He lifted a forkful of the rice dish into his mouth. “This is really good,” he said in between bites. “I never pictured you as the cooking type. Not with your mother being such a feminist.”
“She's a womanist. There's a difference. Feminists tend to tamp down their softer side for fear that it makes them appear weak. Womanists embrace that softer side because they see it as a strength. My mother encouraged me and my sisters to explore all things feminine and feel good about them. My oldest sister, Skye, loves to shop. My sister, Eve, likes to garden, though the last thing I saw growing in her window box looked sort of scary.” At his questioning glance, she added, “Eve's a little different. She's very artsy and creative, and she likes to piss our mother off. She's the rebel of our family.”
Xandra smiled again, and his stomach hollowed out. He shook away the sensation and blurted, “She's a nutball,” before taking a long gulp of the beverage she handed him.
Her full lips pulled into a tight line. “I prefer the term ‘quirky.’”
“Whatever floats your boat, but it still means the same thing: ‘nutball.’”
“Try the steak,” Xandra ground out, shoving a fork into Beau's mouth before he said another word. It was one thing to know that he was a dud in bed, and another to realize that he was rude and insensitive on top of that.
Add to Imperfect Daddy list: A man who uses the word ‘nutball'when referring to her relatives.
“Not bad,” he said after swallowing the mouthful. Before she could cut another, he reached past her. His arm grazed hers and heat tingled through her body on its way to every major erogenous zone. “It could be better, but I'll need another bite before I can make a definite suggestion on what it's lacking.”
Warmth spread through her. A crazy reaction because this wasn't about how well she cooked. It was about saturating his taste buds and making him hungry for more than what was on the plate.
Beau popped another bite of steak into his mouth, and chewed with a thoughtful look on his face. “It needs something.”
“Maybe you need something,” Xandra replied, her patience wearing thin.
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“You know you like it. Just admit it.”
“Maybe I do, maybe I don't. What does it matter if I like it? You didn't do any of this for me. It's for your dinner party. Right?” Challenge gleamed in his eyes.
“Right.” As she watched him enjoy another bite, her own stomach grumbled. She cut another piece of meat, but his hand closed over hers as soon as she forked it. He took it from her and held it up to her mouth.
“So dig in. You know you want it.”
Boy, did she ever.
As soon as the notion struck, she forced it aside. This wasn't about really and truly wanting him. How could she really and truly want something when she knew it wasn't going to be all that? No, this was all in the name of research and the anticipation rippling through her body stemmed strictly from the notion that she was about to validate her ultimate design.
That coupled with the fact that it had been over six months since she and Mark had had sex, even the bad kind. It was no wonder her body was reacting with such fervor.
She ignored the urge to close her lips around the bite of steak. She was already turned on enough. She didn't need any aphrodisiacs adding to her already volatile condition.
“My sisters hate to cook,” she blurted, eager to do something with her mouth. “I'm the only one who really took to it. Every night during high school, I helped my grammie in the kitchen. By the time senior year rolled around, I was doing it all. Appetizer through dessert.” She smiled. “When I went away to college, that was the one thing I missed the most. A hot plate in a dorm room isn't really conducive to a full-course meal.”
“But you make up for it now.” He slid the bite into his own mouth and chewed.
“I'm so busy with Wild Woman that I usually get home too late. Though that didn't stop me at first. I just got tired of eating alone. My ex said it was more convenient for him to catch something at the tofu bar at his gym after he finished his workout. He wasn't much for sit down dinners.”
“Did you love him?” His gaze burned into hers as he waited for an answer to the blunt question and a strange tingling swept up her spine.
“No.” Oddly enough, the admission didn't come with the expected regret. “I don't do romantic love.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
“Love is not a key ingredient to a lasting relationship. I'm sure it's nice, if it exists, but it's not mandatory.”
“If it exists?” He eyed her. “You're telling me you've never been in love with anyone? You've never met a man who makes your knees weak? You've never felt the butterflies in your stomach or the damp palms? You've never had your heart beat so fast that you're scared it's going to jump out of your chest?” His disbelieving gaze held hers. “Never?”
Once, a traitorous voice whispered. A long, long time ago…
She shook her head. “That's lust, not love. So what about you? Do you cook?”
He looked as if he wanted to ask her more personal questions, but then he shrugged. “Not too much now. My schedule is pretty tight. But I used to cook when I was back in high school. I did dinner while my kid brothers set the table and cleaned up.”
“Every night?”
Beau nodded as the past rushed at him. “Family tradition. My dad always made us sit down every night at the dinner table when we got home from the gas station.” He smiled as he remembered his dad telling everybody to wash up “or else.” “It was because of my mother. She was always big on doing the whole dinner table thing and when she passed away, he kept it up. I think he figured she was up there looking down at him and so he had to keep things going or else she'd get pissed off at him.”
“My grandmother made us sit down with her every night, too. It didn't matter who had a date or who had homework or who had to watch the newest X-Files episode.” At his raised eyebrows, she added, “The nut-ball.”
