by Leslie North
And then nearly drooled all over again when she turned to see Arthur McClellan.
His jeans—not pressed trousers or chef pants but jeans, of all things—were just a little too tight for comfort. His shirt was unbuttoned just a little too much to be decent. His eyes were just a little too amused to be safe. His tattoos were just a little too much to trust. And his body…and his cooking…all warning signs. Big red flags telling her to stay away. She knew his reputation and how much of it was deserved, and it was her nature to stay on the straight and narrow path.
But she also knew that tonight, her career had jumped to the next level. Maybe she could take a step off that boring path?
She tossed her head. It was an old tic, one she’d started using to buy herself time as she gathered her thoughts, and now she couldn't stop doing it every time she was nervous.
Art McClellan made her really nervous.
"You saw what I did," she said coyly, opening the fridge. She wasn't about to reveal to a guy like Art that she was pretty sure Jerome Gibbs had just maybe, not-quite-but-almost, positively-possibly offered her own show with the Taste Network. She could just hear his mocking laugh, and she wasn't about to let this jerk rain on her hopeful parade. "I pulled off the Gibbs-Mitchell wedding flawlessly, and I think that's cause for celebration, don't you?" She leaned into the fridge and frowned.
"Looking for something?"
"I…."
"Swiped a bottle from the bar and tried to hide it?"
She shut the fridge and whirled around.
Art lifted a glass from his perch on the prep table. "Cheers?"
"You drank it?"
"I'm drinking a bourbon on the rocks, don't worry. Your pilfered champagne is right here." He laughed and produced another bottle from behind his back with a flourish.
Cassandra tried to look offended even as relief flooded her system. Relief and panic. Because she knew if she wanted a drink, she'd have to drink it with him. She licked her lips and mentally took another step off her straight and narrow path. "You stole a bottle of bourbon from the Gibbs’s?" she asked with a scolding arch of her brow.
Just following your lead." He wiggled the champagne bottle invitingly. "I'm in the mood to celebrate too, doll."
The pet name thrilled through her like an electric current, even as it offended her on a professional level. "Well then, you'd better share."
"Then you'd better come over here." He patted the prep table next to him, then paused. "Wait. Doesn't champagne have carbs?"
She tossed her head and then made to snatch the bottle from him. He laughed and pulled it away, and Cassandra suddenly found herself very, very close to Art McClellan.
That low thrum of electricity in her body suddenly spiked. "Well," she said as she let her eyes trace the dangerous angles of his face. "Didn't you already say today was cheat day?"
His face split into a wide, predatory smile, and another electric thrill ran through her. It coursed down her spine to gather low in her belly, where it pulsed urgently. Cassandra almost moaned as Art gripped the bottle with one hand and popped the cork. "Glass?" he asked.
"I'll use yours."
"It's dirty," he warned.
Cassandra licked her lips again. He was right. It was dirty. He was dirty. The exact opposite of the perfect princes she always dated. He didn't check a single one of the boxes on the list of attributes she wanted in a man. Number one being a proper gentleman who'd treat her like a princess.
Art was looking at her like he wanted to treat her like the exact opposite of a princess. And tonight, just for tonight, she wanted that, too.
"Cheat day," she said again, grabbing his glass and holding it out for him to fill. He poured it to the brim and then watched her as she glugged it down. The warmth spread through her body, making her feel even more dangerous and bold. She looked him right in the eye and smiled. "Do you remember what you told me? If I was still hungry later?"
She shivered as he walked his fingers up the front of her blouse. He slid from the table and then turned, sliding between her legs. He gripped one thigh and pulled it up to his waist. She gasped to feel his hardened length pressing insistently through those cursed jeans. "I told you," he said as he popped open one of her blouse buttons and exposed the creamy white lace of her bra. "That there was more where that came from." He flicked another button open, then met her eye. "What about it, doll? You want some more?"
