“Don’t help me,” she grumbled. “Just keep the official Wyatt cook away from me. She tripped me on purpose, Ned.”
“Of course she didn’t.” He turned to Edie, seeking corroboration.
The plump white-haired witch shrugged innocently. “I couldn’t help myself. It was a ghastly looking cake. I would never serve a cake like that.”
“Well, I’ve got news for you,” Claudia declared. “I’m going to serve two cakes like that. Out of my way,” she said, brushing past Ned. If she’d been disconsolate a minute ago, she was fired up now. Nobody, not Ned with his seductive hazel eyes and incandescent smile, not Edie with her territorial testiness, not Melanie Steele with her haughty affectations—nobody was going to keep Claudia from catering this cotillion successfully. If it meant working nonstop for the rest of the afternoon, running the kitchen in jeans and a ponytail, frosting the cake at the very moment Glenwood’s finest young ladies were being presented to society, she would do it. If it meant locking Ned out of the kitchen, out of her thoughts, out of her heart, she would do it.
The party was going to be Claudia’s personal triumph. She refused to consider any other outcome.
She was swinging through the kitchen door when she felt Ned’s hand on her shoulder. “I’ve got a lot to do,” she warned him, ordering her body not to respond to his touch.
“I know,” he said. She heard no suggestive undertone in his voice, only quiet concern. “Listen, Claudia. Bring everything you’ll need for tonight. Everything. You’ll have a room upstairs, your own private bathroom. We’ve got towels, bath salts, beds, easy chairs…whatever you need. The house is yours.”
She opened her mouth to object. She had a perfectly fine shower at home. She had towels. She had a bed—which she hadn’t had time to make that morning.
She could imagine what the upstairs of Ned’s childhood home would be like: the sumptuous bedrooms furnished with antiques, the private baths with their brass fixtures and inlaid tiles, the hallways as wide as Claudia’s entire house. The elegance. The class.
Contrary to Ned’s claim, this house wasn’t hers. But given how hard she was going to have to slave during the next few hours to make this party come out right…
She deserved the run of Wyatt Hall. She deserved to pretend the house was hers. And all these troublemakers—Melanie, Edie, and most of all Ned with his alluring lips and his mesmerizing touch—had better stay out of her way.
Chapter Seven
4:45 p.m.
CLAUDIA RESTED HER HEAD against the high lip of the claw-foot tub and sighed. The air in the bathroom was steamy with the tart scent of apple blossoms. The water swirling around her tired body was thick with fragrant bubbles.
Downstairs, the third batch of chocolate cake layers was chilling in the refrigerator. She didn’t trust Edie not to sabotage her cake yet again, but Ned had promised to protect it with his life. He had a way with Edie.
He had a way with Claudia, too, she admitted. More than the lavish decor of this bathroom, more than his generosity in opening a bedroom suite for her, more than his insistence on guarding her chocolate cake… Oh, yes, Ned had a way with her.
The scented bubbles of her bath caressed her flesh and made her think of him. The warmth of the water melted her tension the way his hands had when he’d rubbed the small of her back. The rising vapor whispered across her skin the way his breath had an instant before he’d kissed her.
And kissed her. And kissed her.
She forced her eyes open and looked around once more, taking note of every luxurious detail in the room. This was what John Edward Wyatt IV was all about. She mustn’t let herself forget that.
Pandemonium reigned downstairs, but tucked away in her cozy second-floor retreat she was completely shut off from the musicians setting up on the balcony, the bartenders in the solarium, the waiters, the grounds crew stringing spotlights along the driveway. She couldn’t hear anything but an occasional bubble braking against her chin.
So much still to do. The cake to frost, the entrées to heat, the appetizers to arrange on trays. But all she wanted to do was soak in the tub, imagining what her life could have been like if what Ned’s mother had said about love at first sight were true. She closed her eyes again and fantasized that the warm, lulling water was Ned’s fingertips, stroking her, enveloping her breasts and rippling between her thighs. She moaned out loud.
“Claudia? Are you all right?”
Oh, God!
She pushed herself up to sit, causing the water to splash against the sides of the tub. The frothy suds parted to reveal her breasts, and she quickly sank below the water again and stared in panic at the narrow space where the bathroom door stood ajar. “Ned?”
