"I… imagine."
"I wasn't sure if they'd already left for work."
"Oh, no, the office for B Networks is upstairs in the east wing."
"Okay, then, we'll plan on seven." She indicated the eggs, mushrooms, red pepper, onion, and cheese assembled on the counter. "You see anything here that anyone can't eat?"
"No."
"Excellent. I'll make a poppyseed dressing for the salad first so it can chill while I get everything else ready."
"What can I do?"
"Cut the cantaloupe and assemble the salads," Lily replied, reaching for a bowl. "Do crosswise slices."
Jessica raised her eyebrows, and Lily demonstrated what she meant, cutting the melon the long way, then handing the other woman the knife. She turned back to her own station and scraped a carton of vanilla yogurt into the bowl and added some lemon juice and poppy-seeds. A few minutes later she glanced up from grating orange zest in the bowl. "I think I saw some Boston lettuce leaves in the fridge, so when you're done there, get those out and put a few on each plate to make a bed. Then add four or five slices of cantaloupe and sprinkle them with a handful of blueberries." She whipped the dressing, covered it with plastic wrap, and placed it in the freezer for a quick chill. Then she went to work chopping the vegetables.
"How do you do that?" Jessica demanded a moment later.
"What?"
"Chop that fast without slicing off a finger."
Lily laughed. "Practice. Training."
"Can you teach me how to do it?"
"Sure. C'mere." When Jessica joined her, she held up her left hand. "The trick is keeping your fingers tucked under. See?" She demonstrated how to pin down the green onions in such a way that there were no horizontal protrusions to accidentally cut off. Finishing the onions, she julienned the red pepper, then offered the knife to Jessica. "You want to try it on the these?"
Jessica did better than she'd anticipated, but in no way did she attain anything close to Lily's speed. She laughed and went back to removing the last of the rinds from the cantaloupe slices. "I can see it'll take a little practice."
Lily wagged her eyebrows. "Meet me here an hour before each meal and I can give you plenty of that."
"I just might." Jessica smiled and scraped the rinds into the compost bucket Ernestine kept next to the sink. She hadn't expected this, she realized as she washed and dried her hands, then collected salad plates from the cupboard and set them out on the counter to adorn with lettuce leaves. She hadn't expected to like Lily this much, to feel this almost instant sense of kinship with her, as if they were best friends from grade school who'd just met up again and taken right up where they'd left off.
And wasn't that amazing? With Lily's blonde bombshell looks, sparkly jewelry, and wiggly walk, she was exactly the sort of woman who usually made Jessica feel about as exciting as yesterday's leftovers. She was one of the girly-girls, those ultrafeminine types who seemed to know instinctively all the things that escaped Jess. What colors to wear, which makeup to buy, how to put together an ensemble that made the most of one's assets. A woman like Cassidy.
Except Lily didn't make her feel inadequate. She made her laugh, Jessica thought warmly. She made her feel… useful.
"Those look great." Lily nodded at the arrangement of fruit on the lettuce leaves. She grabbed the poppy-seed dressing out of the freezer and handed it to Jessica. "Stir that up and then spoon it down the middle of the fruit. And if you'll point me to a platter, I'll stuff this egg mixture into the pitas, and we'll be ready to go."
A few minutes later, carrying a tray on which she'd carefully balanced all the salads, Jessica followed Lily back into the dining room. She felt as flushed with accomplishment as if she'd devised the menu herself.
The first person she saw when she entered the room was Christopher, and her smile widened with the instinctive flash of joy the sight of her husband invariably gave her. She noted that her sister had yet to put in an appearance—not that that had anything to do with anything. Cassidy was always late… and surely the fact that Christopher had also been late getting to the dining room this morning was strictly coincidental.
Circling the table, she offered a salad first to the dark, silent Marine who quite frankly rather unnerved her, then to the members of her family.
"My word," Aunt Maureen said, looking up from the prettily arranged plate to Lily, who was placing a breakfast pita on everyone's bread plate. "This is amazing. You were only gone ten minutes. How on earth did you manage something so nice in such a short amount of time?"
