by Mindy Klasky
Of course, Ashley dug into the recipe books first. They were a complete history lesson—from the earliest ones that still made notes about war rationing to the volumes from the fifties and sixties, when canned food and other convenience items first made their appearance. A lot of the entries were of general interest—Swedish meatballs seemed to be a nationwide craze in the mid 1950s, and chicken chow mein was a big hit a few years later.
But Ashley was interested in local specialties, especially the ones that said they’d been in someone’s family for decades. She opened up her laptop and started to make notes. Peanuts were featured prominently—boiled, salted, ground into butter. Fresh shrimp was a favorite as well.
She was deep in concentration over the purple-printed pages of a mimeographed church cookbook when the librarian cleared her throat. Ashley looked up, feeling dazed. “I’m sorry to interrupt you,” the other woman said. “But this gentleman is looking for a lot of the same materials you’re using. Would it be possible for him to share with you? You’ve got first dibs, of course, as you requested the items first.”
This gentleman.
Ashley wasn’t even surprised when she looked past the librarian. Josh Cantor was grinning at her. His black hair was in disarray, as if the wind had picked up outside, and the notebook in his hand sprouted half a dozen stray pages that looked like they might slip free at any minute. His Rockets T-shirt was stretched tight across his chest, leaving as little to her imagination as the soft creases that fanned from the crotch of his jeans.
What the hell was she doing, looking at the crotch of his jeans?
She bit her tongue to remind herself that she was working, and then she forced a smile. After all, it wasn’t the librarian’s fault that someone else wanted the cooking materials. “Sure,” she said, but she certainly wouldn’t have believed herself, if she’d heard such a weak assent. “It’s fine,” she assured the librarian. Even though she didn’t think it was fine. Even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to be anywhere near Josh.
Before the librarian could walk away, Josh pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Hey,” he asked her. “Would you mind taking a picture of both of us with these books?”
Before the librarian could respond, Ashley asked, “And why would I do that? What is it with you and pictures?”
He grinned like Dennis the Menace. “Apron will want to use it in their publicity—when they announce that I won the contest after scoring higher than whatever recipe you’re looking up today.”
Well, she couldn’t let him get off that easy. She jumped to her feet and went to stand beside him, both of them setting their hands on the collection of books.
That was a mistake. She felt the heat radiating from his side. Well, of course she did. There he was, wearing a T-shirt at the end of November! And she was wrapped safe and sound in a cable-knit sweater. But that didn’t begin to explain the tingle she felt when his leg brushed against hers. It didn’t begin to justify the way she almost asked the librarian to take her time with the phone, to take another couple of pictures, just to make sure one turned out.
Who was she kidding? She desperately wanted to be near Josh Cantor. She wanted to continue their conversation from the bar the other night. She wanted to find out why he’d almost kissed her. Why he’d stopped.
And if she just happened to learn a little more about his strategy for Who Wears the Apron? Well, that was simply practical of her, wasn’t it? She was just being a good competitor.
Josh might have been thinking the exact same thing, from the easy way he thanked the librarian and took back his phone. In fact, his feline grin made Ashley feel a bit like prey as he settled across the table from her. Willing prey, if that was possible, but prey all the same.
“Let me guess,” she said, eager to regain the high ground. “You set your private detective to follow me, and now you’ve come here to pay me off, to make me drop out of the competition.”
His face darkened at her words, and she wondered what she’d said to upset him. He rallied, though, and said, “You wish. Nope, Ashley. We’re going head to head. If you can take the heat.”
She’d thought she could, until she felt the sudden pulse between her thighs. What was it about this guy? Why did he have her thinking about bedrooms and tangled sheets, when her mind was supposed to be glued to the kitchen, to sheets of puff pastry?
“Don’t take offense,” she said, softening her words with a saucy smile. “But you make a living playing baseball. Only one of us sitting at this table is a real chef. And that’s the one who’s going to win.”
