Take Me Tender

by Christie Ridgway

  “Nope. Sorry.” God, he was so damn sorry. Six months ago he’d shared a bottle of wine with Shanna by her pool. And then a second bottle. They’d started on a third and that’s when she’d suggested they finish it…in her bedroom.

  What had there been to worry about at the time? Two healthy, single, consenting adults. He’d accepted her offer at face value—and that’s where he’d gone wrong.

  You’d think he would have been smarter, being a man who’d sifted through dozens of letters to NYFM’s relationship expert that all began with this same lament: “What did I do? Saturday night’s casual hookup now thinks we’re going steady.”

  He didn’t have the answer for his brothers-in-the-wrong-arms, nor had he been wise enough to keep himself out of their ranks. But by messing around with someone who not only lived next door but who was pictured in Buchanan family photo albums going back dozens of years, he’d made himself the General of the Bad Decisions Brigade.

  The fact was, you couldn’t take out a restraining order on, let alone be in-her-face rude to a woman you remembered attending your seventh birthday party wearing a polka-dot hair ribbon.

  A polka-dot hair ribbon and the identical fragile smile that flickered across her face now. “And my kitchen faucet is dripping.”

  See, that’s where the restraining order would be helpful. Day after day since the night he’d stumbled back to his own bed after a drunken romp in hers, there’d been dripping faucets, missing mail, back zippers she couldn’t reach, heavy boxes on high shelves that only he could retrieve for her.

  And every response of his, from brotherly warmth to distant politeness, hadn’t kept her from returning to his door.

  Over and over and over again.

  He swallowed a sigh. “Shanna…”

  “I know, I know. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  Jay stared. “What?”

  “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  Hallelujah. Praise God. Just as he was wondering if Shanna would never accept reality, she said this. On high, angels began to sing.

  If Shanna had finally moved on, then paradise would return to Billionaire’s Beach. Jay could go back to his single, carefree life.

  Still, his fingers tightened on the cell phone he’d located in his pocket. Even though it looked as if he might be out of the frying pan, he had to be careful about setting any new fires. So yeah, his decision was a sound one. Nikki wasn’t going to work out.

  And a little more celibacy wasn’t going to kill him.

  “I can help with this faucet, Ms. Ryan,” Jorge suddenly said.

  Jay and Shanna turned their gazes on the other man. He’d gotten to his feet and was fumbling with the buttons on his shirt to cover the tattoos that were sprinkled across his chest.

  Shanna shook her head. “I couldn’t…aren’t you my gardener?”

  “Sí,” Jorge answered, ducking his chin.

  Jay rolled his eyes. “Jorge is the owner of the landscaping company that takes care of your property.”

  “No, no,” Jorge corrected, his accent thickening. “She is right. I am a gardener. Today, when one of my employees went home to his mother in Tecate, I worked on Ms. Ryan’s hedge.”

  Jay narrowed his gaze, trying to figure out his friend. The six-foot, strong-as-an-ox businessman he’d known for the past five years looked as if he’d keel over if Shanna did so much as sigh in his direction. He shrugged. “If he can fix a sprinkler system, I’m sure he can tackle your faucet problem just fine.”

  “Sí, sí.”

  Shaking his head, Jay watched the other two head off in the direction of the marble palace next door. He pulled out his phone and flipped it open with his thumb, prepared to make his call to Nikki once he was alone. Then Shanna paused.

  “Jay,” she called over her shoulder.

  Uh-oh. That goose was back, climbing up the ladder of his vertebrae.

  “Now that you have a new girlfriend—well, I’ll try not to bother you so much anymore,” Shanna said. “But tell Nikki I was happy to meet her and I plan on visiting her in your kitchen very soon.”

  Hell. Decision finalized. Neither he nor his new cook girlfriend were going to get off so easily.

  His lashes drifted shut, thinking of Nikki’s witchy eyes, the wink of dimple in her cheek, the amusing little trick he’d played on her. Lesbian. Hah.

