“Everything you ever wanted to know about chocolate.”
Cade pulled it toward him and skimmed it. “The Aztecs called it ‘Nourishment of the Gods.’ And it’s thought to have cancer-preventing enzymes. And it’s not strictly speaking an aphrodisiac.”
Macy threw up her hands. “But you can’t have a Valentine’s Day Sexy Supper without chocolate. So I have to think of something sort of erotic to do with it.”
“Like what?”
Macy tapped her fingers on the counter. “The best I’ve been able to come up with is to feed your lover bits of rich dark chocolate between sips of red wine.”
He grinned at her. “I could go for that.”
She frowned. “I need something better.”
“Could you use chocolate syrup?”
“I suppose.” Then she narrowed her gaze. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I’m thinking dribble it on certain body parts and lick it off. I’d be happy to demonstrate if you’ve got some syrup.”
It pleased him to no end when the color rose in her cheeks.
Then her eyes brightened. “I’ve got an even better idea. Chocolate tattoos.”
He winced. “The kind with needles?”
“No. Fake ones. I could even provide little cut-out stencils—hearts, flowers and a page with the alphabet so you could write your initials in the hearts. Then you paint chocolate into the stencil, let it dry and lick it off. Thanks for the idea.”
The smile she beamed at him had something fluttering right beneath his heart. Had she ever looked at him in quite that way before?
“The offer to demonstrate still goes.”
“I’ll have to give you a rain check. Right now I have to see if I can get the chocolate to the right consistency.” She grabbed a bag of chocolate pieces out of a cupboard and poured them into a glass bowl. Then she filled a pan with water and set it on a burner. “You can’t melt chocolate directly over heat.”
When she turned the gas burner on, there was a loud whooshing noise. Heat and fire shot everywhere. Flames streaked across the surface of the stove and leapt upward to the ceiling. Fire bit greedily into the kitchen curtain over the sink, but all Cade saw was the flame licking its way up Macy’s sleeve. He vaulted over the island and ripped the sweater off her.
“Where’s your fire extinguisher?”
She pointed at the wall near the sink. “Right there.”
The wall was empty.
“It’s always right there!” she insisted.
Smoke billowed into thickening black clouds. He pulled her out of the kitchen. “C’mon!”
“My laptop!”
“I’ll get it.” Releasing her arm, he moved back to snatch it off the island. “Pick up the file I left on the sofa and get out to Nate’s car.”
Cade cast one last glance at the fire that had now spread over half the kitchen. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Leonard had set it. Smoke gets in your eyes. His eyes were stinging with it when he caught up to Macy at the front door. “Stay close to me. Leonard will be out there somewhere, and I don’t want any more surprises.”
They were both sitting in Nate’s car when the first fire engine arrived.
“MY RANCH isn’t much farther,” Cade said as he turned onto a narrow dusty road. “I promise you, you’ll be safe there. You don’t have to worry.”
Macy was worried all right. But it wasn’t just about her safety. So many things had happened in the past few hours that she was still trying to absorb them all. And at the top of the list—she just couldn’t get her mind around the fact that Cade was taking her to his ranch. It was located a mere twenty minutes from downtown Austin, and tomorrow she was going to be filming the Sexy Supper segment there.
She glanced at his face, then at his hands gripping the steering wheel. From the first time they’d met, she’d sensed that he was a man who was highly skilled at his job. And he was equally skilled as a lover. This was a man she’d been intimate with, yet there were so many things she was still discovering about him. First there was the ranch. He’d never mentioned it. Then there was the car they were in. It wasn’t the Ranger issue SUV he’d been following her around in. It was a sleek black convertible. Sporty with an air of recklessness about it, it revealed a side to Cade that she’d never seen before.
Another discovery was that he was an absolute rock. Sitting in Nate’s car, watching her kitchen burn, she’d nearly fallen apart. But Cade had been so calm, so cool. And he’d handled everything. He’d contacted Alan and he’d even talked to Danny at the TV station to arrange the change in the shooting location.