“Are you okay? I heard you—” He pulled the door open, saw that she was perfectly okay, as well as very wet and naked, and slammed the door shut. His eyes burned an afterimage into her mind, wide and surprised…and unmistakably appreciative.
“Sorry,” he called from the other side of the door, sounding not the least bit sorry. “I came upstairs to tell you Edie thinks she should start heating the ovens. I wanted to check with you. And I heard—well, it sounded like you were in pain.”
She recalled the tortured moan that had escaped her—and the tortured thoughts that had prompted it. She supposed there was a kind of pain involved in what she’d been feeling. And she wasn’t about to share those feelings with Ned.
“I’m just a little tired,” she called through the closed door. “What time is it?”
“Quarter to five.”
That gave her an hour and fifteen minutes until the first guest arrived. “Tell Edie she can start the ovens at five-thirty.” She had plenty of time to heat the canapés, then the entrées for a seven-thirty dinner.
“All right.” He hesitated. “I’m going to have to go home soon. I have to change into a monkey suit for this gig.”
Claudia conjured a mental picture of Ned in a tuxedo, his long legs flattered by crisp black trousers, his broad shoulders filling an elegant evening jacket, his collar accented by a bow tie. Not one of those big foppish bowties, she hoped, but something sleek and sexy.
“You’d better go,” she called to him, partly in self-defense. Imagining him in his evening clothes—or more accurately, imagining him tugging loose whatever tie he had on and then undoing the collar of his dress shirt, kicking off his shoes… It was all she could do to keep from moaning again.
She had to put him out of her mind. She had to focus on the cotillion and nothing else. That was what mattered: catering a great party and boosting her company’s reputation. Ned was a diversion, an infatuation. Their lives had intersected today, but tomorrow they would go their separate ways. Unless he’d been serious about finding her a silent partner. In which case they might have a few professional dealings. Nothing more.
“I’ll see you later,” he shouted through the door. She had to strain to hear his footsteps crossing the bedroom to the hall. For a crazed moment she’d wanted to call him back, to invite him into the bathroom, into the tub with her. If tomorrow they were doomed to become business acquaintances, they could still have tonight.
No, they couldn’t. Tonight she had to do her job so magnificently Ned would have no trouble finding financial backers for her. And then she could set up shop downtown, as he’d suggested, and put up a big bright sign in front and hire an assistant.
That was what she should be dreaming about, she decided. Fantasy Feasts. Not a fantasy man.
***
THE SMELL OF CHOCOLATE cake lingered in the kitchen. Claudia’s valentine-shaped pans lay scoured and sparkling in the drying rack beside the double-basin sink. Edie was seated in her armchair near the window, thumbing through a magazine, her face set in a grim frown.
“The ovens go on at five-thirty,” Ned said, surveying the orderly room on his way to the back door.
Edie nodded without looking up.
“Claudia will be down in a while.”
Again, a
surly nod.
“Edie.” Ned hunkered down next to her chair and pulled the magazine out of her hands, forcing her attention to him. “Why are you being so grouchy?”
“I’m not being grouchy,” Edie retorted. “Just because she came in here and took over my kitchen and then she went parading around the ballroom with that ridiculous cake—”
“It was a beautiful cake. Melanie special-ordered it. And Claudia’s just doing her job.”
“I don’t like her job,” Edie blurted out. “It used to be my job. No one ever asked me to make cakes like that.”
“Oh, Edie…” He clasped her hands within his. “No one can replace you, you know that. But you’re retired. You’ve earned the right to take it easy. I just want you to kick back and enjoy yourself.”
“I see that girl working in my kitchen,” Edie complained, “and she’s doing everything different from the way I did it.”
“She’s a different person. She does things her own way.”
Edie’s’ eyes narrowed on him. “You’ve got the hots for her.”
He grinned unapologetically. “Is it that obvious?”
“I’ll grant you, she’s young and pretty. But she’s got a chip on her shoulder, Ned. She doesn’t understand the Wyatt way of doing things.”
