Take Me Tender

by Christie Ridgway

  It meant he had a hell of a lot to make up to the fairer sex, even as he resented the hell out of them that they couldn’t look at things as light and loose as a man. Running his hand over his hair, he trailed Nikki toward the front door, resenting her just a little bit, too.

  She’d shut him up, hadn’t she? And she did it every time: turned him upside down with her little gibes, turned off the sexual heat between them with the flick of an eyelash, turned away without a second glance, even when he was following like a goddamn puppy at her heels.

  She opened the door, her every move casual and relaxed.

  Easy.

  Breezy.

  It made him nuts and he was glad she was leaving the house, by God.

  “Oh, damn,” she muttered, her back turning stiff.

  He peered over her shoulder. “What?”

  “My car’s boxed in.”

  Sure enough it was. Her sedan was parked close to the curb, with both her front and back bumpers just a kiss away from cars that were more massive than hers and very expensive to fix. She sighed and lifted her palm over her shoulder. “Give me your keys.”

  He stared at the back of her head. “What?”

  Turning, she spoke to him like a kindergarten teacher. “Your car is in the garage. The driveway is not blocked. If I take your vehicle, I’ll be able to get to the market and buy the milk and graham crackers you requested for your afternoon snack.”

  So snarky and cool. So unruffled, even though they stood toe-to-toe. Her hand was still proffered, waiting for the keys, and he could smell on her fingers the grapefruit and oranges she’d cut that morning. Fresh. Sweet as well as tart.

  He imagined himself drawing a digit into his mouth and sucking on a fingertip. Her nails were unpainted and short, not the long, elaborate canvases of most women he knew. What would she do if he took her littlest finger between his lips, teasing it by running his tongue along the inner skin of her pinkie until he could tickle the pale web at the juncture of her palm? How would she react if then he wet each of the whorled pads of her fingers and drew them down his chest to cool his hot skin before making introductions to the other heat she fired in him? Would she greet his happy cock with five warm welcomes? The idea only made him hard.

  But knowing Nikki as he was beginning to, she’d likely look at him just as she did now, her bi-colored gaze revealing nothing as it stayed patiently trained on his. Unaffected. Undisturbed.

  Or not. Because then his own gaze managed to escape the snare of hers and drop. The pulse at her throat was throbbing, the thin skin over it trembling with each beat. Lower down and three inches away from his chest were her breasts, and topping those luscious handfuls like berries on top of ice cream were her nipples. Her hard, aroused nipples.

  Hard and aroused like him.

  He had a boatload of work to finish in his home office. He was minutes away from a peaceful house without a distracting, attracting faux-lesbian in the kitchen. All he had to do was hand her his keys and get that caffeinated, quiet atmosphere he was after. But right now work happened to be the last thing on his mind.

  So sue him. It was high summer in Malibu and what man could resist playing hooky with a woman who smelled like citrus and who was doing her damnedest to resist sex?

  It was like waving a red flag in front of an angry bull.

  “As if I’d let you drive my Porsche,” he scoffed. “C’mon, cookie, I’ll play chauffer and you can take the role of the rich missus who’ll later lure me into the master bedroom before hubby arrives home for his martini.”

  She didn’t blink. “Just as long as I get to use my strap-on.”

  Good God, Jay thought. It was almost as if the woman could read his mind. Because though Nikki hadn’t taken the bull that was him into a china shop, what she had done was close enough. Ten minutes after leaving his house she had him escort her into a yarn shop, Cassandra Riley’s Malibu & Ewe.

  He might have suggested he wait in the car and while away her errand listening to his favorite Sirius satellite channel, but for the first time Nikki’s composure cracked a little. She bit her bottom lip—when he wanted to do that—and white-knuckled her leather bag.

  “It’s embarrassing to ask, but will you come in with me?” she said, not quite looking him in the eye. “You know her, I believe, and I kind of, um, shoplifted the last time I was here. You can vouch for me.”

