Sin City Seduction

by Margot Radcliffe

  With that, she shoved a huge bite of rib into her mouth and ignored him. She was so livid she could barely breathe.

  She filled out the scorecard, making a real effort not to let her foul mood skew her ratings. Then she shoved the plate of food into the trash.

  “I usually played ball on Sundays, so there wasn’t really time to grill.”

  She glared at him, sucking in air, her eyelids fluttering in irritation. “You know what I mean.”

  He studied her, not looking upset by her pointed outrage, but almost thoughtful. “So you ran away because my barbecue was bad?”

  “Hugh, your barbecue is not bad. That is not what my review said. I just thought it wasn’t remarkable. For a lot of restaurants that’s exactly what they want, but I’m picky about barbecue and my readers want food they can’t get anywhere else. I don’t know that Blue Smoke qualifies, and that’s the whole story.”

  His tongue pressed into the side of his cheek as he sat fully back in his seat, his hand finally, finally, falling from the back of her chair.

  Relieved, she chewed on a palate-cleansing cracker and sat back as another plate was put in front of her.

  “Why don’t we put our skills to the test then?” Hugh said, regarding her thoughtfully. “We could make this interesting.”

  “This cooking competition?”

  He shook his head. “We could have one of our own. You and me.”

  Her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we’ll each make a plate of barbecue, have it judged impartially and see who wins. If you win, it’ll be a great story for your magazine, and if I win, you’ll know I’m better.”

  “No way,” she said immediately. She was not spending any more time with Hugh Matteson. He would devour her whole. One hand job and she’d been ready to give him five stars and the gold medal for barbecue; no way was she sticking around for some bootleg competition with him that he’d probably rig.

  “You scared you’ll lose?” he taunted.

  She took a bite of the pork, shaking her head. “I just don’t want to spend more time with you.”

  He laughed at that, that wolfish grin with the crooked incisor giving her the shakes. He leaned in again and that deep rumbling voice taunted her. “You are such a chickenshit. What’s the matter? Know you can’t keep your hands off me? Even though I want to, I know I can’t keep mine off you. I’ve relived what we did in that club every hour of every day since it happened. Truthfully, sometimes more than that.”

  Parker swallowed, her breath stuck in her throat and her eyes closed against the wave of prickling anticipation that swept over her body. She shook her head, wanting it all to stop, yet knowing she wanted it to continue more.

  At his low, knowing chuckle, she snapped back to reality.

  “Fine,” she bit off. “I’ll do it, but if I win you have to sell my barbecue sauce in your restaurant and online store.”

  “Done,” he declared, his grin triumphant. “And if I win, I get one night with you.”

  She snorted. “I’m not cattle, Hugh. I won’t barter away my body for a barbecue competition. If you want me, you’ll have to win me on your own wits. Unfortunately for you, I’m a lot more complicated than barbecue.”

  She shoved another plate in the trash.

  But he wasn’t finished, apparently, because he moved his chair closer to her, leaning in all the way so it looked like he was going to kiss her neck, but it was really just a distraction because in the same moment he put a hand high on her thigh, where a rush of heat surged.

  “Better watch out, Parker,” he murmured. “You just accepted a challenge with the only man in Vegas who has always been the odds-on favorite to win.”

  She closed her eyes and nodded. She hadn’t needed the warning; she was already well aware that she was in very deep trouble.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “HAVE YOU DECIDED what you want if you win?” Parker asked Hugh, standing in the middle of the deserted kitchen of Blue Smoke.

  It was late and Hugh was tired after the long day of judging at the festival, but he’d convinced Parker to come and see his kitchen under the guise of fair play for their competition. A competition he didn’t exactly want to participate in, but it had been a good way to prove that she was wrong about his barbecue. It didn’t mean he was quite ready to forgive her lie, because he was still pissed about that, but he believed her reasoning. That said, lying wasn’t something he ever tolerated.

  Ordinarily, he would have walked away and never given her a second chance, but the reality was that he hadn’t been able to forget her. He’d been with a lot of women and nothing compared to what they’d had at Structure. He still felt her touch on his skin, smelled her citrus scent on the air, and he knew he wasn’t going to let go that easily. He at least wanted her in his bed before he moved on to the next.

  She was wearing some kind of flowy peach skirt that ruffled out above her knee and a white T-shirt that emphasized a chest he’d been remembering on a loop since that first night, too. Her long blond hair was pulled up into some messy knot on top of her head, with more and more strands falling onto her face and neck as the day had gone on. Despite the relative coolness the tent had afforded, they’d been sitting in one-hundred-degree heat eating barbecue and he’d spent most of it imagining himself licking up the single droplet of sweat he’d seen rolling down the back of her neck. He’d almost just done it, too, until she’d wiped it away with a napkin.

  So, yeah, he was going to pursue this as a physical relationship, but that’s where it would end. Parker Jones could not be trusted.