Cassandra closed her eyes and pictured herself leaping right off the straight and narrow path and into the dark forest beyond. It felt dangerous and impulsive. And right.
"Yeah," she told the sexy, tattooed bad boy between her legs. "I want some more."
3
Cassandra frowned at her desk and tapped her fingernail against her teeth. "Something is not right," she mused as she scrolled through the calendar on her phone and double-checked it against the two planners spread out in front of her. "I know I have an appointment on the third, where is it…oh!' It came to her in a flash, and her frown deepened as she searched through her fashionably slim messenger bag.
Her purple personal planner, the one she affectionately referred to as "the purple monster," was scrunched down at the bottom of the bag, folded down under the weight of paper samples she needed for her 3 p.m. client. She pulled it out and resisted the urge to apologize to it as she tried to straighten the bent pages. Shaking her head, she placed it with its companions, "the green machine" a/k/a her work planner, and "the dotted dictator," her polka-dotted vision journal. Laying all three of them out and syncing all her handwritten notes into her phone was a first-of-the-month ritual she never missed. Strange how she'd forgotten about the purple planner. That had never happened before.
"Dentist on the 5th," she noted, scanning through the pages of her personal planner. Her cat Kate, named for Duchess Kate, who'd snagged a prince of her own, jumped up onto her desk and began washing her face. Cassandra absently scratched under her chin as she took down the rest of the dates. "Haircut on the 7th and—oh crap, gyno on the 9th? Really?" She frowned at the appointment sticker she had carefully affixed to that date a whole year ago. "Huh." A tiny little spark of worry ignited in her brain. She flipped to the page before and chewed on the inside of her cheek. She'd made this appointment with a rough guess that she'd be done with her period now; she distinctly remembered counting by twenty-eights there at the reception desk.
But her period hadn't come yet.
In fact, it hadn't come twenty-eight days ago, either.
The spark of worry ignited into a full-blown blaze as she flipped desperately through all three planners. Kate jumped down and skittered away from Cassandra in a panic. Cassandra wished she could run away too, but there was no running away from what she was suddenly realizing as she scanned her planners.
There were all the appointments with the Taste Network as she worked through the feverish rounds of negotiations. There were all the weddings, back to back to back. Her planner was a long litany of stress, and a missed period wasn't too out of the ordinary when she was stressed, but…
She flipped the page. There was her last period.
She stabbed her finger onto the little, red P circled in the corner of the date. A date that was six weeks ago today.
A date that was ten days before the Gibbs-Mitchell wedding…and Arthur McClellan.
Her face flushed hot at the memory even as her blood ran cold. It couldn't be true…
Could it?
She grabbed her phone and all three planners. She had time to pop over to the drug store before her next client. It was better to know, right?
She told herself that the whole way to the corner store. She told herself that as she ducked away from the store clerk's questioning eyes, and she told herself that as she dropped her bags to the bathroom floor and squatted over her toilet once she'd returned to her apartment. She set the test on her vanity and stared.
Her phone buzzed in her bag.
"Shit!" she groaned. She snatched it up and hurri
ed out of the bathroom, fishing through the wad of stuff she'd plopped on top of her phone. "Don't hang up, don't hang up." She closed her fingers around it in triumph and yanked it from the bag, spilling the purple monster right onto her Boho-style braided rug. "Hello!" she answered breathlessly, not bothering to check the caller ID.
"Um…is this…"
"Oh! Sorry, sorry." Cassandra blinked and tried to pull herself together. "I mean, Perfect Planning and Events, this is Cassandra." She cringed inwardly.
"Cassandra Kelly?" The voice on the other end was vaguely familiar.
"Speaking."
"This is Adele Crowley with…"
"The Taste Network, yes! Of course! Hello!" Stop talking, Cassandra chastised herself. You just interrupted the Head of Programming. Pull it together. "I'm sorry, you cut out there a second, did I interrupt?" Smooth. Maybe she'll believe you.
