A Beauty for the Billionaire by Elizabeth Bevarly

Author:Elizabeth Bevarly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2016-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

Six

“So? Come on. What did you think?”

Chloe looked at Hogan from her seat on his right at his gigantic dinner table. He was beaming like a kid who’d just presented for show-and-tell a salamander he fished out of the creek all by himself.

“You liked it, didn’t you?” he asked. “I can tell, because you cleaned your plate. Welcome to the clean plate club, Chloe Merlin.”

“It was...acceptable,” she conceded reluctantly.

He chuckled. “Acceptable. Right. You had second helpings of everything, and you still cleaned your plate.”

“I just wanted to be sure I ate enough for an accurate barometer of the taste combinations, that’s all.”

“And the taste combinations were really good, weren’t they?”

All right, fine. Taco meatloaf had a certain je ne sais quoi that was surprisingly appealing. So did the carrots. And even the biscuits. Chloe had never eaten anything like them in her life. Mémée had never allowed anything frozen or processed in the house when Chloe was growing up. Her grandmother had kept a small greenhouse and vegetable garden in the backyard, and what she hadn’t grown herself, she’d bought at the weekly visits she and Chloe made to the farmers’ markets or, in the coldest months, at the supermarket—but organic only.

Chloe had just never felt the urge to succumb to the temptation of processed food, even if it was more convenient. She enjoyed prepping and cooking meals. She enjoyed buying the ingredients fresh. The thought of scooping food out of bags and jars and boxes was as alien to her as having six limbs. It wasn’t that she was a snob about food or cooking, it was just that...

Okay, she was kind of a snob about food and cooking. Clearly, her beliefs could use some tweaking.

“You know,” she told Hogan, “I could make some taco seasoning myself for you to use next time, from my own spice collection. It would have a lot less sodium in it.”

He grinned. “That would be great. Thanks.”

“And salsa is easy to make. I could make some of that fresh, the next time you want to cook this.”

“I’d love that.”

“Even the biscuits could be made—”

“I have to stop you there,” he interjected. “I’m sorry, but the biscuits have to be that specific kind. They’re what my mom always made. It’s tradition.”

And it was a taste of his childhood. Chloe got that. She felt the same way about gratin Dauphinois.

“Okay,” she conceded. “But maybe fresh carrots next time, instead of frozen?”

He thought about that for a minute. “Okay. I mean, we already changed those anyway, since that stuff you call brown sugar is actually beige sugar, and you didn’t have any margarine. By the way, what kind of person doesn’t have margarine in their kitchen?”

Before, Chloe would have answered a question like that with some retort about hexane and free radicals. Instead, she said, “Butter is better for you.”

She managed to stop herself before adding, And you need to stay healthy, Hogan. Because what she would have added after that was I need you to be healthy, Hogan.

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