Title Page
Heat in the Kitchen
by
Sarah Fredricks
Book 1 in the Duval-Adams series
For further information about Sarah and her books, please go to:
http://www.sarahfredricks.com
http://www.amazon.com/Sarah-Fredricks/e/B0076I6CSI
https://www.facebook.com/SarahFredricksRomance
https://www.twitter.com/SarahFredricks1
To follow the Duval-Adams family go to:
http://www.duvaladams.moonfruit.com
https://www.facebook.com/DuvalAdamsFamily
Copyright
Copyright © Sarah Fredricks 2012
Cover Design by www.cloudart.biz
Cover Photos by Yuri Arcurs and via Dreamstime.com
All rights reserved worldwide.
Heat in the Kitchen is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Please respect the author's work and ensure the copy you are reading has been purchased only for your enjoyment. Please do not copy or lend it to others.
Thank you.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Per Bressendorff for offering to undertake a storyline edit. There was no pulling the wool over his eyes! I had written a couple of incidences that I kind of hoped no-one would question, but Per wasn't letting me get away with them! You did a great job Per and I am extremely thankful.
I would also like to thank Bernie Hewitt for advising me on sentencing in Saudi.
Synopsis
Orphaned at eighteen, identical twins Matt and Zander Duval-Adams assumed responsibility for their twelve year old identical twin sisters, Tess and Ronnie.
'Heat in the Kitchen', the first book in a series of four, introduces you to Matt fourteen years after the death of their parents. Matt is a two Michelin starred, internationally renowned chef who has cooked for royalty and presidents all over the world.
As Matt settles in for an evening of creativity in the kitchen he discovers that Tess has lent his professional kitchen to her friend, Ella. Despite being disgruntled at the invasion, his 'big brother' instinct kicks in and he ends up helping her out of the jam she's landed in.
Ella is his baby sister's friend and out of bounds in Matt's eyes but that doesn't stop the raging attraction he feels towards her. As her life spirals out of control, Matt's 'big brother' act becomes just that, an act.
Ella is an internationally acclaimed pianist, fighting for her half-sisters' love, struggling to come to terms with her father's recent presence in her life and forced to confront a nightmare from her past.
She has secretly loved Matt for more than half her life but is panicked by the reality of their mutual attraction. Does she see Matt as someone who can only be a good friend and nothing more, or does his attention finally inflame a passion and love that neither can continue to deny?
Warning
This book contains one seriously hot chef, one beautiful and talented pianist, two sets of twins who love and support each other and a fictitious place called Quinaard. You will be transported from London to the Middle East and across to Long Island.
The sex scenes are explicit and the love intense.
Prologue
Fourteen years earlier
'No!'
A sob pierced the hallowed air.
Ella stopped, and stood silently beside a large marble headstone as she watched the scene unfold before her. She'd been on her way over to offer comfort, but now she stayed put, unable to move forward and unwilling to turn away.
'Matt, please! Let us stay with you and Zander. Please! Please don't send us away!'
Tess, one of her two best friends in the world was sobbing. Tears ran down her face and dripped off her chin.
Ella watched as Ronnie, Tess's twin, moved across to comfort her. Tears streamed down her face too. Identical in looks, yet the girls were very different in personality, one as quiet as the other was dramatic. Most people were unable to tell them apart unless they knew them really well and of course, Ella had known them both since they'd all been six years old.
'Oh for goodness sake, we're not going just yet.' Some old looking woman with a pinched face said, snatching her arm back from grabbing at Tess as if disgusted by the outburst.
She was dressed head to toe in black, with a dreary looking long coat and a stupid, round hat with a poncy feather and thick veil covering her eyes. Her makeup looked like it had been applied with a trowel, and in the heat of the May sunshine, it was beginning to run down her face in streaks. From the way she stood, all sharp angles and poker faced, Ella just knew the streaks had nothing to do with the shedding of any tears. On any other day she would have had a giggle with her friends over how hideous the woman looked.
At the moment though, to twelve year old Ella, she just looked like something out of a horror film - no wonder Tess didn't want to go with her.
From her vantage point she noticed Matt and Zander approach the girls with their arms out.
Tess ran into Matt's embrace while Zander wrapped his arms around Ronnie.
As they wiped away the girls' tears with their hands, Ella felt a twinge of jealousy that her best friends had such amazing and loving big brothers looking out for them.
Then she caught herself and guilt flooded her thoughts.
They were only here today because they were burying their parents. They may have been in boarding school for six years but Ella knew they'd loved their time with their brothers and parents during the holidays, falling over themselves at the start of each term, of where they'd been and what they'd done.
Ella couldn't comprehend how suddenly their lights had dimmed. A horrendous accident had made them orphans.
'We'll sort something out pumpkin. We don't know what, but everything will be fine.'
