Romano's Revenge

by Sandra Marton

  "Uh, yes. Well, actually, I do lots of different sorts of things. French. Spanish. American." She cleared her throat and bent down to retrieve the press. "You know how it is."

  He didn't, but he wasn't about to ask. Joe had bent down for the press, too. Now, he was staring at his new cook's feet. They were small feet. Delicate, probably ... despite the fact that they were shod in very sensible shoes.

  Sensible. Not white, but sensible.

  Joe stood up, so quickly that he almost bumped heads with his new cook, and shunted the insane thought out of his head.

  "That garlic press seems determined to get away," he said with a strained smile. "I- I, ah, I take it those shopping bags are filled with other tools of your trade?"

  "Tools of my... Oh. Yes. Yes, they are."

  "And, ah, your luggage... ?"

  "It's on the porch."

  "Right. Well, then, why don't we stow these bags in the kitchen first, and I'll bring in the rest of your stuff."

  "You don't have to do that, Mr. Romano. I can manage." She reached for the bag Joe was holding. He pulled it back. She tugged at it again and all but dragged it out of his hands.

  "Really, Mr. Romano. I can manage. You just go ahead and put some clothes on..."

  Her voice trailed away. Oh, God. Had she really said that?

  She must have, based on the look on her new boss's face. But it was all his fault. So what if he liked men? He still made her feel uncomfortable, standing around half naked, putting his arm around her shoulders.

  And then there was that nagging feeling she'd met him before.

  "I-I didn't mean," she began, and Joe laughed.

  "Yes, Miss Barry. You did mean. And I apologize. I'd forgotten that I was walking around in a towel"

  "Yes, sir. But- Really. I'm sorry, sir. I only meant-"

  "Look, Miss Barry. We're going to be living together for a while. Sharing the house, I mean. Why don't we try a little less formality, okay? My name is Joe. And yours is ... Lucy?"

  "It's Lucinda."

  It figured. Joe shifted the bag and stuck out his hand. She looked at it as if she'd never seen a man's hand before. Slowly, carefully, as If she were reaching for a hot iron instead of his fingers, she took it.

  Bzzz. There it was again. That kick, as if he'd put his finger in a lamp socket. She snatched her hand back.

  "One of us isn't grounded," Joe said with a little smile.

  "I guess not," she said, and flicked her tongue across her bottom lip.

  Another kick, this time just from watching that pink tongue. Joe smothered a groan along with the thought that maybe he really was losing his mind.

  "Well," he said briskly, "I'll go get dressed. You take a look at the kitchen. And then we'll get your luggage and I'll show you to your rooms."

  "Fine." She waited, smiled pleasantly, then cocked her head. "Where is it? The kitchen, I mean?"

  "Ah." Joe nodded. "Just down the hall, to your right."

  "Thank you, Mr. Romano."

  "Joe," Joe said, and smiled.

  "Joe. Well, then. I'll just put these things away.. "

  She flashed him a polite smile. He smiled back. Her sensible heels whispered against the tile floor as she hurried down the hall.

  Joe watched her go. The bags she held bulged in all directions. He could hear the faint clink of glass and metal with each step she took. She had to have enough gadgets and gizmos with her to open a small ...

  His eyes narrowed.

  She was wearing a skirt and blouse, and those sensible shoes. All in all, she looked about as stylish as his sixth-grade teacher. Still, there was something unusual about her.

  Each time she put one foot ahead of the other, her hips swayed, ever so slightly, beneath that skirt.

  He stared, transfixed. Left, right. Left, right. It was ladylike.

  Ladylike in extremis, he thought with a little smile. But the view was pleasant. She had a nice walk. A nice pair of hips. Small, but nice. A nice bottom, too, and he had to admit, he was a man who admired bottoms. She had good legs, too. Long. At least, he figured them for long. It was hard to tell, because the skirt dipped below her knees.

  Were her legs as long as Blondie's? Were they as silken and elegant? It was a stupid thought, but harmless, wasn't it? To wonder how his new lady chef would look dressed in Blondie's spangles and thong ...

  Joe blinked.