“Neither do I, sometimes,” Ned confessed. “Frankly, I’m kind of interested in the Mulcahey way of doing things.”
“You should find a girl from your own world, Ned.”
“I should find a woman I admire—and love,” he said, half to himself. Straightening up, he walked to the refrigerator, opened it and sneaked two chocolate kisses out of the bowl. He gave one to Edie. “Taste that,” he ordered, “and see if you still don’t like Claudia.”
Eyeing him suspiciously, Edie bit into the chocolate. Her eyes grew round, her jaw grew slack and she popped the rest of the candy into her mouth and sucked on her fingers. “Oh, my,” she said weakly. “That’s something.”
“It’s something, all right.”
“What did she put in there?”
“Magic,” he joked.
“I can see why you’re in love,” Edie said, reaching for the candy in his hand. “Give me another.”
Ned shook his head. “This one’s for me. Treat her nicely, Edie, and maybe she’ll give you a few herself.”
“Well…I suppose I can tolerate her for an evening,” Edie conceded gruffly, although her smile remained, along with a trace of chocolate on her teeth. “Go home and get dressed. I’ll make sure her cakes stay in one piece.”
“Thanks.” Ned winked and headed for the door. Not until he was outside did he eat the chocolate kiss he’d taken for himself. He bit into it and was reminded of his brief glimpse of Claudia’s body beneath the rainbow-flecked bubbles in the tub, her hair pinned up and glistening with drops of water, her face dewy, her throat pale and her eyes as blue as heaven.
His body grew hard as he swallowed the kiss, hungry for more kisses, her kisses. If Claudia’s chocolate could win Edie’s grudging respect, it was no wonder it won Ned’s respect—to say nothing of his lust.
Tomorrow, he promised himself. They’d get through this ridiculous party tonight, and tomorrow he and Claudia could really get down to business.
***
THE OVEN WASN’T ON.
Claudia had entered the kitchen dressed in her black wool sheath—with a full-length apron over it—her comfortable low-heeled black pumps and plain gold earrings. She was ready to frost her chocolate cake.
She was also ready to forge a truce with Edie Mueller. But Edie wasn’t there.
Claudia checked the wall clock. The ovens should have begun preheating by now. She twisted the dial on one, listening for the click and the woof of the gas vents igniting.
Nothing.
She twisted the dial again, off and then on, off and on. Nothing.
No, she gasped under her breath. Enough things had gone wrong for one job—for one lifetime. She’d had a near accident, smashed two cakes and fallen in love.
And now this.
The oven had been working earlier. What happened?
She raced down the hall in search of help and spotted Edie near the open front door. “Edie!” Claudia cried, abandoning her pride. “Edie! The main oven isn’t working.”
“Don’t be silly,” Edie clucked. “you obviously don’t know how it works.”
Claudia held her tongue. “Maybe you could turn it on for me,” she said sweetly, not daring to risk the woman’s wrath. Who knew what she might sabotage if she decided, once again, that she hated Claudia?
“It’s that damned pilot light,” came a familiar voice from outside the front door. “I’ll take care of it.” In swept Ned’s mother, dressed in an elegant burgundy gown spangled with seed pearls. She passed her mink cape to one of the doormen and sent Claudia a smile of sheer delight. “Don’t you look lovely!”
Claudia glanced down at her pinafore apron and her plain black dress. If anyone looked lovely, it was Mrs. Wyatt.
The sight of Ned’s mother in a dress that probably cost an amount equal to Fantasy Feasts’ catering bill for the cotillion took Claudia aback. She struggled to recall the robust, down-to-earth woman she and Ned had visited earlier. The statuesque woman who stood before Claudia now was every inch the town matriarch, her makeup impeccable, each strand of hair meticulously placed. Diamond-encrusted mabe pearls clung to her earlobes and her wrist was circled by a tennis bracelet so thick it probably weighed more than a tennis racquet.
“If it’s just a pilot light,” Claudia said deferentially, “I’m sure I can relight it.”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Wyatt said. “Even Edie can’t relight it. My dear, departed husband couldn’t relight it. I am the only person who knows how to relight it.”
Claudia shot Edie a quizzical look. Edie confirmed Mrs. Wyatt’s remark with a nod.
