The Glass Kitchen

by Linda Francis Lee

  Seriously, if it weren’t for her snooping, Ariel wouldn’t know anything at all about what Miranda was up to. Thank goodness the Shrink had made Miranda write in a journal, too. And Miranda wasn’t as good at hiding hers as Ariel was.

  It was after reading Miranda’s latest lovesick entry about the left-behind boyfriend and wanting to get back at dad “for ruining my life!!!” that Ariel decided to find a new woman to keep their dad busy. Not a wife. No way would he ever marry again. He totally loved her mom. But a nice lady, someone to date, was the best Ariel had come up with.

  Granted, for the last few months, Dad had dated plenty, but he hadn’t met anyone who held his attention for more than a nanosecond. And it was going to take more than a nanosecond to get him out of their hair.

  In her original plan, she had considered taking out an online dating ad.

  Wanted: Girlfriend

  Nice man seeks really nice lady. There’s a kid involved (a little lanky, but cute in her own extremely intelligent way), though she won’t be any trouble, and I swear you’ll like her. Interested parties call: 212-555-0654.

  Perfect wording, like a commercial for a made-for-TV movie, and that was bound to interest somebody. She figured there was zero reason to mention Miranda. At this point, a full-fledged high school–variety teenager would probably be a deal breaker for any sane woman.

  But in the end, she couldn’t go through with it. If she spent her lunch money on an ad, one, it would take more than a few lunches’ worth to afford it; and two, what was she going to eat in the meantime? Contrary to popular belief, not all newly pubescent girls had dreams of anorexia. Beyond that, how did you screen out all the skanks, gold diggers, and weirdos when you ran an ad to the masses?

  Of course, now there was Portia, from downstairs. She was interesting, if you could overlook the awful apartment. Was it possible to like living in a place with cracked windows and uneven floors? And what was up with the sink? Big and deep, with the pipes showing underneath. Ariel could have sworn she had seen pictures in her social studies book of places like that from New York City in the Dark Ages.

  Not a big plus, but the lady seemed to be available, and she didn’t have that gold digger look in her eye. No self-respecting gold digger would get anywhere near that run-down apartment.

  But she was kind of cool, even though she was a horrible dancer. Her hair was a nice sort of curly, which Ariel liked. And boy, could she cook. Didn’t they say that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach?

  Whatever, Ariel had to get this taken care of.

  Miranda’s journal entries were getting weirder. She had gone from just drawing big teardrops all over a blank page to writing Life Sucks! And now she had moved on to I Hate Dad. No exclamation mark. Strangely, an exclamation mark would have made Ariel feel better about it. An exclamation mark meant emotion. Miranda’s journal didn’t seem to have an ounce of emotion in it anymore.

  Ariel knew from experience that the clock was ticking before her sister did something stupid.

  She wasn’t sure how she would hold on if another bad thing happened.

  She was done with bad things. Seriously done.

  Now she just needed the universe to listen to her.

  Six

  IF ANYONE HAD TOLD Portia a year ago that the only job she could get in New York City would be as a “hamburger,” she would have laughed and rolled her eyes. Not that she was much of an eye roller. But really? A hamburger? Could anyone with half a brain believe that a woman as smart as her could go from highly regarded Texas political wife to, well, hamburger?

  But after two weeks of unsuccessful job hunting, that was exactly what she had done. Or rather, what she had become.

  “Shoo!” Portia hissed, waddling down West Seventy-third Street as fast as the hamburger suit allowed, attempting to outpace the pack of little dogs that had escaped their dog walker.

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thrown her heart into looking for a job. She had. She’d made calls and sent out résumés, but not a single person had been willing to so much as interview her. Sure, two weeks wasn’t that long in the scheme of things, but her bank account told a different tale. She needed money, sooner rather than later. Robert still hadn’t deposited the settlement in her account, and her savings were evaporating like a reservoir in the middle of a Texas dry spell.

