On the Surface (In the Zone) (31 page)

Chapter One

“My mommy won’t let me eat ice cream in the morning.
She says it’s not breakfast food.”

As he waited for his flight to be called, Calder Griffin turned
to see a little boy, maybe six years old, standing in front of him. His mother
was a couple of seats over in the passenger waiting area, trying to feed her
other much younger child some green slime out of a jar.

Calder shrugged. “When you’re a grown-up, you can eat whatever
you want for breakfast.”

The boy digested this piece of information as if Calder were
Moses coming down the mountain with new and improved commandments.

Although Wheaties were touted as the breakfast of champions,
Calder was eating a Häagen-Dazs ice-cream bar. According to
his
mom, he was an emotional eater who turned to food when he was
upset. Problem was, he’d been upset for, oh, the better part of the hockey
season.

“What did
you
have for breakfast?”
Calder took another bite. Man, this was heaven. Rich coffee ice cream, covered
with milk chocolate, toffee bits and almonds. The man who’d invented ice cream
was a genius, and the man who invented ice cream on a stick was a
supergenius.

“Cereal with banana. But it wasn’t the good kind.”

“What’s the good kind?”

“Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”

Calder nodded. “That
is
a good one.
So are Frosted Flakes. Frosted Flakes are good on ice cream, as a matter of
fact. Now that, my friend, is a great breakfast.”

“Sammy! Come here. What did I tell you about staying close to
me?”

Sammy turned without another word and returned to his mom while
Calder sucked the last bit of ice cream off the wooden stick and chuckled.

“We are now seating first class passengers for Flight 1211
departing for Ithaca.”

Awesome. He flicked the stick into a nearby trashcan and picked
up his carry-on.

After getting settled, he pulled out the SkyMall magazine. He
enjoyed looking at all the gadgets for sale there. Once in a while, he even
bought something.

“Champagne? Orange juice?” the flight attendant asked him. Her
name tag identified her as Gillian.

“I’ll have both. Make it a mimosa. Thanks,” he said.

A young woman in a T-shirt and shorts stopped in the aisle
beside him. “I’m the window seat,” she said.

Calder looked up and thought hallelujah. She was the epitome of
Asian beauty—high cheekbones, a full mouth and almond-shaped siren eyes that
beckoned a man to approach, but at his own risk. Damn.

Smiling, he stood while she sidled past him and got settled.
Toned arms, nice legs—real nice—even better tits. She wore her stick-straight
black hair in a ponytail and she smelled good. Citrusy.

Unfortunately, before he could turn on the charm, the flight
attendant returned with his drink.

“Miss, can I get you some orange juice or champagne?”

“Already? We haven’t even taken off yet.” His seatmate looked
surprised. “How much does it cost?”

“There’s no charge in first class,” Gillian said.

“Oh. That’s really nice. I’ll have juice, please.”

Deciding to play it cool, Calder perused the magazine while his
beautiful seatmate familiarized herself with her surroundings. She seemed
delighted by the footrest. A First Class virgin, obviously.

He was studying reviews on a Bluetooth-enabled pair of
headphones when he felt her eyes on him. He was used to that. People knew they’d
seen him somewhere before, but couldn’t place him.
Are you
on TV?
Did we go to high school together?
Weren’t you in that movie with Brad Pitt?

Before he could strike up a conversation, Gillian came by to
tell them about their breakfast choices—freshly baked muffins, Virginia ham and
cheddar frittatas, crepes or fresh fruit and Greek yogurt.

“What kind of muffins?” Calder asked.

“Blueberry, buttermilk apple spice and bran.”

He wrestled with his sweet tooth once again and lost. “I’d like
one of everything, please. Two frittatas, if you’ve got enough.”

Gillian nodded toward his NHL Player’s Association T-shirt. “Do
you play for the NHL?” she asked.

“I’m a left wing for the Barracudas.” He hadn’t played in seven
months, but she didn’t have to know that.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw his personal Miss Universe
turn her head sharply.

“So one of everything and two frittatas,” Gillian said. “And
for you?”

“Is the food free too?”

“Yes.”

“Fruit and yogurt and one frittata, please.”

Gillian left, walking down the aisle with a little extra sway
of her hips that Calder thought was for his benefit.

His seatmate cleared her throat. “Excuse me. You’re Calder
Griffin, aren’t you?” She had some beauty marks, one above her right eyebrow and
another on the cheek, like God had added those at the last minute to balance the
otherwise flawless perfection of her porcelain skin.

He sat up and turned toward her. “That’s me.” It was always a
good sign when a woman he was interested in recognized him.

But she wasn’t smiling. In fact, a small line formed right
between her dark, dramatic eyebrows.

Undeterred, he rested left elbow on the armrest. “Are you a
hockey fan?”

“Not really.”

That was odd. Women who recognized him were usually hockey
fans. Or at least pretended to be. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Becca.” She cocked her head at him with something like a
challenge in her eyes. Her tone sounded almost combative.