  What was the matter with him this morning? His new chef was a bow-wow from any angle but this one. She was also a woman who liked other women and, old-fashioned as it might be, If there was one thing he couldn't understand, it was that scene.

  Left, right. Swing, sway .. Joe frowned.

  Time for another shower, he thought, and headed back up the stairs at a trot.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LUCINDA stood in the center of Joe Romano's kitchen, blew a strand of hair back from her forehead, and wondered how she could have gotten herself into such a mess.

  She was in trouble.

  Real trouble. Up-the-river-without-a-paddle trouble. Every cliché-she-could-think-of trouble, and there was no way out.

  She didn't like Joseph Romano or his kitchen. And yet, dammmit, she was stuck with both of them.

  Well, no. Carefully, Lucinda placed the shopping bags on top of a granite counter. She had nothing against the kitchen. Who would? The refrigerator was big enough to house a family of polar bears. The pot rack bristled with what looked like a fortune in copper and stainless steel. You could have roasted a moose in the double wall ovens, if moose was to your taste.

  Who could dislike such largesse, especially if that person were a cook?

  And that, Lucinda admitted with a sigh, that, was the problem. She wasn't a cook, despite the certificate that marked her as a graduate of the San Francisco School of Culinary Arts. She was an imposter, trained by a pompous little man who why not admit it?-owned a bogus school. She'd sensed it, almost from the beginning, but the price of the course had been more than a match for her level of desperation.

  Half a dozen bentwood stools fronted a long length of granite counter. Lucinda pulled one out, eased up onto it, put her elbows on the counter and rubbed her hands over her face.

  She was trapped. Trapped in an advertisement from Better Homes and Gardens, with a man she'd disliked on sight.

  Joe Romano's grandmother had lovingly described him as her darling, but grandma's "darling" was an arrogant, self-centered, gorgeous hunk of masculinity. Well, maybe that was the wrong word to use, Lucinda thought uneasily, although he certainly struck her as masculine.

  Whatever. That was his business. Her business involved cooking for him.

  Lucinda groaned, folded her arms and laid her head down. Who was she kidding? She couldn't cook, not really, and Romano would figure that out for himself soon enough. How she'd thought she'd get away with this charade was beyond her.

  No. No, it wasn't. She sat up straight and stroked back the strands of hair that had pulled loose from the knot at the nape of her neck.

  She'd thought she could do it because cooking for a gay man would ease her into things. Gay guys were easygoing. They were non-threatening. They weren't demanding.

  Joe Romano didn't fit the bill.

  For all his smiles, she sensed he was about as easygoing, as non-threatening, as undemanding as a stick of dynamite.

  What would it be like, to work for him if he were straight? "Are you crazy, Lucinda?" she said, and sat up.

  Who cared? The man's sexual preferences were of no interest to her. Let him do what he wanted, with whom he wanted. What if he had been straight? Women made so much fuss about sex and, really, what was the point? The whole thing was overrated. She'd always known it, in her heart, even before her mother had dropped those not terribly discreet hints about What Men Wanted From Women.

  Sex, was what they wanted. It was the nature of the beast.

  Men needed sex, like the boor last night. He might even have seen himself as some sort of Don Juan.

 
Well, she'd shown him how she felt about that.

  Her arm still ached from the blow, but it had been worth it to see the way the bastard's head snapped back, the way he'd looked at her, as if he couldn't imagine a woman rebuffing his advances.

  Some probably wouldn't.

  Her vision might have been blurry but all her other senses worked just fine. When he'd caught her in his arms, she'd felt the heat of his body. The power of all those very masculine muscles. The hardness of his mouth, and then the softening of it as he fitted his lips to hers. The feel of his hand, threading into her hair ...

  Lucinda shot to her feet and began unloading kitchen equipment from the bags.

  That was one thing to be said about Joseph Romano's sexual preferences. He wouldn't have hot-and-cold running females going in and out the door at all hours.

  No. He'd have hot-and-cold running males instead. The thought wasn't comforting.

  "Oh, hell," she said weakly, and pulled open a drawer. Light from the overhead spotlights glinted on a breathtaking array of stainless steel tools. She picked up one and turned it over and over between her fingers.