  As a result, she had jumped for joy when she received the e-mail from Angus Industries offering her a job in public relations. In hindsight, she should have wondered why they offered her employment without so much as an interview or a phone call. It turned out that Food Industries PR for Angus Industries hadn’t entailed any actual public relations work. Instead, when Portia arrived at the address provided, only a block away from her apartment, she found herself at Burger Boy, where she was handed a rubber hamburger suit and told to direct the public to the fast-food hellhole.

  When Portia realized what the job entailed, she wanted to say no. A thousand different ways she should say no flashed through her mind. But her pride had to balance the staggering expense of living in New York. Was it possible that a two-dollar box of cereal in Texas cost five dollars in NYC?

  End result?

  She had pulled on the burger suit, though no sooner had the manager zipped her up than Portia thought it smelled strange. Mr. Burger Boy had assured her she was imagining things. But as she stood on Columbus Avenue trying to entice passersby with discount coupons, the unseasonably hot fall day beating down on her, the suit began to waft the aroma of charcoal-grilled burgers. Not long after that, the dogs that had been sitting clustered around their dog walker as he talked on his cell phone made a break for it and came after her, leashes flying in the wind, like buzzards sensing fresh kill.

  The manager emerged from Burger Boy just long enough to threaten her miserable life if she let one of those dogs take a chunk out of his costume. She had tried to wiggle out of the suit, but the zipper was stuck. When the manager disappeared back inside the shop, she had fled.

  Now she waddled down the long block toward home, going as fast as she could. Her hair had gotten loose, curls falling all over her face.

  One thing was for sure: This was all her ex-husband’s fault. Well, her husband and her ex-friend Sissy LePlante. Portia swung along as fast as she could, her mind full of revenge fantasies—all of them involving skewering, grilling, or butchering. Hamburger related.

  She was only two town houses away from her apartment when she realized that one dog was still following her. “Damnation!” she yelped, swatting at the pesky Jack Russell terrier leaping at her side, vibrating with excitement as he tried to get a piece of one of the two faux meat patties circling her waist. The only thing that kept the terrier from true success was that it kept getting tangled in its trailing leash.

  Her husband thought she was a pushover? Right. Portia swung around and met the dog’s eye. “Go home!” she thundered.

  He squeaked, tucked his leg between his legs, and tore off.

  “Ha!” she chirped, swinging back around.

  Straight ahead, she could see the thick green trees of Central Park at the end of the long tunnel formed by apartment buildings. Pedestrians, locals and tourists alike, got out of her way. No one, not even the hard-core New Yorkers who had given her nothing but grief since she’d moved to town, were going to mess with Portia Cuthcart in a burger suit, a murderous light in her eyes.

  Finally, she made it to the town house. All she had to do was get inside her apartment, find a knife, and cut the burger right off her body before she suffocated or melted.

  She barreled up the front steps and through the thankfully, if surprisingly, open front door into the building’s small vestibule. Momentum and velocity squeezed her through the opening, the sound of thick rubber against the door seal like a beach ball being rubbed to a squeal.

  But if bad things come in threes—one, the burger suit, two, the dogs—then number three had to be the cherry on top … or the garnish on the burger. The very nei
ghbor she had been working to avoid was in the vestibule, now crowded into a corner, his daughter on the opposite side.

  Even plastered against the wall, Gabriel Kane made awareness slide along her skin.

  “Oh, hello, Ariel,” she stated, her smile forced. “Mr. Kane.” What wouldn’t she have given to be dressed in a fabulous little dress rather than ten pounds of rubber.

  “This is a surprise,” he replied, not looking one bit happy. “Though it explains where you’ve been every time I’ve stopped by to meet with you.”

  Awareness, indeed. Sheez. How many times did she have to remind herself that he was an arrogant New Yorker who wanted something from her, though not anything that had to do with shivers of awareness. “That’s me. A regular busy beaver.”

