“Claudia?” he shouted over the tape. “It’s Ned. If you’re there, pick up!” Cater to me! he almost demanded, but he figured that might frighten her.
A few long seconds passed and then, to his delight, he heard Claudia say, “Hello, Ned.”
He wanted to discuss ways of raising capital for her company. He wanted to tell her that he missed her, that kissing her outside his mother’s home had been a prelude, not a finale, and that she had nothing to be afraid of. He wanted to describe his own fantasy feast, starting with her lips and working his way down to her adorable buns.
“How are your hearts?” he asked.
“My hearts? The cake layers, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“They came out well. I was just about to start making the frosting.”
Frosting. He’d already painted her lips with molten chocolate. Now he was assailed by visions of her with cold, sugary white stuff on her lips.
“I’ll be right over,” he said.
“Ned—”
“What I was thinking,” he hastened to explain, “is that if I drive over we can use your van and my car to transport the food. It would cut down on the number of trips you have to make.”
She didn’t speak for a minute. Evidently she was assessing his offer, weighing the possible hazards in accepting his assistance. “All right,” she finally said. He wondered whether that meant she was no longer afraid of him or she missed him as much as he missed her—or quite simply that she didn’t want to have to make more than one trip to Wyatt Hall.
What it meant to him, he acknowledged after saying goodbye, was that they would be traveling to Wyatt Hall in separate vehicles. He wouldn’t be able to glance to his side and see her clean, sharp profile. He wouldn’t be able to lean across the console and steal a kiss the instant she turned off the engine.
But before they left for Wyatt Hall they would be at her house, in her kitchen, surrounded by hearts and frosting.
The possibilities made him smile.
***
OVER THE WHIR of her mixer, she almost didn’t hear the tapping on the door connecting the kitchen to the garage. She turned off the appliance and opened the door.
She had known it would be Ned, yet seeing him, having him so close, feeling his presence fill her kitchen… Well, there was no adequate way Claudia could have prepared herself.
“I do have a front door,” she pointed out. “You don’t have to come in through the garage.”
He grinned. “I cane to help out, not to act like a guest.” He shrugged out of his jacket and gazed around the kitchen. Spotting the bowl of fluffy pink frosting, he headed directly to the work island, finger poised for dipping.
“Behave yourself,” she scolded, shoving him away before he could poke his finger into the bowl.
“Oh, come on. Just a teeny, tiny little taste?”
He looked so imploring, so irresistibly boyish, she relented with a sigh. He dabbed his finger into the soft pink confection, licked it off and started with surprise. “It’s peppermint.”
“What did you expect?”
“Strawberry, I guess. It’s pink.”
“Of course it’s pink. Today’s Valentine’s Day,” she reminded him.
His smile grew deeper. “You’re catching on,” he murmured in a disturbingly husky voice.
Aware of how close he was to kissing her—and how much she wanted another of his kisses—she quickly turned away, grabbing the mixer and turning it on, clinging to the handle as if it were a weapon. “If you came here to flirt with me,” she shouted over the drone of the motor, “you can leave.”
“I came here to help you,” he said, then shook his head. “Not true. I came because I couldn’t stay away.” He said it so frankly, so bluntly, she had to accept his words as the truth.
If she matched his candor, she would have to admit that ever since she’d driven away from his mother’s townhouse she had been thinking of him, reliving his kiss, obsessing about him. Wishing he would come to her.
She could scarcely admit that to herself. She wasn’t about to admit it to him. “Well, if you’re here to help, you may as well help,” she said, guiding her spinning beaters deeper into the frosting. “There’s a roll of plastic wrap on the counter by the phone. Could you bring it over?”
He located the box and carried it to her, then moved behind her and planted a kiss on the crown of her head. Her scalp tingled, sending a flutter of sensation down her spine. She shivered and clicked the motor speed higher, whipping the fluffy pink frosting against the sides of the bowl.
Ned slid his hands to her waist and pulled her back against him. “Turn the machine off,” he murmured.
She felt him through her jeans and his, felt the hardness of him against the small of her back. She swallowed, shivered…and turned the machine off. “Please, Ned.” Her voice emerged small and breathless. “Don’t play games with me.”
He slid his hands forward, flattening them across her belly. “I’m not playing games,” he swore, his lips close to her ear. “Watching you cook turns me on.”
“I’m not cooking,” she argued inanely, wishing her legs didn’t feel so weak, wishing her hips didn’t want to nestle back against him. “I’m whipping up the frosting.”
“Whipping it up,” he repeated, putting an erotic emphasis on each syllable. “Indeed.”
“Ned…”
He spun her in his arms, then pressed into her again, this time seeking the warmth between her legs. “After you whip it up,” he asked, his eyes sparkling with an odd blend of amusement and blatant arousal, “what do you do?”
“I spread it—” Blushing furiously, she cut herself off.
“You spread it,” he echoed, insinuating his knee between her legs and nudging them farther apart. “It sounds delicious.”
“Coming from you, it sounds X-rated.”
“It sounds wonderfully wet.” He bowed and brushed a light, searing kiss across her lips.
“Actually, it can get kind of crumb-y,” she punned, finding the courage to meet his bold gaze.