His eyes narrowed. “Those are fighting words, babe.”
Babe. A shot of adrenaline nearly made her drop the recipe book. She set it on the table carefully, hoping he hadn’t noticed the tremor in her hands. “That’s because I intend to fight,” she said. “And win.”
She leaned back in her chair, stretching her legs and pointing her toes toward him. She just might have been aware that the motion stretched her hunter green sweater tighter across her chest. And she wasn’t disappointed when she saw him catch his breath, when his head tilted to a sly, evaluating angle. She picked up her pen and pointed it at him like a weapon. “Even if you’ve stacked the deck, having the Rockets offer the new grand prize.”
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “That wasn’t me! I didn’t have anything to do with the restaurant space!”
“But you admit it gives you an unfair advantage.”
“All’s fair in love and … cooking.” He drew out that last word. Made it perfectly clear that there were other battlegrounds where anything went.
She stretched her hands, hoping some of her tension would flow out of her fingers. “It all depends on what you’re bringing to the table,” she said. “Me? I’ve got seven years of professional experience. You’ve got what? A mean throw to first and a good eye for a fastball.”
His eyes glinted. “You follow the game?”
She shrugged, unwilling to admit that most of her knowledge was twenty-four hours old. “I’m more a New York fan, myself.” And she was—a fan of New York delis, of New York cheesecake, of New York fine dining that could break her budget faster than anything in North Carolina ever could, but gave her ideas for culinary experiments that lasted for months.
“You should try the games in your own backyard,” Josh said. “Once you’ve had them, you’ll never go back.”
He had to know exactly what he was saying. She could see it in his laughing eyes, in the way he kept his gaze locked on her lips. She felt heat blooming up her neck, and she wished she’d worn her hair down to give herself some camouflage. As it was, she cleared her throat and nudged the library cart closer to him. “There’s a lot of material here. We’d both better get back to work.”
He wiped a mask of earnestness across his face. “Absolutely,” he said. “Wouldn’t want the day to go to waste.”
It wasn’t a waste, she told herself as she flipped the page of the cookbook in front of her and dragged her laptop closer in a transparent demonstration that she was busy, she was working, she wasn’t even beginning to think of the man who sat across from her. It wasn’t a waste if she got a cardiac workout like the one that was jackhammering her heart every time she glanced Josh’s way. It wasn’t a waste if she peered at his notebook, at the sketches he’d made for plating … something, some dish that had multiple component parts. It wasn’t a waste if she felt more alive, more intrigued than she’d felt for literally years.
She tucked her chin down and got back to work. For the first few minutes, it was hard. She wanted to see what Josh was reading. She wanted to ask him what, specifically, he’d come to research. She wanted to see if she could make him call her “babe” again.
But her eyes finally paid attention when she schooled them back to the page. And her ears stopped hearing every single rustle from his side of the table. And her brain finally stopped replaying those few seconds in the bar, when she’d been certain he was going to kiss her.
And she got some work done.
Until a ball of notebook paper fell onto the keyboard of her laptop. “Hey!” she exclaimed with some true annoyance.
“Sorry,” Josh said, even though he didn’t look sorry at all. “You were so deep in concentration you didn’t notice when I did all the usual library things.”
“The usual library things?”
“You know. Clearing my throat.” He demonstrated. “Tapping the table.” He drummed a quick tattoo with his fingertips. “Stretching.” She felt the toe of his shoe against hers, and she leaped about a mile.
“What are we? In fourth grade?”
His glance at her sweater was quick, but it conveyed even more than his words that followed. “I’m pretty sure we’re not anywhere near elementary school.”
She should have worn her chef whites. Better yet, an overcoat. A shapeless, formless trench coat. “Why did you want my attention?”
“What’s Tom Thumb?”
That was the last thing she expected him to ask. “What?”
“Tom Thumb. It’s in this recipe. It says, ‘boil Tom Thumb and slice, arranging on platter with pineapple and baked sweet potato slices for a Hawaiian surprise.’”