  What was it? She had no idea. Actually, she had no idea what this whole room was about. You'd need a doctoral degree in physics to operate the stove; you'd have to be fluent in Cuisine art to turn on half the appliances lined up along the counters-

  "Finding everything all right?"

  Lucinda spun around. Joseph Romano was standing in the doorway. Actually, he was lounging in it arms folded, his body leaning back against the frame. He was fully dressed, for which she was eternally grateful. Dressed as a man like him would, of course, not properly as in the circle in which she'd grown up, but dressed, nevertheless-if you could call a white T-shirt that clung to all those muscles "dressed." If you could call those jeans "dressed." They were faded. And snug.. Oh.. so snug ...

  She blinked.

  "Just fine and dandy," she said, shooting him a bright smile and shutting the drawer with her hip. She swung away from those piercing blue eyes and went back to unloading the shopping bags, laying things out on the counter as if her life depended on it.

  "Fascinating."

  Lucinda jumped again. He'd come up behind her. She could feel the faint warmth of his breath on her neck.

  Goose bumps rose on her skin.

  "Do you really need all those gadgets to cook a meal?"

  "Oh, not all of them." She flashed another smile as she slipped past him. "Actually, I don't know that I'll need my things at all. You have a wonderfully equipped kitchen."

  "Well, if kitchens could talk, mine would probably be shouting hosannas." Joe slid a hip onto the edge of a stool and smiled. "In gratitude at your arrival, that is. I'm not much of a cook."

  An understatement. Maybe even a flat-out lie, but the lady would never know it if he kept as far out of her realm as he could manage and let her take over in here, not just for a couple of weeks but indefinitely.

  The more he'd thought about it, as he'd showered and dressed, the more he'd started to think that this might just work out. Maybe his Nonna hadn't been so wrong. A woman who could cook up a storm, with a desirability quotient of zero, living right under his roof and available day or night to whip up a meal or a snack, was starting to sound like a pretty good asset. Better than good, he thought as his stomach rumbled a reminder that he'd yet to have breakfast.

  So, he'd be a little nicer. A bit more friendly. It wasn't his cook's fault she wasn't a looker any more than it was her fault she didn't like men.

  "I know."

  Joe jerked his head up. Lucinda had wandered away again.

  She'd opened a drawer and she was looking down into it, her brows drawn together as if she'd found something either unmentionable or unnamable inside.

  "Sorry?"

  "I said, your grandmother mentioned you didn't do much cooking." Why had she picked this drawer to open? There were beaters in it, for a mixer. She recognized those, but not those other things, the long, wicked-looking hunks of shiny, twisted metal. What on earth could they be?

  "What are those things, anyway?"

  This time she managed not to jump when she heard Joe Romano's voice behind her. When she felt his breath on her neck. Was he going to keep doing that? Sneaking up when she didn't expect it? Hadn't the man ever heard of the importance of personal space? She didn't like the intrusion on hers. It was too close. Too intimate.

  Her pulse rate skidded uneasily.

  "What things?" she said, and slammed the drawer shut. Joe reached past her and yanked it open. His shoulder brushed hers; his scent, a combination of soap and man, rose to her nostrils. He was doing it again. Surrounding her, as that-that miserable creature at the bachelor party had done last night.

  Lucinda sniffed, then sniffed again. His smell was so clean. So masculine. So familiar. "Lucinda?"

  She blinked. "Yes, Mr. Romano?"

  "Joe," he said, and smiled politely.

  "Joe," she repeated, and cleared her throat. "I'm sorry. Did you say something?"

  He lifted one of the twisted spikes of gleaming metal from the drawer. "I was wondering what these are."

  "Uh, ah, those?"

  "Yeah. When I first bought this house, I was, um, I was going with this wo-with this person who figured to get me interested in something long-term by showing me the joys of domesticity." Have to watch that, Romano. You skate babes, but so does she. Somehow, the thought was distressing. "Toni's house-warming gift was to have the kitchen completely equipped with every conceivable gadget."

  "Ah. Well, Tony did a great job."

  "Yeah, but the first time I went looking for a teaspoon, I pulled open this drawer and saw these things. And I've been trying to figure out what they are, ever since."

