She gestured him inside, then closed the door. “Are you okay?”
Damn, did he have “pissed off” written on his forehead? She’d asked him the same thing when he’d picked Tyler up. This time her words managed to cut through his bad mood like a knife through butter.
He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “Yeah. Tyler rarely spends the night with a friend on nights that I have him. It just caught me off guard.”
“What was it you had planned to do with him?”
Elisa’s breasts smashed together when she crossed her arms, momentarily distracting him from her question. “What’s that?”
One side of her mouth kicked up. “Earlier you said you had planned something for the two of you.”
Oh, that. Yeah, that had been his last desperate attempt at holding on to his son’s childhood.
He lifted his shoulders to feign indifference, even though he didn’t feel that way. “I was just going to take him out to play catch. We used to do it all the time.”
Elisa’s bottomless eyes softened. “That’s really sweet.”
“Unfortunately, ‘sweet’ doesn’t get you very far compared to Rock Band.” Was he already the uncool dad?
“What kid can resist Rock Band? I bet if you offer to take him out tomorrow, he’ll go.”
Would he though? At one time Tyler would have jumped at the opportunity to play catch with his dad. Now Brody had no one to blame but himself for letting too much time go by. He cleared his throat and tried to steer the conversation in a different direction. “Do you have those pictures for me?”
Elisa regarded him a moment longer with those watchful eyes of hers, eyes that saw way too deeply into him. “Sure, they’re over here.”
Thankfully she didn’t pursue the subject, for which he was grateful. Right now he lacked the words to properly express his feelings. Brody hadn’t been born with the ability to put his thoughts into words, which was something Kelly had constantly complained about.
Elisa’s knee-weakening flowery scent teased him as he followed her farther into the house. Something about the way she smelled always made him think of wildflowers on the Wyoming prairies.
On her kitchen table was a thick envelope. She picked it up, pulled out several proof sheets, and handed them to him.
“Be brutally honest,” she said. “If you don’t think they work, we can do them again.”
The photos looked like they belonged in a gourmet magazine. Each picture captured the delicious essence and perfection of the dish. This woman really didn’t know how good she was. Brody would be damn proud to frame every one of these and hang them front and center in the restaurant.
“These are outstanding,” he said as he glanced from one photo to the next.
“I thought they turned out better, but I wanted to make sure you were happy with them.”
He took his attention off the pictures and placed it on Elisa. Her teeth worried her bottom lip like a child seeking approval from a parent. Her uncertainty was the sexiest yet sweetest thing he’d ever seen.
“I think you did a perfect job with them,” he reassured her.
Her eyes lit up when she smiled. “Thanks. Looks like you were doing pretty good business today.”
He nodded. “Our numbers have been slowly climbing over the past week. I just hope it’s a sign of things to come and not just a fluke. But as good as these are, we have a little problem.
“Another one?” she answered with a grin.
He set the photos on the table and ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Anthony doesn’t want his food photographed.”
Elisa blinked her big brown eyes and shook her head. Her disbelief was as evident as his. “Why?”
“I think it boils down to his confidence. And fear.” Anthony had had a lot tossed at him in the past couple of days, and thus far he’d handled it pretty well. But when Brody had mentioned publishing the pictures in a county-wide magazine, the ex–air force pilot had become more nervous than a nun in a porn shop.
“What, fear of failing?” Elisa wanted to know.
“I think it has more to do with my father.”
Her dark brows pulled together. “He’s afraid of your father?”
“Well, yeah, who can blame him? My dad can be pretty intimidating.” He leaned against the edge of the table and crossed his arms over his chest. “Anthony knows what’s on the line here. I don’t think he thinks he can handle the pressure of bringing the restaurant back and have my father breathing down his neck. Anthony saw what happened to Travis.”
“So, Anthony is afraid he’s putting his job on the line. Basically he wants to play it safe.”
Brody nodded. “Pretty much.”
“Then maybe you should have the sous-chefs prepare the food for the magazine. Give Anthony more time to ease into things. Maybe it’s just too much too fast.”
Brody rubbed a hand along his whisker-covered jaw, thinking he desperately needed a shave. It seemed for every one step forward he took, he had to turn around and take two steps back. How many steps backward could he take before his old man gave him the boot? Brody got that Anthony was just as terrified as he, given what had happened with Travis and the chef before him. The bartender had a living to make and couldn’t do so if he got fired. Somehow Brody had to convince Anthony that the failure would be on Brody’s own shoulders and not on his.
But they wouldn’t fail. They couldn’t fail.
“We could do a mock shoot, then show the pictures to your father,” Elisa said as she took a step toward him. “Maybe he could put Anthony’s fears at ease. Or you could strike a deal with your dad.”
He eyed her as she kept coming closer, bringing with her the intoxicatingly sexy scent that always threatened to bring him to his knees. “What kind of deal?” he asked on a near growl.
For a moment she didn’t respond, but hesitated just in front of him. Perhaps she’d picked up on his pulsing desire to scratch all the restaurant talk and just take her already. The table was right there. To hell with a bed. She chewed her lower lip. “I was thinking you could convince your father not to hold Anthony solely responsible if anything goes wrong.”
One side of his mouth kicked up. “In other words, you want me to make my old man promise that he’ll fire only me.”
“Of course, that’s not what I want—”
He held his hand up at the wide-eyed look on her face. “That’s okay. It’s the way it should be.”
She watched him for a moment, sweeping those dark eyes in slow perusal down his body as though he were Grade A Choice beef. Maybe she could be his steak sauce and they could just slather all over each other.
“I’m sorry you have to go through all this. I thought maybe you were in the clear.”
“So did I,” he agreed. “But this is part of my job and I have to figure out where to go from here.”
“I bet if you unleash that Brody charm, Anthony will come around,” she added with a sly grin.
“You think I have enough charm for that?”
One of her perfectly shaped brows lifted. “I think you know you do.”
He graced her with a smile, wondering what else he could get her to admit. How about how much she wanted him? “I know. I just wanted to hear you say it.”
“And I just fell right into that trap, didn’t I?” Even as she said the words, her cheeks colored. His satisfaction at seeing that eased the tension in his shoulders.
He moved one shoulder in a casual shrug. “Actually, you set the trap up for yourself by bringing my charm into it in the first place.” He paused and gave her the same scorching look she’d given him. “Not that I blame you.”
Elisa shook her head, but he detected a slight turn up of her lips. “Okay, Mr. Smooth, let’s try to keep the conversation on track. Have you thought about advertising? I mean other than running this article.”