“The fire inspector isn’t certain yet, but he believes some kind of odorless and colorless accelerant was used.”
Macy nodded. The inspector had spoken with her briefly. The good news was the fire had been contained in the kitchen. The bad news was that the damage was fairly extensive and she couldn’t safely move back into her house until it had been repaired.
She and Alan had prepared the clients’ dinners at his apartment. Shortly after Alan had left to make deliveries, Cade had smuggled her out a rear exit of the apartment building, and his convertible had been parked in the alley. Just to make sure they weren’t followed, Cade had executed some fancy evasive driving maneuvers before they left Austin.
Now they were on the way to Cade’s ranch. The knots in her stomach tightened. She would be foolish to read too much into the fact that he was taking her to his home. He had to keep her safe. He was just doing his job.
“If you want to talk about it, I’m a good listener,” Cade said.
Macy swallowed hard. The truth was they still hadn’t discussed their relationship. “Yes, I think we should talk about it. We should set down some ground rules.”
He frowned. “Ground rules? I thought we dispensed with all of that last night.”
“We did—which means that we need some new ones.”
He shot her a look. “Are you going to tell me that you don’t want to make love again?”
“No. I do want to make love again…I mean, if you do?”
“I definitely do. So if we’re in agreement, why do we need more rules?”
“I just think we should both be clear that this is a temporary arrangement. There’s no reason why we can’t enjoy each other, but we shouldn’t expect more out of it than…that. Once Leonard is behind bars, we’ll go our separate ways. No harm. No foul.”
For ten charged seconds there was silence in the car. Then Cade said, “I’ll agree to your rules on one condition. Once Leonard is behind bars, I reserve the right to renegotiate them. And now we should talk about Leonard.”
Relief. That’s what she was feeling. Not disappointment.
“First of all, I owe you an apology,” Cade said. “I did a lousy job of protecting you at your house.”
She glanced at him, and for the first time noticed that he looked as tired as she felt. “You did a great job. You got that sweater off me before I was burned. And you made sure that Alan and I were able to service our clients. You’re not to blame for what some obsessed criminal has done.”
“He’s not finished.” The look Cade shot her was grim. “My gut instinct tells me that he’s going to make his final move on you tomorrow.”
“Something to look forward to.”
He took her hand and linked their fingers. “When I told your director about the fire, he immediately offered to film the segment in a kitchen at the studio. I think that may have been what Leonard wanted. That may be why he burned your kitchen. Odds are he has an inside person who works at the TV station. The way he knows the shooting schedule, who the prize winners are…he may have even gotten himself a low-profile job there, perhaps as a janitor. We figured out that’s what he did at each bank he robbed. He always knew things that only an insider would know. Nate’s checking out employees right now.”
“Originally, Danny and I talked about filming the cooking segments at the studio, but he liked the idea of doi
ng it in my kitchen.”
“So that’s why he agreed so quickly to switch the location to my place.”
“Why did you want to do it at the ranch?”
“So far Leonard has been having it all his way. I wanted to throw a monkey wrench into his master scenario. If his plan was to have the last segment filmed at the studio, now he has to improvise, and he may make a mistake.” Cade pulled to a stop. “Here we are. There’s no way he can trace you here.”
Macy had been so intent on their conversation that she hadn’t noticed where they were headed. Now she simply stared at the ranch house. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but certainly not this graceful sprawling structure of glass, stone and wood. Flowers bloomed in neat beds and spilled out of terra cotta pots. Shifting her gaze to the outbuildings, she noted what looked to be a stable and acres of fenced-in fields. The whole place shouted money.
When he opened her door, she swallowed hard. “It’s lovely.”
He took her arm and led her up a flagstone path. “Better than that—it’s safe. Only my family and Nate know that I bought the place. There’s no record of it at headquarters.”
