Taste: A Love Story Read Free Page A

The Yard or Logan Rye up to this point. She’d left that entire mess behind in Paris.
    “Out of sight, out of mind,” she reminded herself every time she crammed some ugly thing to the back of her mind. She’d recently added the Marco Polo review to her mental back drawer, but now Logan Rye, a long-time back-drawer resident, was moving to the front of the class. Thanks to her parents. Damn it!
    She replied to her mother’s text:
     
    I’ll be there with bells on!! :) :) :)
     
    Christ, she actually nauseated herself sometimes. Kara let out a slow breath, took a sip of tea, and turned to her computer monitor. She tried to focus on proofing her review of Two Guys Taco Shop, but she kept reading the same sentence over and over again, so she accepted that focusing on anything other than the invitation was a waste of time.

    The weekend crowd flow was still a little patchy. Friday had been dead, but they were slammed on Saturday, which was strange because there was a local football game Friday and Logan assumed people would have— Aw hell , he thought, none of it made any sense.
    He simply needed to do the work, keep getting their name out there, and make kick-ass food, as Travis liked to put it. Logan poured himself a cup of coffee behind the bar.
    It was Monday morning, the start of a new week. He had spent yesterday in his garden, trying to clear his head and cultivating his own little farm. Although his father and brother would laugh their asses off if they heard him call it that. They ran a real farm—that’s what they would say, and they would be right—but Logan’s little piece of earth was still pretty impressive. What had started off as a garden had grown into something much more. Logan loved working the land and growing food. It seemed so vital, essential to who he was, and when most of his week was filled with Makenna barking at him to post more content to The Yard’s Facebook page or figuring out why most of his servers were either stoned or obnoxiously enthusiastic, his garden was a refuge.
    The carrots had come in beautifully and he now had more kale then he knew what to do with. He’d started some seeds for his next planting, and it seemed in another week or two, Travis would have the rutabaga he’d requested back in June. Travis had made Logan pork tenderloin with cider jus and rutabaga for his birthday and it was nothing short of amazing, so of course Logan wanted it featured on the fall menu.
    Almost every thought in Logan’s waking life was consumed by food—either planting it, sourcing it from somewhere that made him proud, or cooking it. He allowed a few hours for sleep, and then the rest of his “free” time was spent with his family, discussing, arguing, or doing his part at Ryeland Farms. He supposed it was a good life, but he was tired.
    “Stupid douche bag.”
    That was all Logan heard as he set his coffee down and rounded the bar toward the front of the restaurant.
    His sister, Makenna Rye Conroy, her long brown hair pulled into a knot, shouldered through the front door. Her muck boots told him she’d already been to the farm, most likely to help their father feed. The woman did more before noon than most people did all day. She was typing a message on her phone with one hand and in her arms she balanced a water bottle, folders, her purse, three large pieces of leather, and a pair of tennis shoes. She resembled a game of Jenga, and Logan wasn’t sure if he should touch anything for fear it would all come tumbling down. She anchored one hip on the closest barstool, thumbing her phone and still holding everything.
    “Did you want to me to take some of that, or am I the douche bag?”
    Nothing, just more thumbing and a large exhale of breath.
    “Kenna.” He tried again to get her attention as he locked the front door.
    “Hmm?” She finally dropped the contents of her arms on the bar in front of her. “Oh shit. Sorry.” Realizing she’d put shoes on the clean bar, she moved them