by MJ Compton
“I didn’t know what kind of kitchen setup you had, so I made everything for the next twenty-four hours microwavable.” She didn’t look at him as she unloaded the contents of her rolling cooler into his refrigerator. “Tonight’s supper, tomorrow’s breakfast, lunch, and a couple of snacks. The heating instructions are written on the containers.”
“I can’t reach the microwave,” he said. He didn’t bother mentioning his limited access to the fridge. “I guess Franz will have to do the reheating.”
Faint color stained her cheeks. “I didn’t realize you had someone with you, so I didn’t prepare enough food—”
“Franz can order up a pizza,” Tag said.
“I’ll make enough food for two tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry about it, Red.”
“Skye.”
“Huh?”
“My name is Skye. I own Skye’s the Limit Catering.”
“Red Skye at night, a catcher’s delight.” He thought he was pretty clever.
Her lips—very nice lips—parted. “That is…stupid.”
Red’s entire face fascinated him. He’d never noticed her eyes before. They weren’t green, and they weren’t blue but a cross somewhere between the two colors. Like the tropical lagoon where he had swum with sharks.
“Stay awhile, and keep me company.”
“I can’t. Besides, you’ve got your night nurse.”
“Franz?” Tag snorted. “He’s here to make sure I don’t fall if I need to whiz in the middle of the night.”
The color in her cheeks deepened. “Try playing cards with him. I hear you’re good at pitch.”
“I’m good with pitchers. Pay attention, Red.”
She zipped the top of her rolling cooler. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Let me know if you have any requests. You can have anything that was on the regular menu at the clubhouse.”
She headed toward the front door. The denim of her jeans clung to her nicely shaped ass.
“I don’t have your number.”
“Your night nurse has my business card.”
And she was gone. Just like that.
Tag pulled his phone from his pocket and looked up Skye’s the Limit Catering. He liked what he read. Celeste Schuyler specialized in sports nutrition and vegetarian cuisine. He wouldn’t have recognized her from the photo on her website. Her kinky copper-colored hair was down—something he’d never seen. She was smiling too. A big, all-encompassing grin. God, if she ever smiled at him like that, he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions.
He dialed the number on the website.
“Skye’s the Limit Catering. Skye speaking.”
“Hey, Red. Who the hell named you Celeste?”
“Hello, Tag.”
“How’d you know it was me?”
“You’re the only one who calls me Red.”
At least she didn’t sound annoyed. “So you specialize in sports nutrition. Who else uses you besides the Gems?”
“Athletes who demand too much from their bodies.”
“Hey. This was not my fault. All I was doing was catching a ball. Blame that punk from New York. I do. Every second of every minute since he slid into my knee and slammed me with his cleats.”
“You can heat the chicken breast in the microwave.”
“You already said that, and I already told you I can’t reach the microwave. Can I have a steak tomorrow night? I could really go for a grilled top sirloin. Bring enough for Franz and yourself, and we’ll have a little party. We could open a bottle of wine, but alcohol and my meds don’t mix. At least, that’s what the doctor said. But you could drink. Maybe I could get you drunk and have my wicked way with you.”
“Let me see what I can do for you and Franz. Find out what he likes so I can take that into consideration when I’m buying supplies.”
“So, do you like baseball or football better?” Tag asked quickly, before she could disconnect on him.
“What?”
He worked his way to his recliner. He never thought there’d be a time when sitting was preferable to action. “Do you like football or baseball better? Or maybe basketball. Who’s easier to feed?”
He heard a sigh. Or something.
“I’ll see what I can do about a steak tomorrow night. Find out what your night nurse wants and e-mail or text me.”
“What about Hans and Bluto?”
“What?”
“Do we have a bad connection or something? You keep asking me to repeat myself. I asked about my day nurse and physical therapist. They need to eat too.”
“Your nurses are Hans and Franz, and your physical therapist is Bluto?”
“You got a problem with that?”
“Find out what they want and text me. I’m hanging up now, Tag.” And she did.
He resisted the urge to call her back. He was going to have way too much time to get to know her. Getting to know her better would at least give him something to do.
* * * *
Skye fumed as she unlocked the back door of Skye’s the Limit. The alley was dark except for the halo created by the security light over the door. The lock was sticky. She knew she should replace it. It was on the top of her list. Right after the balloon payment.
Which she’d better be able to make after all the nonsense the Gems were putting her through. Nobody had warned her Tag Gentry was high maintenance. And nobody had said a word about feeding his team of caretakers when they’d hired her to nursemaid him. Hans, Franz, and Bluto, indeed. What name would he come with for her?
Oh. He already had: Red.
She could feed Tag and gang from the same meals she was prepping for game one of the World Series. Then she could start on the appetizers for Drake Dixon’s Halloween bash. Right on schedule.
Oh, and she needed to call the bank to ask about a slight extension on her balloon payment due date. A week would do it. But bank business had to wait until morning. In the meantime, she would start boiling eggs for Halloween Devils.
She filled her pot with water and set it on the front burner of the stove that had come with the building. Someday she was going to replace the ancient monstrosity with a double convection oven, six-burner, grill, and flat top all-in-one unit. After the balloon payment. And the lock change.
