French Roast by Ava Miles Read Free Book Online Page A

garlic and thyme. The potatoes couldn’t have held less than a stick of butter. And together, they gave her a foodie power-packed punch. Her eyes closed in sheer delight.
    “God,” she cried out, awash in a food stupor.
    Even without looking, she felt his body tense beside her. Her lashes fluttered open. As she watched, his fingers flexed on his leg like he was itching to grab her. She cleared her throat in an attempt to get a grip. “Did you get Mutt in New York?”
    His fork paused before it reached his mouth. Then he took a bite and chewed. “No. My work schedule was too crazy for a dog. The Chop House doesn’t stay open late, so I decided to go for it when I moved back. Plus, I can run home on my break to let him out. He’s pretty easy going, and he’s good company.” Brian speared a potato. “For a while, the only people I thought would ever talk to me in this town were Mutt, Jemma, and Pete.”
    As she fiddled with the watercress, some of the magic of the night faded. Their past was a minefield, and if they were going to move forward, she needed to stop being afraid it would explode. “Bri, I need to ask you something,” she whispered. “Did you go to New York and not Denver because of me?”
    His eyes narrowed as if he didn’t understand the question. Then he sighed. “How long have you thought that?”
    “Since you left.”
    “Are you sure you want to know the answer?”
    Her heart fluttered like butterfly wings, fragile and slow. “Uh-huh.” Maybe. Not really.
    He swiveled on his barstool and took her hand. “You thought that it would be perfect if we both went to school in Denver, but I knew that if I did, we would have gotten serious. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to give you what you needed. I knew how demanding culinary training was going to be.”
    “So that would be a yes.” Jeez, the sharp pain in her heart made her blink.
    “We were so young, Jill. My parents married right out of high school and look how that turned out.”
    They were nothing like his parents. A spurt of anger rose up in her. “We might have been young, but I knew what I wanted.” You.
    He let go of her hand. “You didn’t know what you wanted to do for the rest of your life. Heck, you didn’t even really want to go to college. You figured things out just like I did.”
    “And what did you figure out?” she asked, hoping that he would give her a straight answer.
    The way those Bengal-tiger blue eyes studied her made her want to turn away. “I figured out I want to be a chef more than anything.”
    The fiery determination made his eyes look like blue flames. “Why did you come back if New York was your oyster?”
    Brian speared the chicken. “Because I missed my friends.” He cleared his throat and looked away. “I wanted us to be friends again. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, even after so much time apart. We were friends for eighteen years. It was hard to lose a relationship like that. I’d…never had what we had…with anyone else.”
    God, she’d waited forever to hear him say that. “I missed you, too. I blamed myself for you leaving.”
    He spun her around and pulled her against his chest before she could blink. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Jill, I needed to prove to everybody—and maybe even to myself after everything my fucking dad used to say—that there was nothing wrong about a guy wanting to cook French food. Hell, if they could feel the heat off the grill, feel the sweat dripping off them in gallons, hear the cursing, and heft the pots as heavy as dumbbells, they’d realize how much of a man’s world a restaurant kitchen is.”
    His pine and musk aftershave tickled her nose. “You didn’t work with any women?”
    His fingers tensed on her back. “Ah…some. Like I said, the kitchen’s mostly a man’s world.”
    She let the sexist perspective go and drew back. “So you weren’t driven away by some mystery woman or anything?”
    His head darted back. “Why would you