He grinned. “This really isn't half bad.” He took a bite of salad. “What's in this?”
“It's got cherries and bananas and mangoes. They're all really high in—” She caught the last word as if she'd been about to tell him some big secret. “They're, um, very high on the fruit chain.”
“There's a fruit chain?”
“Um, yeah. It's a variation of the whole food chain idea.”
“And what would be at the top of the fruit chain?”
“The biggest fruit, like a watermelon and then a pineapple, and then you've got your coconuts and the whole melon family before you get to the apples and oranges and the like…Boy, it's kind of hot in here.”
“You know, it really is.” Beau took a long gulp of the beverage she handed him, but the slightly sweet liquid did little to quench his thirst. Instead, he found himself even more thirsty. And hungry.
The notion stuck in his head as she popped a cherry into her mouth. Her straight, white teeth sank into the fleshy red pulp and his stomach hollowed out. Juice spurted and slicked her lips and he told himself he was going to hand her a napkin. You'll hand her the napkin and get the hell out. But thinking it and doing it were two very different things and instead he leaned forward.
Her eyes hooded as he reached his destination. He flicked his tongue along her plump bottom lip, tasting the sweet mixture of warm female and ripe fruit. Another flick and he caught her bottom lip between his teeth and nibbled just enough to make her gasp.
He kissed her then, claiming her lips in a hot, wet, thorough kiss that made his heart pound and his groin throb. He plunged his fingers into her hair and canted her head to the side just enough to deepen the kiss.
Soon she was feeding him kisses rather than fruit. She moved against him, her hands exploring until she found the hem of his shirt.
His breath hitched as her fingers touched the bare flesh of his abdomen. She worked her way up then, ruffling her hands through his chest hair, as i
f learning the outline of each and every muscle.
Need rushed through his body, stringing him so tight his only thought was to push her down on the sofa and plunge into her sweet heat.
He half turned, urging her down, following her. He tore his mouth from hers to taste the soft skin of her neck. He licked the hollow between her breasts before pulling back to unfasten her buttons and open the front closure of her bra. Her breasts spilled out, her nipples ripe and red and ready for his mouth.
Dipping his head, he drew one swollen tip into his mouth and suckled her. Long and hard and…sweet. So damned sweet. He'd missed this their first time because he'd been so hot to be inside her. He'd ached so bad.
The thought jarred him from the lust clouding his brain and he stopped long enough to take a drink of air.
His heart hammered as the past rushed at him. He'd not only ached so bad for her, but he'd been so bad that she'd picked him to test her newest product.
“What's wrong?” she asked as he sat upright and took another deep breath. And another.
“Beau?” Her hand touched his shoulder and he turned to look at her.
A big mistake because she looked so damned delicious with her blonde hair all mussed and her lips pink and swollen from his kisses. Her silk blouse hung open. The edges of her lace bra dangled to the side. Her soft, full breasts trembled with each breath and her red nipples glittered from the wet heat of his mouth. And suddenly he didn't care half as much about his pride as he did about kissing her again.
“What's wrong?” she asked again.
“I, um, feel funny.”
“What is it?”
You was on the tip of his tongue, but he managed to bite it back. And then he did the only thing that he could think of when faced with so much temptation and a woman who wanted him only for bad sex.
He burped. “I think it was the food. It's not sitting too well with me. There must be something wrong with it.”
His insult didn't seem to register because she said, “Oh, no you didn't. You didn't just burp.”
He forced another for good measure.
“I don't believe this,” she said. “You burped. We were kissing and then you just stopped and burped.”
“I wouldn't eat any more of this if I were you. Something's bad.” He got to his feet. “Wow, would you look at the time? I'm late.”
“For what?”
“Dinner.”
“But we're having dinner.”
“I hate to break it to you, but that's not really dinner. It's a disaster. Besides, I'm already meeting someone else for dinner.”
“You've got a date?”
“A date?” Hell, no. “Yes. I'd keep practicing for the dinner party if I were you. I'm sure you'll get it right.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Have a good night.”
“That's what I was trying to do,” she grumbled as he headed for the door. “Before the burp, that is.”
“I see you started the party without me,” Beau said when he walked into the hospital room where his longtime friend sat at a small table.
Evan no longer wore the bandages that had concealed the right half of his face since the accident. The newly grafted skin was healing nicely, the bright pink patches the only reminder of that night and the fact that he'd been driving drunk. He'd wrapped his Beamer around a telephone pole and had been the only victim in the accident. Thankfully. While Evan wasn't the most responsible guy, he did have a heart. Beau knew his friend wouldn't have been able to live with himself if he had hurt anyone else.
The accident had been only a partial wake-up call, however. While Evan had sworn off the booze, he still hadn't traded in the other vices of his fast and furious lifestyle. Judging by the deck of cards and the pile of bills sitting next to it, Beau knew his friend still had a hankering for high stakes cards.
“Actually, you're just in time. Desiree, here, promised to do a table dance.” Evan eyed the blonde nurse who'd followed Beau inside and was now unfolding the blood pressure cuff hooked to a nearby wall.