  Shoplifted? She continued to surprise the hell out of him. He pretended to hesitate. “I don’t know…”

  “Please?”

  He considered another long moment. “Well, okay, but only if you promise to let me break out the fur-lined handcuffs when we get home. That way I can honestly tell Cassandra I’ll punish you myself.”

  Shaking her head, she ignored his clever riposte, but still he followed her as she moved slowly—reluctantly?—across the parking lot. He just had to figure this woman out. Had she actually shoplifted? And could she possibly get more fascinating?

  Bells jangled as he held open the door for her. Inside, a gaggle of women were gathered on the couches in the center of the shop. A swift attack of TP allergy—a phrase coined by the editors of NYFM to refer to the well-documented male aversion to all-female gatherings like the Tupperware Party—prodded Jay to make a hasty retreat, but then Nikki beat him to it, her butt bumping his groin like a practiced grind of a stripper.

  Her hesitance only made him more interested in getting into the shop—not to mention he needed to limit their body-to-body contact before things got any harder. So with his hands on her shoulders, he guided Nikki forward, speaking to Cassandra in his best hardened cop imitation when she looked up. “I’ve brought in the perp, ma’am.”

  Nikki flashed him a quick I’ll-kill-you from her amazing eyes, then walked out of his reach to approach the shop owner. From her purse, she pulled out a ball of yarn and a pair of knitting needles. “I can’t believe I left the other day without returning these first. I’m so sorry.”

  Cassandra rose from the couch and met Nikki halfway. The smile on her face looked welcoming, but she watched the other woman as if she was a skittish animal. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. Can you stay? We’re having an impromptu klatch.”

  Nikki didn’t hesitate now. “Oh, no. I’m on my way to the grocery store and, to be honest, I didn’t really get very far”—she looked down at the items in her hands and held them toward Cassandra again—“with these.”

  “You can give it another try.”

  “Jay wouldn’t have the patience to wait for that,” she said, without looking at him. “He’s already tapping his toe over there.”

  He was not. Well, not now, not now that everyone in the knitting circle was looking at him with the identical question on each of their faces. So when did you stop beating your wife?

  “You go ahead,” he said, trying to appear charming and accommodating and not like he was afraid to offend more women in his world. “I’ll just hang over here for a while and, um…”

  “There’s coffee in the kitchen around the corner,” Cassandra said, giving him a bright smile even as she tugged Nikki toward the center of the room. “And Gabe Kincaid’s someplace nearby puttering.”

  Jay didn’t go looking for either coffee or male company. Now that he’d made it past his initial knee-jerk, let-me-outta-here, he thought he’d take a look around, not to mention a listen-in. One of his sisters used to cross-stitch, but lately she’d been yakking about the size of her stash and wailing about the stitch she’d dropped two Wednesdays before. The ladies on the couches could probably clue him in to what that meant.

  And he could clue in to Nikki. It was maddening, how damn hard she was to read. As a journalist, he had an idle interest in almost everyone, and when it came to her, his idle was running fast. It could prove enlightening to eavesdrop.

  Except she dropped next to nothing. Maybe learning to knit was more difficult than he thought—and to be fair, one woman on the couches was making something that looked very complicated and
required a dozen needley needles and several small balls of thread—because Nikki stayed focused on the materials in her hands and was monosyllabic when pressed.

  And Cassandra was pressing.

  That also seemed strange to Jay. Not that he was surprised that Cassandra was chatting up a customer—she was an outgoing person and he’d heard she was passionate about her craft—yet this seemed like something more than friendly interest. But thanks to her unflagging interrogation, he did learn a few bare bones about his personal chef.

  Any brothers and sisters? None.

  Father? Passed away from a heart attack two years before.

  Mother? More than ten years before that.

  Jay—who to this point had been loitering by the deck and faking a fascination with the view—couldn’t stop himself from turning toward Nikki. Nothing about her demeanor hinted at an inner wound—the same as when she’d told him about preparing her first meal…and her mother’s last. She sat on the couch as composed as ever, her down-turned eyes allowing her lashes to hide their incredible colors.

