by Joanne Rock
“Mornings are for sleeping,” she confirmed, although a man like Hugh Duncan could inspire a woman to use the morning for other things. Like taking handsome strangers to bed, peeling off their clothes and—
“I have to admit you’ve got me curious.” Hugh pinned her with a level look, his green eyes divining too much.
Had she spoken her wayward thoughts aloud?
“What exactly are you celebrating?” he prodded when she remained silent.
Relieved he hadn’t read her lascivious thoughts, Giselle backed up a step and gestured him to follow her deeper into the kitchen. “Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll tell you? The kitchen may be closed, but that doesn’t mean I can’t locate something snackable for a fellow night owl.”
When he didn’t move to follow her immediately, Giselle knew a moment’s panic. Hugh Duncan was her ticket to a week of sensual delights, and she had no intention of letting him slip away easily. The man had entered her turf after all, proving he must be at least moderately interested. And he wore no wedding band on his left finger.
Not that a girl could count on a missing ring as evidence of no commitment. Giselle had learned that the hard way the last time her brothers had been out of town over a year ago.
She couldn’t be in over her head already, could she?
“I wouldn’t want to impose.” His feet followed her more slowly, his gaze moving around the kitchen with unhurried thoroughness. “But it’s not often I run into such a tempting offer.” His gaze shifted back to her at the same moment the word “tempting” eased from his lips.
Giselle thought she’d have heart palpitations as she reached the small table where she’d planned to offer him a seat. But, damn it, now the whole issue of whether or not he was married danced irritatingly around the back of her brain. After the major screwup she’d committed by sleeping with a married man who’d claimed he was single, how could she not clear the air straight out of the gate?
She gripped the back of one of the chairs pulled up to the butcher-block table and hesitated. “It’s definitely not an imposition and I’d be glad for the company.”
Still she hesitated. Awkward.
“But?” Hugh Duncan stared at her with patient eyes, his slow pace putting her so much more at ease than her noisy, in-your-face family where everyone competed to talk at once.
“But I just want to make sure you’re not married or anything. Are you?” She’d rushed the words out so fast she’d be lucky if he’d even been able to decode them. “Married, I mean.”
To his credit, he didn’t laugh. If Nico was here, he would have busted a gut over that one. Instead Hugh simply met her gaze with unblinking sincerity. “No. One would hope that if I had a wife, I wouldn’t be crawling the halls of a singles hotel at this hour.”
Relief mingled with a quick pang of envy for the picture he created. Too bad most men didn’t view marriage that way. The philanderer she’d gotten caught up with most certainly hadn’t given a rip about being part of South Beach’s club scene despite his wedding vows.
Willing her thoughts out of that dark time in her life and back to the wealth of possibilities epitomized by Hugh Duncan’s timely arrival, Giselle withdrew the chair from the table and nudged it in his direction.
“Then by all means, Hugh, have a seat while I find something to tempt you with.” She flashed him her most flirtatious smile and hummed a few more bars of “The Way You Look Tonight.”
What to feed a man one wanted to seduce?
She’d been given an ideal window of opportunity with the sexy stud in her kitchen and now she’d even been granted the chance to cook for him, when the culinary arts were her lone claim to fame. If she couldn’t reel this guy in for a serious between-the-sheets encounter, she had no one to blame but herself.
Sure, the spaghetti sauce she had simmering on the stove would be delicious, but it didn’t really send the right message. The pomegranate on the counter was one of the most sensual fruits in the world, but it could be messy for a guy with no experience eating one.
Of course, then there was her specialty—the erotic pastries all of South Beach had gone wild for since the restaurant opened a few months ago. What man could resist light, flaky pastries shaped like a woman’s breasts and filled with sweet cream? He’d be putty in her hands in no time.
And maybe Giselle would have a shot at remembering what a man-induced orgasm felt like.