  His eyes widened fractionally. It didn’t take a genius to guess he wasn’t a man used to people snapping at him. But after a second, a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “You mean, a busy burger.”

  Portia glared at him. “Ha-ha.”

  His reluctant half smile ticked up a notch. Heat rushed through her, the kind of heat that had nothing to do with the layers of the thick rubber suit, which just made her all the angrier.

  The man wasn’t good looking in any classical sense, and never mind his broad shoulders, dark hair, and darker eyes. His features were rough-hewn in contrast to the quality of the suit he wore.

  Portia hated his perfect suit.

  On the other hand … that imperfect face? Lust. Even wrapped in a hamburger suit, she couldn’t miss the flash of non-rubber-induced heat rushing down her body. Yep, pure lust.

  I’m attracted to men who are kind and quietly intelligent, she told herself. Men who had sandy blond hair and light blue eyes, who held doors for ladies, and made liberal use of words like please and thank you.

  The type of men who were stupid enough to run off with their wife’s best friend.

  “Do you work for Five Guys?” Ariel asked. “That’s my favorite. If I was going to be a burger, I’d totally work for them.”

  Gabriel raised one of those dark brows. “How is it in the competitive world of burgers?”

  The book about courtesy her mother stole from the library was hard to set aside, even north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Portia drew a deep breath, fought for a polite smile, and said, “I was hired as a … representative of Burger Boy, not Five Guys. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just get out of your way.”

  But when she tried to move to the smaller door leading down to her apartment, she realized she wasn’t going to fit. Momentum had gotten her through the wider door. Nothing short of a good hard shove was going to get her through the other one.

  Gabriel’s raised brow raised a little bit more.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  “Need some help?” he asked.

  What Portia would have given to be able to say “No need to bother your little ol’ self,” flip her hair, and sashay off. But just as she had never been much of an eye roller, she had never been good at hair flipping or sashaying either. That was Olivia’s department.

  “Bless your heart. Maybe a tiny push,” she conceded.

  “‘Bless your heart’?”

  “Just give me a push,” she practically growled at him.

  It took more than a tiny push to get her levered down the stairs without pitching headfirst like an overlarge bowling ball. While Gabriel angled her down the steps, Ariel called out if he started to make a move that would have her tumbling. But then they came to a grinding halt with Portia only halfway down the steps.

  “We’re stuck,” Gabriel ground out.

  “Hold on!” Ariel said, shoving her shoulder into the burger suit and flailing around underneath, trying to get a better look. “Found it! The lettuce is caught on the banister.”

  It wasn’t bad enough that her husband had come home and announced out of the blue that he was divorcing her. Or that her former friend Sissy was now living in the house Portia had worked so hard to make a home. No, she had to get stuck in a burger suit and be manhandled down a stairwell by the kind of man who made her want to forget she was a lady. She really was going to kill her ex-husband, right along with the Burger Boy manager.

  Gabriel and Ariel managed to get Portia to her apartment door, but then she came to a halt again. She stood on her toes, trying to see over the burger suit, then didn’t bother to swallow back a curse. Not even a good Texas woman should have to live through this humiliation.

  “A problem?” Gabriel asked, his tone utterly even. But he was grinning. She could just imagine him having a wonderful time telling all his sophisticated New York friends about the hamburger who lived downstairs. Though it hit her with surprising certainty that this wasn’t a man who told tales out of school. In fact, she felt equally certain he was a man who didn’t surround himself with friends at all, or even confidants.

  Never having imagined she’d be wearing a burger suit, she had forgotten all about how she planned to get back inside. “Thankfully, I keep a key under the mat.”

  His grin flatlined and his brows slammed together. “You keep a key under the mat? In New York City?”

  Portia’s eyes narrowed. She’d had it. With him. With life. With this whole damned employment disaster. “Last I heard, burgers don’t carry handbags.”

  Ariel gave a snort of laughter, which earned her a glare as well. “Go upstairs,” he snapped.

