Not Quite Enough (Not Quite #3)(29)
Author: Catherine Bybee

“I had my share of those days. Gets old after a while. My mom taught us all the basics.”

“Good for her,” Monica said with a smile. “Have you talked to her since the quake?”

His silence had her glancing over his way.

“My parents passed a few years ago.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Were they young?” From the look on his face, the memory of their passing still hurt.

“Yeah.”

Monica pushed on to another topic. He obviously didn’t talk about his parents any more than she did hers. She got that. “Jessie was the cook in our family. We were so broke most of the time eating out wasn’t an option.”

Trent laughed. “And now she’s married to a Morrison.”

Monica opened the can of chicken and dumped it into a pan over the stove. “That’s a crazy story.”

“What is?”

“How she and Jack met. She thought he was a temporary waiter at The Morrison, just passing through. He didn’t tell her he owned the damn hotel.”

“And that mattered?”

“Well yeah. She had Danny to think about. A bad high school decision made her a single mom early on. She always seemed to attract the biggest losers. Then comes Jack pretending to be a bum… well, actually, he didn’t really pose as a bum, but he knew she wanted to find someone who had it together, which in his head meant she wanted someone with money.”

“Jack has money,” Trent said.

“No guy wants to think a woman is with him for the money. So he lied.”

“He told her he was broke?” There was laughter in Trent’s voice.

“He omitted the truth. He didn’t say he was broke.” Monica stirred the chicken and added spices she found above the stove. “Jack was determined to make her fall for him. She was determined to ignore him.”

“I take it that didn’t work.”

“Not for long.” She poked her head back into the cupboard and found a package of tortillas. “You’re holding out on me, Barefoot.”

He smiled. “Forgot those were in there.”

She glanced on the package for an expiration date. Still a few days off. Fresh eggs were cracked and sizzling in the pan as she finished her sister’s story. “Eventually she and Jack hooked up and she found out about who he really was. Ticked her off at first, too.”

“No one likes to be lied to.”

“No. I get why he did, though. The guy has some serious cash. I think there was more than one woman in his life who wanted to marry him just for the money. That has to be hard on a guy.”

“That’s very forgiving of you.” Trent had rested his chin in his hands as he watched her in his kitchen. He had this silly grin on his face that made her wonder exactly what was going on inside his head.

She pulled two plates off a shelf and scooped her chicken omelets onto them.

“They are crazy about each other. I knew he was the right guy for her long before she did. It’s easy to forgive him.” Monica turned off the stove and brought the plates over to him. She topped off their coffee before taking the seat to his side.

“Were you a short-order cook before you became a nurse?”

“I waited tables a little when I was going to school.” She poured salsa on her eggs and took the first bite. “Hmmm.”

Trent approved with a quick thumbs-up when his mouth was full. “Good,” he mumbled around the food.

“Everything’s good when you’re starving. It needs cheese.” But it was still the best meal she’d had in forever.

“It’s perfect.”

Not perfect, but it was nice he approved. “Did you have any crappy jobs growing up?”

He shook his head. “Not really. Went to college after high school, then straight into the family business.”

“The helicopters?”

He took another bite and finished swallowing before he elaborated. “I floated around the office first. Marketing, public relations, that sort of thing.”

“Doesn’t sound like you had much of a choice. Was it a foregone conclusion that you’d work for the family?” She wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than having no direction from your parents.

“Seemed a waste of time to look for work somewhere else. Besides, if the corporate side wasn’t for me, I could always fly.”

“So you took to flying.”

He finished his breakfast and pushed his plate away. “I’ve always loved flying. Helicopters, jets… prop jobs. Doesn’t matter.”

“Ever worry you’ll crash?” It scared the hell out of her just thinking of spending so much time in the air.

“Ever think you’re going to bite it when you’re driving a car?” he asked instead of answering her question.

“No, not really.”

“Same thing applies with flying. The only day I thought about crashing was the first day I was up there. After that, it didn’t cross my mind. The best way to dispose of that fear is taking the controls.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Suit yourself. But you seem like the kind of girl who likes to take control. Might cure that height fear you have.”

“If God wanted us to fly, he’d have given us wings.”

Trent laughed. “Or pilots.”

Monica relaxed in her chair and stretched her arms over her head.

The movement caught Trent’s attention and his appreciative smile spread over his lips. He wore a T-shirt and shorts, his normal attire since she’d met him. His hair could use a trim, but he didn’t carry the surfer look from back home. “Well, Mr. Testosterone, what does one do on this island when they’re not flying tourists at death-defying heights, or cleaning up nature’s mess?”

She wasn’t sure if he had a desire to pick up where their kiss had left off the day before. He hadn’t so much as touched her since helping her into his home the night before. Of course, she was doing her best zombie interpretation at the time, and wouldn’t have been able to do much more than snore in the poor guy’s arms.

He rubbed his chin as if in thought. “There’s usually plenty of steel band music and rum concoctions to entertain on a free day.”

“Not a lot of that going on,” she said.

He swiveled in his chair, his knee nudged against hers. The contact was about as innocent as it could get, but her breath caught anyway. When his hand dropped to her thigh, she knew he hadn’t forgotten their kiss or his promise to make up for his mistake about Jack. “If you come up with some cheesy line about making our own music…”