  But he was sticking to that story. If she was destined to spend her days in his kitchen, then he was all for coming up with obstacles to the two of them heating it up together.

  On her first day of employment, in the quiet of Jay Buchanan’s kitchen, Nikki measured out coffee grounds then added a dash of freshly grated cinnamon stick before sliding the basket into the maker. As instructed, she’d let herself into the house and gone straight to work on breakfast preparation. If his bed-tousled look of the other day was any indication, he was a late sleeper and she decided to dislike him for it, even though she appreciated getting started without his presence to distract her.

  The day of the interview she’d been broke, broken, and a little bit desperate. Today, she was broke, broken, and more than a little determined. With only a month to build the foundation of a new career, she refused to be diverted from that goal, no matter what Jay Buchanan threw her way. Though she was committed to acting both gay and girlfriend—and wasn’t that enough to make her brain reel—she was his chef first and foremost. Fact was, she worked for the man and no matter what other parts she was called on to play with him, she planned on maintaining a professional distance.

  A businesslike detachment.

  A private chef didn’t mean a personal anything—just the way she liked it.

  At the thought, more of her tension loosened, easing out of her like a deep sigh. She closed her eyes. Even her bum knee seemed less painful than before, as if Jay’s seaside kitchen and the decision she’d made to take this job in it calmed her old injury as well.

  “Morning,” a male voice said.

  The interruption yanked the serenity from beneath her feet. Her eyes flew open and her leg wobbled as she spun toward the sliding glass doors at her left. The knee restarted its own painful heartbeat.

  “You scared me,” she accused.

  Jay Buchanan’s eyebrows rose. “Jumpy, much?”

  Not that she wanted him to notice. Not that she wanted to notice him, but God, who could look away from a man so blond, so gorgeous, so ripped? He stood in the open doorway, shirtless again, his hair wet, his board shorts dragged low on his hips by the weight of the water they’d absorbed. One of his tanned forearms was braced on the jamb, and the pose made him look like a living, breathing ad for Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil or some exotic brand of rum. She swallowed, the movement as slow as the drop of saltwater rolling over his pumped pec and copper nipple. Dragging her gaze off it, she noticed the kayak and paddle he’d propped against the deck railing.

  So he hadn’t been in bed after all. People who left their sheets at the crack of dawn to engage in athletic endeavors were more dislikeable than people who spent their mornings lolling between them.

  But even a dislike was more personal than she wanted to get with him, so she tucked away her annoyance and reached for a mug. “Coffee?”

  He wrapped a beach towel around his hips before stepping off the deck and into the house. “I thought I told you to dress like a girl,” he said, eyeing her from across the bar separating the kitchen from the living area.

  “This from a man in a striped terry cloth skirt,” she murmured.

  “I heard that.” He picked up the coffee she slid in front of him and sniffed at it, sipped, then took a longer swallow as he hitched a hip onto a barstool. “But great coffee isn’t all I need from you, cookie.”

  She decided to ignore the nickname. In kitchens where she’d worked, she’d been called much worse.

  “You can’t have forgotten already that you’re my woman.”

  “Of course not. Last night I wrote a long entry in my diary about it in pink ink. With little h
earts like champagne bubbles surrounding your name.”

  He ignored the sarcasm. “Pink is exactly what I’m looking for, cookie. Tomorrow ditch those black-and-white checked pants and that starchy white tunic thing.”

  His order irked her. It was as if no one had ever stood up to the man. Though, looking like that, probably no one had. Probably women fell all over themselves to make him happy. “There’s nothing wrong with what I have on. This is chef-wear. I’m your chef.”

  “About that…”

  Her stomach clenched. “Okay, I’ll wear pink. Fuchsia or baby?”

  He seemed to consider. “It doesn’t really have to be pink, but it does have to show off your tits.”

  Her mouth dropped.

  “What?” he asked, as if surprised by her shock. “You’re supposed to be my girlfriend. My girlfriends like to show off their bodies to me. Are you telling me lesbians don’t look at each other’s tits? NYFM did a survey—”

  “Let me guess. Ninety-eight percent of your readers, 98 percent of your readers who are male, are certain they know exactly what lesbians like to look at, or at least they’re certain they’d like to watch lesbians ‘looking’ at each other.”