"It's fine." Adele's crisp voice matched the crisp appearance Cassandra remembered. The former supermodel turned mogul was the major influence behind Taste's impeccable brand. Her unerring eye, along with Jerome Gibbs's unending flow of money, made Taste the only cable network actually gaining viewers this season. She was everything Cassandra wanted to be—polished, put-together, and one part of a picture-perfect power couple alongside her Prince Charming, the ruggedly handsome news anchor Brian Crowley. Cassandra had their wedding pictures pasted into her vision journal and referred to them often. "Is this a bad time?"
"Of course not!" Cassandra lied. "How can I help you? Was there anything else you needed me to forward along? I was under the impression that…"
"There's nothing," Adele interrupted so smoothly Cassandra's stomach dropped. Adele was cutting her off. She was trying to let her down gently. All the work and the hoping had been for nothing, they were going to decline the pilot and…"I just got the go ahead this morning. Will you be free in November to shoot the pilot?"
Cassandra reached out blindly. Bracing herself against her desk to keep from dropping right to the floor, she exhaled carefully before clarifying. "The…pilot?"
"Destination: Wedding," Adele said, naming the series title Cassandra was most proud of. "It starts shooting in the Bahamas the first week of November. Will you be available?"
"Yes! Of course!"
"Good, those dates work for Arthur, too.”
Cassandra blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"Chef Arthur McClellan pitched a show concept to us as well."
"Did he?" She glanced at the bathroom.
"And while we liked his concept, we thought it would be fun…" There was a menacing emphasis on that last word that made goosebumps race up Cassandra’s arm. "To play you two off each other. Oil and water. Opposites attract…"
"I'm not attracted to him," Cassandra sputtered.
"It's not real, honey. It's just good TV. Now, will those dates work for you?"
Cassandra swallowed hard. All her dreams were coming true. Arthur being there meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. She didn't even have to look at him. She just needed to showcase her brand and prove that the C. Kelly lifestyle was something that women wanted.
She closed her eyes and imagined shelves full of C. Kelly merchandise. Cut crystal and lace-edged linen. Straw bags and her own line of branded rosé. It was all there in her vision journal.
And this was the way to get there. "Yes," Cassandra said firmly. "Those dates work."
"Wonderful! I'm going to put you through to Ronda, my assistant. She has all the details."
"Great. Thank you. I mean…Adele?"
"Yes, Cassandra?" Adele said, with more warmth than usual.
Cassandra beamed. "Thank you."
"You earned it," Adele said kindly. "Now here's Ronda."
There was a click, and then the tinny voice of Adele's assistant, who launched into her spiel immediately, rattling off dates and times and 'drop-deads,' that made Cassandra's head spin. But she gamely took notes, confirming for a second and a third time that she'd be spending most of the fall in the Bahamas, putting together a destination wedding for a semi-famous couple. She beamed as she agreed that yes, she'd give the Taste Network permission to use her likeness for promotional purposes. As if that wasn't a dream come true.
"Thank you!" she said once they'd wrapped up. "You've been wonderful!"
"Have a nice day." Ronda ended the call, leaving Cassandra staring at the phone, wondering who to tell first. Her mother? Her assistant Shelley? She'd have to find Shelley other work while she was gone, it was only fair that…
There was a thud, followed by a scratching sound. Cassandra glanced up just in time to see something pink and plastic skid across the floor, followed by a streak of white fur.
"Kate!" she cried, lunging for her cat before she could knock the…oh no!…pregnancy test under the oven. "Are you kidding me?" She knocked the crazy feline aside and dropped to her knees, wincing as she felt around in the greasy dust bunnies under the oven and vowing to clean better under there. Then her fingers closed around the test. "Please, please, please?" she chanted before pulling it out and wiping away an errant piece of fuzz.
She stared at it.
