Janelle Taylor (5 page)

Beau chuckled. “Well, I don’t imagine many people like blue chicken.”

“It’s
cordon
bleu,” Jordan inserted. “And it happens to be my specialty.”

“Chicken cordon bleu? That happens to be my favorite.”

“There’s plenty left,” Jordan said. Having no idea how much little boys ate, she had doubled the recipe. “Would you like some?”

Beau Somerville nodded. “That sounds good to me.”

“Come on in.” Jordan couldn’t believe she was doing this—inviting a strange man into her kitchen and volunteering to feed him. But it was such a relief not to be alone with Spencer for the first time today, and Beau seemed to know how to interact with the little boy in a way she did not.

Belatedly, she remembered Phoebe’s warning. She wasn’t supposed to let anyone know Spencer was here.

But after this, she would never see this man again. Now that he was here, face to face, she could explain that she wasn’t really actively dating these days because …

Well, why wasn’t she?

As she led the way to the kitchen, with Spencer trailing behind alongside the ruggedly handsome Beau Somer-ville, Jordan couldn’t seem to remember
why
she wasn’t dating. Or why she had thought dinner with this man was something to dread.

“Have a seat,” she said, gesturing at the breakfast bar as she walked over to the stove, where the serving platters waited.

He sat. So did Spencer. Right next to Beau, she noticed.

When she’d invited him earlier to sit down to eat, with her, he had left a stool between them.

Obviously, the little boy felt a kinship with this stranger that he didn’t feel with his own godmother.

Jordan tried not to let that bother her. After all, Beau was incredibly charismatic. He seemed to know just what to say to Spencer, and how to say it.

Come to think of it, he knew just what to say to her, too.

Warning bells went off in her head.

Don’t let him charm you, Jordan. You fell for a charmer once before, and look what happened.

Well, she was on guard. She would never fall for a good-looking, smooth-talking man again. Period.

“Nice place,” Beau said, looking around Jordan’s kitchen. He surveyed the three big foil-covered casserole dishes on the stove. “You always cook like this for just the two of you?”

“Actually, I never cook like this here at home,” she said, her back to him as she took down a plate from the glass-fronted white cabinet.

“Oh, yeah, that’s right, you’re a caterer. I almost forgot. Guess that means I’m in for a treat.” He leaned forward and peered at the contents of Spencer’s abandoned plate. “What’s this, mashed potatoes with chives?”

“Scallions.”

“And—hey, are those sautéed greens?”

“Yes!” She turned to look at him, obviously pleased at his culinary detective work.

“I
love
greens,” he said. “My grammy used to make them in one of those big old white enamel pots. She would let it simmer for hours, with bacon and onions and vinegar and molasses and her secret ingredient.”

“Secret ingredient?”

“She never would tell my mama what it was,” Beau said, smiling at the memory. “She said that as long as she could stand at the stove and make her greens, nobody else was going to have her recipe. She said she would give the recipe to Mama when the day finally came that she couldn’t do the cooking herself anymore.”

“But she wouldn’t tell her the secret ingredient when
the day came?” Jordan asked, taking flatware from a drawer.

“It wasn’t that. She died suddenly one day when she was only in her early sixties. Just keeled over and had a massive stroke. None of us saw it coming. We all thought she had years of cooking left.”

“That’s terrible. I’m sorry about your loss.”

“Tragedies happen.” His eyes were shadowed. “It was a long time ago. I just wish she had told us her secret ingredient.”

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing. Her recipe sounds an awful lot like mine. You named every ingredient I use, except one.”

“What’s that?”

“Beer. I use a whole bottle. It gives the greens a nice flavor.”

He shook his head, smiling. “Nope. Mama wouldn’t allow liquor in the house. She was a strict Southern Baptist. It must’ve been something else.”

“Maybe it was hot pepper flakes,” she said conversationally. “I’ve seen recipes that call for that.”

“I don’t think so. Grammy’s greens weren’t spicy. They just had a very distinct flavor that I’ve never tasted since, and believe me, I’ve had lots of greens. I’m a Southern boy at heart.”

He watched Jordan heap his plate with golden chicken, mashed potatoes, and greens. As she carried it over to him, he looked down at
the
little boy seated beside him.