She turned the knob and waited for the faint whoosh of the gas igniting. Nothing. She peered under the pot. No blue flame licked at the copper bottom.
Damn. The burners were working less and less frequently, no matter how often she scoured the burner rings. She’d need to light the pilot manually with a kitchen match. After moving the pot of water to the counter, she removed the burner grates from all six burners and then raised the top of the range. Not one of the three pilots was lit, which explained the faint aroma of cooking gas lingering in the room. All three pilots had never extinguished at the same time before. That concerned her. As did the scent of gas.
Maybe she should call the utility company. They wouldn’t charge her to check for a gas leak.
And they didn’t. Nor did they charge her to shut off the gas to the building. The incoming lines were fine. The lines inside the building were fine. The ancient monstrosity of a stove was not. No gas also meant no hot water.
The time she should have spent negotiating with the bank the next morning was instead spent calling appliance repair businesses, who wanted at least a hundred and twenty dollars just to make a house call. Only to tell her the stove was unsalvageable.
Without a stove, she was sunk. Without a stove, she wouldn’t need the building, and all the money she’d already poured into architectural drawings and renovating the old restaurant into a cozy catering facility would be lost.
Unless she could find someplace else to…
Tag Gentry. He had a big, sterile, and underutilized kitchen. The place looked as if it had been designed for a magazine, with its restaurant stove, double-size subzero stainless steel refrigerators, and marble counters. He needed meals, and the Gems were paying her to feed him. Nobody excep
t the state said where she had to prep those meals. Okay, maybe Hans, Franz, and Bluto might not like her being there, and if the Health Department ever found out…but she had to do something.
Skye’s the Limit wasn’t the building. It was her. Where she prepped her meals didn’t matter, except for her kosher clients. But Passover was months away. She had a more immediate problem, and Tag Gentry’s kitchen could be her salvation.
October 25
World Series Game 1
When Skye arrived at Tag’s apartment that afternoon, he was in a physical therapy session. Hans, the day nurse, let her in.
“Great lunch and breakfast. Thanks.” He did look a little like Dana Carvey. “If you’re doing all the cooking, this job isn’t going to be so bad.”
“Glad you enjoyed it.” Skye pushed her rolling cart toward the kitchen.
“I thought you weren’t coming back until tonight,” Hans said as he followed her.
“Change of plan.” She didn’t have to explain anything to him.
The first haul from her van involved her baking sheets and other kitchen tools she simply could not work without. At least for what was on her agenda for the day. She’d bring over her other equipment as she needed it.
Next came the giant coolers with the produce she’d purchased from the market at dawn. Before her stove had been pronounced dead. By the time she’d finished unloading the van, Tag was done with his PT session. Hans was helping him shower.
Skye tied on her apron and went to work. First up: marinate the giant portabella mushrooms before she grilled them. Yes, Tag had a built-in grill in the kitchen, so food prep was that much simpler. Gluten-free pasta with grilled portabella mushroom slices and a fresh bruschetta-style marinara would be the main entrée for the Gems. A side of dark healthy greens tossed with a citrusy dressing completed the meal, which was one of the team’s favorites. Making it before game one of the World Series was a good-luck gesture on her part.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Skye jumped. She’d been so intent on chiffonading basil leaves, she hadn’t heard Tag wheel into the kitchen. Black stubble covered the lower half of his face. His dark hair was still damp on his forehead and curled in j’s as if a stuttering computer keyboard had gone berserk. Deep grooves bracketed his eyes and mouth, hinting at the pain he had to be in.
“Fixing your dinner,” she replied as she applied her knife to the bundle of herbs. Better to focus on her work than on his biceps—which were exposed by a gray tank top—or the heavily muscled thighs revealed by his gray sweat shorts. More dark hair curled on his one exposed calf.
Not that she’d noticed.
“I don’t eat that much,” he said.
She glanced at him and saw his stare fixed on the giant pot of water she’d put to boil on the back burner of his stove.
“I thought I’d save time and prep the team’s meal while I made yours.”
He narrowed his eyes, which were the same cold gray as the stainless steel refrigerator door. “Isn’t it a little bizarre to be cooking for the team in my kitchen?”
Skye shrugged to hide her discomfort. She could pull this off. She had to pull it off. “The team hero deserves the freshest meal I can serve him.”
“Don’t call me that.” The steel was in his voice too.
Skye turned to face him, keeping her knife in her hand. “If you hadn’t covered home base the way you did—”
“If they hadn’t changed the frigging rules so I couldn’t block the plate, that punk never would have caught me with his cleats.”
“Or his cleats could have caught you in a more vulnerable spot.”
TAG WANTED TO snort. There wasn’t a more vulnerable spot on a catcher’s body except his balls. A guy’s cup could protect him, even though it would still hurt like hell. But he wasn’t about to enlighten the caterer.
Who looked as if she’d moved into his kitchen. Mounds of multicolored vegetables covered the counter near the sink. A deep pot he knew damned well wasn’t his teetered on a back burner of the stove he was positive had never been used before. She wielded a big-ass knife with flecks of dark green stuff clinging to the blade. The room smelled like pesto.