  And any reaction to the memory of her mother’s death.

  But she’d only been fourteen! Younger than Fern. A child, really, who unexpectedly became a motherless child.

  He found himself rubbing his chest as if to quiet a phantom pain. Her mother was gone. Her father, too.

  Nikki didn’t have anybody.

  Cassandra was talking at ninety miles an hour now, perhaps as thrown by Nikki’s calm as he was. Other women joined in the general conversation as well, yet Nikki, no longer being questioned, retreated into a silence that surprised him yet again. He’d never met a woman who wouldn’t open up like a bachelor’s wallet at a lap dance table when welcomed into a group of other friendly, chattering females.

  He was still mulling over the enigma that was his chef when he was joined by Gabe, a tool belt at his waist and a smattering of what looked like sawdust in his hair. He braced his shoulders against the same patch of wall that Jay had found. “What’s up with Cassandra?” he asked.

  “Huh?” Jay switched his gaze from Nikki to the other woman. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you. She’s all revved up.”

  “Don’t know,” Jay replied with a shrug. “Maybe it’s the subject matter. One of those women just related a story about her bad blind date.”

  Gabe snorted. “Did Cassandra set her up? For a woman with zero romantic life herself, she’s damn quick to badger everyone else into having one.”

  Jay’s gaze drifted to Nikki again. He didn’t know what she did on her evenings off, did he? That she’d agreed to play his girlfriend didn’t mean she was without a real lover of her own. Though it was hard to picture prickly Nikki opening herself up to any man. Or maybe he just didn’t want to picture it.

  “I edited a piece for the magazine last week,” he told Gabe. “It posits that women who are the most skeptical about romance end up with a better caliber of mate.”

  Gabe snorted again. “Then Cassandra should find herself a prince of a guy, because she’s celibate.”

  “Really?” Jay’s eyebrows rose.

  “That’s what she tells me,” Gabe grumbled. “Often.”

  Jay swallowed his smile. He didn’t know the other man well, but he certainly wasn’t stupid, so Jay didn’t need to point out that a woman “often” flaunting her celibacy at a particular person might have something other than celibacy on her mind. Gabe would figure it out sooner or later.

  “Well,” the other man went on, “don’t say I didn’t give you fair warning.”

  Jay looked over. “What?”

  Gabe’s tone was matter-of-fact. “But if you do somehow get in her bed, and then you make her unhappy, I’ll have to kick your ass.”

  Clearing his throat, Jay glanced over at Nikki. How had she come to make a conquest so quickly? He glanced back at Gabe and noticed he was focused not on Jay’s private chef, but the yarn shop owner instead. Oh. “I’m not after Cassandra,” he said.

  Gabe’s expression didn’t betray any kind of relief—it didn’t betray anything at all. “Then why are you here?”

  “I…uh…” He shrugged, helpless to explain how his fascination with his cook had become so damn compelling. “I just had to get out of the house,” he offered. “I’ve been going a little stir-crazy and my chef—that’s the woman next to Cassandra—needed a ride.”

  “You should come to the opening of that new restaurant tonight, then,” Gabe said. “Somehow Cassandra made me promise I’d escort her there.” His gaze moved off Jay’s face and settled on the women again. “Bring your chef with you. Cassandra seems fond of her.”

  And wasn’t that just the oddest thing, too? This whole episode in the yarn shop had that goose Jay’d discovered on the first day he met Nikki traipsing up and down his spine again.

  “A restaurant opening,” he said slowly. Why not? “Cookie and I wouldn’t miss it.” He’d make it a condition of her employment, and just like his demand that she wear more revealing clothes, he figured she’d capitulate.

  He didn’t feel bad about it, because he was done with even the pretense of keeping his distance from her. Nikki was only growing more intriguing by the moment, arousing his curiosity almost as much as his sex. Both were equally demanding, and he decided at least one of them must be satisfied.

  Six

  A woman is never sexier than when she is comfortable in her clothes.

