Take Me Tender

by Christie Ridgway

  I was just indulging in my new hobby. Not that I didn’t notice you weren’t all that thrilled with the possessive way that boy is touching you.

  She was settled into the nearest deck chair when Cassandra came back with a pair of needles and a ball of yarn the buttery color of the middle of a good crème brûlée. “You’ve never knitted at all?” she asked.

  Nikki shook her head as the other woman crouched close and then showed her how to make the first couple of stitches. “Now you try it,” Cassandra said.

  Nikki tried copying the nimble movements, but she seemed to have grown four extra fingers. Making a little grunt of frustration, she shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head and frowned at the woman beside her. “I can take a radish and make a rose, for goodness sake. You’d think I could do this.”

  Cassandra stared at her. “I…” Her voice died and she grabbed the arm of Nikki’s chair as she seemed to wobble on her feet. Pushing to a stand, she cleared her throat. “It…it takes some practice.”

  “Or some talent that it looks like I don’t have.” Nikki tried handing off the items as Cassandra sank into the seat beside her.

  The other woman pushed them back into her grasp. “Time,” she said, her voice husky. “It takes time, too.”

  Nikki frowned. “Are you all right?” Cassandra seemed to have paled, and she was now rubbing her arms with her palms.

  “I’m good. Fine. Try it again,” she encouraged with a little scoop of her delicate chin in the direction of the yarn. “It’s really not that hard.”

  Movement on the beach distracted Nikki for a moment. Fern was trying to get to her feet, but the boy kept dragging her back down to the sand. When the girl glanced about, Nikki ducked her head and tried another stitch. “Maybe it’s like skiing. You need to learn when you’re little or you’ll never get the hang of it.”

  Cassandra responded with an abrupt, off-topic question. “What are you doing in Malibu?” she said.

  Nikki flicked her a glance. “I’m a private chef. For Jay Buchanan.”

  “Ah. Jay.” Cassandra leaned into the back cushions of her deck chair as if forcing herself to relax. “Malibu’s own über bachelor. Known to all as Hef Junior.”

  “No kidding.” Nikki wasn’t surprised. “You’re acquainted?”

  “We have a population of 13,000, which feels a lot more like 300. Our regularly occurring natural disasters band us together. For example, when I and some others couldn’t get home last month due to the latest fire, four of us stayed at Jay’s for a couple of nights.”

  Nikki took another long look at Cassandra. Knowing Jay’s reputation—and hadn’t it just been confirmed that he was an out-and-out player?—surely he would have made the moves on this beautiful woman.

  She raised both hands as if she heard the unspoken question. “I spent those nights in the guest bedroom. We’re just friends.”

  Nikki cleared her throat and didn’t plan the next words that free-fell from it. “Well, um. So you know, we’re not. Just friends that is.” Why the heck was she saying this? It couldn’t be that she was staking a claim. “We’re dating. Um, exclusively.”

  “You and Hef J—I mean, Jay?”

  It wasn’t as if she could deny it now, though she felt miserable, and like a traitor to the IQ of her sex with the admission. No smart woman would think professional bachelor Jay Buchanan would become exclusive with anyone. “Yes.”

  The other woman’s arched brows rose. “Well, well, well. You’ll have to tell Jay that Cassandra Riley expects a sooner-than-later invite to dinner, then. We should get to know each other better, Nikki.”

  “May—” Movement caught the corner of her eye and she returned her attention to the beach. Both Boyfriend and Fern were on their feet and plastered together in a kiss that took the summer temperature up another ten degrees. Nikki started to look away, uncomfortable with the intimate display, but then Fern broke the embrace. Boyfriend tried to yank her back, but the teen broke off again, despite his obviously displeased reaction. When she turned to run up the beach in the direction of the path Nikki had seen the teens scramble down earlier, the boy took off after her.

  Still clutching the knitting experiment, Nikki ran, too, exiting the store on unchecked impulse, her instincts compelling her to intercept and…do something as completely out-of-character as get herself involved in someone else’s personal life.

  “Nikki!” Cassandra called after her.

  But she kept on going, even as the odd thought struck that she didn’t remember telling the woman with the rippling hair her name.

