Southern Charmer Read online

  Probably for the best.

  He pulls out a stool for me at the bar and heads to the other side. The bartenders, who were busy loading the dishwashers and wiping down the counter, now nod at Eli and slip out of sight.

  My heart is pounding. I know I should go home. Call it a night. But I don’t want to.

  Not yet.

  “What are you drinking?” Eli asks, grabbing a shaker.

  I look at the wall of liquor in front of me. “I’m really full—nothing too heavy. What would you recommend?”

  He narrows his eyes playfully, searching my face.

  “I got you. Hang on.”

  Watching Eli work a cocktail shaker—the way he casually knows his way around the bar, the liquor, the glasses—

  I am sweating. This town is turning me into a perpetually sticky, sweaty, lusty mess.

  My body is practically throbbing by the time he slides a heavy bottomed glass across the bar. He’s holding another in his hand.

  “Cheers,” he says, holding it out. “Thanks for coming tonight.”

  I touch my glass to his. “Are you kidding? Thank you for having me. And for treating me to the best meal of my life. Seriously. I’ve never experienced anything like it. The food here—the atmosphere—it’s special, Eli. I’m in awe.”

  He grins, bringing his drink to his lips. His eyes are on me as I sip mine. Like he’s a little nervous to know what I think.

  A smoky-sweet flavor hits my tongue, cut with a refreshing edge of something cold and foamy and just a little bit tart.

  “Stop blowing my mind already, would you?” I say, smacking my lips. “One time is enough.”

  Eli is still grinning. “It’s the Mezcal. I’ve kind of been obsessed with it lately—it’s a Mexican liquor made from agave, and it has this incredible, sexy smoke to it I can’t get enough of.”

  Sexy. That’s exactly how this drink tastes.

  That’s exactly how I feel when Eli looks at me.

  Chapter Nine

  Olivia

  “It’s delicious,” I say, looking away. “Everything you make is delicious. Watching you work in the kitchen gave me so much inspiration.”

  “Inspiration?” He arches a brow. “For what?”

  I freeze, holding my cocktail in midair.

  I hadn’t meant to say that.

  I meet Eli’s eyes. They’re dark. Handsome.

  Earnest.

  I think about what Ted said when I told him about my romance author aspirations.

  Then I think about what Eli said the other morning over breakfast. The stuff about doing what makes him happy.

  Maybe he’d get why I want to write.

  Or maybe he won’t.

  Either way, I kind of want to try on Writer as a profession. Just this once. If I can’t do it here, in a place where literally no one knows me, I never will. There are no friends to make uncomfortable. No colleagues to go running to my department head with the alarming news that one of their up and coming academic stars is writing a bodice ripper. No boyfriend to disappoint or embarrass.

  It’s not like I’d be lying about it, either. I am writing a book.

  My heart thumps once. Twice.

  “Inspiration for my novel,” I say, squaring my shoulders. “I write historical romance.”

  Eli blinks. Then his face cracks open with the biggest, brightest smile I’ve seen on him yet.

  My heart, suddenly light, flutters around my chest like a drunk butterfly.

  “You write romance?” he says. “That is the coolest fuckin’ thing ever! I don’t know if you saw the bookshelf at my house—”

  “I did,” I say, grinning.

  “But I love to read. I’ve met a lot of magazine writers in my day, but I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting a novelist. Least of all one who writes about love. You officially win the prize for Most Badass Profession Ever.”

  I laugh, bringing my cocktail to my lips to hide the rush of warmth to my cheeks and chest. His excitement is infectious. So intensely flattering I’m not really sure what to do with myself or the insane amount of pleasure I feel just being with this guy. He’s authentic in every sense of the word. Which makes me want to be authentic, too. Authentic to my secret, romance-writing side I’ve hidden for so long.

  “Thanks,” I reply. “I’d say that prize actually belongs to you. Writing romance is a hell of a lot less glamorous than it seems.”

  Not that I have much experience with it. Not yet.

  Eli shrugs. “Same goes for being a chef. But you’re doing something different, which takes balls. A lot of people—they don’t get different.”

