Page 40 of Burning for Alexander
Kincaid looked at me for a beat. “I… don’t understand. I’m here to get food. For the station house.”
And now I was on fire. “Of course! Well, I’d better go in. My plan was to get back in time to be at Timber for the dinner shift.”
He nodded. “Sure. Same. Er, well, I need to be back in time to make dinner for the crew. I promised to bring rotisserie chicken and a big cake.”
We started making our way toward the entrance, still speaking as awkwardly as if we were two fourteen-year-olds introduced by our parents and told to “make friends.”
When we got to the giant trolleys, I grabbed one and glanced up at him in question, as if asking if the plan was to go our separate ways or shop together. He nodded and followed along, as if that somehow gave me a clear answer.
“Tell me about the band,” he said after we showed our membership cards to the greeter. “I gotta say, I’m surprised you drove all the way up here to listen to music. Why not offer to have the band play at Timber instead?”
“Uh, because bands like to be paid for their work?” I said with a small laugh. “And since I’m still paying back my startup and renovation loans, there’s not a lot of extra money for fancy shit like live music.”
He looked surprised. “Oh, I thought… well, it doesn’t matter what I thought.”
It did to me. It mattered a whole lot what he thought. “You can’t just leave that hanging there. Tell me.”
Judd threaded fingers through his hair. It was unusual to see him less than confident. “Sorry. I just heard you came from money. It wasn’t fair of me to make assumptions.”
I felt the familiar mix of embarrassment and self-consciousness creep up, and I struggled to shut them down. “You aren’t wrong. But I didn’t accept my family’s help when opening Timber. It was a source of many fights, actually. My parents weren’t happy about it.”
That was an understatement. When my uncle Jude tried to release my trust fund early, I refused that, too.
“Why didn’t you accept their help?”
It seemed a personal conversation to be having next to the Tupperware sets and mini Keurigs, but I decided to go ahead since the chances of anyone around us knowing who I was were slim.
“Lots of reasons. First, I guess because I wanted to prove to myself and to them that I could succeed on my own. A lot of restaurants fail in the first few years, and I knew that pressure would light a fire under my ass.” I shot him a sideways glance. “Not literally.”
He snorted.
“And then also because… my dads own a vineyard, and they wanted me to take over. So when I left Napa to do something different, something for me, I felt guilty. I didn’t want to ask them to help finance my abandonment, so to speak.”
Kincaid stopped and turned to face me with an odd expression. “Really? I had a friend in a similar situation. How did your parents take it?”
“They tried to be supportive—and don’t get me wrong, they have been—but I could see my dads’ disappointment. The vineyard’s been in our family for a long time, and neither of my sisters is interested in running it either. There’s a cousin who’s working there now who might end up getting the bug, but I don’t know.”
“You still feel guilty.” Kincaid’s hands looked huge, grabbing bags of apples and palming whole melons.
I shrugged as I reached for a large container of grapes. “My feelings on the topic are… complicated. Oh, hey, look, fire extinguishers! My local fire chief probably wants me to buy five hundred of these. Zip-tie them to every available surface just in case.”
“He sounds like someone who cares about the safety of the people around him,” he said with a firm nod.
“He sounds like a stickler for the rules.”
“Rules save lives, Marian. Don’t forget that.”
We moved from the produce to the milk as Kincaid continued loading up the cart. “I didn’t mean to pry about your family,” he said after a few minutes of silence.
“It’s not that. I just… don’t know what to say. I do feel guilty. They don’t want me to feel guilty. But you can’t just tell yourself how to feel or not feel. And I’m learning I don’t let things go very easily,” I confessed.
I felt his stare on the side of my face as I leaned in to get a giant block of American cheese slices I didn’t need.
“What else can’t you let go of?” His voice was deep and steady, like the man he seemed to be. Judd Kincaid carried a kind of commanding authority I couldn’t deny. It made me want to do exactly as he said. No matter what he said.
“You,” I said, laying it out there. “I can’t stop trying to figure you out. One minute, you seem interested, and the next, you’re not. I wish I didn’t give a shit, but there it is.”
Kincaid was silent for a long moment. Then he blew out a breath and said, “My feelings on the topic are… complicated.”