“It’d be a surprise, all right.” She wrinkled her nose. “Tom Thumb is a sausage—pork shoulder, sage, red pepper, sort of like a spiced bologna.”
“With pineapple? That sounds disgusting!”
She shrugged. “Anything Hawaiian was the rage.”
“But what a thing to do to a perfectly innocent sausage!”
Somehow, she suspected that if Josh Cantor was involved, there wasn’t anything innocent about the sausage. Or about his interruption, either. Sure enough, he said, “Isn’t it time for a study break? Let’s go get a cup of coffee.”
She wanted to. God knows, she wanted to get to know this intriguing, infuriating guy better. But the library was only open until five. And the next round of competition was on Friday; that only left her two days to process whatever she learned from the history books and turn it into a winning appetizer.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Can’t? Or won’t?” The competitive gleam in his eye tempted her to slam her laptop closed right then.
Instead, she shook her head. “Same difference. I’m winning Who Wears the Apron, and no amount of distraction from you will change that.”
“Then you admit I’m distracting.”
“I didn’t mean it as a compliment!”
He laughed and said, “All right. Have it your way. But if I collapse from hunger, and you have to resuscitate me, you’ll feel guilty forever.”
“Who says I’ll resuscitate you?” she asked sweetly. She dug back into her books before he could say anything else to distract her. This time, it took her almost half an hour to ignore the man who sat across from her. But ignore him, she finally did. She tried to tell herself that the world of tidewater foods had never been so engaging.
But she didn’t begin to believe that lie. Especially not after four o’clock, when Josh slapped his notebook closed. “Are you going?” she asked, startled enough that she didn’t care if she sounded overly interested.
“People to see. Games to play,” he said.
But he winked as he said. He winked. On anyone else, the gesture would have looked corny. But on Josh it was just right. She stared after him for far too long after he left the reading room.
~~~
Josh took a slug of whiskey and picked up his phone for the third time. Maybe Ashley was right. Maybe he had regressed to fourth grade.
Shit. That’d be far enough back that he wouldn’t have thought twice about phoning a gorgeous woman. Gritting his teeth, he typed in the numbers displayed on his computer screen.
Three rings. He caught his breath and got ready to hang up.
“Hello?” She sounded cautious. Uncertain. But she also sounded like Ashley, and he breathed a huge sigh of relief, realizing he wouldn’t have to steel himself to dial the last two numbers.
“It’s me,” he said, before she could hang up. “Josh Cantor.”
“Josh!”
“Do you realize there are five Ashley Harrises who live in the greater Wake County area?”
“And you’re calling every one of us, to tell us we might have won a million dollars in your super sweepstakes giveaway?”
The amusement in her voice was a good thing. If she truly hated his guts, she would have sounded exasperated. Of course, if she had the first idea that he’d sent that afternoon’s photo to Angel, she’d already have figured out a way to send him packing. But she didn’t know. And she wasn’t going to. So he said, “All you have to do is buy three magazines. You might be interested in this one here, Popular Mechanics. Or maybe Sports Illustrated.”
“I hear that’s all about skimpy swimsuits and baseball players who get too big for their britches.”
Well something was getting too big for his britches. It was the honey of her voice, the soft throatiness with just a hint of a Southern accent, combined with a hefty dose of laughing-at-him skepticism. He shifted in his overstuffed recliner and took a sip of his drink before he dove back in. “I wanted to let you know. I mean, I’m sure Wake Up will tell everyone, but I wanted you to hear this from me first.”
“What?” She sounded absolutely disinterested.
He didn’t frighten easily. Hell, a hundred and sixty-two nights a year, he stood behind a slab of plastic and let another guy throw ninety-mile-an-hour balls at him. But he was suddenly terrified that Ashley wouldn’t give a damn about what he was about to tell her.
