Seduction By Chocolate

by Nina Bangs, Lisa Cach, Thea Devine

  "Chocolate chocolate is exactly what I mean," Sydnee said scathingly. "Cacao beans are where cocoa comes from, after all. And from cocoa, we get chocolate."

  "It comes from a plant? Really? And all this time I thought it came from a factory in Hershey, Pennsylvania."

  Sydnee rolled her eyes. Ella's knowledge of plants could fit into a thimble.

  "An old college friend of Professor Lindermann's owns a coffee and cacao plantation down there," she went on as if Ella hadn't spoken.

  "And?"

  "He's afraid his trees will catch this… disease that's circling the planet. So the professor wants me to help him protect his silly harvest."

  "Ah. Let me guess. You're not happy about it?"

  Sydnee rolled her eyes. "Ya think? But what choice do I have? From what I understand, if the disease isn't eradicated, in two years farms all over the world will be wiped out. At the very least, there will be a shortage."

  "Oh, good Lord! We can't have that happening," Ella murmured with feeling. "A shortage of chocolate would be a disaster. There'd be riots in the streets! Prices would be driven sky-high."

  "I suppose there would be. A shortage, I mean. Not riots in the streets." Syd's withering expression said she thought Ella was exaggerating. "I hadn't thought of it that way."

  "You wouldn't. You're not a chocolate freak, like me. I'm so relieved Lindy's sending you down there, Syd. Imagine. Cornell's very own Sydnee Frost, saving chocolate for mankind! Ta daaa!" Ella grinned and stretched like a well-fed cat.

  "Don't be ridiculous!"

  "I'm not. This will probably earn you canonization. I can just see it now. Saint Sydnee, patron saint of chocolate. After all, once you do away with chocolate and ice cream, what else do women have?"

  Sydnee rolled her own eyes in exasperation. Ella never changed.

  "There, You see? You can't think of anything, can you?" Ella said smugly when Sydnee volunteered no response.

  "What about men?" Sydnee suggested, heavy on the sarcasm.

  "Yeah. But they're a pretty poor substitute for chocolate and ice-cream, bless 'em," Ella declared. Her blue eyes twinkled. "No other suggestions? There. You see. I rest my case."

  Selecting a chocolate caramel from the candy dish, she popped it into her mouth, munching as she asked, "Getting back to your project, how old is this Costa Rican babe?"

  "I haven't a clue. But if he's Carl's age, I seriously doubt he's a babe."

  "Okay, okay, don't get snippy. Is he married? Loaded? All of the above?"

  "I told you, I don't know. And what's more, I really don't care," Syd added pointedly.

  "You didn't even ask, did you?" A second chocolate caramel followed the first. "Amazing. You know, Syd, you really are an odd duck…."

  Sydnee's spine stiffened. Odd duck? Her chin came up. The green eyes flashed behind the Coke-bottle lenses.

  "Why? Because I don't obsess about chocolate and men like you? Because I'm not ho—"

  "—horny all the time, like me?" Ella drawled, tawny brows arched. She smiled a sultry smile. "Don't be silly, darling. No one could ever be that horny. Yeowww!" She growled like a leopard and curved her fingers into claws.

  Syd gasped.

  It was such fun to shock Americans, especially Syd, Ella thought, chuckling to herself. Her friend and roommate was one of the few truly shockable people left in North America.

  "No!" Sydnee insisted, looking bothered. "I meant, interested in jumping into bed with every man I meet—"

  "Correction, sweetie. You're not interested in jumping into bed with any man you meet—"

  "That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with me," Sydnee finished defiantly. "I'm just not as… outgoing, shall we say, as you."

  "You don't think it's a little excessive in your case?"

  "No!"

  "Oh? Then why do the students call you Frosty the Snow Queen, hmm?" Ella shot back.

  "They don't."

  "Syd, sweetie. That's the most polite name they call you. There are others…. But this isn't about what people think of either of us. This is about you. Sydnee. We're worried about you."

  "We?" Her head came up. "Who's we?"

  "The people who care about you. Your friends." Ella looked evasive. "You've been alone and unhappy long enough. Your mum's gone. And you've put that married worm, Barry, behind you. Now it's time to move on. To date. To have a life outside the bloody research lab. You know? Meet someone. Fall in love. Get laid, as you Yanks call it." She grinned. "Who knows? Maybe even have an orgasm or two! In short, to be happy, Sydnee."

