Almost Wonderful

by Christie Ridgway

  Nikki switched on the light to cheer the early A.M. gloom, then tapped the aquarium with her fingertip. “How you doing, Fish?”

  In seconds, she’d popped off her cooking clogs and shimmied out of her black-and-white baggy chef’s pants. Sucking in a breath, she stared at her knee. Swollen to the circumference of a summer melon, it throbbed with each one of her heartbeats. She slapped the bag of frozen peas on it, then pushed back on the chair to elevate the aching joint.

  “I’ll take the anti-inflammatories before bed, Fish,” she said, glancing over at her finned roommate. Her eye caught on the top envelope in the pile of mail. Her name was written in a beautiful hand and the return address was Malibu, California, the famous seaside enclave just over the Santa Monica Mountains.

  Curious, she picked it up. Leaving the hectic, ever-active restaurant business had become a necessity, thanks to her injury, but doing something else besides cooking—well, she wasn’t trained for anything else besides cooking. With a wonky knee and a decidedly private personality, she’d hit on the idea of working in a home kitchen where her work space and her contact with others would be limited.

  So she’d advertised in L.A.-area neighborhoods where households might be interested in a private chef.

  Bel-Air.

  Beverly Hills.

  Malibu.

  Nothing had come of it…until now? Her pulse quickened as she tore open the seal—and then it slid back to a slow thud.

  This piece of mail wasn’t what she needed. It was an advertisement—granted, a beautiful advertisement—for a yarn shop, address on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

  Join us each Tuesday for

  Knitters’ Night at Malibu & Ewe!

  Make a Connection!

  Make something beautiful…friends, too.

  An enclosed brochure showed the exterior of a cottage-styled shop overlooking a golden beach and an endless ocean. Other photos captured the displays of yarn and a cozy, comfortable-looking seating area filled with women chatting and knitting. There was an open spot on a particularly inviting sofa.

  Shaking her head, Nikki tossed the papers back on the pile of mail. What she needed was a job, not a hobby.

  “And who needs friends, Fish,” she murmured, glancing at the aquarium as she pulled the bands free of her braids and untangled her gold and brown hair, “when I have you?”

  With a frown, she noticed his tail sinking southward and used her fingers to spoon him out of the water. Then she wound the tiny screw on his side and tossed him back in, gratified as he whirred around his little pond just as if he was a real, live pet.

  He was perfect, wasn’t he? Perfect for her, anyway. She didn’t have a good track record keeping things that lived and breathed. And a twenty-seven-year-old woman with culinary school loans and without a job couldn’t afford to feed another mouth anyway.

  “Yes, you are perfect, Fish,” she said aloud.

  And she wasn’t going to cry, even though her knee was still throbbing like a bitch.

  It was then she noticed the light blinking on her answering machine. Who would be calling? Her parents were dead and her social life was practically nil. Was this something about a job? Her heartbeat picked up again, even as she remembered how disappointing the envelope from Malibu & Ewe had proven to be.

  Make a Connection!

  She needed a way to make a buck or she wouldn’t be able to afford the water to fill Fish’s bowl, let alone the rent on her condo.

  Crossing the fingers of her right hand, she reached over with her left to press Play. A man’s voice rumbled into the air.

  “Yo. Nancy? Nellie? Whatever. Your friend Sandy gave me your number. Said to call. This is Jay Buchanan.”

  Nikki crossed the fingers of her other hand. “Fish…” she breathed. Jay Buchanan. Editor for the hip men’s magazine NYFM, L.A.’s man about town, and former employer of her fellow cooking school student Sandy Bivers. For two months, Sandy had worked for him while he wrote a journal-style account of the bachelor joys of having a woman in his kitchen who wasn’t also warming his bed. The attention had garnered Sandy a gig on one of the food channels.

  Nikki’s mind flashed on what her fellow chef had told her about the man. Like that yarn shop, Jay Buchanan was a resident of Malibu, and though he was credited with the magazine’s sexist signature tagline, “Men are boys and women are toys,” Sandy claimed the worst thing anyone had ever said about him was that he was born under a lucky star on a sunny day at a Southern California beach.

