"I'm a wonderful cook."
As he walked behind her, his eyes lowered to the sway of her hips, her rounded bottom he'd come to appreciate in the past week, and the brush of the towel across the backs of her knees. Dinner prepared by a wonderful cook sounded great. And of course, it gave him the opportunity both to ask her a few questions about her relationship with Kevin and to get her to relax around him. "What's for dinner?"
"Stroganoff, French bread, and salad." She climbed several steps to the screen door and opened it.
Joe followed close behind and reached over her head, grabbing the top of the wood frame and holding the door open.
She paused, and if he hadn't been paying attention, he would have knocked her flat. His chest lightly grazed her bare back. She turned, and her shoulder brushed his chest through the thin cotton of his T-shirt. "Are you a vegetarian?" she asked.
"God forbid. Are you?"
Her wide green eyes stared into his, and a distressed little furrow creased her brow. Then she did something weird-although he guessed he shouldn't be surprised by anything she did. She breathed really deep through her nose as if she smelled something. Joe couldn't smell anything beyond the floral scent clinging to her skin. Then she shook her head slightly as if to clear her mind and continued into the house as if nothing had happened. Joe followed and resisted a sudden urge to sniff his armpits.
"I have tried veganism," she informed him as they moved through a small back room with a washer and dryer and into a kitchen painted bright yellow. "It's a lot healthier lifestyle. But unfortunately I'm lapsed."
"You're a lapsed vegetarian?" He'd never heard of such a thing, but he wasn't real surprised.
"Yes, I've tried to resist my carnivorous urges, but I'm weak. I have control issues."
Control usually wasn't an issue for him- until now.
"I love most things that are bad for my arteries. Sometimes I'm halfway to McDonald's before I realize it."
A stained glass window above the breakfast nook threw patches of color about the room and on the rows of little glass bottles lined up on the small wooden table. The room smelled like Anomaly, like rose oil and patchouli, but nothing else, and he grew suspicious of her claim to be a wonderful cook. No Crock-Pot filled with bubbling stroganoff sat on the counter. No scent of baked bread. His suspicions were confirmed when she opened the refrigerator and pulled out a container of sauce, a package of fresh pasta, and a loaf of French bread.
"I thought you were a wonderful cook."
"I am." She shut the refrigerator and set everything next to the stove. "Would you do me a favor and open the cabinet by your left leg and pull out two saucepans?"
When he leaned down and opened the door, a colander fell out on his foot. Her cabinets were messier than his.
"Oh, good. We'll need that too."
He grabbed the pots and colander and straightened. Gabrielle stood with her back pressed against the refrigerator door, a hunk of French bread in one hand. He watched her gaze slide up the front of his jeans to his chest. She slowly chewed, then swallowed. The tip of her tongue licked a crumb from the corner of her mouth, and she finally looked up at him. "Want some?"
His gaze searched her face for a hint that she wasn't asking about bread, but he saw nothing provocative in her clear green eyes. If she'd been any other woman besides his CI, he would have loved to show her exactly what he wanted-starting with her mouth and slowly working his way to the little mole on her inner thigh. He'd downright love to fill his hands with her big, creamy breasts straining against that bikini top. But she wasn't any other woman, and he had to behave like a Boy Scout. "No, thanks."
"Okay. I'm going to change my clothes. While I'm gone, put the stroganoff sauce in the small pan, then fill the larger pan with water. When the water starts to boil, add the pasta. Cook it for five minutes." She pushed away from the refrigerator, and as she walked past him, she paused for a second and breathed deeply through her nose. Just like before, a crease furrowed her brow, and she shook her head. "Anyway, I should be back by then."
Joe watched her breeze from the room, tearing off a bite of bread, and he wondered exactly how it had happened that he'd been invited to dinner by a woman in a bikini who claimed to be a wonderful cook but left him to cook the meal while she changed. And what was up with that smelling thing? She'd done it twice now, and he was starting to get a little paranoid.
Gabrielle popped her head back into the kitchen. "You aren't going to search for that Monet while I'm out of the room, are you?"
