity she didn’t fail to notice.
At length Sera stumbled to a halt. “Anyhow, that’s about it. The whole sordid story. My failures, my shortcomings, and the chef-shaped monkey that just won’t get off my back.” She stared down at her barely touched plate. What a waste of foie gras, she thought, apropos of nothing. She wasn’t sure if she felt liberated or nauseated. Or maybe liberation itself was a bit of a queasy thing. It all depended on how Asher reacted.
Her date leaned back in his chair, crossed his long legs at the ankles, and folded his arms across his chest. “I’m disappointed, Bliss.”
“I’m sorry?” Oh, crap-covered-crap. He’s totally disgusted now. We probably won’t even make it to dessert. And I so wanted to know how the sweets in this place would stack up to my own… But it wasn’t the potential loss of pastry that had Sera’s heart squeezing painfully in her chest.
“I don’t see why you should be,” said Asher. He saw her look of confusion and unfolded his arms, reaching forward to touch her again. This time it was her wrist he captured in a gentle vise. “Don’t see why you should be sorry, that is. I’m only disappointed because, after all that buildup, I expected you to tell me you smothered kittens for a hobby or baked straight razors into your layer cakes.” He shook his head, speaking urgently. “Bliss, from what you’ve described, you’ve done nothing to be ashamed of—nothing that you could help anyway—and the things you couldn’t help at the time, you’ve since put to rights as best you could. You’ve been paying penance for events that happened long ago, and paying far too much, if you ask me. Isn’t it time to let them go?”
Sera sighed, turning her hand over in his, tracing her fingers across the jeweler’s scars and calluses that marked his sensitive flesh. She’d thought the Blake years were behind her, that she was no longer the sad, messed-up woman she’d once been. Yet when Austin had showed up, he’d brought with him a whole lot of baggage she’d hoped to leave behind forever. Part of her still feared Asher would see her as Blake always had—someone pitiable, flawed. Someone who couldn’t satisfy.
“I’m trying,” she said, giving Asher a wobbly smile. “But there are times I still feel… I don’t know… wanting somehow.”
“Let me tell you something,” said Asher. “That was one deeply petty little man I met the other night. He cannot steal what you possess now.” His grasp tightened. “Bliss, you’ve got a spirit that shines out, that’s so infectious I smile each time I see you coming. That is the woman with whom I want to dine—and not just dine, if I’m fortunate, but laugh, and chase dildo-thieving dogs, and slay my unfortunate shrubbery. That’s who you are to me, Bliss. Not a failure. Not wanting.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Asher,” Sera said, letting the tears spill, and damn the mascara. Her voice caught. “There’s something I’m ‘wanting’ very much right now.”
She stood up, came around the table, and showed Asher exactly what—and who—she wanted, making herself at home in his lap and giving him a deep, wholehearted kiss.
Their server waited as long he could, but eventually the strain on his arms began to take its toll. He cleared his throat politely. “Ah, sorry, hot plates over here…”
Sera blushed, removing herself to the correct side of the table. Asher discreetly adjusted his napkin over his lap as the embarrassed waiter placed their entrées on the table and made himself scarce.