  Of course, right at this moment she was the one who looked low-level pissed that he’d dragged her to a restaurant kitchen after hours when no one was around. He’d been maneuvering her all day, simply because she deserved it. He could give a shit about the review, but that she’d been operating on a lie of omission dug deep into him in a way he couldn’t shake. Seeing her order that night, his first thought had been that she was a reviewer anyway; he didn’t see what the big deal would’ve been if she’d just told him the truth. It wasn’t as if she was held to some kind of food journalist code of ethics where his knowing she was a critic would somehow corrupt her review. It was just scared bullshit because whatever this was between them was combustible and she knew it, just as he did.

  “I’ll tell you if you admit that you writing that review wasn’t the only reason you left,” he said, baiting her.

  “First of all, you’re going to tell me anyway because I’m not agreeing to a competition unless I know what you’re getting if I lose,” she challenged, like the boss she was. “But since you want to be cute and hassle me first, I will admit that had I planned to write a positive review, I would have admitted what I did for a living.”

  That unintentional tell had him smiling. “I get it,” he drawled, rocking back on his heels. “You didn’t want to hurt your chances of a one-night stand with me by telling me the truth. It had nothing to do with journalistic integrity.”

  Parker shrugged. “So what? You hit on me first.”

  “No problem,” he clarified, “just making sure I understand. And then you felt so guilty for using me for my body even though you were writing a crappy review, you cut out on me.”

  “I wouldn’t say guilty,” she said. “I don’t feel guilty about writing the review.”

  “Of course not,” he snarked. “Why would you feel guilty about that?”

  “Because your food is fine, but it’s not upscale,” she told him, standing right in the middle of his own restaurant’s kitchen. She might be a liar, but she also didn’t pull her punches.

  “I never said it was upscale,” he told her. “Those were the words of another food writer, so hate to burst your bubble there. Furthermore, the people who come to a restaurant associated with me aren’t coming for upscale barbecue. I know exactly who my c
ustomers are and sales just keep going up.”

  “Your price point is not at the family-friendly restaurant level,” she argued, arms crossing under that magnificent chest.

  He stretched his neck, trying to keep from reaching for her. Regardless if Hugh the person was still pissed at her, his dick had already forgiven her, bought her flowers, and was ready to move in together. “Are you going to keep droning on about business or are you just going to admit you were wrong and take your clothes off?”

  “Excuse me?” she choked, and the satisfaction of catching her so off guard was very deep.

  “I mean just what I said. We both know that regardless of the content of your review, which for the record I’m fine with, you owe me an apology for lying. So let’s have it.”

  Her brown eyes narrowed. “I already apologized at the festival.”

  “Did you?”

  She nodded her head and he smiled. “Well, I don’t think I heard you, so maybe you should try it again. Maybe it’ll stick this time.”

  “I’m out of here,” she said, glaring at the command and grabbing her canvas bag from where she’d tossed it earlier on one of the stainless steel worktables.

  “I thought something really bad had happened to you, Parker,” Hugh reminded her. And this was a true fact, because he had honestly been concerned for her welfare, especially when he’d thought she’d passed out in the bathroom or something. The thoughts that had spun in his mind, like if he’d actually been taking advantage of a sick or drunk person, for instance, had been monumentally shitty. She’d appeared to be in possession of all her faculties, but when someone disappears like that anything seems possible. “You could at least acknowledge that. I mean, I called your damn hotel to make sure you were okay. And then you didn’t even text me at the number I left the concierge to let me know. Do you know how much of a risk it was to leave my phone number with someone? The last time I gave it to a woman in a bar, she sold it. One thousand times. Made nearly a hundred grand. Yet I gave it to a random hotel employee just so I could know you were okay.”

  She regarded him, those warm brown eyes shrewd and assessing, as if he were lying. He didn’t know what it said about him, but he was getting off on her skepticism of him. Being who he was, most girls just gave him what he wanted either because he was rich or they felt sorry for him. While he wasn’t complaining, he was also very aware that his most distinguishable trait was that he was a workhorse. Fed off the drive, the goal, the raw, unfettered grinding toward what he wanted. If she thought that her back-off attitude was pushing him away, she couldn’t be further from the mark. It only made him want to work harder.

  Then she blew out a breath, a piece of blond hair alighting from her face and then plopping back over her eye. “I meant I was sorry when I said it earlier, Hugh,” she repeated. “I have felt guilty for days about it and I don’t know how else to get you to believe that, but it’s true. I was afraid because we’d already made out and I hate lying, but that’s no excuse for being a coward, which is what I was. It is, in fact, the only reason I’ve agreed to this ridiculous, and pointless I might add, contest.”

  He leaned back onto one of the big industrial ovens. “That was a lovely apology, thank you,” he grinned. “I accept your prostration.”

  She rolled her eyes, still holding on to her bag.

  “So you think it’s going to be that easy to beat me, do you?”

  Shrugging, she met his eyes. Not saying anything, but her meaning was clear. She wasn’t worried about it at all.

  “You know, I won’t be using the recipes I use for the restaurant.”

  Still, she didn’t look bothered. Fuck, not for the first time, he wanted to kiss that smug smile off her face. But he’d settle for needling her instead.

