Read Online Northern Escape by Jennifer LaBrecque - Free Book Online

especially after reading his columns.
    She threw out a conversational gambit. “So, your parents have a diner in New York?”
    â€œThey did. They sold it last year. It’s just a little place.” He named a location she mentally mapped out in her head. She had a rough idea where it was. “But it’s a good location. My grandparents had it and then the folks took over. I grew up there.” He laughed and shrugged those impossibly wide shoulders. “Hey, it kept me off the streets.”
    While they each did their own thing, he regaled her with stories about his family and some of the incidents with different customers. Several times he had her laughing and she loved listening to the rhythm and cadence of his voice. She realized he was a natural storyteller.
    â€œI get it now,” she said, adding a bit more seasoning to the chicken stock.
    â€œYou get what?” He looked across the prep table that separated them. They were on simmer now. No searing, no flambéing, but definitely a simmer. This attraction, this thing was still there between them but laughter and the occasional companionable silence had dialed it back to a low heat.
    â€œWhy you’re so good at what you do. You’re a natural storyteller and I’m sure you never meet a stranger.”
    A quick smile curved his mouth and lit his eyes. Heacted as if she’d just handed him a blue ribbon. “You think I’m good at what I do?”
    â€œYes, you’re very good at what you do. Of course, you don’t need me telling you that because if you weren’t, you wouldn’t still be employed, would you?”
    â€œTrue enough. I think it was the diner that set the stage for me. It was impossible to grow up there and not talk to people.”
    â€œYou didn’t catch the restaurateur bug?” He was definitely at ease in a kitchen. She’d wondered how she’d work with him distracting her, but it was just the opposite. She felt intensely tuned into everything she was doing.
    He shook his dark head. “I like it and I certainly appreciate good food but my passion is the written word. My degree was in literature. It’s not a particularly useful degree so I was damn lucky to get that internship and a job when I graduated.”
    â€œYou travel all the time?”
    â€œA fair amount. I’m gone at least a week out of every month.”
    â€œDoesn’t that make it difficult to have any kind of stable life? A girlfriend or a pet? And that’s not a criticism, just a question.”
    â€œTrue enough, I don’t have any pets but I get home often enough to my folks. They’ve got the whole shmeal. Corky, a West Highland terrier, is the family dog. Gabbie is the cat who allows us to fawn over her. My mother has a cockatiel, Albert, more commonly known as Big Al because he never shuts up. My brother and two sisters and their families live within a block of my parents andmy apartment’s close by. My nieces and nephews have ferrets, hamsters, cats, dogs and fish. Trust me, it’s a veritable zoo.”
    Wistfulness tugged at her. She’d always wanted to be part of a big family. Perhaps that was just the grass always being greener on the other side for an only child. And anyway, now in Good Riddance she had one huge extended family in the town itself. But that wasn’t exactly what she’d been asking about. “You definitely have pets at your disposal, even if you don’t own one yourself.”
    He grinned. “Were you trying to find out if I have a significant other?”
    God he was brash and bold…and utterly charming.
    â€œMaybe I was.” Gus had almost forgotten how delicious it was to flirt with a man, even one who could give her away if he blogged about her.
    â€œNo significant other. A couple of years ago I had girlfriend and things were getting fairly serious and then she wanted me to quit my job. She didn’t like the