  “What did I do this time?”

  “Upstairs.”

  It took a second, but Ariel stamped her way back up the stairs into the vestibule, then slammed the door to their apartment.

  When Gabriel finally got Portia through her door, she waddled with determination over to the kitchen and managed to pluck the sharpest knife out of the drawer. With the grace of a sumo wrestler, she lifted the blade high like a samurai on the verge of seppuku. But before Portia could plunge the knife deep into the rubber bun, Gabriel was on her, grabbing her wrist and twisting it so that the knife skittered across the cracked linoleum floor. “Are you insane?” he demanded.

  Her mouth fell open, then closed, then open again as if mimicking the very pedestrians who had gaped at her when she barreled down the sidewalk, a pack of yapping minidogs behind her.

  “I’m not trying to kill myself, you, you … you!”

  Quick comebacks had never been her strong suit.

  “I am not trying to hurt myself,” she said, enunciating each syllable. “The zipper’s stuck. I have to cut myself out of this thing.”

  Gabriel fell back a step, and started to say something.

  “No more sarcastic comments or weird assumptions,” she snapped icily. “Just get me the knife.” She wasn’t feeling icy, though. Gabriel’s eyes had changed. He wasn’t looking at her waist—or her lack of one, given the suit—he was looking at her mouth.

  Portia’s heart sped up.

  He didn’t retrieve the knife. He turned her around, his hands impersonal. But when he jerked the zipper, it wouldn’t budge. “Bend over and hold on,” he said, pointing to the counter.

  Portia turned slightly to look at him over her shoulder and glowered.

  “Please?” he added as an afterthought.

  Murder, she decided, was too good for Robert after putting her in this situation.

  With a low growl, she shook her hair back, trying to get her curls out of her face again. Then she bent over.

  But nothing happened.

  She tried to glance behind her again. “The zipper? You? Working it?” She gave a scoffing laugh.

  “You know, Ms. Cuthcart,” Gabriel said, surprising her because suddenly he was so close his lips nearly touched her ear. “Once I get you out of this contraption, if I ever lean you over anything again, you won’t be laughing.”

  Even in this damned burger suit a pulse of awareness shot between them that could have set all that rubber on fire.

  Portia swallowed, then forced herself to roll her eyes, not that he could see. It was that or beg him to throw her over whatever h
e pleased the minute he managed to get her burger-free.

  “Men always think that women never laugh at their technique,” she managed. “I can assure you that you’re all wrong.”

  She felt him stiffen, and then he burst out laughing. “God, you’re a piece of work.”

  Before she could come up with a fitting response, Gabriel gave a good hard yank and the zipper came free.

  The ceiling fan whirled above, and as soon as the burger fell open into two parts, she drew in a ragged breath, turning around. “Oh, my Lord, that feels good,” she breathed.

  She tugged at the suit, but he had to help before her arms popped out. Her little white tank top was damp with sweat and clung to every curve she had.

  Glancing up, she saw his eyes had darkened again, as if he wanted to peel the rest of the burger right off of her. And not in a helpful Boy Scout kind of way.

  Portia had been divorced only a little over a month, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had sex. Not that her ex-husband suffered a similar fate. He’d had plenty of sex, with Sissy. The only person not having sex in her marriage was her.

  Everything around them evaporated. The sounds of traffic. The thoughts of outrageously expensive groceries she couldn’t afford. Even her ex-husband and ex–best friend’s betrayal seemed distant.

  Gabriel reached out, but he dropped his hand just before touching her. “What kind of a woman goes around in a burger suit?” he asked, his tone quiet.

  She told herself to step away, but couldn’t. “The kind who’s looking for gainful employment.”

  “So you’ll stoop to anything tossed your way?”

  She stiffened, the mood sharp again. “No, not just anything. I turned down the position of Hot Dog, complete with an ‘Eat Me’ sign.”