  "I am happy. Now. We were talking about Costa Rica, remember?" Sydnee reminded Ella stiffly, touching her throat in the prissy way she had when she was upset. The way that Ella deplored.

  Ella sighed. Once again, Sydnee was trying to change the subject. To divert attention from her nonexistent love life. "Okay, okay. I'll bite. What happened? Did you tell Lindermann you'd go?"

  "Not at first, no," Sydnee hedged.

  "But in the end, he strong-armed you?"

  She nodded unhappily. "Apparently, this Cord Westridge or whatever he's called has money, and he's dangling a fat endowment in front of Carl's nose, so Carl is pretty anxious to—"

  "Then he is loaded!" Ella exclaimed. Padding into the kitchen, she poured herself a cup of tea. "This gets better and better!" She added milk, stirred, then sipped. "Hmm. Heaven. Can I pour you a cuppa?"

  Sydnee ignored her. "We'll need more funding if I'm to continue my research beyond next spring. And the department has to get the money from somewhere."

  She shrugged slender shoulders and shoved her horn-rimmed glasses back up onto the narrow bridge of her nose. "I mean, what choice do I have, really?" she asked Ella, peering at her friend through thick lenses that made her eyes look blurred, as if they were underwater. "So. I fly out of Newark on Friday."

  "Friday!" Ella exclaimed, splattering a mouthful of tea in all directions. "This Friday?" When Sydnee's nod confirmed it, she went on. "But that leaves only two days to shop! One, if you count having to get into the blasted city first."

  "Shop? For what?" Sydnee's forehead creased in a frown. She hooked a strand of creamy blond hair behind her ear. "Westridge's operation is providing everything I'll need. Hotel for the first night. Living quarters at Rancho Corazón, his ranch and plantation. Meals. Transportation. Lab facilities. The lot."

  Ella snorted in disgust. "You'll still need the essentials." When Sydnee still looked blank, she rolled her eyes, exasperated. "Clothes, Syd. Real clothes." Her blue eyes held a gleam now.

  "Not lab coats. Not sweatpants. Warm-weather clothes. Resort clothes. By-the-pool-suntanning clothes. Romantic, exotic, beautiful clothes…"

  "If you're thinking Hawaiian flower prints and bright parrot colors, forget it," Sydnee snapped, pulling the front of the white lab coat she was wearing across a bulky gray sweater and baggy fleece pants. "They're not me, thank you very much."

  And never will be me! Right, Mom? she added silently, taking her mother's framed picture down from the marble mantelpiece. You made sure of that.

  She brushed a speck of dust from the antiglare glass.

  Clare Frost, her own pale blond hair drawn back into a severe bun that echoed Sydnee's French braid, looked out of the plain silver frame at her only daughter with a wintry smile.

  A waitress who had worked in a diner until a drunk driver claimed her life nine years ago, Clare Frost had raised her infant daughter alone after Michael Erickson, her high school sweetheart, ran out on her and her unborn baby, and her strict Catholic parents kicked her out.

  Determined to raise her love child single-handedly, Clare had made her way from Minnesota to New York. She'd waited tables at Dolly's Diner in New Jersey for as long as Sydnee could remember.

  By pinching a penny here, a dime there, and cutting every conceivable corner, Clare had squirreled away what was left over from her meager paycheck after rent, food, utilities, and life-insurance premiums, for Sydnee's education.


  There had been no money for frills or luxuries while little

  Sydnee was growing up. No extras. Nothing frivolous.

  "You're going to get an education so you can be better than your mother, honey. Smarter," she'd told Sydnee over and over as she was growing up, doing her homework each afternoon at a scarred table in a corner of Dolly's Diner. "No worthless bum's ever gonna take advantage of my little girl."

  But they had, Sydnee remembered silently, bitterly, thinking back to those lonely, vulnerable weeks following her mother's death. She was only thankful her mother had not been there to witness her daughter's fall from grace with Barry Gordon….

  "Syd? Hell-o! Earth to Syd!"

  "Hmm? What?" She came back to the present with a jolt to see Ella standing before her. Sydnee frowned. Her friend was dressed to go out, her pixie face all smiles.

  An artist's beret was pulled down over her cap of red hair. A lambskin leather coat hugged her petite figure to midcalf, where matching boots began. She was holding Sydnee's serviceable black wool coat out to her. "Come on! Shake a leg!"

