Page 47 of Turn Up The Heat

What the hell was hedoing?

Shane cleared his throat in a rough growl and took another bite of his apple before finishing abruptly. “So, it might not be glamorous, or pay a hundred and fifty bucks an hour, but I don’t want to be anywhere else. The city and I don’t mix.”

Bellamy gave him a pretty smile, and his edginess fell a notch. She scooped up the other apple to cradle it in the heart of her palm. “Mmm. Well, it seems you’ve got it all figured out. I wish I was so lucky.”

He pulled back to look at her down to earth expression, so honest and clean as she took a huge bite. A stream of juice trickled down her chin, eliciting a self-conscious smile from her lips. She rolled her eyes and wiped her chin with the back of her hand before taking another bite.

A warm, unexpected feeling spread out in Shane’s chest like it wanted to settle in for a nice, long stay, and he rubbed the spot over his sternum.

He tipped his head at her and shrugged. Time to go vague. “Luck is what you make it.”

Bellamy’s smile became wistful. “I’m envious.”

“Of what? Me?” That just seemed ass-backwards.

“You sound so surprised,” she said, gesturing at him with the apple in her hand.

“I just find it hard to believe that someone like you is envious of her mechanic, that’s all.” He leaned into the workbench to unwrap the sandwich, sliding the larger half toward her on the napkin.

“What do you mean, someone like me?” The slight bristle to her words was offset by the curiosity on her face, as if she wasn’t sure which one she wanted to go with.

The edges of Shane’s lips inched upward at her feistiness. “You just seem to have it all together. I mean, getting your MBA is no joke.”

She switched the halves of the sandwich and slid the bigger one back toward him before answering. “Getting my MBA was a lot of work, but I was lucky. I had a knack for it. My parents never outwardly pressured me to go to grad school, but they’ve owned their own business since I was a kid. They built if from the bricks up. Getting my MBA just made sense at the time.” Bellamy picked at the lettuce on her sandwich, putting it on the napkin in front of her.

“But now you’d rather do something else.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” She shrugged. “It’s not like I really have the experience to switch careers. I have to do what I’m good at.”

A flicker crossed her face, barely a whisper of suggestion, but Shane recognized it. He tipped his chin at her. “If none of that mattered, what would you do?”

“It does matter,” she pointed out, finally taking a bite of her sandwich.

Damn, her toughness knew no bounds. Shane cracked a half-smile to try and loosen her up. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you kind of suck at the hypothetical game.”

Bingo. She laughed. “Fine. If none of it mattered, I’d probably go to culinary school and be a chef.”

“So, why don’t you?”

“It requires a lot of time and money. One of which I now have, but the other…” She held up her empty palms in a soft shrug. “I’m not exactly going to be rolling in cash without a job.”

Nope. She might be nine kinds of cute over there, but he wasn’t going down that path. “Yeah, I see your point. Still. Maybe there are ways around it.”

“Maybe. But there’s something else.” Bellamy spread her fingers over the napkin, smoothing out nonexistent creases.

After a full minute during which Shane’s curiosity hit an all-time high, he lifted his brows in question. “Okay, I’ll bite. What else is there?”

“Well”—she broke off and took a deep breath—“I spent all this time and money to go into big business, and now I don’t like it. What if cooking for a living made it not-fun anymore? It’d be a hell of a way to find out, and I’m not really sure I want to risk the crash and burn.”

He chewed on that for a second before answering her. “Sure, it’s a risk. But what if being a chef turns out to be something you love even more when you get to do it all the time? I mean, yeah, pulling the tranny out of your car was a righteous pain, but if I’m being honest, I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else, even on the hard days.”

Bellamy’s head sprang up, curls bouncing. “I never really thought of it that way.”

“Plus, cooking won’t ever be not-fun for you.”

Her inquisitive stare sent a jolt through his chest, as if she could see every last shred of him with those green stunners. “How are you so sure?”

Although it took a fuck-ton of effort, he resisted the urge to look away. “The same way you’re sure I love what I do. Your face just looks different when you’re around food.”

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