  My turn to blink. My throat thickens, suddenly and unexpectedly.

  I look down at my drink. “They don’t.”

  “When I opened this place, everyone thought I was off my rocker to keep my menu—and my food—so simple. They kept waiting for me to fall on my face. But I’m still here. Bruised. Worse for the wear. But still here,” he says, raising his eyes to the room around us.

  “Yeah, well. Doesn’t hurt that you’re extraordinarily talented,” I say.

  Eli shakes his head. “No more talented than any other asshole with a culinary school degree. I’ve just always been a hard worker. I keep goin’ when everyone else quits. I’ve wanted to quit, too. Every time something went wrong, I was so tempted to hang up my hat and call it a day.”

  “But you didn’t.” I’m leaning into the bar now, the countertop cutting into my stomach. “Why?”

  “Because I love it,” he says simply, eyes softening with emotion. “Cooking itself can be hard and hot and stressful as all get out. But when I see a packed house enjoying these beautiful dishes we put together, comin’ back again and again to eat the food I love to make—it’s satisfying. Deeply, deeply satisfying, in a way I can’t really describe. It fills me up. It’s freedom.”

  I want to be filled up like that.

  It’s been so damn long since I felt free like that. Which is ironic, because I thought I’d finally be free once I had it all. But now that I do, my life feels more like a prison than a wide open sky. Makes me think that as much as I should want to be the highly accomplished other half of Ted’s power couple, maybe I’m not that woman.

  Maybe I’m this woman. The one who writes romance and does yoga and flirts freely with handsome, interesting, talented chefs.

  What if I’ve been wanting the wrong things? Things that don’t make me all that happy?

  “So what period do you write in?” he asks.

  I take a long pull of my drink. “Regency. Early nineteenth century. I’m a total sucker for ballrooms and breeches. I just adore the romance of that period. All the rigid rules they had back then make for some pretty delicious plots. Forbidden romance is probably my favorite—enemies-to-lovers is a close second. I love a heroine who really grapples with convention and turns the rampant sexism of that world on its head. And the heroes—nothing turns me on quite like a Duke or a rake or a bareknuckle boxer who’s a gentleman in the streets but a total freak in the sheets.”

  I hope I’m not going too far. I just can’t help myself. I’ve never been able to talk to anyone about this stuff. Now that I am talking about it, and with a handsome, smiling southerner at that, I can’t seem to shut up.

  But judging from the way Eli’s eyes are dancing, I haven’t gone far enough.

  “Shit,” he says. “Now I wish I’d gone into bareknuckle boxing.”

  I laugh, the sheer giddiness of having someone to trade jokes about historical romance with flooding every inch of my being.

  “Not too late,” I reply. “So, yeah. I basically write in the same vein as Jane Austen, just with way more explicit sex scenes.”

  “So basically you go behind closed doors with Mr. Darcy and Lizzie Bennet.”

  Oh, God, as if this guy isn’t hot enough.

  Now he’s got to go and name drop characters from Pride and Prejudice.

  Just my favorite book ever. No big deal.

&n
bsp; “You know your Austen,” I say, looking away lest I spontaneously combust into a ball of screaming hot magma. “I’m honestly surprised—didn’t see many women on your shelves. Writers or characters.”

  Eli holds up his hands in mock surrender. “You got me there. I’m not perfect, Olivia. But I am willing to learn. How about I start with your books? Just give me the titles and I’ll have my friends over at the Rainbow order ’em for me.”

  Seriously.

  This guy.

  I hadn’t expected Eli to be so enthusiastic about my writing.

  I definitely hadn’t expected him to want to read my writing. Even if he is a big reader, guys don’t read romance. They make fun of it. Belittle it. At least in my experience.

  But looking at Eli, seeing that earnest glint in his gorgeous eyes, I get the feeling he wouldn’t make fun of it the way Ted does.

  He’d devour it.

  Just like he’s kind of devouring me right now. Or maybe it’s me that’s devouring him.