  "What's that for?" Sydnee asked. She eyed the coat as if it might bite as she returned her mother's picture to the mantelpiece. Ella was famous for her madcap schemes.

  "To wear, silly. What else? Get your stuff together and let's go."

  "Go where?" Sydnee asked warily, realizing that Ella had an overnight bag slung over her shoulder. Surely she hadn't been serious about coming down to Costa Rica with her?

  "The city. Where else? We'll check into a hotel tonight; then first thing tomorrow, you and I are going shopping, darling! Upper East Side, here we come!"

  "Shopping? You really are crazy! It's ten degrees out there, remember? Polar bear weather— you said so yourself. We'll never get a Greyhound or anything else into the city in this weather."

  "Then we'll hop a sleigh! Just come on, do! And bring your contacts. We're going clubbing tonight!"

  Friday morning, Newark Airport, New Jersey

  "Well there she goes. Off into the wild blue yonder! I feel as if I've just chucked my first chick out of the nest." Ella sighed. "Do you think we did the right thing?"

  They watched as Sydnee's plane, which had taxied down the runway, lifted into the air. The sun caught the wings with a glint of silver as it banked.

  "I certainly hope so," her companion murmured, looking worried. "Since it's a little late to change our minds."

  Ella hugged him. "Silly. I told you. It's a win-win situation. At the very least, your friend Cord gets a top-notch fellow biotechnician to study his cacao trees. At the very best…" She grinned. "Well, you know."

  "Oh, I know," the man agreed, laughing as he snaked his arms around her shoulders.

  "I just wish I could be a fly on the wall when she unpacks," Ella said wistfully. Catching his eye, she giggled. "Those thongs! She'll have a fit!"

  "You're bad, Ms. Lawrence. You do know that, don't you?" He nuzzled her nose.

  "I try. God knows, I try," she agreed happily, kissing his chin.

  "So. What now?"

  "I've been thinking. There's a perfectly good hotel room with a marvelous Jacuzzi going to waste back in Manhattan…."

  "Really? I just hate waste, don't you?" he whispered, nuzzling her ear.

  "Loathe it," she agreed weakly, hanging on to the lapels of his cashmere overcoat. "Hmm, stop nibbling my ears, you naughty man! You're making my knees go weak."

  "Serves you right. You steamed up my glasses." He chuckled. "Do you think she suspects?"

  "Sydnee? Lord, no. Unless something has leaf fungus or root rot, it doesn't exist to her. When she gets back will be soon enough to tell her about us. Come on. Let's go! Oh, and Lindy, darling?" Ella's voice was throaty now. A feline purr.

  "What, my little tiger kitten?"

  "For God's sake, hurry…."

  Chapter Two

  Sydnee's research into tropical agriculture had meant taking flights all over the Pacific. Hawaii. Tahiti. Java. The Philippines.

  But however how many flights she took, she still felt sick to her stomach each time, convinced every takeoff or landing would be her last.

  This flight was the worst yet, she thought woozily, lurching against the person in the adjoining seat. The plane had suddenly bumped over some bad weather, like an old farm truck bouncing down a rutted road.

  The comparison to an old truck didn't do a thing for her nerves.

  Right on cue, a bell bonged and the FASTEN SEATBELTS light came on as the plane plowed its way through yet another patch of turbulence.

  If the man in the adjoining seat had looked remotely approachable, she might have begged him to let her clutch his arm for reassurance during takeoff. But the hard profile he presented had not been one that invited hand-holding.

  Tanned and clean shaven, but with chiseled features and a beard shadow that gave him a dangerous, decidedly disreputable cast, he looked like the handsome, bad-boy outlaw in a spaghetti Western.

  Hardly the comforting type…

  And so, several such bumpy patches ago, she'd decided to splurge on some liquid courage instead. The kind that came in a little bottle.

  Unfortunately, a single Scotch hadn't done the trick, and so she'd ordered another. Or had it been two others? Oh, my God I've lost track, she thought, giggling.

  Baaad Sydnee.

  "Yoo-hoo! Mish!" she cooed, waving a five-dollar bill at the flight attendant's retreating back. "C'mon back here, li'l mishee!"