  “I’ve seen him charming water from the devil,” Sandy had gone on to say, “at the same time he was slipping the panties off an angel.” Nikki had caught a glimpse of him herself, in a pictorial layout in NYFM. Leaving a charity function at an L.A. club with a starlet on his arm, he’d appeared both classy and capable. A guy in black tie who looked as if he could make a mixed drink or change a car tire with the same aplomb.

  “I need a cook—a chef,” the man was saying now. “Just for August. I’ve got a house guest for the next few weeks and then a big event to host at the end of the month.”

  Her heartbeat ratcheted up another notch. Okay, it wasn’t long-term, but it was something, not to mention a likely way to make future contacts. And anyhow, she’d do whatever she had to if it meant cooking and keeping off her knee at the same time.

  “If you’re interested, come by tomorrow. Ten A.M.” The address he gave was on the Pacific Coast Highway. “We’ll talk.”

  Her gaze flicked to the time. Given the late hour and the traffic she’d likely encounter heading to the beach on a summer morning, if she went to bed now, she’d have enough time to get four hours of sleep. Her knee needed at least seven, but she’d make do.

  “Oh, yeah,” the male voice added. “And bring your best batch of cookies.”

  Two hours of sleep.

  Optimism would keep her awake, though, and maybe work as an analgesic as well. “Jay Buchanan, you’re the answer to a prayer,” she said, though still not allowing herself even a single grateful tear. But God, how much she needed—

  The chance. Not him.

  No, not him.

  She might be in a tight spot, but long ago she’d learned the hard way what it was to need a man and she wasn’t about to make that same mistake again.

  Bleary-eyed and fuzzy-brained from lack of sleep, Jay Buchanan yanked on a pair of shorts and stumbled barefoot toward the front of his beachside house, where someone had the annoying gall to knock on his door at the early hour of—

  He paused, then leaned back and craned his neck to read the clock on the coffeemaker in the kitchen. Why, oh why, was the carafe empty when he needed it full, and why did the digital numbers claim it was almost 10:00 A.M.? He’d just woken up and…oh, yeah. He’d just woken up because he hadn’t hit the sack until after 4:00. An idea for a couple of ManTalk columns had nagged him until he’d stopped tossing and turning around midnight and headed for his computer instead.

  The idea was worth it. It was all about New Year’s resolutions and he’d had a sufficient number of words on the subject to fill the required inches for NYFM’s print edition with enough left over to offer a slightly different slant for the online version.

  Not so different, actually. They were both about giving up women for the forthcoming three hundred sixty-five days. The columns were for the January issues because magazines worked ahead—and Jay did, too.

  While in his latest writing for the magazine he resolved to give up the fairer sex in the new year, though it was only August he’d already made that commitment to himself.

  As of today, no females.

  No how.

  It was going to put a hiatus on his popular “In Search of the Perfect Woman” articles, a series inspired by his discovery of his grandparents’ old Broadway cast album of My Fair Lady in the back of a cabinet. Rex Harrison rapping his way through “A Hymn to Him,” which asked the immortal question, “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” had sent Jay on the hunt for j
ust such a one—and his readers voraciously feasted on every account of his failures. So while he’d yet to find a breezy, sexy, sloppy-emotions-unnecessary female, now he was determined to go without looking for the rest of this year and all of the next.

  There was that irritating bam-bam-bam on his door again. Obviously, the irritator wasn’t giving up. Fine, he’d send them on their way and return to bed.

  The soles of Jay’s feet registered the rug in the entry, then his hand found the knob and he wrenched open the door. Heat wafted over him, as well as the scent of car exhaust and hot asphalt mixed with something sweet. The Pacific Coast Highway was as close to the house’s front entry as the ocean was close to his back one and the four lanes were already bumper-to-bumper with Angelenos out for their sand-and-surf fix.

  He blinked against the bright sunlight, his gaze now taking in the leggy teen on the doorstep, her hair in two loose braids and her hands clutching some kind of lunch pail.

  “Fern’s out,” he said, making the assumption about his young cousin since she hadn’t answered the knock herself. “Don’t know when she’ll be back.” Without waiting for a response, he swung shut the door.

