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  Feeding Her

  The LeClarks Trilogy - A Billionaire Culinary Romance

  Eva Windsor

  © Copyright 2019 - All rights reserved.

  It is not legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Discover More Romance

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Kaitlyn LeClark pushed her long, red hair out of her face, took one last look around her small Brooklyn apartment, and wondered for the millionth time whether she was making a mistake.

  I’m only subletting, she reminded herself. The charming one bedroom, one bathroom unit in the limestone townhouse was still hers. If she and Grayson crashed and burned in New Canton, she could come back to nurse her wounds under its high ceilings.

  And if they succeeded, well, she could still come back. Just because Grayson was hellbent on remaking a life in New Canton didn’t mean she had to. She told him she’d come back for a few months. Long enough to get LeClarks up and running again, to make the cookbook—that was it. Of course, she was also hoping it would be long enough for the residents of New Canton to eat their words, but it was the first two things that really mattered.

  Kaitlyn felt a familiar tightness between her shoulder blades that meant she was unconsciously tensing her body. She rolled her shoulders back and blew out an irritable breath. She wasn’t even back in New Canton yet and the town was already getting under her skin. If it weren’t for Grayson, she’d happily forget the nasty little pit of undeserved wealth and bitter privilege existed. She’d black it out on the map and tell people she’d been born and raised right here in Brooklyn. “LeClarks?” she’d say if someone happened to mention the restaurant. “Never heard of it.”

  Her phone rang, startling her. Kaitlyn looked down and saw it was Grayson. Of course it was her older brother calling to check on her. He was a restaurant manager by profession, and he couldn’t stop himself from managing everything else around him.

  “Kaitlyn,” he said calmly. “You’re going to miss your bus if you don’t move it.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Kaitlyn glanced first toward the clock that no longer hung on the wall and then down at the slim silver watch on her wrist. “I have—oh.”

  “Exactly.”

  “How do you know I’m not at the bus stop already?”

  Tolerant silence flowed down the line. Finally, he asked politely, “Are you?”

  “I almost am.”

  “And by almost, you mean…”

  “I’m still in my apartment,” she admitted, and he snorted. “But I’m leaving right now.” She grabbed up her duffle bag and swung the apartment door closed behind her loud enough for him to hear it. “See?”

  “I hope so,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at the station. We can grab dinner before I take you to your apartment.”

  “My apartment?” Kaitlyn asked, jogging down the twisting flight of stairs, her hand grazing over the carved wooden bannister just in case. “I figured I’d be crashing with you.

  “I thought so, too,” he said. “But something came up.”

  Kaitlyn’s eyebrows raised. “Something I assume you’re planning to tell me about?”

  “Definitely. Over dinner.”

  Kaitlyn hung up and stepped out of the townhouse’s front door. By habit, she mentally counted off the 18 steps to the sidewalk. Grayson thought it was obsessive how often she counted, but she didn’t have his exquisite, innate sense of timing. When he cooked, for instance, he knew the exact moment the bacon for beef bourguignon was perfectly sautéed. It was like food spoke to him. It didn’t speak to her, so she counted. And even now that she’d given up on having her own kitchen, she couldn’t break the habit.

  Normally Kaitlyn would have turned and given the three-story building a nostalgic last glance. After all, she’d called it home for the last four years—longer than anywhere since she left New Canton. But Grayson had done what he’d likely meant to and distracted her with the tantalizing bit of information that she was going to have her own apartment. She’d fully expected them to be sharing some cramped, two-bedroom, one bathroom with a view of the alley for the next few months. She had prepared herself for the inevitable misery that accompanied two chefs sharing one kitchen. She’d rearrange his spices so that they were sorted by expiration date rather than alphabetically. He’d criticize her beloved Masamoto knives and keep his Shun Kajis under lock and key. They’d always be fighting for stove time, and God help them both if the stove was electric. In short, she’d fully expected to be miserable.

  What financial wizardry could have possibly enabled Grayson to be able to afford two apartments along with the overwhelming expense of starting a restaurant?

  Kaitlyn felt a pleasant tingle as she considered the possibilities. Maybe he had gotten more investors than they’d expected. Or maybe he’d won the lottery. That actually seemed more likely than the New Canton elite embracing a LeClarks revival.

  Not for the first time, she wondered what Grayson was thinking. Yes, she’d loved LeClarks, too. It had been more than a business. It had been their family’s lifeblood—their inheritance. She’d fallen in love with cooking because she’d learned at the feet of the huge, Dutch oven her grandparents brought over from France. She’d wanted to be a chef because that’s what LeClarks were. For as many generations back as had been recorded, LeClarks had fed people. Her ancestors had worked in castles, owned inns. Then they’d owned a restaurant that had drawn people from all over the country. And finally, when they’d immigrated to the United States in the 1930s, they’d brought as much of that old building with them as they could. It had been exorbitantly expensive to bring the stove, and even more, later, to have the fountain from the courtyard shipped over, but they had done it because those things were a part of their family. And when somehow, the large, sprawling family had narrowed down to just Kaitlyn and Grayson’s father, the restaurant made up for the lack of aunts and uncles and cousins.