  Gritty dirt dug into the soles of Fern Daley’s bare feet and her bag thumped against her hip as she hurried up the path leading to the highway. The minor discomforts didn’t slow her down. She had to get away from Jenner.

  Up ahead, a car hesitated at the exit from the fish market parking lot. In the driver’s seat was Jay’s new chef…Nikki? Yeah, Nikki. She gave Fern a little wave and called over the sound of the traffic. “Need a ride? I’m heading back to your cousin’s.”

  Fern didn’t hesitate to take her up on the offer. As the car turned onto the highway, over her shoulder she watched Jenner reach the head of the path. His scowl said he was pissed, but she was, too. She hoped he understood that…God, he didn’t think she was running away, did he?

  But she’d told him to cut out the PDA and still he kept up with the too-public displays of affection, no matter how many times she said, “Not here,” “Not now,” “Not in front of everybody.”

  She drew her bag onto her lap and hugged it against her chest as goose bumps broke out on all the skin between the top of her bikini and the low-rise waist of her denim mini-skirt. The blast of cool air from the car’s vents was downright frosty in comparison to the heat of her flesh after Jenner’s full-body contact. That was the part about sex nobody explained to you, whether it was your mom discussing “special” feelings or your fifth-grade teacher diagramming female organs. Nobody told you it could be like the sun, melting and burning you all at once.

  “You’re a brave girl,” Nikki said, glancing over at Fern.

  Because she was playing with fire? But this woman didn’t know anything about her. “What do you mean?”

  “Living away for the summer.”

  “Oh. It’s only for August. And this isn’t really ‘away.’ Over the years we’ve spent plenty of time at the house that used to be my grandparents’. I know a lot of the local kids from other visits.”

  “Still, I bet you miss hanging out with your friends at home.”

  “Janice is on a two-week college scouting trip. Marissa’s a counselor at a sleepover camp. My best friend, Emily, well, she’s…not really available.” Their whole group, the “Two Shoes,”—a name they’d adopted after being teasingly taunted with “Goody Two-shoes” for, like, the bazillionth time—were in different places. Fern had to wonder if they’d ever be back to the old place again.

  Probably not. Not for Emily, anyway.

  “So you have a cute boy to spend time with instead.”

  Fern frowned. Was this woman just making idle conversation or was there more to it? Had her parents said something to Jay and had Jay then said something to his chef…? Nah. Jay had hired the chef just days before. His lesbian chef, she remembered him saying. And his girlfriend.

  Fern’s eyes narrowed. Nikki didn’t look like any lesbian she knew, but then again, the only lesbian Fern knew was Cher Brooks, who’d cut her hair Marine-style and started dressing in hiking boots and oversized sweatshirts after they’d arrested her stepfather for molesting her. It seemed to Fern that Cher—and maybe Nikki, Jay’s lesbian girlfriend—might be as confused by sexuality as she was.

  “What’s the boy’s name?” Nikki asked, glancing over again.

  “Jenner.” He was nineteen and starting college in the fall. She didn’t really know what had happened to the year after he’d graduated from high school, but the mystery of that only made him more attractive. It was stupid of her,
and stereotypical—she’d read the S.E. Hinton novels, and just think how teenage Lydia Bennet had been taken in by the disastrous Wickham in Pride and Prejudice—but when it came to Jenner…Well, the bad in that boy was something Fern found irresistible.

  It was because of Emily in some part, she knew that. And because of Jenner himself. Of the way he made her feel when he kissed her and touched her. That’s where her confusion came from. She never could figure out, from minute to minute, whether she wanted him to stop or whether she wanted him to take it further.

  It’s what came from being one of the Two Shoes, she thought in disgust. From being smart enough to figure out you could become popular by being the one to say no to the offers of booze and weed and wild sex. Everyone might like you, from your peers to their parents to the high school principal, but when the day came that you were truly tempted…When the day came when you were truly tempted and you discovered inside yourself a reckless streak that would freak out your family if they only knew…

  Well, then you didn’t have enough practical experience to know how far you could edge your toes over the brink before falling completely into the abyss.