"No, I'll wait until you get back."
"Great," she said through a smile, then was gone again.
Joe moved to the sink and filled the larger pot with water. A fat black cat rubbed against his legs and wound its tail around his calf. Joe didn't really like cats, figuring they were pretty useless. Not like dogs that could be trained to sniff out dope or birds that could be trained to talk and hang upside down by one foot. He nudged the cat away with the toe of his work-boot and turned to the stove.
His gaze strayed to the doorway, and he wondered how long before she returned. It wasn't that he had any scruples about searching through drawers while she was out of the room, he just had two very good reasons why he chose not to. First, he didn't believe he'd find anything. If Gabrielle was involved in the theft of Mr. Hillard's painting, he doubted she would have invited him into her house. She was much too high-strung to shoot the breeze over stroganoff if she had a Monet rolled up in her closet. And second, he needed her trust, and that would never happen if she caught him ransacking her house. He needed to show her he wasn't such a bad guy, which he didn't think would be too terribly difficult. He wasn't the type of man who bragged about conquests over a few beers, but women generally liked him. He knew he was a good lover. He always made sure the women in his bed had as much fun as he did, and despite what Meg Ryan said, he'd be able to tell if a woman was faking. He didn't roll off and start snoring afterward, and he didn't collapse and crush a woman beneath his weight.
He dumped the stroganoff into the saucepan on the stove and turned the burners on medium. Although he wasn't one of those sensitive, pansy-assed weenies who cried in front of women, he was pretty sure women thought he was nice.
Something sat on his foot, and he looked down at the cat perched on his boot. "Get lost, furball," he said and nudged the cat just enough to send it sliding across the linoleum.
Gabrielle hooked the lace bra between her breasts, then pulled a short blue T-shirt over her head. Even though Joe said he wouldn't search her kitchen, she didn't really believe him. She didn't trust him out of her sight. Heck, she didn't trust him with her eyes glued right on him. But he was right, she had to find a calm way to deal with him in her shop and in her life. She had a business to run, and she couldn't do it if she had to watch his every move or leave early.
She stepped into a pair of faded jeans and buttoned them just below her navel. Besides her business concerns, she knew her health was at risk. She didn't know how much longer she could walk around with stress headaches and unattractive facial tics before she developed serious health-related issues, like a hormonal imbalance and an overactive pituitary gland.
Gabrielle grabbed a brush off her dresser and pulled it through her damp hair. She sat on the lace spread covering her four-poster bed and tried to remind herself that everyone entered her life for a reason. If she opened her mind, she would find the higher purpose for Joe's existence. A picture of his behind as he'd bent over to retrieve pots from her cabinet entered her head, and she scowled at her reflection in a cheval mirror across the room. The way he filled out his jeans had absolutely nothing to do with spiritual meaning.
Tossing the brush beside her, she wove her hair into a loose braid, then tied a blue ribbon around the bottom. Joe was a dark, brooding cop who'd wreaked havoc on her nerves, turned her life upside down, and caused disharmony. An imbalance of body and spirit. A war for supremacy. Anarchy. She certainly didn't see a higher purpose in all of that.
But he did smell nice.
When she entered the kitchen several minutes later, Joe stood in front of the sink pouring noodles into a colander. A cloud of steam enveloped his head while her mother's cat traversed a figure eight between his feet, wrapping her tail around his calves and meowing loudly.
"Beezer!" She scooped up the cat and held her against her breasts. "You better leave the detective alone or he'll slam you to the ground and arrest you. I know from experience."
"I never slammed you to the ground," Joe said as the steam cleared. "If anyone was slammed, it was me."
"Oh, yeah." She smiled at the memory of him lying on the ground with his lashes stuck together. "I got the jump on you."
He looked across his shoulder at her and shook the colander. A slight smile curved a corner of his mouth, and the humidity curled the hair about his temple. "But who ended up on top, Miss Bad Ass?" His gaze slipped over her from the braid in her hair to her bare feet, then back up again. "Pasta's done."