“So what’s up, Spence?” he asked. “You don’t like blue chicken, but what about the rest of this stuff?”

“Guess,” Spencer invited.

“Well, I’d say you don’t like those little green things in the mashed potatoes.”

“She said they’re like onions,” Spencer said, with unpleasant emphasis on the
she.

“Most kids don’t like onions,” Beau agreed. “Especially green ones. Because most kids don’t like anything that’s green. Least of all something that’s called ‘greens.’ Right?”

“Right!” Spencer nodded, and the expression on his face officially ordained Beau a superhero.

“When I was a kid, I liked onions, and green vegetables, and greens,” Jordan said, setting the heaping plate down in front of Beau.

“Yeah, but you were a girl,” Beau said, as though that explained everything. To Spencer he said, “I bet you would’a rather had a peanut-butter-andjelly sandwich, huh?”

Spencer nodded emphatically.

Jordan seemed to consider that. “I have peanut butter,” she volunteered. “And I think there’s a jar of marmalade in the pantry cupboard…”

“Marmalade?” Beau and Spencer echoed in unison.

“What’s marmalade?” Spencer asked, wrinkling his nose.

“You don’t have regular jelly?” Beau studied Jordan as though she had just whipped up a batch of eyeball soup.

Didn’t all moms keep jelly on hand? Didn’t all moms know that marmalade didn’t qualify as jelly? Jelly was purple and sticky, and these days, it came in a plastic squeeze bottle.

“How about honey?” Beau asked. “Got any of that?”

“Yes! I have honey!” She looked as though she had successfully answered a $32,000 question on
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

“Ever have a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich, Spence?”

“Nope.”

“Want to try one?”

“Yup,” the little boy told Beau, who promptly pushed back his stool.

“I’ll make it for you,” he said.

“I can do it,” Jordan said. “You eat.”

“Nah, I have a special way of making peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches. You got any pretzel rods?”

“Pretzel rods?”

“I didn’t think you did. Well, got anything that looks like a pretzel rod?”

“I have sesame-garlic bread sticks,” she said from the pantry cabinet, from which she removed peanut butter and a jar of honey. Not the plastic bear-shaped kind of honey jar, Beau noticed. A pricey glass jar with a fancy brand name.

Well, better that it wasn’t the familiar bear jar, Beau told himself. The bear jar would have brought back memories that were better left buried.

The trouble was, they refused to stay buried.

He distracted himself by saying to Jordan, “Sesamegarlic bread sticks? Can I see them?”

She held up the package. He peered at the contents, then shrugged. “That’ll do it.”

“You’re going to make a sandwich on bread sticks?”

“I’m going to make the sandwich on bread,” he said, draping his blazer over a nearby doorknob and rolling up his shirtsleeves. “The bread sticks are for something else. Stand aside.”

She threw up her hands in a whatever-you-say gesture, then took a seat beside Spencer.

“Where’s the bread?” Beau asked.

“Top drawer on your left.”

“Knives and spoons?”

“Top drawer on your right.”

He retrieved the bread—a fancy whole-grain kind, of course, but it would do—from the metal-lined bin and took two butter knives and a teaspoon from the drawer. He used one to spread the bread with peanut butter, then drizzled honey over it with a spoon.

As he worked, he forced his thoughts not to stray from the project at hand. Not to venture away from the here and now—from this Georgetown kitchen and this little boy, a world and so many years away from another kitchen, another little boy, another peanut-butter sandwich….

“What do you think he’s going to do with the bread sticks, Jordan?” he heard Spencer ask.

“I have no idea. Let’s wait and see,” she replied.

Jordan? Beau was surprised to hear the child call his mother by her first name. Some families did that, he knew. Maybe that was “in” up north here, but the old-fashioned Southerner in Beau found it disrespectful.

He found himself wondering about the little boy’s dad. Andrea hadn’t mentioned whether Jordan was divorced, or a widow. Nor had she mentioned that Jordan had a son. Beau figured that she must have assumed it would turn him off to date a woman who came with that kind of baggage.

Truth be told, if he had known about Spencer, he probably wouldn’t have gone along with the date in the first place. It was hard enough to see little boys in his everyday life—playing on swings when he drove by the park, eating fast food when he picked up his lunch, clinging to their parents’ hands in crosswalks when he stopped at lights.