She already had her head buried in the refrigerator when she heard his chair scrape along the ceramic tile. She peered out at him while she dragged essentials from the icebox. He seemed to be getting more comfortable, pivoting his seat to face her, stretching out long legs encased in light brown trousers. She recognized the distinctively male characteristic from life with her four brothers—take up as much space as possible to maintain control of the environment.
“Are you going to give me a hint what you’re celebrating, or am I going to have to guess?” He propped an elbow on the table, his green gaze warm and intimate even from four feet away.
“You’d never guess.” She set the pastry in a low temperature oven to take the chill off while she stirred a small batch of frosting in a peachy, skin-tone shade.
Glancing at the difference between her own bronze skin and the fair hue of the frosting, Giselle added a dash of brown and yellow to the mixture. If the man was going to be thinking about breasts, he might as well at least be thinking about the proper pair.
“I don’t know about that. I’m a pretty good guesser.” He scrubbed a thoughtful hand along a squared jaw. “Any woman singing Sinatra probably has romance on her mind.”
She stopped stirring. “Romance?” Odd how the word made her nervous.
“Yeah. You know—a man, a woman and a lot of sparks?” He crossed his feet at the ankles as if utterly content to play guessing games.
And she had to admit he was pretty damn good at them.
Slowly, she began to stir again. “I might have been thinking about sparks, I’ll grant you that much.”
She wanted to glance his way again as she pulled the pastry out of the oven, but to create an erotic confectionery masterpiece she needed to concentrate on the task at hand.
“She says yes to sparks while romance remains questionable.” Hugh seemed to mull over the notion, the words spoken more softly than the rest. “I’d have to say that means you were celebrating a wild, out-of-control affair. Am I getting closer?”
The deep timbre of his voice in her kitchen did wicked things to her insides as she frosted the treat and put the finishing touches on the nipples with tiny pieces of cherry.
“You’re definitely getting closer.” Her words ended on a husky note as she eased the pastry onto a small silver serving dish and dusted powdered sugar around the rim. “I was simply celebrating the freedom to have a wild, out-of-control affair since my watchdog big brothers are all far away from South Beach this weekend.”
She hoped she didn’t overplay her hand as she swayed her hips with blatant suggestiveness when she walked toward him with the plate.
“All that singing and dancing over a basic freedom like the ability to conduct a sensual interlude?” His eyes lingered on her hips before lifting to meet her gaze. “It stirs the imagination to think how you might react when faced with the reality of a man who would give his right arm for a chance at that kind of encounter with you, Giselle.”
She paused beside him, her legs mere inches from where his own sprawled across the floor. Heat crawled over her skin and made her tingle with anticipation. But it was nothing compared to the flash fire that sizzled through her when she leaned forward to set his plate on the table. Her breasts moved through his line of sight, almost close enough to his mouth to feel his breath.
Or so she wanted to think.
“You won’t have to use your imagination for much longer.” Straightening, she took shallow breaths in the too-warm air that hovered between them. The urge to lick her lips grew almost overwhelming as she stared down
at him. “All you have to do is take a peek at the dish I’ve made for you to see what I would do to tempt that sort of man.”
2
NORMALLY, HUGH WASN’T THE KIND of guy who enjoyed surprises. He’d learned at an early age that being unprepared could have dangerous consequences, and he’d forged a personal quest to make sure his stories kept people so informed they’d never be caught off guard.
But Giselle’s late-night offering was the kind of surprise a man relished. And one he sure as hell would never forget.
“What do you think?” She stood over him, the scent of her vanilla cream confection mingling with the more earthy, herbal aroma that clung to her skin.
Even though he was curious to see her facial expression, to search for hints of the game she played in her mischievous dark brown eyes, Hugh couldn’t seem to tear his gaze from the bare breasts served to him on a—no kidding—silver platter.
He sensed her shift beside him while he searched for the correct response. She tugged out the chair across from him and eased into it.