  If Fern was as smart as her SAT scores said, she’d find a way to go back home for the rest of the summer or at least call it quits with Jenner. But when Emily had returned from her weekend visit to her brother at college, a deep, scary hole had opened inside Fern. Jenner with his dark moods and sullen looks, with his nimble fingers and insistent, sometimes stinging kisses, overwhelmed her fears and let her forget that frightening chasm by making her aware of other things—her skin, the blood running through her veins. Each and every cell.

  Chef Nikki was filling the silence between them with questions again. What were some of her favorite foods? “Strawberries and vanilla yogurt.” Did Fern have any allergies? “No.” What did she plan to do with the rest of her day?

  What did she plan to do with the rest of her day, now that she’d left Jenner and the other kids at the beach? More to the point, what would Jenner do?

  A new Beetle convertible passed in the lane beside them and Fern caught sight of Shelby Templeton, her dark hair swirling like a vampire’s cape around her shoulders. Her gaze caught Fern’s and she rolled her middle finger up her cheek. Beeyatch. She’d had her eye on Jenner, rumor had it, but he’d switched his attention from the pampered Malibu princess to Fern.

  And he could switch it back again just as easily.

  Her lungs shut down and something that felt like panic twisted her stomach. It was stupid to like a guy so much. It was stupid to worry he’d forget about her just like that. But without Jenner, what would there be to do, to focus on? Without him, it would be thoughts of what happened to Emily, playing in her head 24/7 like some crazy cable news channel fixated on the latest white girl tragedy.

  Her hand scrambled in her purse and then closed around her cell phone.

  Speed dial #1.

  He picked up immediately. “You shouldn’t have run out on me.”

  “I didn’t!” That wasn’t what she’d done. This was all about not running. It was about staying and it was about the lure of sex. “But I’m sorry anyway. Can you come to the house?”

  Five

  The interesting thing is how one guy, through living out his own fantasies, is living out the fantasies of so many other people.

  —HUGH HEFNER, FOUNDER,PLAYBOY MAGAZINE

  Mid-morning, on the Friday of Nikki’s first week of employment, Jay found himself wandering into the kitchen, as was his new habit. His chef had cleared away the remains of the zucchini-walnut pancakes she’d served him and Fern along with a citrus and coconut salad. But the coffee carafe was still more than half-full.

  He told himself that’s what drew him. Caffeine.

  It couldn’t be the chef. Not only had he sworn off women, but sitting on a stool pulled up to the bar, headphones stuffed in her ears, this particular woman steadfastly ignored him as he filled his mug.

  The coffee went down hot and smooth as he watched her fill out a shopping list. He’d been doing a hell of a lot of that lately, too—watching Nikki. It was wreaking havoc on the work he was trying to do from home¸ since more than once he’d dragged his laptop out of his home office to the living room with its closer proximity to the kitchen.

  Of course, it meant that on occasion she offered him tastes of the things she was prepping or baking, but it was getting hard to deny those weren’t exclusively the kinds of tastes he was truly after.

  Strange, that. She didn’t appear to like him much, her attitude decidedly take-him-or-leave-him, with emphasis on the leave-him, and he wasn’t accustomed to a woman so intent on stamping out the sexual sparks that continued flaring up between them. Yet still, he was drawn to the kitchen and to her. Yeah. Strange, that.

  She stood, and he remembered why it wasn’t so strange after all. The girl had a body, he’d discovered, now that she was out of that chef shroud she’d been draped in the first day. This morning he could see her true form, thanks to the bright turquoise T-shirt she wore tucked into a pair of hip-hugging white jeans that were cropped at the calf. The tee exposed her delicate collarbones, some of her smooth-skinned shoulders, and was tight enough to advertise a nice set of breasts.

  But his favorite part was on the other side of her. She had the most enticing sway at the small of her back, a pronounced dip that was just begging for the flat of a tongue. It sloped to a sweet curve that was the round little swell of her perfect ass.

  He admired that in profile as she gathered up her purse that was perched on the end of the counter. As was usual for her, it looked as if she was headed to the market now, and so he let himself indulge a few minutes longer. She’d be off soon enough and then he’d boot her from his mind and get back to the business of editing NYFM’s online edition.