Ella looked up to where the unsure sounding voice had come from. She caught the look of uncertainty and pain that flashed between Matt and Zander across the heads of the girls. Every time Ella had set eyes on the boys at boarding school, they'd always been so confident, so full of life. Zander quiet to Matt's gregariousness. There was just a rawness to them today. Despite their height, they looked small and unsure.
Two good looking young men who'd only just celebrated their eighteenth birthday. Themselves identical twins but Ella could tell them apart too. She'd had a case of hero worship for Matt since the day the Duval-Adams family had come into her life. As she faced turning thirteen in a few months, that hero worship was shifting from a starry eyed wish that he was her brother to an embarrassing desire that he actually saw her as a potential girlfriend.
Her heart broke for the helpless look on Matt's face and for the tears that glistened in his eyes as he fought to stay strong.
No-one would be comforting him or Zander today and Ella was too young to offer. The boys didn't even know she was there most of the time anyway. When they came looking for the girls at school, they did so with a single-minded focus and escaped from the adulation of another thirty-odd, pre-teenage, giggling girls as fast as they could.
Ella was distracted from her thoughts by a shrill voice that seemed to bounce off the headstones.
'Ungrateful, the lot of you!'
Ella winced and watched the woman's chest heave as she took in a hurried breath. 'My brother married below his station and the fool has left you with nothing. I'm taking you girls in, when I don't have to, and you stand there behaving like the ungrateful wretches that you are. Well, my offer is on the table only until I leave. If you don't come with me, then I shall wash my hands of the lot of you. Four children! What were they thinking!' 'Poker faced' turned on her heel and huffed h
er way back to her chauffeured car.
Zander put his hand out to restrain Matt. 'She's not worth getting into bother for Matt. No matter what we've found out about our parents, they brought us up to be better than that.'
Ella saw Matt take a deep breath and give a subtle nod of his head. How they could read each other was a constant source of fascination to her. She hadn't noticed anything to indicate Matt's intentions.
The boys embraced each other with the girls stood between them. A family of four united in their grief, huddled together by the side of their parents' grave - silent tears now from them all as they stood there, oblivious to the movement of people around them.
Ella wasn't the only silent observer of the scene though and she continued to watch as Mr Brown, the school's headmaster, walked over and rested his hands on Matt's and Zander's shoulders.
'Come Matthew, Alexander. Bring Thérèse and Véronique with you too. I think I know a way you can all stay together if that is what you wish.'
As he led the family away, Ella finally found the strength to move and she turned to leave the cemetery, her own face awash with silent tears as her heart shattered into tiny pieces. Shattered for Matt, whose pain just then she'd felt so keenly; shattered for her friends' loss, and selfishly shattered for herself too, as she just somehow knew that nothing in her young life would ever be the same again.
Chapter 1
Present day
What the…!
Words failed him.
He went from irritation to admiration in the blink of an eye.
Stressed and knackered he may be, but he could always summon up the energy to admire the female form. This one stopped him in his tracks just inside the door - a profusion of purple and a touch of pink that halted his irritation and anger.
But it was the long legs - clad in skin tight, purple, knee high boots - disappearing up into a very short, frilly, purple skirt that caught his attention first. This purple vision then bent over the table and reached for something the other side allowing the skirt to tantalise him with what might, or might not, be underneath.
He did a double take.
Wow! She had legs to die for.
He'd never really thought he was a legs man until seeing those legs, perfectly formed and sexy as hell. He closed his eyes momentarily as he felt them squeezing around his waist. His eyes sprung open in shock at the speed of his thoughts. He was more stressed than he realised and clearly in need of female company, if he could have thoughts like that over a pair of purple legs. His lower body stirred. He shuddered at his reaction.
She moved.
Oh boy!
Standing up and stretching up into a cupboard gave Matt a side view of breasts that looked so round and perfectly formed - restrained under the pink, stretchy tube thing, the like of which he'd never seen before. He could see the protrusion of a nipple straining at the front of her top. No bra, if he was any judge. He hardened. Before he could dwell on what those breasts would feel like in his hands, they bounced, breaking the moment. His eyes moved on and up. She was swaying, he realised, and then saw the white cord hanging down from her ear. That explained why she had no idea he was there.
Her face was shrouded in an abundance of purple hair that seemed to be bursting out of the constraint holding it in place. Matt wondered how far it would fall down. His eyes closed again on an image of her hair cascading over bare breasts, caressing pink nipples and teasing him with a hint of their lusciousness.
Man! He'd definitely been working way too hard and ignoring his pleasures for far too long when he was fantasising over a stranger.
He shook his head in disbelief.
A pink and purple stranger.
A stranger that looked more like a high class tart.
A stranger that was working in his kitchen.
Hey, that final thought brought him up short.
What the hell was she doing in this kitchen!
His irritation had returned.