“I suppose that would happen if you don’t spread it properly.”
“Or if the cake is too warm,” she said, swallowing the tremor in her throat as his thigh moved between hers. “The layers have to cool down.”
“I’ll bet they do.” He flexed the muscles of his thigh slowly, subtly against her. She closed her eyes and suppressed a moan. “I like my layers warm, though.”
“Then you can’t frost them,” she told him, her tone rasping. If he didn’t kiss her soon, really kiss her, kiss her the way he had outside his mother’s house…she didn’t know what she would do.
He rocked against her in a deliberate rhythm. “Can’t the layers be warm and firm at the same time?”
“Not when it comes to cake.”
Reaching around her, he scooped a dollop of frosting onto his finger. “Taste it,” he whispered, presenting his pink-glazed fingertip to her.
This was insane. She had work to do, tons of work, the most important work in her life. Yet, as if under a spell, she opened her mouth and ran the tip of her tongue over his finger.
Simultaneously his tongue darted out to lick the frosting. Their tongues touched, sweet and sticky with peppermint, and she sank against the work island, buffeted by the deluge of hot sensation that seared her.
“Make love with me,” he said, half a plea, half a demand. His gaze burned through her, expressing desire and need, lust and something more.
“I can’t,” she groaned, even as her thighs tensed around his leg, as her tongue tingled with the flavors of confectioner’s sugar and butter, peppermint extract and passion. “I can’t, Ned.”
“Because of the cotillion?”
She nodded. Let him think her professional pressures and deadlines were what was preventing them from finishing what they’d so recklessly begun with a finger full of frosting. Let him believe that Fantasy Feasts was her only reason for saying no.
Ther
e would be time later, after she’d composed herself, to remind him that he was a Wyatt with a Roman-numeral name, pampered and privileged, a citizen of a community where she would always be an outsider. An employee. A bit too Irish, according to his sister.
If Ned was looking for a quick fling, she wasn’t interested. And if he was looking for anything more than that, it wouldn’t work. She would never belong in his world.
When his hands relaxed at her waist, however, and he eased back from her, she found herself wondering whether a quick fling with Ned Wyatt might be worth all the heartache and regret she would feel afterward, after he’d had his fun and returned to his proper place among the ranks of the elite.
No man had ever excited her the way he could. No man had ever made her want so much. Not that she believed in love at first sight, not that she believed any of the blarney his mother had dished out, but…God, wouldn’t it be nice if Ned wanted the same things Claudia did?
What he wanted, she admitted with a doleful sigh, was to have his cake and eat it, too. And she also admitted that cake and chocolate kisses, while delectable treats, would never be enough to satisfy her.
Chapter Six
2:12 p.m.
“FINANCING?” she asked.
They were in the kitchen of Wyatt Hall. Seated on a stool, Ned observed as Claudia arranged her cake materials on the counter. This time everything had survived the trip across town in her van.
Following in his car, his back seat filled with heaping trays, Ned had felt her absence keenly. He had wanted to be with her, smelling her clean fragrance, admiring her stunning blue eyes.
Of course, if he’d been seated beside her in her van, he might have been unable to resist the temptation to reach out and grab her. And then she would have lost control of the van and it would have skidded on an icy patch of road and all the food would have been ruined again.
And then they would have had to start all over. Which might have been kind of fun.
Fun for him, anyway. For her it would have been a disaster. As soon as he’d stopped trying to seduce her at her house, she’d become compulsively businesslike, trooping around her kitchen like a drill sergeant, barking orders as if she viewed the cotillion as a military campaign—with Melanie serving as the commanding officer of the opposing army.
Fortunately, Melanie wasn’t at Wyatt Hall when they arrived. Edie was, but after huffing about Claudia’s invasion of her precious kitchen, she let Ned convince her that the florist needed her invaluable advice regarding the flower arrangements in the ballroom. Once he’d dispatched Edie, Claudia got to work assembling her cakes.
It seemed like a good time to broach the subject. “Nothing complicated,” he told her. “I’m only thinking of what you could accomplish with the proper capitalization.”
She flashed him a sharp, blue-eyed glance. “Proper capitalization, huh,” she repeated dubiously. “Pretty fancy language.”
“All it means is having enough money to get Fantasy Feasts to the next level.”
“The next level of what?”
He watched as she smoothed the pink frosting over the largest chocolate cake layer, which sat on a doily-lined silver tray. With a deft flick of the pan, she dropped the second layer on top of the first, centering the smaller heart atop the larger one.
“Imagine what your life would be like if you could work in a kitchen this big all the time, in a shop in town. If you had a clerk, and an assistant, and an eye-catching sign out front.”
“Yeah, right,” she snorted. “That sounds like a lot more fantasy than feast.”
“Not if your company had an infusion of cash. That’s where I could help you out.”
She shot him another look, this one decidedly suspicious. “What am I, the newest Wyatt charity?”
He shook his head and chuckled. “No one’s going to give you a penny. However, I can put together funding—”
“A loan? Forget it.” She cut him off. “I’m already paying off my van, a mortgage and the refrigerator in my cellar. I’m not taking any more loans.”