He cleared his throat and forced himself to go on, even though he had to wipe his palms against his jeans first. “I left the library early because I wanted to go by Rockets Field. I needed to catch some of the guys in the front office before they closed up for the day.”
“Go on,” she said. Just those two words. Not enough for him to read what she was thinking. Dammit. He should have figured out a way to have this conversation in person.
“I told them I was dropping out of Who Wears the Apron. I said it wasn’t fair for me to keep competing if they used the stadium restaurant as a prize.”
Silence.
And so he finally had to ask, “Did you hear me?”
“Yeah,” she said, and her voice was soft. “What did they say?”
“I won’t lie to you.” Not about this anyway. Not about the conversation with Ormond, and the phone calls that had gone back and forth with Wake Up. “The team likes the idea of my being in the competition. It’s good publicity for the Rockets. And it’s good for me, too. For whatever restaurant I open. You know. In the long run.”
“So, basically, you’re interrupting my dinner to gloat.”
He laughed. “That’s right. I called every Ashley Harris within a hundred and fifty miles just so I could feel like a big man on campus. On the TV set. Whatever.”
“Why did you call then?”
“To let you know they’re changing the rules—again. For the next two rounds, our dishes will be presented anonymously to the judges. We’ll cook them, and we’ll bring them down to the station. But the Wake Up hosts will present them to the judges without any idea of who prepared the food. They’ll make us all stand on stage when the decisions are announced.”
“And the last round? Dessert?”
“After the appetizers, they’re cutting the field to five men and five women. After the main course, it’ll be cut to two. That man and that woman will present their desserts in person.”
Even with Ormond’s support, it had taken the better part of the evening to hammer out the compromise. The TV guys thought they had a good thing going; they didn’t want to change anything about the most popular segment they’d put on for years.
Maybe they would have come to their senses anyway. Maybe they only did because Josh had threatened to make his next call to the News & Observer.
“Thank you,” Ashley said. Her drawl was heavy on the words, the thickest accent
he’d heard from her yet. “You didn’t have to do that, but I really appreciate that you did.”
“When I win, I don’t want you saying it wasn’t a fair competition.”
She laughed, just like he’d hoped she would. “If you win, it’ll be because the judges don’t understand good food, even when it’s served on an anonymous plate.”
Jesus. What was it about her? He wanted to keep her on the line. He wanted to talk to her forever. Christ, he even found himself wishing that photo he’d taken at the library had been for real, that he actually was in some sort of relationship with her, that she really was the girl of his dreams that Angel had been pushing him to find ever since Harper stomped all over him.
Just to prolong the conversation, he said, “All right, Ms. Good Food. What’s on your plate right now?”
“Is that like asking me what I’m wearing?” she purred.
Christ. Did she have any idea what that voice could do to a man? He undid the button on his jeans to ease the pressure against his cock. “Let me guess,” he said, following his little head and throwing caution to the winds. “You came home from the library and took a nice hot shower. You decided you might as well get dressed for bed, as long as you were staying in for the night…”
Silence.
Okay, not absolute silence. He could hear her breathing on the other end of the phone. He could picture her sitting in her kitchen, and what the hell? Why not picture her in a skimpy nightgown, one so sheer he could see the dark circles getting hard on those magnificent tits that had distracted him all afternoon? Why not imagine barely-there panties, hell, a black lace thong that just asked for his fingers to slip beneath?
She was going to slap his face. Hang up on him, anyway. Same difference.
But instead he heard the faint murmur of her swallow. And then she answered, sweet and low and sultry as a summer night. “I poured myself a glass of cab franc after my shower. It’s smooth. Peppery. Finishes with raspberry and violets. Want a sip?”
Jesus. He wanted more than a sip. He worked his dick free from his jeans, from the boxers that rode up high under his balls. His hand was rough as he made a fist around his shaft. He closed his eyes, and he could see her swallowing the wine. His voice was husky as he said, “Sure. Tell me more.”