  "Try ice chips, lady. Or black coffee. You've had enough of those." Dark and Dangerous, seated next to her, nodded at the small brown bottles on her seat tray.

  Sydnee cocked an eye at him. Dangerous cocked an unwinking one back at her. A narrowed eye that was a vivid blue against his tan.

  He had, she noticed through the golden haze of Scotch, blue-black hair. Worn just a shade too long, it curled over the collar of his crisp cream shirt like inky waves breaking against a cream shore.

  The spotless shirt and conservative tie didn't match that ruggedly handsome, outlaw face, she decided. Nor did the boyish cowlick that flopped over his brow.

  His personality may be the pits, but I have to admit, the guy's a babe, Ella. No doubt about it. A major babe, she thought with a sigh as she weighed the wisdom of smoothing that stray cowlick back into place. Not a normal Sydnee reaction at all, since Dangerous looked capable of biting off her fingers if she touched him.

  The Scotch must have lowered my inhibitions, she decided, giggling. I'm turning into Ella!

  "Whad I drink is my business, mishter," Sydnee shot back, but it came out more gushy than crisp. "So butt out, okeydokey?"

  "And let you upchuck on me? Hell, no," Dangerous said in a growl, his jaw rock-hard now. "Do I look stupid to you?"

  She was rashly about to answer his question in the affirmative when the flight attendant interrupted.

  "To signal a flight attendant, please press the call button next time, por favor, señorita."

  Her admonition brought their heated exchange to an abrupt halt.

  As they glared at each other, the flight attendant leaned over her companion's seat, her boobs almost putting out one of Dark and Dangerous's baby blues.

  He didn't appear to mind almost being blinded, the pig.

  "Another drink, ma'am?" the attendant offered.

  "You betcha!" Sydnee glared at her neighbor, daring Dangerous to say something. But he stared straight ahead, silent and ignoring her.

  Mm-mmm. Will you look at that profile! Mount Rushmore, eat your heart out, she thought irrationally.

  "I'll have another of those widdle Sco—"

  "She'll take some crackers," Dangerous cut her off before she could finish. His lethal tone dared her to contradict him. "Two packets. And coffee. Lots of coffee. High-octane. Black."

  The flight attendant flashed him a dazzling smile that showed a fortune in American orthodontistry. He grinned back.

  As far as the two of them were concerned, Sydnee no longer existed. If s
he ever had, which was debatable.

  "Certainly, señor," Smiley Sue cooed.

  Seething, Sydnee scooted down in her seat. That guy had his nerve, telling her what she could and could not have.

  "Next trip, give us all a break, honey," Dangerous said in a gritty tone when Sue was gone. "Get yourself airsickness patches. Scotch makes you sick as a dog, unless you're used to it."

  "I am ushed to it," she lied, her lips rubbery and out of control. "And I don't have moshion shickness. It's just—" She started to say, "It's just that I'm terrified of flying." But since it was none of his damned business, she insisted, "I just… happen to love Scotch."

  Those moody dark brows lifted. A deprecating sneer lifted the corners of his mouth. One that said, "Oh, yeah? Then I'm Elvis, back from the great beyond." But he only muttered, "Sure, honey. Sure."

  At a loss for a sizzling comeback— the one Ella would have had on the tip of her tongue— she snorted, shoved her glasses back up onto the bridge of her nose, and glared at him.

  "Bite me!" she insisted lamely.

  Dangerous shrugged and turned away, dismissing her in favor of his glossy Importers' Quarterly. "Whatever."

  She started to argue the point— the booze was making her belligerent now— then decided it wasn't worth the effort.

  The odds against ever seeing this… this handsome tico, as the Costa Ricans fondly called themselves, according to the guidebook, in a country with a population of almost 4 million were… were… well, they were pretty damned high, she thought, her chin drooping on her chest.

  A soft snore buzzed from her. She heard it as if from a great distance, and gave a smug little smile. Dark and Dangerous had been wrong about the Scotch. It hadn't made her throw up at all. It had put her to sleep….

  She woke an hour later to find her head pounding.

  The dark-haired, brown-eyed flight attendant with the toothpaste smile was beaming down at her.

  The seat beside her was now vacant.

  "What is it?"

  "Señorita, you must wake up now. Everyone else has deplaned," the woman was saying.

  "Deplaned? Why? Where are we?" Sydnee demanded. She gripped the armrests, her knuckles white.