  “Where are you staying now? Just in case you decide to wimp out of this competition, as well?”

  “Do you want my blood type and Social Security number, too?” she asked, hands poised testily on her hips. “I’m not telling you where I’m staying so you can have access to me whenever you feel like it.”

  “Hotel staff isn’t allowed to just give anyone your room number, Parker.”

  “Yes, but you’re—” she waved her hand up and down in his direction “—you, so they’ll do anything to please you.”

  That was probably true and why he’d asked for her hotel, but it wasn’t as if he was going to stalk her there.

  “You have a pretty low opinion of me if you think I’m just going around Vegas browbeating innocent hotel employees into letting me into women’s rooms. If you want to know the truth, I could be single-handedly causing the plastic garbage heaps in the ocean for all the room keys I’ve had slipped in my pocket over the years.”

  It was the wrong move. He saw it as soon as the words left his mouth, but fuck it, he wasn’t going to hide the truth of who or what he was.

  “I’m sure lots of women do give you their room keys, but I’m not going to be one of them.”

  “But if you hadn’t written that review, we both know we were headed back to one of our places.”

  “You don’t know anything like that,” she insisted, glaring at him openly.

  He ran his tongue across the back of his teeth, watching her. She was bald-faced lying to him.

  “We both know that night was off the charts. I don’t know why you’re trying to deny it now. I was fucking there and I remember every second of it,” he said, his voice low as he took a few steps toward her. He wasn’t going to get in her space. He didn’t need to. He was big enough that getting closer drove his argument home. Case in point, she took a couple of steps back. “I have relived it too many fucking times to count. Even after I knew you’d written that review where you called my food, what was it? Ah, yes, ‘lacking substance.’ Even after that, I couldn’t stop thinking about that night. Couldn’t stop finishing it in my head. So don’t fucking tell me you haven’t. You’ve already lied to me once. Don’t do it again, Parker.”

  He’d really done it now. Her eyes were shooting fireballs right at his face and her hands were clenched at her side, the knuckles stark white against her tanned skin.

  But then after a moment she blew an audible breath through her nose, closed her eyes, then opened them again, her fists falling open at her sides. When she met his eyes again, she was calm.

  “Are you going to show me where I’m cooking for the competition or are you just planning on hitting on me this whole time?”

  “Ideally, hitting on you,” he admitted, unashamed. “But I can show you around, too. Just to make sure you don’t call foul play when I blow your shit away.”

  A corner of that cute bow mouth quirked, but she didn’t take the bait. The confidence in her belief that her barbecue could beat his was sexy as fuck, and honestly, he didn’t care if she beat him. He was a businessman and football player before he was a master of barbecue. He’d never fashioned himself otherwise. The food in the restaurant was good and designed for mass production, because his goal had always been a national chain. If he’d wanted a single restaurant of critical acclaim, he would have built one, but being adored by a few was never his thing. He went big. Always.

  “Not gonna crack, are you?” he taunted with a good-natured smile. “Admit you want to punch me a little.”

  She rolled her eyes again and pulled out her tablet from her gray canvas bag. Tapping it, she brought up a notes app and starting typing something. “Walk me through the kitchen?”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets because apparently playtime was over.

  Pointing to the oven, he said, “This is the oven.”

  Her lips pursed. “Just show me the smoker, please. And do I need to buy all my own ingredients or will we be working from the same basic ones?”

  “You can use whatever’s here, but I imagine we’ll both want to use specific brands or types of stuff that aren’t in the kitche
n, as well. We’ll check out the pantry after I show you the smoker.”

  “Great,” she said, her smile more of lips being pressed together instead of genuine pleasure.

  He laughed, shaking his head as he led her out to the back where six stainless steel smokers, each the size of a large refrigerator, sat on the cement floor of the outdoor kitchen extension. The area was covered, but also ventilated, because the smoke had to go somewhere. In the corner was a mobile smoking unit for when they went on the road to different area festivals or food truck rallies.

  Parker went to work, taking pictures of the smokers, noting how many racks each one held. He explained how they worked and had to admit that she asked intelligent questions. Not that he’d thought she wouldn’t. Her article had been thoughtful and thorough, after all.

  “So mesquite is the traditional Texas wood used in barbecue, but it tasted like you chose hickory to smoke yours. Why is that?”

  He raised an eyebrow, impressed that she’d noticed. “I use hickory for pork, mesquite for beef, maple for poultry.”

  Small white teeth appeared, worrying that puffy bottom lip. He felt a jolt in his dick, remembering those teeth on his tongue.

  “I don’t think whoever was smoking that day did that. I tasted hickory on everything,” she told him, meeting his eyes.

  He shrugged. “I do random checks every so often to make sure food is being made the right way. Other than that, there’s not much I can do. Sometimes people forget, maybe the wood was out of stock, any number of things could happen on any given day. I’m more concerned with the quality of the cooking and the consistency of the service. No typical customer will ever know if something should have been smoked with mesquite instead of hickory.”