“I’m not talking about a loan, either,” he explained patiently, trying not to let the graceful gliding motions of her fingers distract him. “I’m talking about an investment. I could find you a silent partner, someone looking for a promising business to sink his money into, in return for a portion of your profits.”
“Profits?” She laughed. “I’m just barely breaking even.”
“Most new businesses don’t start breaking even for years. If you’re not in the red, you’re doing great.”
“Who’s going to invest in my company?” she asked, flipping the smallest chocolate layer onto the cake. “Who in his right mind would invest in my rickety little catering company when they could buy something safe and sound, like municipal bonds?”
“You’ve got a better chance of avoiding bankruptcy than some municipalities I know,” he argued, smiling. She dragged over a bowl of chocolate kisses and used them to create a decorative border around each later. “If my clients wanted to buy municipal bonds, they wouldn’t come to me.”
She eyed him warily. “And by getting these clients to invest in Fantasy Feasts you pick up a whopping commission?”
There was that, sure. But more was at stake than simply Ned’s commission. He wanted Claudia to succeed because it meant so much to her. Because she was entitled to it. Because if she didn’t succeed her spirit would be broken in two.
It was her spirit that excited him, more than her reddish-brown hair and her pure blue eyes, more than her prowess with shrimp and sweets. He wanted her happy.
“I can think of at least two clients who might be interested in parking some money with you. I’d need to examine your profit-loss records, your debt service and son on. But—”
“I’m supposed to let you see my private financial records?”
“I’d have to see them before I recommended that my clients invest in Fantasy Feasts.”
She set down her knife and gripped the tray. “Here’s what you’d learn from my records, Ned. I’m your basic hand-to-mouth model. My bank balance resembles what you probably spend during an average night out with a woman.”
If she’d meant to discourage him, she’d made a mistake. “Now, there’s an idea. Why don’t you and I spend an average night together tomorrow and see if it resembles your bank account?”
Claudia bit her lip. Maybe he was pushing too hard. But after the way she’d responded to him a mere hour ago, the way her body had arched and surged against his and her hips and moved with his and her eyes had closed in surrender…
Why shouldn’t he push a little? Why shouldn’t he bring this relationship to the next level? No matter how anxiously she was avoiding his gaze right now, he knew she was as interested as he was in taking things further.
“I don’t want you spending your money on me,” she muttered, lifting the tray carefully.
“All right. We’ll keep it cheap. I’ll rent the DVD, you make the popcorn.” At her skeptical stare, he shrugged. “Hey, I can do a low-rent date just like you.”
“Right. And you can also peel carrots.” She handed him a bag of them, and holding her head high she carried her magnificent cake out of the kitchen.
Ned was lost in a reverie. A bowl of popcorn, his toasty wool afghan spread over them, a 1950’s thriller about mutated insects on the TV in the background…and afterward, they could discuss making a formal announcement and setting a date.
An average night with the most extraordinary woman he’d ever met, he thought with a smile. It could be the most exciting night in his life….
He heard a scream, and another, and a loud thump. This might be the most exciting night, after all, he thought as he bolted from the kitchen. But he was no longer smiling.
***
“WELL, IT WAS TOO PINK!” Edie ranted. “The color startled me! In all my days, I’ve never seen a cake that color pink!”
It wasn’t a cake any more. It was a mess of smeared frosting and
crumbs strewn across the marble floor of the ballroom.
Claudia wanted to weep. She sat on the hard, shiny floor, less than an inch from where she’d been standing when Edie had noticed the cake, shrieked and dropped her dry mop at Claudia’s feet where she would trip over it. Two stories above her loomed the ornately corniced ceiling of the ballroom. Chairs and settees stood along the room’s perimeter, along with tables festooned with flowers and the elegant dessert table where the cakes were supposed to be displayed. An arching stairway that looked as if it had been designed just for debutantes soared to a balcony along the inner wall.
It was so opulent, Claudia thought, wondering what kind of picture she made seated cross-legged on the polished floor with frosting spattered on her jeans.
“It’s all right,” Ned was saying. She tilted her head only enough to see him ushering Edie away. A good idea, too. Claudia was ready to strangle the old hag. There had been something suspiciously deliberate in the way Edie had tossed down her dry mop in front of Claudia’s foot. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“Everything’s not going to be all right,” Claudia snapped. “We’re down one cake.”
“So you’ll make another. Look, Edie will oversee the cleanup. We can get whatever you need from your house and you can bake the cake here. I’ll be right by your side, doing whatever has to be done. Come on, Claudia—we can do it.”
“You’re not going to let her make another cake like that, are you?” Edie sputtered. “It looked horrible. Repulsive! Much too pink.”
“Edie, please,” Ned silenced her, evidently aware of the homicidal turn Claudia’s thoughts were once again taking. “Just clean the floor, all right? Come on, Claudia,” he said brightly, extending his hand to her and hoisting her to her feet. “If we work really fast—”
Claudia yanked her hands from his. If he touched her, they wouldn’t work really fast. They’d get sidetracked. He’d dip his fingers into the next batch of cake batter and he’d slide his arms around her…and they’d be lost.
Chocolate Kisses Page 5