Lily shrugged. "It's what I do—I'm a chef by trade. Besides, I had a terrific assistant." She shot Jessica a grin, then turned back to Maureen. "Your niece actually made the salads."
"Well, I followed directions, anyway," Jess amended. Setting the rest of the plates down in the vacant places at the table, she propped the tray against the sideboard and took her seat next to Christopher.
"Yes, Jessie's a good little direction follower." Cassidy breezed into the room, wearing just the right outfit, complete with chunky jewelry, her hair twisted up in a messy, casual do that Jessica knew took her forever to arrange. "Good morning, all." She slid into the vacant chair next to Zach that Lily had been heading toward and looked down at the salad plate in front of her. "So what was your contribution, Jess? Washing the lettuce?"
Jessica felt herself start to disappear, simply fading away until she became part of the surroundings, the way she so often did around her younger sister.
Then simultaneously, Christopher squeezed her thigh beneath the table while Lily sat down and leveled a look at Cassidy as she reached for her linen napkin and shook it open. "Actually, she pretty much did it all. Cut the fruit, arranged it, dressed it. And as you can see, she did a lovely job of the presentation. What is it that you do, Ms. Beaumont?"
The question was asked in a perfectly polite tone of voice, but Cassidy's cheeks mottled red beneath her impeccable makeup. And suddenly Jess didn't feel quite so much like a part of the wallpaper.
"Cassidy shops," Richard supplied, and picked up his pita. He took a bite and hummed a little in appreciation.
Cassidy shot her brother a sour look. Then she turned to Lily with a superior smile. "Actually, my real forte is fund-raising. Someone has to look after the less fortunate." She glanced down at the plate in front of her but made no move to pick up her fork. "Being a cook is certainly a useful little job, though. If you're looking for work, I'm sure I could find you a place on someone's staff. Our crowd is always looking for good help."
Jessica winced at her sister's rudeness and Aunt Maureen said, " Cassidy" in a remonstrative tone.
But Lily merely smiled. "That's very kind of you, but I have a job."
" Do you. Do you work for a good family, dear? Or perhaps cook for a nice little diner?"
"No. I'm a corporate chef."
Cassidy shrugged impatiently. "Cook, chef, what's the difference?"
"Training, chiefly—a chef has a great deal more of it. I got mine at the Culinary Academy in San Francisco and in Le Cordon Bleu at the California School of Culinary Arts in Pasadena. Then I apprenticed for several years with two of the top chefs in Los Angeles."
Zach abruptly set down his fork. It clattered against his china, and Jessica looked over in time to see him push his chair back from the table.
With his shuttered eyes and unsmiling mouth, he appeared completely intimidating to her. but obviously her sister didn't agree. She reached out to run her beautifully manicured fingers down his arm, and sent him a flirtatious glance from beneath her long lashes. "You're not leaving already, are you?"
"Yes." His face expressed no emotion as he stared down at her fingers tracing the soft veins that stood beneath the tanned skin of his forearm. "I have some calls to make." Withdrawing his arm from beneath her hand, he stepped back, circled the table, and walked out of the room.
No one said a word for an instant, then Lily, too, set her napkin aside and rose to her feet. "Excuse me
, won't you?" she murmured. "I need to talk to Zach for a moment, then I'll be back to clean up the kitchen."
"Oh, dear, you needn't do that," Aunt Maureen said with a little flutter of her hands.
"I don't mind, Mrs. Beaumont, really. It's just another part of the job."
"What?" Cassidy demanded sweetly. "The big, important chef doesn't have a little helper-bee to do the dirty work for her?"
"Shut up, Cassidy," Jessica snapped.
Her sister turned cool eyes on her. "Well, well, the mouse speaks." Then she turned away, and Jessica watched her watch Lily walk out of the room.
As soon as the petite blonde disappeared, however, Cassidy turned back to her, and something about her air of satisfaction made Jessica's stomach churn.
"So," Cassidy said. "Did Christopher tell you about the… service… he performed for me this morning?"