  Lucinda nodded. "Well, ask Tony."

  "Oh, Toni's long gone," Joe said lazily. He looked at his new cook. "Do you always wear your sunglasses in the house?"

  "My...? Oh. No. These aren't sunglasses. They're smoked, that's all. Actually, I usually wear contacts. But I lost one yesterday and when I found it this morning, I didn't have time to clean it properly, so..."

  Joe nodded, as if he were listening, but he wasn't. Actually, for such a drab little mouse, she had an interesting mouth. Soft. Full. Nice hair, too. A strand had escaped and hung against her temple. Incongruously, it reminded him of the long, sexy hair of the babe who'd popped out of the cake. Could Lucinda's hair possibly feel as silken? His fingers itched with the desire to find out. Maybe even to taste that mouth...

  Hot damn.

  "So," he said briskly as he took a couple of quick steps back, "what do you do with these spiked things, anyway?"

  Lucinda smiled brightly. "Why don't you try and guess?"

  "I did try. I decided they must be a medieval torture device." He chuckled, leaned against the counter, crossed his feet at the ankles and tossed the metal object from hand to hand. "But the guy I bought the place from wasn't into S and M."

  "S and ... " Lucinda swallowed. This was more about Joe Romano's sexual preferences than she wanted to know. "I see. But, uh, I mean, there's nothing wrong with S and M. If you're into it. Not you. Someone else. Well, two someone else's. If two people are adults, if that's what turns them on..."

  Her eyes met Joe's. Color flooded her face. "It's a dough hook," she said, the name for the spike coming back to her in a rush. She plucked it from his hand, dumped it alongside its mate, and slammed the drawer shut. "A person's private life is his private life, is my motto, Mr. Romano. I hope you understand that."

  She saw color flood his face, too. "Of course," he said stiffly. "That goes without saying. I'd never sit in judgment on anyone, Lucy."

  "Lucinda," she said primly. "And, if you don't mind, I'd like to see my accommodations."

  "Certainly. If you'll follow me...?"

  She nodded and fell in behind him. Backs rigid, they marched through the house and up the stairs.

  Lucinda sat on the edge of her bed, hands folded neatly in her l
ap. She'd put her clothing away, lined up her shoes in the closet, hung her robe on the hook in her private bathroom and put her toothbrush into the holder on the sink.

  "I hope your accommodations are to your liking," her new employer had said.

  She'd assured him that they were fine-even though they weren't.

  Chef Florenze had discussed accommodations. He'd talked about living in the staff quarters of hotels, small inns, and private homes.

  "For those of you fortunate enough to find positions as personal cooks to the wealthy," he'd said with a supercilious little smile.

  Not that she'd needed the information. She knew how things were done in the home she'd grown up in and in those of her childhood friends. Family lived on one floor, staff on another. A cook might sleep on the staff floor, or in rooms just off the kitchen.

  Whatever the arrangement, it didn't include putting a cook into the bedroom next door to her employer's, with the headboards of their respective beds separated by a thin wall.

  It didn't matter, she thought briskly. So what if Mr. Romano slept a foot away from where she slept? So what if they might bump into each other in the hall? She would block her mind to the pictures racing through it.

  Pictures that would be even worse if he were straight and she had to imagine him in that room, in that bed, with a woman ...

  Lucinda frowned. "Ridiculous," she said, and got to her feet.

  It was time to brave the dangers of the kitchen, check the fridge and think about making dinner tonight.

  "Are you going out?" she'd asked Mr. Romano after he'd shown her to her rooms.

  He'd seemed to hesitate and then he'd shrugged and said yes. Yes, he was.

  "And will you be here for dinner?"

  He'd hesitated again. "Yeah," he'd finally replied, "yeah, I will."

  So she had almost an entire day to work up a menu. Good.

  That gave her plenty of time to figure out how to prepare a meal he'd never forget.

  Lucinda hesitated at the door. Should she change into her uniform? She was unclear as to the protocol. Chefs wore white in restaurant kitchens but in private homes, in her experience, anyway, such things were generally left to the discretion of the employer.