  It bounced off the toe of a bright yellow rubber clog. “Mr. Buchanan?” the braided girl said. She had a curiously low, intriguingly husky voice. “I’m here to see you.”

  He’d written a ManTalk column last year debunking the myth of the hunch, so it was ridiculous of him to feel cold, webbed feet goose-stepping down his spine. Ignoring the sensation, he inched back the door and peered again at the intruder.

  Leggy. Braids. Now that he looked more closely, she wasn’t the teenager he’d first thought. He made a vague gesture to his right, still hoping he could shoo her off. “No, you can’t use the bathroom. And the public beach access is three doors down.” He couldn’t hold back a little grin. “Right between Geffen’s mansion and that equally over-built monstrosity next to it.”

  Her brows, he noticed as they came together over her small nose, were a shade darker than her brown hair that was heavily laced with lighter streaks. “What?” she asked.

  It was one of Malibu’s longest-running feuds—the privacy-obsessed celebs versus the public’s right to beach access. Newspaper articles and court battles had proven that some of Hollywood’s most liberal were anything but when it came to sharing the sand in front of their homes. Jay wasn’t entirely unsympathetic. In the summer, he’d had his share of sun worshippers trespassing while in search of showers and toilets. But even when his grandparents had built this house in the 1950s, they hadn’t assumed the beach bordering it was theirs and theirs alone.

  “It’s the price of privilege,” he explained to the girl. “You get the incredible property, but you have to share it from the high-tide line to where the surf breaks. There’s a public path to the water two hundred and fifty feet down that way.”

  Leggy with Braids frowned at him. “Mr. Buchanan, I said I came here to see you.”

  He hadn’t missed that, not really, he thought, rubbing his hand over his bare chest. But as his mother always said, Jay was a hoper, and he’d been hoping to get back to sleep. Yet he should have known better, because nothing was ever simple when there was a woman involved. Why did they always have to complicate everything? Leggy with Braids even looked like a complication. A man just couldn’t ignore that sweet, full mouth and she had an interesting sprinkle of freckles across her nose that—

  Crap. There he went again, heading off into muddy and probably mined female territory. “What, then?” he demanded, sounding surly even though he was mostly mad at himself. “What is it you want?”

  To wring his neck, if her expression was anything to go by. But she gave him a tight little smile, not a slice of teeth showing. “I want to talk to you about the private chef position. Remember, you called me yesterday? I’m Nikki.”

  “Oh.” He let his gaze run down Leggy with Braids. Nikki. Nikki of the cute freckles, the slim body, that pretty, earth-and-sunlight-colored hair. “Sorry, you won’t do.”

  Without a whiff of remorse, he shut the door again.

  Again, it bounced off a rubber toe.

  Jay sighed. This was what was wrong with them. Women. They were tenacious and stubborn in the most troublesome ways. You tried to let them down easy, but they would never take the hint. Why couldn’t they appreciate fun and games? Why couldn’t they accept when the fun and games were over? But no, they’d always come back—

  “Mr. Buchanan,” her low-pitched voice was forced to find its way through the narrow crack in the door, yet still he could hear it over the rumble of the traffic on the highway and the surf’s crash-and-shush at his back. The goose made another march down his spine. “You called me. Remember?”

  Right. There was that. With a sigh, he pulled back on the knob to gaze on her again, girly as all get-out. “Look,” he said, “it’s nothing personal. It’s just that I’ve sworn off women.”

  His last chef had worked out great. Sandy was businesslike, quiet, and a lesbian to boot. When she’d recommended her friend Nikki, Jay had assumed—which reminded him of one of his grandfather’s favorite old saws, “Assume makes an ass out of u and me”—that she’d be of the same sexual persuasion.

  But after studying the woman on his doorstep…well, to put it bluntly, this leggy darling was no dyke.

  “Mr. Buchanan—”

  He held up his hand, once again wishing like hell he’d had a cup of coffee waiting for him when he rose, which was just another reason to regret this pretty chef person wasn’t an ardent fan of The L Word. “I’ve got enough trouble right now, okay? Believe me, I’ve sworn off women.”

  Those eyebrows slammed over her nose again. “Then we’re even, because I don’t like men.”