  I keep saying this. But I’ve never met a guy like him. A man who cooks for a living, who’s tatted up to within an inch of his life, who loves to read and do yoga and talk passionately about big ideas like romance and freedom and purpose.

  He’s one of a kind.

  A kind that would make the people I know back home uncomfortable. They wouldn’t be caught dead socializing with someone who works in a kitchen. They’d roll their eyes at his tattoos and his accent. Don’t even get me started on how they’d feel about his walking-around-town-shirtless habit.

  But right now, Eli is making me feel like a million bucks.

  I’m hit by the wild idea that that is all that matters. Not what other people think. Not what other people expect. But how I feel and what I want.

  It’s a stupid idea. I can just imagine Ted shaking his head and sighing. A tired, disappointed sigh that he’d follow with something like don’t be ridiculous, Olivia, you’re an adult, not some teenaged free spirit nursing a crush.

  Still. Why not try it on while I’m here? Doing things because I want to, because I feel like it?

  Blame it on my excitement. The wine. The way Eli talks to me like I’m not insane for writing romance. But I feel like taking a chance. Maybe having some kind of accountability—say, turning ten pages into Eli every night—will be the push I need to get this novel off the ground.

  It’s ballsy. But if not now, then when?

  “Actually,” I say, wrapping my hands around my cocktail glass. “I could use some help with a manuscript I’m working on. I keep hitting these roadblocks. I can’t seem to move past a few thousand words. I know you’re busy, so I totally get it if y—”

  “I’m in,” Eli says. “I’m no editor, and I don’t know my way around romance. Yet. Like I said, I’m willing to learn. I’d be happy to read what you have.”

  “Really?” I’m fighting a smile so big it actually hurts. “You’d do that?”

  He grins. That slightly devastating, totally handsome quirk of his lips.

  “’Course. Maybe then you’ll be stoppin’ by my place for breakfast more often,” he says.

  An almost violent rush of heat prickles in my cheeks. Between my legs.

  I remind myself that with a personality as big and warm as his is, Eli probably flirts with everyone, men and grandmas and babies included. I’m nothing special in his eyes. In all likelihood, I’m the fiftieth person Eli’s laid out with his charm in the past hour alone.

  I’m nothing special.

  Even if he makes me feel like the sexiest, most interesting woman in the world for just being myself.

  Eli is called to the kitchen to deal with a crisis—something about a dishwasher and a waiter being caught en flagrante in the locker room—so he puts me in a cab (“Olivia, you’re outta your goddamn mind if you think I’m lettin’ you walk home alone in the dark”) with a promise to look out for the first ten pages of my manuscript I said I’d have on his doorstep the next day.

  I giddily skip up the stairs to the carriage house. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept properly in what feels like years. But from the way I float through the kitchen to the bathroom, even doing a quick little twirl while I wipe off my eye makeup, you’d think I’m bursting with energy.

  I am bursting with energy. I haven’t felt this jazzed up to write in…forever. Cozied up in bed in my pajamas, I open my laptop and plug in my earphones. I turn off the internet—a first for me—and then I open a fresh new Word document.

  My muse is singing.

  I don’t second guess. I don’t edit as I go. I just write, letting the words fall and trip over each other as my fingers move furiously over the keyboard.

  MY ENEMY THE EARL

  By Olivia Gates

  ROMEO AND JULIET meets Regency England

  (meets the tiniest bit of GAME OF THRONES)

  The heirs of opposing families stoke an ancient feud by falling in love.

  England, 1813

  Castle West, Northumberland

  Even in a ballroom full of dark haired, broad-shouldered warriors, Gunnar Danes, Earl of Garrick, stood out. He was enormous, made even more so by the thick leather pauldrons that covered his shoulders, the metal plackart stretched across his breast. It was only a costume, but on him it looked thrillingly real.

  He wore his long hair in a knot on the crown of his head, emphasizing the sharp lines of his cheekbones. Lines that gleamed in the honey-hued light of the room. The stubble of a careless beard—redder than his hair—caught the light, too. A prickly fuzz.