  His mug was halfway to his mouth and he toasted her with it. “You have been reading the magazine.”

  Rolling her eyes, she turned away to face the cutting board. Her plan was a modified huevos rancheros using scrambled eggs and fresh mango salsa. “Will your cousin want breakfast?”

  “I don’t know. She’s not here.”

  “What?” Nikki tried ignoring the morning’s second little jumpstart to her heart. “Why?”

  There was the sound of a shrug in his voice. “She’s already hanging out with her friends. I saw her on the beach from my kayak.”

  “Oh. Well, then.” It wasn’t any of her business. Really, it wasn’t. Professional detachment, remember? But words were already tumbling out of her mouth. “Shouldn’t she be better supervised?”

  She found herself facing Jay again, knife in hand.

  He glanced from it to her face. “Um…Fern’s seventeen.”

  She looked much younger. “Still, it’s so early to be already at the beach…”

  “It’s Malibu. It’s summer. That’s the whole point of living here when you’re a teenager.”

  Nikki forced herself to return to chopping mango. “Her parents must really trust you.”

  He laughed. “Everyone in the family knows Fern is plenty responsible. As for me…”

  She remembered the magazine’s motto. “Men are boys?”

  “I’m the oldest and the only male cousin in the family. We’re a close-knit group. Fern’s mother and mine are twins who married brothers. Between the two families there are six girls—and me.”

  “Which so explains your fabulous rapport with females.”

  She heard the legs of his stool scrape against the floor. Then she felt him at her back as he came to stand before the coffeemaker. As he reached for the carafe, his elbow brushed against her arm and she abruptly shifted away, her starched cotton tunic tickling the sudden goose bumps it hid.

  “I don’t seem to do that well with you,” he said.

  “But that’s no cause for sulking, handsome.” She pretended to be kind as she ignored the wayward tingles. “We’ve determined I play for the other team, right?”

  He was silent for such a long moment, she wondered if she’d pushed him too far. Damn, she knew distance and detachment were a better plan. She busied herself removing items from the refrigerator, then turned, only to find him blocking her way, his chest in her direct line of sight.

  A smattering of golden hair glinted between his tanned pecs, and suddenly she imagined touching them, feeling them beneath the curve of her palms, the skin hot and smooth. Her fingers flexed and she started, realizing she’d nearly cracked the eggs she’d taken from the fridge. Flushing hot, she jerked her gaze away from his naked flesh. Lord, she thought, if she swore to showcase her own chest would he promise to cover his?

  “Excuse me.” She sidestepped him, her shoulder grazing his biceps. Goose bumps prickled beneath cotton again and she coughed to clear her suddenly thick throat. Had her body betrayed her by unconsciously creating that “accidental” touch? There’d been plenty of room to bypass him, but he seemed to exert some unprecedented magnetic pull on her.

  On her, his lesbian chef. Great.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Hmm? Fine.” Keeping her head down, she drew a bowl closer.

  He leaned his hips against the counter a few feet from where she stood. “So tell me about you, cookie.”

  “Why?”

  “I shared something about myself. I told you about my family.”

  She flicked him a glance. “And about how you screwed your next-door neighbor.”

  “Ouch, that hurt.” Though he sounded more entertained than pained. “Are you saying you’ve never made a…uh…romantic mistake?”

  Nikki had made plenty of mistakes, starting at age fifteen. “Well…”

  “You’ve never gone to bed with the wrong woman?”

  She could look up and meet his gaze without flinching. “I’ve never gone to bed with the wrong woman.”

  A little smile played at the corners of his mouth.

  It made her uneasy. Looking away, she used her right hand to crack the eggs into the bowl.

  “Now there’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” he said. “I’ve never gotten the hang of using just the one hand.”

  “If you weren’t so satisfied by the ladies, you could practice in the shower.”