*
Aaargh! The music in her ears screeched to a halt as her brain became oblivious to all but the impact of boiling water on her hand.
'What do you think you're doing?' She shot round and lashed out with fright and pain.
Having been working in her own little bubble, with her music blaring in her ears, her heart had nearly failed her when she'd got the hand on her shoulder. The shock had jolted her and the boiling water in the kettle that she'd been pouring into a jug had ended up over her instead.
'I could ask the same of you.' Matt said dryly, ignorant to the outcome of his action as he grabbed her earphones out of her ears.
He was warming up with indignation now over a stranger being in his own private space.
'What the hell do you think you're doing in my kitchen?
'How did you get onto the Estate?
'Who let you into this building?' Matt fired off the questions as fast as his brain thought them, having finally got it out of the gutter where it had been languishing just moments before.
He knew he sounded curt and that was partly because of his unexpected reaction to her. He was also genuinely annoyed that a stranger had got onto the family's private estate, into the building that housed his professional kitchen and made herself so at home.
The pain from Ella's hand was shooting up her arm. It must have registered on her face because Matt finally realised what she'd done.
'You idiot!' Matt grabbed her arm and pulled her across to the sink where he shoved her hand under a fast flowing tap of cool water to alleviate the effect of the burn. 'Don't you know that water from a boiling kettle will scald you? What the hell were you thinking of?'
'What was I thinking of?' Ella screamed at him. She winced as she heard the pitch of her voice. Oh great, she'd turned into a screaming banshee. It wasn't just the effect of getting a kettle of boiling water all over her fingers either. She was face to face with the man who had haunted her dreams for most of her life. Dreams that had changed from a little girl's thoughts to adult ones as she'd got older.
Defence seemed her best option here to cover her embarrassment.
'You've got a nerve! If you hadn't jumped on me and frightened me half to death I wouldn't have poured boiling water all over myself in the first place!'
Matt humphed, not in the right frame of mind to admit she had a point.
'Leave your hand under the tap, fingertips facing the water.' With that instruction Matt left the room.
It seemed like forever before he returned and checked her fingers.
Matt dragged her over to where he kept a first aid kit and set about treating her hand. He gently prodded each of the burnt fingertips causing Ella to wince over and over. Finally, he wrapped her hand in clingfilm to limit infection.
'You may not be doing much for the next couple of days but it shouldn't need hospital treatment. You've been lucky.'
'Lucky?' Why couldn't she stop screaming?
'I've got a buffet for forty people to prepare and I'm playing tomorrow. I can't afford to have my hand out of action.'
She bit back a sob. One born from pain and frustration, as well as an element of delayed shock, but she wouldn't give in and cry. She didn't do tears, not in front of anyone. Especially not in front of this man who she had loved for more than half her life, who was obviously angry and she didn't understand why.
For the first time Matt noticed all the food stuff scattered across every surface of the kitchen.
His beautiful, top of the range kitchen that was always so neat and orderly, even when he was creating new dishes or filming for one of his TV shows.
Well it looked like little Miss Purple had taken whatever dynamite she'd used to create her own appearance and exploded it in his kitchen.
His attention refocused on his very purple, but nonetheless beautiful intruder. Covered in purple and pink she may be but her face had only a light pink gloss on her lips and a touch of mascara on her lashes that accentuated ice blue eyes. He tried not to dwell on those eyes. He
r lovely, natural looking face didn't jell with the fashion disaster and hair but Matt couldn't work out what was the real her and what wasn't. The clothes and hair were making such a loud statement, they overshadowed the rest of her.
His brain caught up with the conversation and he responded to what she'd said.
'You may be doing a buffet for forty people but you still haven't answered any of my questions. I repeat, how did you get in and what are you doing here?'
As well as sounding angry, now he sounded sarcastic. Way to go Matt, what is wrong with you? He could tell by the stubborn jutting out of her chin that she'd heard the sarcasm too.
Taking a deep breath, Ella told him, again, that she had a buffet for forty people to prepare, as if that explained everything to him.
'Why are you still being obtuse and not answering my questions? You clearly know you shouldn't be here. I'll help you remove all this…,' Matt helplessly waved his arm around at the endless amount of food abandoned everywhere, '… stuff. You can go find somewhere else to mess up. And don't worry, I'll clean up in here after you've gone.'
Ella looked around her and saw everything through Matt's eyes. In their rush to unload the car, her and Tess had just dumped everything wherever they'd found a bit of space. In normal circumstances, she wasn't this disorganised or untidy.
*
'Matthew Christophe Duval-Adams! What do you think you're doing?'
Blessed with a French mother and English father who had linked their surnames together for the children, Matt had also been given a French middle name to add to his English first name. The whole lot was a mouthful that only his mother had ever used, and then only when he was in trouble. He did use the double-barrelled surname for professional purposes but otherwise he preferred to be Matt Adams.
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