The inside of the house was even more impressive than the outside. Beyond a spacious foyer was a cavernous room with high vaulted ceilings. A huge stone fireplace dominated the far wall, and clustered around it in a U were three comfortable-looking leather sofas. Early-evening sunlight spilled through tall windows and gleamed off wide-planked, cherry-stained floors.
“My family calls this place Cade’s Folly.”
“Why?”
“Because they can’t understand why I bought it. They know how important my job is to me, and running a ranch is a lot of work.”
“Why did you buy it?”
He moved to one of the windows and Macy followed the direction of his gaze. She saw the stable and fields bordered by neat fences. Beyond that the land stretched for miles. After a moment, he turned back to face her. “When I was a kid, I always had this dream of running a ranch. But I also wanted to follow in my dad’s footsteps and become a Texas Ranger. A year ago I was driving around—I do that sometimes when I’m thinking about a case—and I saw the For Sale sign. The owner gave me a tour. There was something about the place that pulled at me, so I bought it. I just knew that it was right. Crazy, huh?”
The fact that he looked a little embarrassed softened something inside of her. “No. I don’t think it’s crazy at all. Where’s the rule that you can only follow one dream?”
For a moment, neither one of them spoke. Then Cade gestured toward an archway. “You’d better check out the kitchen.”
When she stepped through the arch, her breath caught in her throat. There were acres of granite countertops, a set of copper pots hung from hooks, and a zero-degree refrigerator nestled snugly against a commercial eight-burner stove. Unable to stop herself, she moved forward and ran her fingers along the refrigerator door. In a moment she was going to drool over that stove. Someday, she promised herself.
“What do you think?”
When she turned to face him, nerves danced in her stomach. “You’re rich. What do you have—a few oil wells on the side?”
“Actually, my great-grandfather had them. I’ve only had this place for a little over a year. I started with a hundred head of cattle, but I’m going to double that in the spring.”
At the pride in his voice, Macy studied him more closely. “How do you juggle being a Ranger and running a ranch?”
“I hired a retired cowboy, Dix Hatcher. He hires on hands when he needs them and runs the place when I’m away. He lives in a flat over the stables and takes care of the horses.”
“You have horses?”
“Three.” He narrowed his eyes. “Do you ride?”
“I haven’t since I was in college.”
There was a moment of silence as they studied each other.
“There’s a lot we don’t know about each other,” Cade finally said.
But Macy knew one thing for sure. Ranger Cade Dillon was way out of her league.
“Are you bothered by the fact that I have money?”
The man saw way too much. “I just never—” she made a sweeping gesture with her hand “—expected this.” It occurred to her then that whatever decision she’d made in her head about a temporary relationship with Cade, there’d been a part of her heart that had held on to a hope that she and Cade would continue to explore their relationship even after Leonard was in jail.
She glanced around the kitchen. This little reality check was exactly what she needed. “My grandfather worked on an oil rig once, I think. But my male ancestors all had wanderlust. My mother believed they had gypsy blood. I’m really a descendant of a long line of waitresses.” Now she was babbling. Clamping her lips shut, she reached overhead for one of the copper pots and tested its weight in her hand. “These are beautiful. I had no idea you cooked.”
Cade shrugged. “I don’t. My specialty is burning frozen pizza, but in a pinch, I can manage scrambled eggs and charred toast.”
She was staring at him as if he’d suddenly grown a second head. She’d been nervous on the ride out, but that had obviously increased tenfold since she’d entered the house. No other woman had ever made him so unsure of what his next move should be. He’d agreed to her damn ground rules, hoping to ease some of her tension. Besides, weren’t they the rules he’d always used with other women?
But Macy was different. What shocked him was there had been a moment in the car when he’d very nearly told her to shove her damn rules.
“If you don’t cook, then why did you buy all these marvelous pots?”
“They came with the house. The man who sold me the place built the kitchen for his wife. He claimed she was a great cook. When she died, he couldn’t bear living here anymore.”
Macy ran her hand along the side of the copper pot. “He must have loved her very much.”