Chapter 11
A chef! Zach stalked across the foyer and up the graceful central staircase, taking the stairs two at a time. And not just a line cook giving herself a fancy title, either, from the sound of it, but a highly trained professional . He swore with inspired creativity beneath his breath. Because, as much as he'd love to scoff at the notion, it made an awful sort of sense.
Nothing like having your fuck-ups come home to roost. All of a sudden he couldn't even convince himself that, in spite of having a career, the possibility still existed that Lily was the golddigger he'd repeatedly accused her of being. For, too late, he figured out the fault in his logic that had bothered him the other day when he'd demanded to know if she was worried his stopping Glynnis from marrying David would lose Lily her meal ticket. He smacked himself in the forehead. It never occurred to you, genius, that if a meal ticket had been her big concern she would've been all for you breaking up the big romance? Once Glynnie has a husband to monitor her finances, chances of wriggling money out of her are pretty much shot.
Zach blew out a breath and squared his shoulders. So all right, big deal. He'd been wrong, and as a consequence he'd leveled a bunch of unfounded accusations at her. What the hell—he'd apologize.
Even if he still did wonder what was in it for her. There had to be something. Gainfully employed or not, no one put herself out to the extent that Lily had for someone she'd known as short a time as she had his sister. No one outside of the Corps, anyway.
"Zach."
He spun around at the sound of her soft voice and watched her jiggle down the corridor with that hip swiveling, feminine walk of hers, looking like every Marine's wet dream as she perambulated toward him on yet another pair of her ubiquitous high heels. He marched over to meet her. "Well, you really got me good, didn't you? I'm sure you're pretty damned pleased with yourself."
She had the brass to laugh. "I gotta admit, not being regarded for once as the Slut of Golddigger Gulch is a nice change of pace."
Grasping her upper arms, he backed her against the nearest wall. "Just who the hell are you, lady?"
She didn't pretend confusion. Palms pressed flat against the wainscoting at her back, she tilted her chin up and looked him straight in the eye. "Exactly who I claimed to be right from the start, Soldier Boy. Glynnis's friend."
"Right. And you just ditched your career out of the goodness of your heart so you could come along and keep me from wrecking the so-called love match of the century?"
"I'm not ditching anything. I'm a chef for a corporate yacht, and my next trip doesn't leave port until the last week in May. But, yes." She shrugged. "That's precisely why I came along. I tried to tell you David was different, but you refused to listen."
The firm feel of her shoulders shifting beneath his hands reminded him that touching her—especially right now when his feelings were so screwed up—wasn't the wisest idea in the world, and he released her like a hot spud. "I might have been more inclined to pay attention if you'd bothered to let me know you actually worked for a living." Then he mentally winced. This is your big apology ? As bad-tempered and burdened as he felt this morning, it didn't escape him that he was being unreasonable. And the real pisser was, his mood didn't even have all that much to do with the revelation that Lily wasn't the little money grubber he'd accused her of being. Discovering he'd been acting like a jerk toward her was merely the sprinkles on his cupcake.
Somehow Lily seemed to know it, too. "I don't feel a burning need to justify myself to people who make idiotic assumptions," she said with a commendable lack of rancor for someone who had every right to be dancing around taking pokes at him and singing na-na-na-na-na . "I have a feeling that's not your biggest beef, anyhow," she said, staring up at him. "What is this really all about, Zach?"
Gut churning, he stepped back. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes, you do. You were already tense when I came down to breakfast. Does it have anything to do with Mrs. Beaumont?" She reached out and touched his arm, a sudden anxiety scudding across her eyes. "Did she say something? Discover something about Glynnis and David's situation?"
The ire that had been eating him alive all morning came boiling to the surface, and he slapped his hand down on the wall next to her shoulder. "Finally. Someone who acknowledges that Glynnie, too, is at risk."
Her eyes widened. "Well, of course she is."
"No one else around here seems to think so! They're all so friggin' worried about their precious David —but I have yet to hear a single word of concern for my sister. Jesus, Lily. It's as if she doesn't exist."
"I'm sure it's just because they don't know her, Zach."
Incensed, he leaned into her. "I don't know Darling David either, but at least I have the decency to pretend I care."