  Her head turned toward him. She frowned.

  He loved her frown. Her bottom lip pooched out and somehow her eyebrows turned all bristly over her two-color eyes. Who could take the disapproval of a pouting mermaid seriously? He smiled at her.

  She hooked her pinkie around one earbud and pulled it free. “Don’t you have to work…not to mention wear a shirt?”

  His grin widened. She’d threatened to put up a sign in the kitchen stating “No Shirt, No Service” until he pointed out that these days he made up the rules and that how he wanted to be serviced was her sole consideration. Just to remind her of it, he let his palm rub a slow path from his heart to his hips, and watched her eyes track the movement. When his thumb hooked inside the waistband of his low-riding 501s, her gaze jerked back to his face, and then away from him altogether.

  There she went again, tamping down those little flares of sexual heat, and it bugged him how good she was getting at it. She muttered something as she retucked the earbud.

  “What’s that?” he called. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Never mind.” She tugged both headphone wires free and curled them into her hand, then withdrew her phone from her front pocket. “I’m going to the store. Can I get you anything while I’m gone?”

  He shook his head, gesturing at her cell phone with his coffee mug. “What are you listening to?”

  “A self-help book. I’ll let you borrow it when I’m through.”

  “The Kama Sutra? Tantric Touches for Dummies?”

  She looked up, unbalancing him with her cool regard from the polar shades of her sky-and-ocean eyes. “The Expert’s Guide to Strap-on Sex.”

  His last swallow of coffee bubbled back up his esophagus. He choked. “You didn’t just say that.”

  Leaning toward him, she repeated the words. “The. Expert’s. Guide. To. Strap-on. Sex.”

  He cleared his throat again, at the same time clearing away the images that had sprung to his mind. “Really. You didn’t just say that.”

  “What you truly want to ask is if I didn’t just do that.”

  “Not just now you didn’t.” Those images were back, but hey, he was a guy, and NYFM had done
a study that proved his girl-on-girl flights of fancy put him squarely within the heavy majority.

  Shaking her head, she tucked her purse under her arm. “No, Jay. Not just now. There’s no woman hiding in the broom closet. However, last night…”

  It was a joke. She was yanking hard on his leg, because she didn’t really like girls. That was just their little game, right? Right? But hot damn, if the woman wasn’t playing it to win.

  She started out of the kitchen, then paused. “Are you okay? You seem a little, I don’t know, poleaxed by the idea, which seems an overreaction from the hot stud of Malibu known to his friends far and wide as Hef Junior.”

  He winced. “Don’t go there.”

  “Why not?”

  “First, because the one-and-only Hef—may he continue resting in a bed of infinite sexual bliss—is an original. And second…well…” Suddenly he didn’t want Nikki viewing him as some randy alley cat always on the prowl. “You don’t see a bunch of women traipsing in and out of here as if it was the Playboy mansion, do you?”

  “Only because I scare them off.”

  She threw a mean curveball. “You did? How? Who?”

  “A brunette named Alicia. Another one with black hair who calls herself M.K. And there was a Trudy, who teared up when I told her you weren’t home—and that you’re currently taken.” Her blue and green eyes were wide with innocence. “I did the right thing, didn’t I?”

  Oh, yeah, if she wanted to make him feel like a dog as well as look like that alley cat he’d been thinking of. “Sure. Great. Fine,” he mumbled.

  Wait a minute. He didn’t remember any Trudy. And wasn’t M.K. the fifty-something Judi Dench duplicate who picked up his FedEx packages? “Hey, hey, hey. You—”

  “Not to forget Shanna. Your neighbor came over yesterday afternoon while you were out surfing and explained to me all about your single night of sin.”

  Guilt pierced him as deeply as Nikki’s knowing gaze. Shit. While he’d had a few affairs-gone-bad and one-night stands he wasn’t so happy to remember, he’d never botched it so badly as he’d done with Shanna. Sin was the right word. What for him had been the simple act of scratching an itch had wounded the woman who lived next door. A woman he’d known his entire life.