"Go ahead and dump it in with the stroganoff."
"What are you going to do?"
"Feed Beezer or she'll never leave you alone. She knows you're making dinner, and she's food obsessed." Gabrielle walked to a cabinet by the back door and retrieved a package of Tender Vittles. "After I feed her, I'll make the salad," she said as she ripped off the top. She dumped the food in a porcelain saucer, and once Beezer began to eat, she opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bag of chopped-up salad.
"That figures."
Gabrielle looked over at Joe, who stood in front of the stove stirring the pasta into the sauce with a wooden spoon. The shadow of his beard darkened his tan cheeks and emphasized the sensual lines of his mouth. "What?"
"That your lettuce is precut. You know, this is the first time I've ever been invited to dinner, then been asked to cook it myself."
She hadn't really thought of him as a guest, more like unavoidable company. "How odd."
"Yeah. Odd." He pointed the spoon at the breakfast nook in the corner of the room. "What is all that?"
"Essential oils for the Coeur Festival," she explained as she dumped lettuce into two bowls. "I make my own aromatherapies and healing oils. Today is the first free day I've had to test a sunscreen oil I made out of sesame, wheat germ, and lavender. That's what I was doing in the pool."
"Does it work?"
She pulled down the neck of her T-shirt and studied the stark white bikini line against her tan chest. "I didn't burn." She glanced at him, but he wasn't looking at her face or her tan line. He stared at her bare stomach; his gaze so hot and intent heat flushed her skin. "What kind of dressing do you like on your salad?" she managed.
Then he shrugged one shoulder and focused his attention on the pot of stroganoff, making her wonder if she'd imagined the way he'd looked at her. "Ranch."
"Oh…" She turned to the refrigerator to hide her confusion. "Well I only have Italian and fat-free Italian."
"Why did you ask like I had a choice?"
"You do." If he could pretend that nothing had passed between them, so could she, but she had a feeling he was a better actor. "You can have Italian or fat-free Italian."
"Italian."
"Great." She dressed the salad, then carried the bowls into the dining room and set them on the cluttered table. She didn't have dinner company often and had to shove her catalogs and oil recipes into the built-in china hutch. Once the table was clear, she placed a short beeswax candle in the center of the pedestal table and lit it. She brought out her linen place mats and matching napkins, a pair of silver napkin rings, and the antique silver flatware she'd inherited from her grandmother. She grabbed two Ville-roy & Boch plates painted with red poppies and told herself she wasn't trying to impress the detective. She wanted to use her "good stuff" because she hardly ever got the chance. There was no other reason.
With her finest china in her hands she walked back into the kitchen. He stood where she'd left him, his back to her. She paused in the doorway, her eyes taking in his dark hair and the back of his neck, his broad shoulders and back. She let her gaze move to the back pockets of his Levi's and down his long legs. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a good-looking guy to dinner. Her last two boyfriends didn't count because they hadn't been all that great in the looks department. Harold had been brilliant, and she'd loved listening to him talk about spiritual enlightenment. He hadn't been preachy or too far out, but Francis had been right, Harold had been too old for her.
Before Harold, she'd dated Rick Hattaway, a nice, average-looking man who made Zen alarm clocks for a living. Neither man had made her pulse race or her stomach flutter, or made her skin flush from the heat of his gaze. Her attraction to both Harold and Rick hadn't been sexual, and neither relationship had progressed beyond kissing.
It had been years since she'd judged a man by his looks and not the quality of his soul. It had been before her conservationist conversion, when she'd hated washing dishes so much she'd only used paper plates. The guys she'd dated in those days probably wouldn't have even noticed the difference between Wedgwood and Chinet. At that time in her life she'd considered herself a serious artist, and she'd chosen men for purely aesthetic reasons. None of them had been enlightened, some hadn't been very smart, but really, intellect hadn't been the point. Muscles. Muscles and tight buns and stamina had been the point.