Finally he managed to look up at her own cleavage, enticingly displayed in the killer scrap of red silk she wore for a dress. A plunging neckline edged in a tiny red ruffle seemed to frame the object of his attention.
“Quite honestly, they look delicious.” With an effort his gaze continued up to her face, her flirtatious smile and finally her sugar-streaked cheek. “I can hardly wait for a taste.”
He reached across the table—surprising her a little if the sudden biting of her lip was any indication—and swiped the powdered sugar smudge from one high cheekbone.
She stilled beneath his touch, her skin as warm and soft as he imagined, before he pulled away to lick his finger.
“Very sweet.” Desperate to distract himself before he leaned across the table for a much more thorough sampling, Hugh scooped up the silver fork she’d provided and speared a bite of the explicit pastry.
“Thank you.” She leaned back in her seat and pulled a thin wooden stick from the knot of hair piled on top of her head. A silky brown mane fell about her shoulders while she tucked the stick into a black leather satchel alongside the table. “My pastries have developed quite a following among the locals.”
Hugh watched the dance of her wavy hair against the smooth column of her neck as he swallowed another bite of sweet pastry and wondered when he’d ever been so sensually bombarded on all levels. For a man accustomed to an austere existence in one unstable foreign country after another, Giselle Cesare provided an electric jolt to his system.
“I can see why. Tasty, as well as provocative. You don’t find that too often in a food.”
She quirked a dark eyebrow while a smile played about her lips. “Then you don’t know your foods well enough. Spend a little time with a chef and I guarantee you’ll change your mind on that score.”
He would have jumped at the chance if his mouth hadn’t been full. And perhaps that was a good thing, he realized as he gulped another bite, because he wouldn’t want Giselle to think for a moment he was dating her to unearth information on Club Paradise.
He could develop an exposé on the scandal-ridden resort with his eyes closed as soon as he knocked the considerable chip off his shoulder over having to write it in the first place.
Before he could decide how to proceed with the enticing woman seated across from him, she leaned forward to speak.
“So what do you do besides roam the hallways at the crack of dawn? Are you a hotel guest? A nightclub partyer who didn’t heed the last call?”
“I’m a wanderer. I’ve been out of the country for the last few months and I’m settling back into the rhythm of South Beach. I just followed the crowd into the Moulin Rouge Lounge around midnight.” He wondered fleetingly if Giselle had slipped an aphrodisiac into his pastry because the longer he sat across from her, the more he wanted to reach out and touch the warmth of her skin, inhale her exotic, spicy scent. “I checked out the club, strolled the beach. Next thing you know, it was closing time.”
“Next thing you know?” She rolled her eyes. “That’s four hours. I can never do anything for four hours without getting impatient. And I’m pretty sure I’ve never ‘strolled’ at any time in my life.”
Somehow that didn’t surprise him. He pointed his fork in her direction. “You’re more of a charge through life kind of person, I bet.”
“Exactly. I’ve never been very good at waiting for anything, and even back in my party girl days I never spent four hours at any single club. It was more of a trick to see how many places I could hit in that much time, you know?”
“You miss all the best parts when you rush.” He smiled, thinking about how much fun it would be to slow this woman down for four hours. Twenty-four hours.
She crossed her legs, extending one gorgeous calf toward him and inviting memories of what her legs had looked like as she twirled around the kitchen before. He’d never forget the sight of her bright red panties against her dusky skin.
Although she hadn’t revealed any more than a woman wearing a bathing suit, the fact that the peep show had been so unexpected had his mouth watering for a repeat performance.
She tucked a strand of wavy brown hair behind one ear. “What do you do when you’re out of the country? Do you travel for your job?”
Busted.
He’d been too busy thinking about how much he wanted to distract her from this line of conversation, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to admit his profession to the woman who worked for the subject of his next article.