Cade couldn’t have said exactly what it was—her tone or the way she looked standing there with the early-evening sun pouring over her. But he knew in that moment that this was why he’d brought her here. He wanted Macy here in his kitchen and in his house. And not just for a few days.
The realization left him shaken. It left him aching. This was what had made him run scared from the beginning with her. This was why he hadn’t contacted her for two months.
There was a part of him that wanted to tell her, but the words weren’t going to get past the lump of pure fear in his throat. He wasn’t ready to say them. And she wasn’t ready to hear them.
So he did what he’d been wanting to do all day. He closed the distance between them, yanked her against him and claimed her mouth with his.
OH, YES. Yes, Macy thought. This is what she’d been wanting all day. They might be as different as night and day, but this need was something they had in common. One taste of him had skyrockets exploding in her head and fire shooting through her veins. She couldn’t breathe. Didn’t want to.
The copper pot dropped to the floor. She barely heard the clatter above the pounding of her heart. There was another noise from further away, but she couldn’t make it out. Not when desperation had her rising on her toes and digging her fingers into Cade’s shoulders. She had to get closer.
“Cade, you’re home. On a Monday. I never expected—oh!” The excited voice trailed off.
Thankfully, the counter was at her back or Macy might have slid to the floor as Cade drew back and she focused her gaze on the tall, beautiful woman who was standing on the other side of the kitchen.
7
“MACY, meet my sister Lonnie,” Cade said.
“I am so sorry for interrupting,” Lonnie apologized.
Cade’s sister didn’t look sorry. She looked as delighted as a cat who’d just swallowed a canary.
“Wait a minute.” Lonnie’s eyes narrowed. “You’re Macy Chandler—the chef everyone is talking about. Mom caught your first show on the News at Noon and we’ve been watching the segments eve
r since. You’re wonderful.”
“Thanks,” Macy said.
Lonnie glanced at her brother, then back at Macy. “And you run that personal chef business, Some Like It Hot. Is that how the two of you met? Cade’s an abominable cook.”
“Thanks, sis.” Cade’s tone was dry.
“He’s protecting me,” Macy said.
“Really? What happened?”
“It’s a long story,” Cade said discouragingly.
Lonnie turned to her brother. “The reason I dropped by is that I have curtains for your guest bedroom. Why don’t you go out to my car and get them while Macy fills me in.” She flashed him a mile-wide smile. “In fact, you can even take them upstairs and hang them while we chat.”
There was a resigned look on Cade’s face as he left the room.
Lonnie climbed up on one of the stools at the counter. “Tell me everything.”
That’s exactly what Macy did. Then Lonnie had questions. Fifteen minutes later, when she’d finished answering all of them, Lonnie sighed. “I really am sorry I interrupted. But I’m happy to have met you.”
“Same here.” Macy liked Cade’s sister, and she’d learned a lot about his family. His parents had divorced when he was in high school, and after that he’d taken on the role of looking after his two younger sisters. Lonnie was three years younger than Macy and ran a small interior decorating firm, and Lissa was in her last year of college.
“He’s never brought a woman here before,” Lonnie said. “It’s about time.”
Macy felt heat rise in her cheeks.
Lonnie leaned close and pitched her voice low. “And my sister and I would know. There’d be evidence.”
Macy’s eyes widened. “You spy on him?”
Lonnie grinned. “Payback for all those years he spied on us. Believe me, Big Brother was always watching.”
“You shouldn’t get the wrong idea. The only reason he brought me here is to keep me safe.”
Lonnie shook her head. “I don’t think so. Cade is a straight-and-narrow, follow-the-rules kind of guy. And I’m sure there’s some big rule against getting involved with a material witness. Besides, if all he wanted was to protect you, he could have stashed you in a safe house. The Texas Rangers have a number of them in Austin. You’d be assigned to a couple of his men and he’d be back at his office working. He’s a bit of a workaholic, you know.”
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