  Until it wasn’t theirs anymore. Until they’d been run out by the same people who’d celebrated their birthdays and anniversaries at LeClarks for as long as they could remember. Even as she boarded the bus, everything in Kaitlyn rebelled against the idea of returning.

  God, she hated New Canton.

  Landon James rumpled his hand through his dark hair, stared out the window of his luxurious apartment on the 54th floor of the most prestigious high rise in Manhattan, and wondered what he was thinking. Why was he leaving all this, even for a week, to return to New Canton? He certainly didn’t harbor any fondness for his hometown. In the last eight years, he’d returned approximately seven times. He’d endured five Christmases at the sprawling James’ estate that somehow never seemed big enough for both him and Randolph James. He’d gone back for one obligatory 70th birthday party at which he’d toasted his septuagenarian father and thought: to very few more. And three months later he’d gone back for Randolph’s funeral.

  Maybe that was why he was going back now. Because even the long arm of the James’ patriarch couldn’t escape the grave. But most likely, Landon knew, it was because the LeClarks were returning. And Christ, if the LeClarks could return after practically being run out with flaming pitchforks, he certainly could.

  And he had to. Landon didn’t explain himself to many people. No one, actually. But when Grayson had called to tell him that he wanted to revive LeClarks, Landon had to tell him. If Gray had blown up at Landon, Landon could have laughed and hung up without a shred of remorse. Maybe he’d have told his business partner and best friend, Carter, about it over drinks, and they’d have toasted with shots of Patron, the way they always did when they got the best of someone.

  But instead, Grayson had taken it the way he took all the shitty things that had happened over the last fifteen years. Without batting an eye. And Landon had found himself offering to come back. To help.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, shaking his head in wonder. When was the last time he’d offered to help anyone? What the hell was it about Grayson that brought out the better nature no one else believed existed? If Landon bothered to think about the question, he probably could have pinpointed the truth. That it wasn’t Grayson so much as the man he’d grown up to look and sound like. Arthur LeClark had been everything Landon’s father wasn’t—everything he abhorred, really. Randolph James valued power, wealth, and standing, and he didn’t care how he got it. Arthur LeClark hadn’t had any of that and didn’t want it. He valued decency, honesty, and kindness. And for a while, Landon had thought those things meant something.

  Then Arthur LeClark had been run out of New Canton, died at the age of 55 with barely a cent to his name,
and Landon realized that his father had been right all along.

  Decency was bullshit.

  Landon’s phone rang, and he looked down to see the name of his assistant on the Caller ID.

  “What?” He barked into the phone.

  “Sir, the chopper is on the roof. It’s ready when you are.”

  “I’m coming.” Landon hung up and took one last look at the Manhattan skyline. It would be seven days before he saw glass and concrete buildings towering against the blue sky, the yellow snake of taxis below, the carefully contained rectangle of greenery that was Central Park. Until then, his lip curled, it would be low-slung rooftops; the sleek, discrete Mercedes; and grass.

  God, Landon hated New Canton.

  Chapter Two

  The bus ride was three hours long, and Kaitlyn had been determined to work for all of it. The Confident Cook, the latest cookbook she helped develop, was in the final proof stage. Once, Kaitlyn had relaxed by this point. She’d trusted in the careful writing, the thorough copy editing, and the exhaustive first proofread to create a flawless product. Now she knew that there could—and likely would—be mistakes even in the finished product. They’d be minor, and they’d be fixed in the second edition (if they were lucky enough to get a second edition), but she was determined to make sure as few as possible went to press. This was her last project before LeClarks, and three hours should have been just enough time to make sure no teaspoons had been confused with tablespoons and that the diacritics made it over the sautées and flambés.

  She settled into her window seat, nodded politely at the older woman who sat beside her, and fell asleep instead. She fell so deeply asleep she didn’t hear the bus driver when he announced the first two stops and would have slept through her own if the elderly woman hadn’t tapped her shoulder politely and asked, “Is this you, dear?”

  Kaitlyn peeled her forehead off the window and looked out of it woozily. Yes, there was the sign for Springfield, Connecticut—the closest bus stop to New Canton—and there was Grayson, tapping impatiently on the glass from the outside. He mouthed thank you to the woman and rolled his eyes at Kaitlyn.

  “Get off the bus,” he said clearly enough that she heard him through the glass.

  “I am,” she said loudly, startling people around her. She grabbed her duffle and hurried down the aisle and through the accordion doors.

  “I had to get my stuff together,” she said to Grayson when the bus had pulled away.