  And his eyes—they were a striking shade of hazel, more green than brown.

  They were on her.

  Her, Catherine Woodville. Spinster. The daughter of his great enemy and all that. Their families had been at each other’s throats for generations.

  Reason number one hundred and eighty nine why sneaking into the Dane family’s annual Michaelmas ball was a bad idea.

  But here she was, dressed in a borrowed gown and mask, meeting eyes with the one man on Earth she needed to stay away from.

  This Romeo was much, much different from the thirteen-year-old lovesick Italian in Shakespeare’s play. Indeed, Gunnar Danes was the kind of rough-hewn, medieval-warrior handsome that made Cate dizzy. She grasped the edge of the refreshment table, readying herself for the onslaught as he approached her from across the crowded ballroom…

  Chapter Ten

  Eli

  I make a quick pit stop on my way to work the next morning.

  Rainbow Row Books, the city’s oldest and most famous indie book store, is housed in a tiny Charleston single that, thanks to the great earthquake of 1889, is leaning precariously to one side. There’s no way you could stand up on its second story porch; it’s slanted at such an angle you’d slide right off and land on your ass in the parking lot below.

  Its kooky exterior gives way to an equally kooky, light-filled first floor that is packed to the rafters with books and rescue cats.

  Charlotte, a Siamese cat who’s missing a leg, is the first to greet me, rubbing up against my calf. Alice, Beverly, Ernest, and George are next. In the space of half a minute my jeans are covered in cat hair and my tennis shoes are practically vibrating from all the purring going on.

  Making a silent pussy joke, I grin.

  “Elijah!” Louise, the owner, quickly closes her book behind the register at the back of the shop. Dipping her head, she looks at me above the cloudy lenses of her reading glasses. “I’m always happy to see you, handsome, but that Vonnegut you ordered still hasn’t come in.”

  Careful not to step on any stray tails or paws, I make my way back to Louise and press a kiss onto the papery skin of her cheek.

  “I’m actually not here for Vonnegut,” I say. “I’m here because I need your help.”

  Louise straightens in mock seriousness. “Talk to me, chef.”

  “I want you to give me a crash course in romance.”

  “Romance?” Louise bli
nks. “As in, romantic love, or…?”

  “Romance novels,” I say, laughing. “I’d like to focus on historical romance, but I’ll take anything you can give me.”

  Using her first finger to push up her glasses, she peers at me, her eyes wide and owlish through the lenses. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for a romance reader.”

  “Because of the Vonnegut?”

  “Because of your penis,” Louise says. She slides off her stool. “World would be a better place if more men read romance. Come on, handsome. I’m sorry to say we don’t keep much of it in stock. We’ve just never had that reader base, and so much of that market has gone digital in the last few years.”

  Louise is right. Her romance section is pitifully small. It’s the bottom two rows on a rickety metal bookshelf. Many of the paperbacks are so old their pages are yellowing.

  I wonder what Olivia would have to say about this. She was so contained the other morning at breakfast, and then again at yoga. But when she talked about romance, it was like a dam burst. Her eyes lit up and her cheeks flushed pink and she laughed, really laughed, the kind that came from her belly.

  She was so goddamn gorgeous in that moment I’d had to grip my cocktail, hard, to keep from reaching for her. Kissing that pretty mouth of hers. Which would’ve been a bad idea on many levels. Most important, I didn’t have her permission. I also don’t know her story. Well—the story about her romantic life, anyway. Maybe she has a boyfriend.

  Maybe she doesn’t. But even so, maybe she’s not interested in a kiss for whatever reason.

  This all started out as innocent curiosity about the beautiful stranger who showed up in my kitchen, hungry and tired and holding something in.

  But now that I’m getting to know this stranger, I’m finding I like her. A lot. I’m intrigued by the dissonance between her calm, cool exterior and the fire in her eyes. I like that she has secrets. I fucking adore that she’s a writer. I admire her for taking a chance and writing romance. I also like how I seem to forget all my worries when I’m with her. She has this way of taking up the whole room that clears my mind and lightens my mood.