Gabrielle's gaze moved up Joe's spine, and she begrudgingly admitted that she'd missed looking across a dinner table at a handsome, hormone-enriched he-man. Joe certainly didn't seem concerned with his own enlightenment, but he did seem more intelligent than the average muscle neck. Then he raised his arm, bent his head, and sniffed his pit.
Gabrielle looked at the plates in her hands. She should have used paper.
Chapter Seven
Gabrielle was surprised at his table manners. Surprised he didn't chew with his mouth open, scratch himself, or belch like a frat boy with a sixer of Old Milwaukee. He'd actually placed his napkin on his lap and was entertaining her with outrageous stories about his parrot, Sam. If she didn't know better, she might think he was trying to charm her or that perhaps he had a decent soul buried somewhere deep within that solid body.
"Sam has a weight problem," he told her in between bites of stroganoff. "He loves pizza and Cheetos."
"You feed your bird pizza and Cheetos?"
"Not so much anymore. I had to build him a gym. Now I make him work out when I do."
Gabrielle didn't know whether to believe him or not. "How do you make a bird work out? Won't he just fly away?"
"I trick him into thinking he's having fun." Joe broke off a piece of bread and ate it. "I put the gym next to my weight bench," he continued after he'd swallowed. "And as long as I stay in the room with him, he'll climb his ladders and chains."
Gabrielle took a bite of her own bread and watched him over the top of the beeswax candle. Muted light from the dining room windows poured through the sheer curtains, bathing the room and Detective Joe Shanahan in soft light. His strong, masculine features appeared relaxed and subdued. Gabrielle figured it had to be a trick of the light, because despite his present charm, she knew from very recent experience that there was nothing subdued about the man across from her. Nothing soft, but she supposed that a man who loved his bird couldn't be totally without redeeming qualities. "How long have you had Sam?"
"Not quite a year now, but it seems like I've always had him. My sister Debby bought him for me."
"You have a sister?"
"I have four."
"Wow." Growing up, Gabrielle had always wanted a sister or brother. "Are you the oldest?"
"Youngest."
"The baby," she said, although she couldn't envision Joe as anything other than a grown man. He had too much testosterone for her to think of him as a nice little boy with shiny cheeks. "I bet growing up with four big sisters was fun."
"Mostly it was hell." He twirled a bite of pasta onto his fork.
"Why?"
H
e shoved the noodles into his mouth and watched her as he chewed. He didn't look like he would answer, but then he swallowed and confessed, "They made me wear their clothes and pretend I was the fifth sister."
She tried not to laugh, but her bottom lip trembled.
"It's not funny. They wouldn't even let me pretend to be the dog. Tanya always got to be the dog."
She did laugh this time and even thought about reaching out to pat his hand and telling him he would be okay, but she didn't. "Sounds like your sister made up for it. She bought you a bird for your birthday."
"Debby gave me Sam when I was laid up at home for a while. She thought a bird would keep me company until I was back on my feet and would be less trouble than a puppy." He smiled now. "She was wrong about that."
"Why were you laid up at home?"
His smile fell, and he shrugged his big shoulders. "I was shot in a drug bust that went wrong from the very beginning."
"You were shot?" Gabrielle felt her brows raise up her forehead. "Where?"
"In my right thigh," he said and abruptly changed the subject. "I met your friend when I knocked on your door earlier."
Gabrielle would have loved to know the details of the shooting, but he obviously wanted the subject dropped. "Francis?"
"She didn't give me her name, but she did say you told her I was your boyfriend. What else did you tell her?" he asked before he stuck the last bite of pasta in his mouth.
"That's about it," Gabrielle prevaricated as she reached for her iced tea. "She knew I thought a stalker was following me, so she asked me about it today. I told her we're dating now."
He swallowed slowly, and his gaze studied her across the slight distance that separated them. "You told her you're dating the guy you thought was stalking you?"
Gabrielle took a drink and nodded. "Mmm-hmm."
"And she didn't think that was weird?"
Gabrielle shook her head and set her tea back down. "Francis has relationship issues. She knows that sometimes a woman has to take a chance. And being pursued by a man can be very romantic."
It Must Be Love Page 9