  “Right, and wake up,” he said.

  “I wasn’t asleep.”

  “You left drool on the glass, Kait.”

  Kaitlyn doubted that was true, but Grayson was swinging her duffle bag onto his own shoulder and saying, “Come on, we’re over here.” So she didn’t bother to continue arguing the point.

  Grayson led them across the parking lot to the far end where no other cars were parked except a dilapidated Honda Civic that perhaps had once been tan. Certainly, it had once boasted two side view mirrors that stayed on by themselves, without the help of what must have been an entire roll of duct tape.

  “This is yours,” Grayson said, jimmying open the trunk and tossing her bag in. “Mine is green. I got kind of a two for one deal.”

  “Is this a joke?” Kaitlyn asked politely. She’d expected a beater car, something Grayson would have to change the oil in every month to keep it running and they’d keep a gallon of water in the backseat for the inevitable times when the engine would overheat. But for god sakes, she’d thought it would have windows. This one had a black trash bag in the back passenger side in lieu of glass.

  Grayson eased the trunk closed gently and looked relieved when it stayed latched. “It’s more of a gift. You’re welcome.”

  “It’s vehicular manslaughter in the making,” Kaitlyn corrected. “You can’t be serious.”

  “You’re quite the car expert for someone who hasn’t had one in four years,” Grayson said, getting in the passenger seat.

  Kait followed him. “I’m not driving this thing, Grayson. I’ll take the bus.”

  “Oh right,” he tried to pull the door closed, but she wouldn’t budge. “I forgot about New Canton’s extensive public transportation system.”

  “I’ll walk.”

  “I hope you’ve taken up marathons. You’re six miles from the restaurant.”

  Kaitlyn hissed in frustration, and then she saw something that made her heart leap in triumph. “Grayson, I couldn’t drive this thing if I wanted to. It’s a stick shift.”

  He finally succeeded in pushing her out of the way and closing the door. He cranked the window down just enough to say, “I know. That’s why I’m going to teach you to drive in this parking lot first.”

  Landon never drove himself if he could help it, but flying was another story. The sky was the only place he could really relax. Once that place had been a massive kitchen that was a mix of old country and top-of-the-line appliances, but that had been taken from him. It had been three stifling years before he’d discovered the sky.

  He rose high, high above the city, feeling his stomach tighten with excitement as the roof of the building dropped away and the helicopter slid sideways through the sky before righting itself. Flying never got old. It was a two-hour flight to the helipad in New Canton, and for that 120 minutes, not a soul could reach him. Not his assistant, not Carter, not his mother, not even the ever-present specter of his father.

  So it irritated him when his brain conjured the man anyway. When it wondered idly: What would he think of the LeClarks returning to New Canton? Randolph wouldn’t have let it happen, it was that simple. He was like an octopus with slimy tentacles in every aspect of New Canton’s industry. He’d have blocked the lease, cut off the loan, and made it so the LeClarks had to sleep on the streets if they wanted to lay their heads down in the city limits. Grayson had known it, too. That was why he’d waited until the old man had died. Landon had heard it in Grayson’s voice when his old friend called to tell him he was coming back. Grayson wasn’t asking permission, that was never his style, but he was seeing what he was up against. How closely had the son followed in his father’s footsteps? Had he inherited the grudge along with the business, or did some small scrap of goodwill still exist between them?

  Landon had made it clear that it was the latter, though it wasn’t altruism that made the decision. If there was an afterlife—and Landon hoped to God there was a Hell—his father would have a heart attack all over again to see the LeClarks re-ensconced in New Canton.

  Unexpectedly, his mind veered to Grayson’s sister, Kaitlyn. The LeClarks had left the day after her thirteenth birthday, and he remembered her as being a scrap of a kid. More untamed red hair than flesh and blood, with witchy blue eyes that were too wide for her fine-boned face. She’d had a love-hate battle with that hair, he remembered. She spent half of her time hiding in it, like a wild creature in a forest, and half the time ruthlessly scraping it back under a hairnet.

  “If a single strand gets in a customer’s plate,” Grayson had warned, “I’ll shave it off in your sleep.”

  Funny how that had turned out to be the least of their problems.

  Landon had found her website online, so he knew the hair was still red, though she’d tamed it into smooth waves, and she’d grown into those witchy blue eyes. She’d grown up nicely, he’d thought without much interest, and then skimmed the content. She graduated from the Culinary Institute and worked at La Fontaine for two years—expected. But then she’d left La Fontaine and the kitchen altogether in favor of helping chefs write cookbooks—that was unexpected. The Kaitlyn he remembered couldn’t have been pried away with a stainless steel spatula.

  Landon banked left, following the coast. Far below him, crashing waves formed white crescents in the light blue water. They fanned out, subsided against the shore, and then gathered themselves up again for the next onslaught.