Fine. He loved a challenge.
Five hours to
melt Becca’s icy exterior
, he thought as he drank down the last of
his mimosa.
Plenty of time.

“Nice to meet you, Becca. What do you do?” Calder shifted,
trying to stretch out his right leg and not succeeding. At six foot two, he
usually fit in the First Class section, but since the injury, his knee got stiff
sometimes.

“I run a place called Cups on the Commons.”

Calder had been to Ithaca Commons probably six-dozen times over
the years. It was a small pedestrian mall of quirky shops and restaurants in the
downtown area. Playgrounds, street performers and sculptures made it a great
place for families. Students from nearby Cornell University and Ithaca College
almost swarmed it on the weekends.

“Is it a bar? Are you the manager?”

“No. I own it,” she said with a little proud lift of the chin.
“It’s a café. I serve soups and lettuce cups.”

Gillian brought their food.

“Lettuce doesn’t sound like a very stable container for soup.”
He looked over the frittatas. They were pitifully small but smelled good.

“Not soup
in
lettuce cups. Soup
and
lettuce cups—lettuce leaves with different
savory fillings inside them. That’s why I named it Cups on the Common.”

He cast a sideways glance at her. “But soup comes in
bowls...”

She sighed and looked up at the roof of the plane. “Why doesn’t
anyone ever remember that soup comes in cups, too?”

“I don’t know.” He popped the whole frittata in his mouth at
once as if to prove it. “I eat a lot, and if I get soup, I never get just a cup.
Oh hey, I remember what lettuce cups are. I think I had those at P.F.
Chang’s.”

“Yeah, most of the time the restaurants only have one kind, but
I have a big variety and mine aren’t drowned in salt.” She said this with the
barest hint of a smile now. The ice was definitely melting. “People who are
watching their carbs love it.”

“I’ll definitely check it out. What’s your biggest seller?”

One of her dense but somehow feminine eyebrows arched upward.
“Soup or lettuce cup?”

“Both.”

“Soup? It’s probably a tie between the chicken noodle and the
tomato lobster bisque. The best-selling lettuce cup is the Classic Chicken, no
question, but when it’s available, the Duck, Duck, Goose is a close second.”

“What’s in that one? Sounds exotic.”

“People like it. It’s different,” she said, her smile a tiny
bit more visible. “There’s seasoned ground duck and goose, scrambled duck egg,
julienne carrots, zucchini and bean sprouts for crunch. A drizzle of hoisin
sauce.”

“I’m getting hungry just listening. Do you have a card?”

“Sure.” She pulled one out of her purse, but when she handed it
over, her face closed up again, like a sea anemone someone had poked.

He put the card away without really looking at it. He needed to
coax that smile back. “Did you grow up in Ithaca?”

Whoa. The expression on her face got ten degrees frostier. What
the hell kind of reaction was that to a perfectly innocent question? Not only
was she a challenge, she was a mystery.

“You really don’t remember me.”

That took him aback. He studied her face a little more closely.
Now that she’d mentioned it, she did look vaguely familiar.

“Have we met before? At some fan event maybe?”

She shook her head. “We went to school together. Elementary
school.”

He got the feeling that she’d found the experience less than
thrilling.

“I look a lot different now.” That eyebrow arched again.

“Yeah, don’t we all?” He gave an awkward laugh. With a sinking
feeling in his stomach, he pulled out that business card she’d given him,
thinking if he saw her last name it might jog his memory.

Rebecca Chen
,
owner and head chef.
The wheels in his brain were turning way too
slowly.

“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll give you a little hint. You
used to have this cute little pet name for me.”

Oh shit.
The tone of her voice told
him she hadn’t thought the name was cute at all. He thought hard.
Come on.
Who is she?
Who is she?

“Braceface Becca.”

Oh fuck. Now he remembered.

Copyright © 2014 by Kate Willoughby

About the Author

Kate is in love with the sport of hockey and the entire Los
Angeles Kings team. Having lived most of her life completely uninterested in
professional sports, she is surprised at the intensity of her enthusiasm and her
growing collection of Kings merchandise: a Dustin Brown jersey, two T-shirts,
three lapel pins, a hat, several play-off towels, a purple sequined jacket, a
replica Stanley Cup Champions banner, a car windshield sticker and, the pièce de
résistance, a collector card with a swatch of Justin William’s game-worn jersey.
Yeah. Don’t judge her.

She has held a variety of jobs—podiatrist’s assistant,
telemarketer, typist, gift wrapper, painter, illustrator’s assistant, paste-up
artist, calligrapher, teacher, transcriptionist and barista—but her favorite by
far is author. She resides in Los Angeles with her husband, their two sons and a
Chihuahua named Mochi.

She is also a member of Romance Writers of America and Los
Angeles Romance Authors and has won the 2009 EPPIE Award for Best
Fantasy/Paranormal Erotic Romance.

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ISBN-13: 9781426898235

ON THE SURFACE

Copyright © 2014 by Kate Willoughby

Edited by Melissa Johnson

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