  Jay stared in surprise. Could it be? Could his lack of caffeine have impaired his usually impeccable, spot-on radar? “You…” He shook his head, because now he noticed something even more remarkable about her. Pretty chef person, Leggy with Braids, Nikki-who-said-she didn’t-like-men had the most amazing eyes. One was blue, and one was green. Like a mermaid, like a witch, like a…?

  Could it really be? He frowned. “You don’t like men?”

  She took a breath.

  He leaned forward so as not to miss her answer.

  Another female’s voice found him first. From the vicinity of his back door floated a light, sugary voice that he was painfully familiar with. “Jay? Jay, darling. I can’t go another minute without seeing you.”

  Tension tightened a strangling hand around his neck. He closed his eyes, opened them, and was distracted for a second from the sticky problem coming up behind him by Nikki’s pretty, pretty face and those witchy, witchy eyes.

  Hmm. Was she or wasn’t she?

  “Jay?”

  Uh-oh. The sticky problem was getting closer.

  “Jay, honey, where are you?”

  Nikki’s bi-colored eyes were big and full of questions.

  Jay had one of his own, of course. Did she really dislike men or didn’t she? But there wasn’t time to speculate, not with the minty breath of his worst double-X chromosome mistake bearing down on him.

  And then, bam, it hit him. Call it an impulse, call it a brilliant idea, call it both. He kicked aside the unsettling warning that not all his impulses or even his brilliant ideas had panned out to be oh-so-successful.

  Like Mom said, Jay was a hoper.

  And now he hoped to kill two birds with one stone. A single, simple move—and oh, how he liked things simple—could clear up one little question as well as one big problem.

  As high heels clacked on the tile behind him, he grabbed Nikki-who-might-not-like-men, yanked her across the threshold, then pulled her close for a kiss.

  Buy TAKE ME TENDER (Billionaire’s Beach Book 1)

  Buy TAKE ME FOREVER (Billionaire’s Beach Book 2)

  Buy TAKE ME HOME (Billionaire’s Beach Book 3)

  Buy THE SCANDAL (Billionaire’s Beach Book 4)

  Buy THE SE
DUCTION (Billionaire’s Beach Book 5)

  Buy THE SECRET (Billionaire’s Beach Book 6)

  Christie Ridgway’s Book List

  Almost Wonderful (Almost Book 1)

  Almost Always (Almost Book 2)

  Almost Everything (Almost Book 3)

  Almost Paradise (Almost Book 4), coming soon!

  Take Me Tender (Billionaire’s Beach Book 1)

  Take Me Forever (Billionaire’s Beach Book 2)

  Take Me Home (Billionaire’s Beach Book 3)

  The Scandal (Billionaire’s Beach Book 4)

  The Seduction (Billionaire’s Beach Book 5)

  The Secret (Billionaire’s Beach Book 6)

  Light My Fire (Rock Royalty Book 1)

  Love Her Madly (Rock Royalty Book 2)

  Break on Through (Rock Royalty Book 3)

  Touch Me (Rock Royalty Book 4)

  Wishful Sinful (Rock Royalty Book 5)

  Wild Child (Rock Royalty Book 6)

  Who Do You Love (Rock Royalty Book 7)

  Love Me Two Times (Rock Royalty Book 8)

  Rock Royalty Boxed Set – Books 1-3

  One Look (One & Only Book 1)

  One Kiss (One & Only Book 2)

  One Night (One & Only Book 3)

  One Love (One & Only Book 4)

  Make Him Wild (Intoxicating Book 1)

  Make Him Want (Intoxicating Book 2)

  Make Him Stay (Intoxicating Book 3)

  7 Brides for 7 Soldiers - Multi-Author Series

  Ryder - Barbara Freethy (#1)

  Adam - Roxanne St. Claire (#2)

  Zane - Christie Ridgway (#3)

  Wyatt - Lynn Raye Harris (#4)

  Jack - Julia London (#5)

  Noah - Cristin Harber (#6)

  Ford - Samantha Chase (#7)

  7 Brides for 7 Brothers - Multi-Author Series

  Luke: Barbara Freethy (#1)

  Gabe: Ruth Cardello (#2)