She'd ridden on a roller coaster exactly once in her life. She’d been well above the height requirement, but she'd pretended to be too short for as long as she could. One awful summer's day, goaded on by the jeers and taunts of the rest of the kids from her summer camp, she'd allowed herself to be strapped into her worst nightmare.
Her whole body had locked up in a desperate bid to hold on as she was whipped and tossed around. She was still frozen in place after the ride ended and everyone had exited. They'd had to call a medic to coax her out of her rigid fear.
She could still feel the way her stomach dropped when they crested the first rise.
Her stomach dropped the same way now.
Sagging against the wall, she slowly sank to the floor. She closed her eyes and once again had that feeling of being flung through the air against her will.
The two pink lines were unmistakable. She was pregnant.
Some days Arthur missed the heavy landline phones of his childhood. The kind you could slam really forcefully to hang up on someone. Pressing a button, no matter how angrily, just didn't have the level of fuck you he looked for in ending a call like the one he'd just had.
It should have been good news. A call from the Taste Network was exactly what he'd been waiting for after the endless negotiations these past two months. He'd been waiting for it ever since the Gibbs-What’sHisFace wedding. "Hello, Chef McClellan, this is the Taste Network calling to offer you a pilot."
He just didn't expect them to follow it with, "You're not the star—it's actually a show about weddings, not cooking. Oh, and Cassandra Kelly will be your love interest."
Love interest?
Bullshit!
He didn't need a love interest! That was pure reality-show manufactured crap. Shoehorning a pretty woman into the mix just for ratings.
"What? Am I not enough?" he'd tried to joke.
But it came out more like a snarl, and the prissy assistant had interrupted. "It will bring in more viewers. Heighten the drama."
He'd laughed at that, and then been on his best damn behavior all through the logistical part. But all the while, that phrase kept echoing in his brain.
Heighten the drama. Heighten the drama.
Oh yeah, there was some real drama between him and Cassandra Kelly. Most of it happened at night, as the memory of her lush body and her gasping cries invaded his dreams, leaving him panting and needing a cold shower the second he woke up. She'd only wanted him because of his reputation. She was just like every other woman, more interested in his persona than in him. He knew all of this, and yet he hadn't been able to get her out of his head.
And now she was going to be in his show.
A slow grin spread across Arthur's face. He slumped into his battered leather recliner—the one his last girlfriend had begged and pleaded with him to burn—and stared at the ceiling, still smil
ing.
Before she'd hung up, Ronda had informed him that Cassandra had requested a meeting with Arthur. "Tomorrow morning, Mr. McClellan. She specifically requested I set up a one-on-one before the show is a go."
A one-on-one with Cassandra? He could think of worse ways to spend a morning. And the fact that she'd requested one?
Maybe she was still thinking about him too. Maybe he wasn't just an itch she needed to scratch?
The thought drained some of the sting out of the network's decision to pair them. Cassandra wanted to see him.
He could only imagine what she had to say.
Maybe he'd dream about it tonight.
4
Cassandra tapped her nails against the top of the glass-topped conference table. The noise was annoying, but she had to do something with her hands, and it was better than chewing her nails like she'd done all evening. Her manicure was a mess, she chided herself, right before biting the edge of her index finger.
She'd come early to the offices of the Taste Network on purpose. She'd thought she'd need the time to prepare for this meeting with Arthur. After all, there was no way, professionally or personally, she could go ahead with filming before telling him the news. He had a right to know; she just needed time to prepare herself to tell him.
But she'd given herself way too much time, and now she was antsy. She glanced at the clock on the wall and then double checked the slim, antique silver wrist watch that was her only jewelry today. Arthur wasn't late…yet. But he was one minute away from it.
She yanked her fingers away from her mouth and reshuffled the papers in front of her. She'd spent part of last night highlighting and color-coding the "script" sent down from the head office. Yes, even though this was a reality show, it was highly scripted. The interactions with the bridal couple were intended to be true to life, she'd noted with relief. She could showcase her style and her flair for warm interaction to her heart’s content.