“Let me clarify my question. What the hell are you doing in my kitchen?”
He was in pain from his PT session. The last thing in the world he wanted was another stranger knocking around his apartment. Hans and Bluto—he didn’t have a choice. But Red?
This was taking flirtation to a level he didn’t want to visit. At least not right now. Maybe in a couple of weeks when he was feeling better and his leg had healed. Not now. Not with Pain and Torture on the agenda twice a day.
“The Gems hired me to prepare your meals, along with the team’s meals for the duration of the postseason.”
“They didn’t rent my kitchen for you to do your thing.”
Her magic. She served the best pregame meals he’d ever tasted.
“I’m trying to save myself some time here.” Red sounded exasperated, when he was the one with every right to be annoyed. “The Gems aren’t my only client, and I hadn’t planned on feeding you and your…staff.”
She snapped at him. Red actually had the audacity to snap at him because she was trespassing in his apartment.
And she wasn’t finished. “It’s not as if you’re using your kitchen. There isn’t even a Chinese take-out menu hanging from a pizza delivery magnet on your refrigerator door.”
“Don’t judge me.”
“I’m trying to feed you.”
He needed to eat. He didn’t need any more grief. “Fine.” Stomping off in a wheelchair didn’t have the same impact.
* * * *
Skye sagged against the counter. She’d managed. At least for one day
She delivered the food to the stadium on time. The players dug in. There was a new tension in the clubhouse. Excitement hummed. The World Series. Every baseball team dreamed of reaching this moment.
“Good food, Skye,” a couple of guys said, but mostly they ate in intense silence.
She usually hung around to watch the game, but she couldn’t afford to take the time this night. She hurried through cleanup, packed the leftovers for the local homeless shelter, and left before the second inning started.
Drake Dixon stopped her on her way out to tell her he was changing the date of his Halloween party from Saturday to Monday because the Gems would be playing game four of the Series on Saturday. He didn’t want to be distracted. And Monday was Halloween. And a travel date, should the Gems not wrap up the Series in four or five games.
“I hope that’s not a problem.”
“Not at all,” Skye lied. Postponing the party meant delaying his payment, which she might not receive by November first. She smiled anyway.
He bumped knuckles with her clenched fist. “How’s it going with Gentry?”
“Fine.” As if she’d admit to anything else.
“Well, I won’t keep you any longer.”
“Good night, Mr. Dixon.”
She drove to Skye’s the Limit to pick up the dozens of eggs she needed to boil for Dixon’s party.
The heaviness in her chest as she surveyed the kitchen hindered her breathing. How many years had she dreamed of her own place? Since her mother’s death when Skye was eight? That was when her unsuccessful salesman father started dragging her from town to town as he bounced from job to job. Skye craved stability.
Her father had never appreciated her homemaking efforts. A few wildflowers stuck in an empty olive jar earned her a sneer. If he noticed at all. A nicely cooked meal was shoveled down as hurriedly as canned spaghetti. And every few months, when he’d lost yet another job, Skye would pack up their sparse belongings and wish for roots.
Her father had died the week before her eighteenth birthday. She missed him. He was her father. He’d done his best by her. But she was finally free to escape his nightmare and follow her own dreams. Columbia, South Carolina, was a good place to start. Hard work had l
anded her the catering job with the Gems. Business was good and growing. She already had one part-time employee and had been thinking about adding another once she paid off the building.
Now it was time to regroup. She had plenty of practice doing that.
And whether he knew it or not, Tag Gentry was going to help her.
Someone like Tag wouldn’t understand how growing up without a base had formed the way she thought. He was secure in his traditional nuclear family—according to the team’s official bio. Yeah. She’d checked. Little crush, not stalking. He’d had a mother, father, and numerous siblings. He’d never had to wonder where he’d be sleeping. Never had to wonder if the roof would leak or where he’d be in relation to the rest of his class when he started yet another new school. His kind of cocky confidence would carry him wherever he wanted to go.
Not everyone in the world was that self-assured. But she was learning. And somehow, she was going to survive the dead stove and the balloon payment.
November first. Seven days.
October 26
World Series Game 2
Damned if Red wasn’t in his kitchen when he got out of his post-PT shower the next morning. Cooking for game two of the Series. Or so she claimed.
Tag had stayed up to watch the first the game. The night nurse didn’t like baseball, so he’d busied himself elsewhere. Tag was tempted to ask for another nurse. What kind of man didn’t like baseball?
Someone should have been watching the game with him. A guy shouldn’t have to watch his team play an important game alone. The Gems won, but there was no one to exchange high fives with. His tribe was on the field. His sometimes woman was chasing nuclear bombs half a world away.
Tag wheeled his chair into the kitchen, where he’d be in Red’s way as she worked.
“So did you stay at the stadium to watch the game?” He had no idea what her usual routine was. He’d see her on his way out to the field before a game and ask for a kiss. That was all he knew about her.
“Not last night. I have a big Halloween party I’m getting ready for. I hadn’t planned on the Gems doing so well in the postseason.” Red did something with pieces of raw chicken, plastic wrap, and a big wooden hammer.