  There was another moment of silence. “Which I suppose is the only option open to me, now that we’re a couple. When I have a girlfriend, I’m sexually monogamous and you’re—”

  “Sexually unavailable. To you.”

  “But that has to be our secret, cookie. You can’t be traipsing around Malibu flirting with girls, since I don’t want my fellow residents to suspect we’re a sham.”

  “I’ll tell them you’re into threesomes. That should up your cachet.” She wondered where all this mouthiness was coming from—and then she didn’t. Despite her desire to stay impersonal, a man like this deserved to be taken down a peg or two, and she was in a unique position to do it. It was practically a noble—if not holy—purpose. As a lesbian, she could act unimpressed by him even though Hetero Nikki would have found his masculine beauty downright intimidating.

  He chuckled. “All right, then. Flirt away.”

  Deflecting more of his questions, she managed to finish his breakfast and place it before him on the bar at the place she’d set. As he took his seat, he looked over the eggs, the crisp hash browns she’d shredded along with a smattering of onion, the creamy green avocado slices she’d fanned along the side of the plate. “Looks great, smells great. You won’t join me?”

  She blinked. “Of course not.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m your chef.”

  “With benefits, at least as far as the public’s concerned. And if you’re going to play my girlfriend, I really do need to know more about you.”

  “I grew up in L.A., I went to culinary school in L.A. I’m still in L.A.” What else was there to say? She’d never acquired the knack for chitchat. Her father had been a taciturn man who could go for days without talking. Nikki had grown accustomed to quiet, and later, it developed into a self-contained remoteness that had offered her some protection in raucous restaurant kitchens.

  In silence, she watched Jay take a bite of the huevos and could judge his approval by the expression on his face. Though she had plenty of confidence in her cooking skills, it was always gratifying to please the person for whom she’d created a meal. Satisfied, she turned back to the sink to take care of the cleanup.

  “You won’t even stay still long enough for the compliments?”

  She filled a pan with soapy water and gathered closer the utensils she’d used. “Your empty plate will be compliment enough for
me.”

  She felt him staring at her. “It can’t be this easy,” he finally declared. “It just can’t.”

  “What?” She turned to face him.

  “Seriously. I’ve devoted my life to finding a woman who makes things as simple as that.”

  She’d read a couple of NYFM articles with his byline—the last a scathing exposé of the wasteful spending of one of the departments of the federal government—and so she doubted the only thing he was interested in was simplicity. But then she remembered those pictorials. “You’ve got women who fit that requirement plastered all over your magazine, my friend. A simple two digits for breasts, waists, hips, and brain.”

  “That’s the fantasy, cookie. But in real life…” He interrupted himself to take another bite. “This meal is incredible.”

  As she dumped the knives and the spatula she’d used into the suds, she discovered she was smiling. “Thank you.”

  “So tell me, what inspired you to create good food?”

  The answer flew to the tip of her tongue. “My mother’s spaghetti. Store-brand tomato sauce dumped over browned ground beef and limp sticks of noodles. Not a spice to speak of.”

  With her grim father at the head of the table and plates of such banal food on top of it, Carmichael family meals had been mostly wordless and mercifully quick. All three of them had been thin.

  Then her mother got thinner.

  “And the first real meal you ever made was…?”

  Jay’s casual prompt sent her to the past again. To when her mother was sick and Nikki had learned to do laundry and be her father’s silent partner on runs to the grocery store. During one of those runs she’d remembered a recipe she’d seen on TV or scanned in one of her mother’s unread magazines or maybe merely dreamed about after finally dropping off to sleep at night.

  “It was pasta, too,” she said, recalling it with perfect clarity though it was years away from the Malibu kitchen. “I was fourteen years old and I put together fresh fettuccine from the refrigerator section, grated Parmigiano Reggiano, heavy whipping cream, butter, fresh mint, and basil.”

  She’d made the dish with deliberation, as if each ingredient was an important element of a magic spell. And then she’d added a final, uncalled-for component: the salt from her very own tears. Never again had she cried with such abandon.