Page 26 of Lilacs and Leather
“No, I haven’t been stalking you,” I bluster, my cheeks heating even more.
Rhett throws his head back and laughs again. “It’d be okay if you had. But to answer your question, technically, this is my restaurant. Or at least, I’m the owner on paper. Lucas is the kitchen manager here, so he runs the kitchen, curates the menu, and works with the restaurant manager to keep the doors open and tables full.”
“What about the—”
“Fancy ones? He does own those, but mostly leaves the everyday operations to others. Luc owns three standalone restaurants and works really closely with the management of the hotels and Bright Hills on the menus and what have you. He tends to bounce around, filling in where he’s needed, but this is his primary location,” Rhett goes on, pride in his eyes.
“How does he have time to sleep?” I ask, unable to keep the astonishment out of my voice.
“I have to tie him down and make him some days. But I thoughtyou and Iwere on this date,” Rhett says.
I blush at the absolute seriousness of his voice as he casually mentions tying someone to a bed, and I feel my lower belly clench. I clear my throat and turn back to the menu.
“Do you order a surprise meal often?” I ask, looking at my options.
He shrugs with one shoulder. “If there’s a dish that Luc wants to test before adding it to the menu, I’ll try it, or if I’m not having a craving for anything in particular,” Rhett says.
I smile and soften a little. We place our order, a seafood pasta dish for me, and Rhett decides to let Lucas choose. Conversation picks up again, and I learn that they actually named this restaurant after Rhett’s grandmother, whose kitchen door was always open to anyone who needed a hot meal. In her honor, any food waste that can be salvaged is donated, and the restaurant acts as a soup kitchen for the homeless once a month.
Talk is easy with Rhett, and I find myself lost in the flow of his voice more than once as he tells me about his life. I knew from the article that he owns a building and design firm, but he tells me that designing houses is half of his job. The other half is research into historic buildings that are being considered for restoration, trying to find photos and accounts of how the buildings used to look to aid in bringing them back to their former glory.
I tell him about my childhood growing up in a small town about an hour from New Orleans. The pack I grew up in is old-fashioned in the extreme, though I’d only realized this after I left. Most modern packs are made up of friends or lovers who, more often than not, had the same designation. Marriage laws are still catching up with the times, and allow for just one legally recognized spouse, and bonds can only be formed between alphas and their betas/omegas. Forming a pack has become a suitable alternative for people who want a deeper connection with those that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to marry or bond with. Pack mates have some of the same legal rights as spouses or bond mates, though the exact details of the specific tax benefits never really interested me enough to bother remembering them.
My family, however, has stuck to a fundamentalist, outdated version of pack dynamics, subscribing to a rigid hierarchy that’s more dogma than anything beneficial. As the eldest, my father is the prime alpha, with his omega mate and wife. His two alpha brothers, with their respective beta mates and wives, and his beta sister and her beta husband, are under him. My brothers and I are beneath my aunts and uncles, with the rest of the cousins below us. There are some business associates and employees in the pack, but they are at the very bottom of the pecking order. I’m one of three omega children born into the family pack, with one other omega marrying her way in through a cousin. I never spent much time with any of my extended family growing up, even the omegas, as my dad was always weirdly paranoid about other alphas being around “his omegas.”
Rhett always looks me in the face when I speak, giving me his undivided attention without judgement or interruption. His questions always feel considered, and my chest is warm and light as he makes me feel heard. When he responds to my stories with his own anecdotes, it never feels like he’s trying to one-up me, but just relating to my experience with his own. He laughs at even my stupidest jokes, and I sit a little straighter, leaning toward him, captivated.
“So, have you ever been in love?” Rhett asks when there’s a brief lull.
I freeze, my smile slipping for a moment. I pull my hands into my lap and sit back in my chair. “Aren’t past relationships one of those topics that you’re not supposed to talk about on a first date? Like politics or religion?” I ask back, chuckling nervously.
“I suppose. But you can be in love without being in a romantic relationship,” he counters, taking a sip of his drink.
I shrug, conceding a little to his point. “I thought I was in love once. He wanted to get married,” I admit, playing with the edge of my napkin in my lap.
“And I take it you didn’t?” Rhett asks gently.
I shake my head. “Not to him. He wasn’t who I thought he was. I thought the bad bits were the exception, but it turned out that the nice guy was the mask all along. It took rejecting his proposal to find that out.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, Lydia,” Rhett says softly, taking my hand from my lap and holding it on top of the table. He rubs my knuckles with his thumb, and I feel the tension leaving my stomach at the soothing touch.
I shrug. “What about you?” I ask, trying to change the subject.
“I am in love right now,” he replies without missing a beat.
I furrow my brow. “Then why am I here?” I ask hesitantly.
“Because no one person should be solely responsible for another’s happiness and wellbeing,” Rhett replies.
He pulls his hand away as our food arrives, giving Lottie a small smile. I wait until she’s out of earshot before turning back to Rhett.
“I don’t understand. If you’re in love, it means that you’ve found your other half, doesn’t it,” I question as I start to eat.
“People aren’t jigsaw puzzles, love. We don’t have missing pieces, and, even if we did, I don’t think it’s fair to look for them in another person. It’s setting both parties up for bitterness and heartache when one inevitably asks for something the other can’t give,” Rhett says, cutting into some sort of steak dish.
I hum with a frown, taking a bite as I consider his point. But my mind gets immediately sidetracked as a culinary explosion fills my mouth. I let out a small moan, closing my eyes as I chew. The scallops and shrimp are bursting with flavor, and not even the slightest bit rubbery, while the sauce adds just the right level of texture and flavor to round out the bite. I look back at Rhett and see he’s staring at me, his fork halfway to his mouth. I blush a little at the blazing heat flickering his eyes, tucking my chin to my chest as I swallow.
“It’s really good,” I mumble, taking another small bite.