  —VERA WANG, DESIGNER

  “A deal is a deal,” Nikki muttered to herself as she readied for the restaurant opening in Jay’s guest bathroom upstairs. It was the exact wording he’d used on her when he’d announced earlier that they had a social engagement for the evening. And he was right, she’d agreed to play his girlfriend as part of her job as his private chef.

  She just hadn’t considered it would mean playing his girlfriend to such a large audience. But she’d make it work, she would. After all, tonight’s event also gave her a chance to mingle and make contacts with others who could use her services. She’d need a new job at the end of the month, even if she managed to successfully play gay for the remainder of this one.

  “You’d better not be in commando boots,” Jay called from the bottom of the stairs. Nikki inched up her ankle-length skirt to inspect the kitten-heeled sandals she’d borrowed from Cassandra. They were stable enough to provide her knee the support it needed, yet pretty enough to go with the dress that Cassandra had created.

  Nikki had borrowed that, too. After Jay’s party pronouncement, she’d returned to Malibu & Ewe following lunch preparations. Surely the shop owner could direct her to a local boutique and save her from fighting the afternoon’s beach traffic to get home and back again with the right kind of partywear.

  “I have just the thing,” Cassandra had offered. “It’s hanging in my office. I was planning to display it in the shop, but you can wear it first.”

  “No! I couldn’t…The size—”

  “Will be perfect,” Cassandra had put in. “I made it to fit my measurements, and haven’t you noticed we’re a similar height and weight?”

  Now that she mentioned it, Nikki did notice, though the other woman had it way over her in the chest department. Cassandra had waved that objection away, too. “Won’t matter. You’ll see.”

  And when Nikki did see the dress…Well, something so beautiful was harder to resist than a plate of homemade potato chips topped with crumbled, smoky bacon and melted blue cheese—the decadent concoction she’d promised Cassandra as payment.

  So instead of scooting around Malibu seeking something suitable to wear, she’d sat on the shop’s deck and fumbled through more rows of her very first swatch of knitting. Cassandra had joined her when she could, and laughed as Nikki complained her stitches were reproducing like rabbits. In frustration, she’d taken to counting the number on the needle each time she finished a row. By the time she’d left the shop, she’d become confident enough to count the stitches only every oth
er row.

  “Nikki?” Jay’s voice traveled up the stairs again. “Just so you know, I found Fern’s mascara and I’m not afraid to use it.”

  Nikki dropped her own tube of Maybelline into her makeup bag and pressed her top and bottom lips together, setting her twenty-four-hour lipstick. Her afternoon outside had left a pink flush across her cheekbones, and the highlights around her face appeared a shade lighter. She’d taken her hair out of her usual working braids, and it waved in a tousled tangle around her shoulders.

  With one last adjustment of the spectacular dress, Nikki reminded herself she had a job to do. Making Jay happy on the social circuit was as much her obligation as it was to make him breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “A deal’s a deal,” she murmured to herself once more.

  She ignored the twinge in her knee as she made her way to the top of the stairs. There, she paused a moment, her hand gripping the railing for support before taking the first step down.

  Jay was slouched against one of the banisters below, his hands in the front pockets of black linen trousers. He wore a white, thin cotton shirt with a thousand tiny pin-tucks in front. It looked like something a Miami drug lord would wear if you transferred him to Malibu and made him a golden-haired surfer.

  He glanced up, froze, then his spine straightened as he slowly turned to stare at her.

  She felt her sunburn heat and flow down her neck. “It’s Cassandra’s dress. She…she said it was okay for tonight.”

  “Christ,” he said after a moment. “Well, at least I can be fairly sure you left your strap-on at home.”

  Her free palm slid over the soft, knitted fabric that covered her left hip. He was right—if crude, as usual. Cassandra’s dress didn’t leave room for anything besides the skin it covered.

  “What…How…” Jay broke off and made a vague gesture, his gaze still glued to her form as he slowly ascended the staircase. “Is that thing truly going to stay on?”