It seemed that there were children everywhere he looked, and all those little boys were reminders of the one who had left an aching void in Beau’s heart that could never be filled.

He was caught off guard when he’d spotted Spencer standing in the doorway tonight behind Jordan. But something about the child drew him in. There was a desolate aura about him that touched Beau’s heart, made him want to help. Instead of turning and fleeing, he’d found himself reaching out, venturing inside.

And now, here he was.

And here was the sandwich. He carried the plate over to Spencer and set it in front of him.

“Whoa! A sailboat!”

“Like it?”

“It’s great!”

“It
is
great,” Jordan said with a smile, studying his handiwork.

He had cut the square sandwich diagonally in half, then cut the point off one of the halves, which gave him a large and small triangle, which he arranged side-to-side on the plate as a sail, with the bread stick in between as the mast. The remaining piece of bread was shaped like a boat, and he positioned it beneath the sails.

“How’d you learn to do that?” Spencer asked, taking a big bite of the mast.

He shrugged, a lump in his throat.

“Beau’s an architect,” Jordan told the little boy. “I bet he knows how to design all kinds of neat things. Now let’s let him eat his dinner. I hope it hasn’t grown cold.”

“I’m sure it’s fine.” He sat down again, his appetite diminished by the wave of emotion that had washed over
him. How well he remembered those days of peanut-butter sandwich sculptures, and shared jokes, and being part of a cozy threesome….

“I can warm it in the microwave for you,” Jordan offered.

“That’s okay.” He raised a forkfull of greens to his mouth and chewed mechanically at first.

Then his eyes widened in surprise. “I can’t believe it. This tastes just like Grammy’s recipe.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive. The flavor is identical. Delicious. I haven’t had anything this good since she passed away.”

Jordan grinned. “I think she was holding out on your Southern Baptist mama, Beau.”

He considered that. It wouldn’t be so far-fetched for Grammy to have had a stash of beer somewhere. Come to think of it, he half remembered Mama accusing her of spiking the Christmas eggnog with bourbon one year.

Beau gobbled down the food, the best he’d tasted in years. Well, how long had it been since he’d had a home-cooked meal? Lisa didn’t cook. Mama did, but she sure didn’t have a flair for it.

Only Jeanette had cooked for him in the years since Grammy died. She made all his favorite foods: fried catfish, sausage gravy over biscuits, cornbread. She teased him that she was going to make him fat, and he was well on his way….

And then she was gone, and there were no more home-cooked meals, and even if there had been, Beau had lost his appetite. Permanently, it seemed. For food, anyway. Liquor went down easy. It dulled the pain. The booze and lack of food had whittled his once-expanding waistline until none of his clothes fit and he was a shadow of the man he used to be.

It was Lisa who turned him around. Got him off the booze, and into salads and sprouts—and a gym. Lisa was a health nut.

Well, at least one of her healthy habits had stayed with him. He didn’t care if he never saw another sprout or tasted tofu ice cream again, but he was hooked on his daily workouts.

“My dad has a boat on the river,” Spencer commented, munching on one of the sandwich-sails. “But it’s not this kind. It’s a yacht.”

Startled back to
the
present, Beau glanced down at the little boy, then at Jordan. “Is that so?”

She shrugged, her eyes clouded, expression veiled. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why. Spencer had referred to his dad in the present tense, so clearly his parents were divorced. Maybe Jordan’s ex was one of those playboy types with a yacht—and a female first mate in every port.

“Does he take you sailing on his yacht?” Beau asked, setting his fork down and pushing away his empty plate.

“Yup. But my mom doesn’t like it when we do that. She says I should learn how to swim first.”

“That’s probably a good idea.” Again he looked at Jordan. “I’m sure your dad makes sure you have a life jacket on when you’re out on the water.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s good.”

“Do you have a boat?” Spencer asked.

“Actually, I do.” Truth be told, he had a few boats. But he wasn’t about to elaborate. Knowing Andrea, who was from Louisiana and had to be well aware of the vast Somerville fortune, Jordan had been duly informed that Beau was a wealthy man. That didn’t mean he had to go into detail about his sailboats, speedboats, his yacht—
or any of the other trappings that no longer meant anything to him. He would trade all of it…