Now, caught without an alibi and unwilling to lie to a sexy-as-hell female sending him definite “do me” vibes, he had no choice but to go with the truth. “I’m a reporter for the Miami paper. I thought I’d check out the resort on an informal basis before I make an official visit for a story.”
Okay, so he only told a portion of the facts. She didn’t need to know he’d stumbled across her tonight as part of his spying routine. She’d write him off as creepy before he could say so much as “nice to have met you.”
The come-hither vixen in the sexy red dress paled a few shades. Backed up visibly. “A reporter? From the Herald?”
“What? You have an ax to grind with the media or something?” No skin off his nose. He just hoped she wouldn’t rule him out on the basis of his job.
Because one way or another, he wanted to learn everything there was to know about Giselle Cesare.
PLEASE SAY SHE DID NOT JUST just serve an erotic pastry to a potential food critic from the biggest newspaper in the southeast.
It simply wasn’t possible. Giselle had worked too hard to distinguish herself as an up-and-coming chef. She’d poured every last dime of her share of the family inheritance into a portion of the resort ownership. No way could she afford to lose that money by screwing up this badly.
Leaping out of her chair, she set aside all thoughts of seducing Hugh Duncan as she wondered what else she could feed him that didn’t involve naughty depictions of female body parts.
She could still salvage this meeting. Maybe.
“An ax to grind? Who, me?” Her laughter sounded a bit manic even to her own ears. Oh, God, he was surely going to think she’d lost her marbles, as well as her desire to succeed in the restaurant business. “You want to try some calamari? It’s a house specialty in our Mediterranean dining room.”
Did he know the resort boasted three different eating facilities? She had no idea how familiar he would be with the way her kitchen operated.
Tugging open the refrigerator she stared into it, waiting for culinary inspiration to strike while a nervous sweat broke out across her brow. How had her day gone from awesome to gut-clenchingly awful in the course of half an hour?
She jumped when Hugh appeared at her side.
“I’m not hungry for anything but conversation. Care to join me?” He held his empty plate in his hand.
Giselle hurried to take the plate and the fork, letting the refrigerator door close behind her. “That’s f
ine, too. Did you want to take a tour of the dining areas while we talk?”
Of course, taking a walk meant she damn well better put her shoes on. What if he included in his review the fact that he’d caught her in the kitchen in her bare feet? She’d be doomed to health-code-violation hell.
The health department would close her down, her partners would kick her out as an owner and she’d never escape the smothering shelter of the Cesare family clan who always insisted she couldn’t make it in the world without their help.
Hugh’s hands on her shoulders steadied her as she slid into the three-inch heels she’d kicked off after the nightclub closed for the night.
“Wait. Stop.” His touch permeated the silky fabric of her dress as if it wasn’t even there. His fingers curved around to her back, his thumbs dipping into the soft terrain at the base of her neck.
Ten minutes ago she’d longed for a chance to have his hands on her. Now she stood paralyzed, unsure how to proceed from here with a man who held the balance of her career in his hands as surely as he held her body.
Her hot, aching body that still longed for him.
She blinked up at him. Waiting.
Hugh shook his head, his brow wrinkled in obvious confusion. “What did I miss here? We went from racy flirtation to I-can’t-stand-the-heat-so-let’s-get-the-hell-out-of-the-kitchen in record time, and I’m not quite sure how it happened. You seem upset that I work for the paper.”
He hadn’t made it a question, yet he seemed content to wait for her to speak. To explain.
“I’ve been trying to get your paper out here for weeks to review my food.” She cleared her throat in an effort to remove the hesitant sound from her voice. She wouldn’t compound tonight’s problem by appearing ungrateful to the poor unsuspecting food critic who only wanted a taste test and wound up walking in on the chef flashing her panties in a moment of unbridled enthusiasm. “And while I realize it is often customary to make a surprise visit to a restaurant in order to sample the average food preparation capabilities on any given night, I can guarantee that my welcome would have been much different if you’d at least made your visit during business hours.”
