The Perfect Ingredient (Dare Valley) Read Free Page B

addiction to his smile, his badass attitude, and lust over his rock-hard body. Even laugh as he made innuendos about food—something he was famous for. Along with the swearing.
    “So tell me what really made you so afraid earlier?” he asked, something she hadn’t been expecting.
    “It’s nothing,” she said, shoving another bite in her mouth. No way she was talking about it with him. First, it was personal, and second, he was alpha enough to handle it for her, which she didn’t want or need. As she’d told Rhett, she was dealing with it.
    After her violent past, she needed to be strong enough to handle it on her own.
    “I might not have known your real name until a few weeks ago, but I know you don’t scare easy. At least not so much that you’d keep a Louisville Slugger by the door.”
    Well, she didn’t keep it by the door. She kept it by the bed, and she’d run for it the minute she heard the car in the driveway. Terrance was wrong. She might put up a brave front, but she scared way too easily after being stalked by an ex-boyfriend while in her M.B.A. program at Harvard.
    “I don’t want to talk about it,” she fired back. “And it’s not why you came over anyway. Aren’t you going to ask me what you came here to ask?”
    He set his spoon aside, and she watched his ice cream continue to melt under the heat of the bananas. “Why did you leave like you did? Was it because I punched that guy who put his hands on you and called you a slut? You told me you weren’t upset about it.”
    “I don’t have a very good reason.” At least not one she could share. His violence hadn’t been directed at her, but it had horrified her nonetheless.
    “I deserved better than that note, dammit.”
    When he drew another hundred out of his wallet, she had to stop from reaching for his hand to comfort him.
    “We both knew our time together would end.” Except she hadn’t wanted that, which had only scared her more, giving her another reason to flee.
    His mouth quirked up. “Did we? It might have started out that way, but I thought…”
    Her heart thudded in her chest, and she set her spoon aside too, her appetite gone. He’d thought they had a future? Mr. No Commitment Chef T himself?
    “I’m sorry.”
    His eyes flicked up to hers, and inside their green depths she saw the hurt and vulnerability he never showed to the world. “Me too. Why didn’t you tell me about Elizabeth? I would have kept your real name secret. Rhett’s my friend too. I mean, I understand why you wanted to keep it quiet that you and your friend, Raven…ah, Jane, were his poker scouts and not just hot babes. The whole masquerade was pretty genius if you ask me. But I deserved to know.”
    Their disguise had been genius. The three of them had concocted the plan together after Rhett offered them jobs as his scouts. Elizabeth and Jane, both Harvard M.B.A. graduates, had been eager to escape their lives—Elizabeth, because of Vince, the man who’d stalked her and told her he would kill her if she went out with another man and Jane, because of her controlling parents, who wanted her to work on her father’s political campaign. The arrangement had served them all well.
    “Until last month, no one knew but our small circle. I couldn’t tell you because it would have endangered the people I love most in the world.”
    He picked his spoon back up and made circles in the melting ice cream. “I suppose we didn’t talk much about the past when we were together.”
    No, but she’d wanted to, and it had been a first. Relationships didn’t work, at least not in her experience. Certainly her parents hadn’t been happy. She’d sworn never to make herself vulnerable to another man after the disaster with Vince.
    Yet Terrance had threatened to peel back all her barriers.
    Which was, of course, part of the reason she’d left.
    “Why are you here, Terrance?” she finally asked.
    “At your house or in Dare Valley?”
    “Dare Valley.”
    He