Lily's lips twitched, but she merely said, "No, what I mean is, I imagine Glynnis probably doesn't seem quite real to them, since none of them has ever actually met her."
"I don't want to hear any lame excuses—there's no justification for their behavior!" Bracing both forearms on the wall on either side of her head, he bent his knees and leaned into her so closely they only escaped a full body press by a hair's-breadth. Such close proximity had him sucking in the warm, lemony-sugary scent of her, and suddenly all his pent-up agitation veered off in a brand new direction. Or maybe not so new. Either way, feeling jumpy and restless and in need of a safe outlet to blow off some steam, he found himself dipping his nose until it almost touched the contour of her neck, where he inhaled deeply. Her fragrance seemed to emanate from her skin rather than any one particular pulse point, but he wasn't fussy about the source. He merely breathed her in, then had to slick his tongue across lips suddenly gone dry. "Ah, man. I want to kiss you."
She froze. "What?"
He pulled his head back far enough to look down at her, aware of the heavy drumming of his heart against his ribs. "I want to kiss you. Have wanted to kiss you since practically the first minute I laid eyes on you."
"Yeah, right," she scoffed. "My tush , you have."
"Hey, it's no lie. But since I have this ironclad rule about never making time with women out to steal my sister's inherit—" He trailed off. Oh, good going, Romeo. Be sure to remind her of all the insults you've hurled at her — that oughtta put her in a lather to jump your bones . "What I mean to say is, I couldn't act on it."
"Uh-huh," she said neutrally. "So, I've officially been cleared, then, of only wanting to be friends with Glynnis for her money?"
"Yes. I guess I owe you a pretty big apology for some of the things I've said."
"Gee, ya think?" She regarded him with those brilliant blue eyes. "Have I been cleared of the slut charges, too? Or, wait. Maybe it's the fact you do still think I'm one that's fueling this sudden desire to kiss me."
"No—I mean, yes. Shit." He looked down at her and shrugged helplessly. It was exactly this sort of female doublespeak that drove him up the wall, and by rights, having to deal with it now on top of everything else going on ought to banish his hard-on right into soprano country.
But it didn't seem to be working that way. "Let me try this in Engli
sh. No, that's not the reason I want to kiss you," he clarified. "And yes, you've been cleared of that charge." As if getting to kiss her was a likely prospect, anyway. Why the hell was he giving her the opportunity to get her rocks off by rejecting him? The smart money said he should just turn and walk away.
Lately, however, smart wasn't exactly the first word he'd use to describe himself—so why start now? He stayed where he was, staring down at her in frustration.
"So let me see if I've got this straight." She drew a slow, deep breath, and the action brushed her breasts against his diaphragm, sending him sucking for a breath of his own.
Then she ticked off the points on her fingers. "I'm off the hook for the charge of trying to lead Glynnis astray in order to get my mitts on her moolah. I apparently no longer top the Ten Tawdriest Sluts list. And you have a sudden urge to kiss me." A small, crooked smile tugged at her lips as she looked up at him.
He lowered his head until his mouth was a fraction of an inch from hers. "There's nothing sudden about it, Lil. But, affirmative. That about covers it."
"Well, I've only got one thing to say to that, bud." Her tongue stole out to moisten her bottom lip.
Watching the movement, he had to rein in the impulse to simply take what he wanted, and political correctness be damned. He dragged his gaze up to meet her eyes. "Let me guess. Get bent?"
"That's two words, Taylor, and I only need one. It's short; it's sweet. It's—" " "No.Iget it ."
"—Okay."
"The only damn service I provided your sister," Christopher said, tugging Jessica into their suite, "was offering to jump-start the battery in her car."
"Yes, so you said downstairs." Jessica watched him as he set her loose and began pacing their bedroom. God, he was handsome. With his sculpted cheekbones, gold-streaked brown hair, and leaf-green eyes, he could have been a model, and she knew perfectly well what people thought whenever they saw the two of them together—how on earth had such a Greek God ever ended up with someone as plain and dowdy as she? Not that Jessica blamed them. She often wondered the same thing herself… and very much feared she knew the answer, that he'd married her for her connections.
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