“Now, now. You know I don't dance when I'm on duty.” She winked as she walked over to him, hooked the cuff around his arm, and started to pump.
Beau set a Domino's pizza box on the nightstand and unearthed a six-pack of Coke and several packages of chocolate doughnuts from the paper sack he'd picked up at the grocery store down the street.
The room was dark except for the white fluorescent light humming at the head of the bed. The rest of the room sat in shadows. The curtains were open, the Houston skyline barely visible past the concrete edge of the adjoining building. It was a far cry from the high-rise apartment where Evan lived during the week and partied away the weekends.
“Don't you have anything better to do on a Saturday night?” Evan asked as Beau pulled up a chair.
“Better than a few Cokes, a pizza with the works, and beating you at poker? You forget who you're talking to.”
“The guy voted most likely to study himself to death.”
“The one and only.”
Evan shook his head, took a can of Coke, and popped the tab. “I thought you were crazy the first year we roomed together, did you know that?”
“I knew you were crazy. Playing strip Monopoly and quarters the night before a calculus final? I still can't believe you passed that test.”
“I aced it, friend. What can I say? I was a genius.”
“You were lucky. You're still lucky,” Beau said. “You're looking good.”
“Yeah,” he touched his face, “and you're still playing it safe.”
“How's that?”
“Sitting here with me when you could be out with some hot babe is definitely playing it safe. Your dad's been dead over three years now. Your brothers are all grown up. You don't have to pay for braces or buy graduation pictures or put anyone through college. You don't have to work from dawn to dusk to keep a falling down gas station from actually falling down. You don't have to put food on anyone else's table or pay their electric bills anymore. You don't have to fork over nursing home expenses or pay medical bills. You've done all that, bud. That and more. You can think about yourself now.”
“I've still got a business to run. People depend on me. I can't let them down.” Which was why he couldn't fall into bed with Xandra Farrel.
Sex with her wasn't just sex. It was intense sex. The kind that followed a man home long after it was over and filled his head with all sorts of crazy thoughts like maybe, just maybe, he'd found The One. The kind that shook him so much he couldn't concentrate on the most important day of his life. The kind that messed with his head and screwed up his future.
He wasn't having sex with her again.
No matter how good she tasted.
“Man, you need to live a little.”
Beau licked his lips and tried to ignore the sweetness that lingered on his tongue. “You live enough for the both of us.”
“Not anymore.” A strange look crossed his face and Beau had the feeling that Evan wanted to say something. But then Beau's cell phone rang, effectively killing any more conversation.
“Beau Hollister,” he said when he punched the button.
“She hated Jack,” Annabelle's voice filled his ear. “She hated him and she's threatening to report us to the Better Business Bureau for false advertising if we don't satisfy her.”
“Who?”
“Savannah Sawyer. The lady who writes the newspaper column.”
“The trouble with a capital ‘B’?”
“That's the one. Jack was there for two days and did most of the work. I thought you might actually turn out to be right about her caring more about the work than the worker. But then she called and threatened me. And you. And she made me promise to send her somebody really hot. Somebody without a beer belly who has blond hair and looks like Matthew McConaughey.”
“We don't have anyone working for us who looks like him.”
“I know. What are we going to do? This is terrible. This is worse than the Titanic. I'm
this close to trading my caffeine addiction for something really major. I can't deal with this stress. I'm sending Tom.”
“Tom doesn't know the first thing about decks. He's an electrician.”
“He's all we've got.”
“He doesn't even have blond hair.”
“I'll hand him a bottle of bleach. He's hot. That'll make her happy.”
“Calm down. Send Jason. He's blond and he's in fairly good shape and he at least knows about stripping and varnishing.” Jason was the resident painter and the closest thing he could come up with to finish the Sawyer job.
“I don't think he's going to work. He's married and hunky guys aren't supposed to be married.”
“She doesn't know that.”
“She'll know. His matching socks will be a dead giveaway.”
“Just send him and relax. Everything is going to be okay.” That's what he told her, but damned if he didn't have the crazy urge to tell her to make Jason wear mismatched socks.
He shook the thought away, stabbed the button and slid the phone into his pocket.
“No rest for the weary, huh?”
He shrugged. “What can I say? I'm the boss.”
“You don't seem too happy about the fact.”
“I'm happy.” His temples throbbed from an oncoming headache. “Dammit, I'm very happy.”
“Sure you are.” Evan gave him a knowing look. “And with this new face I'm the next contestant for The Bachelor.”
Beau frowned. “Are we going to play cards or what?”
Chapter Fifteen
I’m a complete and total loser,” Xandra told her sister Eve the next morning as she sat at her desk and stared at the untouched samples of Mabel.
“No, you're not. You're only failing at the seduction stuff, which makes you only part loser.”
“You're making me feel so much better.”
“You're missing the point.”
“Which is?”
“The other part of you—the nonloser side—has it going on in a major way. You're single and successful and totally hot. If I were a guy, I'd do you in a heartbeat.”
“Really?”
Sometimes Naughty, Sometimes Nice Page 15