“Now, if you want to serve hot food, let’s get the thing lit.” Mrs. Wyatt strode across the entry to the hall.
Claudia hurried to catch up with her.” Are you sure you want to do this, Mrs. Wyatt?”
“I’ve been blessed with a certain talent for repairing ovens,” Mrs. Wyatt said. “It would be as wasteful for me to deny my talent as it would be for you to deny yours.”
“Mine?”
“Those cookies. They were superb, my dear. I hope Ned paid you a fortune for them.”
Claudia didn’t bother to set Mrs. Wyatt straight. Ned’s mother was pushing up her sleeves with the gusto of someone about to join a bar brawl. “Here, hold these for me,” she said, removing her tennis bracelet and a pearl-and-platinum ring. Before Claudia could stop her, she had pulled the wires shelves out of the top oven and leaned into the oven chamber.
“Mrs. Wyatt—”
A loud clanking noise emerged from the back of the oven.
“Mrs. Wyatt, I think—”
“Stubborn little valve,” Mrs. Wyatt growled, pulling her head and shoulders out of the oven. Her hair was mussed, her eyes glowing with purpose. “I’ll need a screwdriver.”
“Mrs. Wyatt, you shouldn’t be doing this. It’s such a special night—”
“I am not going to eat raw veal,” Mrs. Wyatt declared, yanking open a drawer and removing a screwdriver.
“Couldn’t we call a repairman?”
“At five-thirty on a Saturday night? He’d charge an arm and a leg.” She climbed back into the oven and tackled the broken valve.
Claudia gazed at the jewelry in her hand. It had probably cost enough arms and legs to fund an Olympics swim team.
“Mother!” Melanie Steele screeched as she bounded into the room. Her dress, a bright pink brocade gown, was less regal but probably more expensive than Mrs. Wyatt’s. Her hair was a frightful array of curls. her throat was strung with so many gold necklaces, she looked like a pampered dog who’d broken free of its leash. “Mother, get out of the oven right now!”
“I’ll get out when I’m ready to get out,” Mrs. Wyatt said, her voice eme
rging from the oven in a distorted echo. “Claudia, dear, I need a different screwdriver, a phillip’s head. In that drawer. An adjustable wrench, too. There should be one in there.”
Claudia glanced at Melanie, who was wringing her hands. “Why is my mother in the oven?”
“She’s trying to get the pilot light started.”
“And why is there only one cake on display in the ballroom? We’re supposed to have two.”
“The other one isn’t frosted yet,” Claudia explained.
“Mother, you’re going to ruin your hair,” Melanie whined as Claudia placed tools in Mrs. Wyatt’s outstretched hand.
“You can fix it for me,” Mrs. Wyatt assured her. “How is Amy? Excited to death?”
“Amy and her friends are upstairs listening to some grating rap singer. I don’t know where she picked up such terrible taste in music. We should never have let her go to Bennington.”
No response from Mrs. Wyatt.
Melanie turned her sharp eyes on Claudia. ‘Well? Frost the cake!”
Not knowing what else to do, Claudia tucked Mrs. Wyatt’s bracelet and ring into the pocket of her apron and tackled the cake. Fortunately, she’d made extra frosting. As long as Ned didn’t show up and start stealing tastes from the bowl, what she had would cover all three layers.
Melanie’s eyes shuttled from Claudia’s efficient labor to her mother’s visible bottom, shifting and twitching as she plied her tools inside the oven. “I swear,” she muttered, “that woman is the most humiliating mother a person could have.”
Claudia doubted Melanie’s daughter would agree, but she kept her opinion to herself.
“Aha!” Mrs. Wyatt crowed, at last wriggling out of the oven. “All set. Where are the matches?” The pilot light ignited without an explosion, and Mrs. Wyatt dusted off her hands and smiled smugly.
“You’re a mess,” Melanie said, grabbing her mother by the elbow and hauling her out of the kitchen.
Claudia finished frosting the cake, then slid her trays of stuffed mushrooms into the oven to heat. As she dappled the cake with chocolate kisses, she felt her pulse rate return to normal. Everything was going to be fine. The party was going to go well. She was going to survive.
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