“Okay, okay. You want simple or fancy?”
“What do you think?” Ashley asked wryly.
“Simple it is. Dredge the fillets in flour, salt and pepper, then fry them in about a quarter inch of oil. Make sure the oil is hot, but not too hot. You don’t want to burn the fish.”
Ashley jotted the instructions down, even though they seemed foolproof. “How long?”
“Till the flour is golden brown. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes on each side, depending on how thick the fillets are.”
“And that’s all there is to it?” Ashley asked, frowning at the simple directions. “You’re not leaving out anything critical, so I’ll wind up being totally embarrassed?”
“I would not let you humiliate yourself,” Maggie said, sounding wounded by the suggestion. “This is an easy one, Ash. You’ll do fine. What else are you having?”
“Salad, and Josh said he’d pick up something for dessert.”
“Chocolate?”
“Yes, if you must know.”
“My, my. You don’t usually lay into the chocolate until you’re really, really comfortable with a man. Or under a lot of stress. Which is it, Ashley?”
“Go suck an egg. Josh is an easygoing guy. It’s no big deal. It’s not like it’s a date or something.”
“Really? Not a date? Just out of curiosity, what would you call it?”
“Dinner with a friend.”
Maggie chuckled. “Delusional, but nice. Have fun, big sister.”
She hung up before Ashley could reassert that her sister was way, way off base.
What was it with women and chocolate? Josh stared indecisively at the display case in the bakery. There was a chocolate layer cake, a chocolate mousse cake, two brownies with icing and walnuts, and eclairs topped with chocolate icing and filled with chocolate cream. They all looked decadent enough to him, but which one would satisfy Ashley? He had a hunch she was very particular.
“Decided yet?” the cheery young clerk asked him.
“Which is your favorite?”
She shrugged. “I like blueberry pie myself.”
Obviously she was going to be no help at all. He finally gave up in frustration. “I’ll take it all.”
Her jaw dropped. “Are you having a party or something?”
“Not really.” He was pretty sure dinner with Ashley didn’t qualify as a party. He doubted she even saw it as a date.
To be honest, he hadn’t quite decided what this evening was all about, either. He just knew that he’d rushed like crazy to get ready to go to Rose Cottage. Being invited there by one of the D’Angelo sisters was like a dream come true. Despite all the strides he’d made in building his self-confidence over the years, he still couldn’t quite believe it. He felt like the shy, awkward boy he’d been at sixteen. He wanted to get this right.
He paid the disbelieving clerk for the boxes of desserts, then headed the few miles back to Rose Cottage.
When Ashley opened the door, he almost swallowed his tongue. She was wearing a thin robe that clung to her still damp body, revealing every intriguing shadow, every lush curve. Her hair was in damp ringlets that sprang free from some sort of scrunchy thing that was supposed to be holding it on top of her head.
“Sorry,” she said, sounding frantic. “I had a phone call right after you left. It took me longer to get started in the shower than I expected. Make yourself at home. Get whatever you need in the kitchen to clean the fish. I’ll be down in a minute.”
She bolted for the stairs without waiting for a reply. Just as well, Josh thought, since it took him fully a minute to get the blood flowing back to his brain where it was necessary for speech.
“Clean the fish,” he muttered as he set out to find the kitchen. “Just concentrate on cleaning the fish.” Maybe that would drive the provocative image of Ashley in that revealing robe out of his head before she came back downstairs.
He was out back, scraping the scales from the last fish, when she finally emerged from the house. Thankfully, she was wearing loose jeans and a shapeless T-shirt, which looked as if they’d been borrowed from someone two sizes larger. Even so, she managed to stir his blood. Apparently she was going to do that no matter what she wore, he concluded. He’d just have to resign himself to it.
She’d dried her tawny hair into waves that fell to her shoulders. Her skin was clear and free of makeup, except for the faintest pink gloss on her lips. Even with all the suntan lotion she’d lathered on while they were on the water, her color was heightened to a healthy pink glow. She looked a thousand-percent better than the pale, shaken woman he’d met the day before.
“How’s it coming out here?” she asked.
“Just about finished. Have you figured out how to cook them?”
“Rest easy,” she said. “My sister has coached me through it. We probably won’t die of food poisoning.” She regarded him with apparent amusement. “By the way, why are there four bakery boxes on the kitchen table?”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t make up my mind what you’d like best.”
“So you bought out the place?”
“Pretty much—at least everything chocolate,” he admitted. “You don’t have to eat it all.”
“But I probably will,” she admitted with a sigh. “Chocolate is what gets me through stress.”
“And you’re stressed now?” he asked.
She hesitated, then regarded him with surprise. “Not right this second, no.”
He grinned. “I told you there were advantages to a day in a rowboat.”
“Apparently so. I haven’t thought about work all day long. That’s like some sort of miracle.”
“Then let’s keep that track record intact and get dinner on the table.”
Ashley nodded at once. “Good plan. If I start to bring up anything work-related over dinner, cut me off.”
Josh wasn’t sure he’d be able to agree to that indefinitely, but he could for tonight. “No work. Got it.”
In the kitchen, they worked side-by-side. He made the salad while she fried the fish. When the plates were ready, they sat at the kitchen table and Ashley lifted a glass of wine in a toast.
“To relaxation,” she said.
“It’s a wonderful thing,” Josh added.
“Even if it can’t last forever,” she said, looking just a little sad.
“Hey, that borders on mentioning work,” he scolded. “Maybe we need to have a penalty.”
Competitive woman that she was, Ashley immediately seized on the idea, just as he’d known she would.
“Such as?” she asked at once.
“We each have a pot and put in a dollar for every in fraction. We’re on the honor system. We have to put the money in even if the other person isn’t around. At the end of the week, the one with the fewest violations gets all the money.” He grinned. “And gets treated to dinner by the loser.”
She considered the scheme thoughtfully, as if weighing her odds of winning. “I can do that,” she said finally.
Josh doubted it, but he lifted his glass. “To relaxation,” he toasted one more time.
They’d no sooner taken a sip than his cell phone rang. He could have sworn he’d left it turned off on his dresser, but apparently it had been stuck in the pocket of his jacket.
“Aren’t you going to get that?” Ashley asked.
He debated the wisdom of it, then finally reached for his jacket and grabbed it out of the pocket. “Yes?”
“Have you lost your mind, Madison?”
“Mr. Williams,” he said, barely containing a sigh.
“I’ve spoken to Stephanie,” his boss said. “She tells me the two of you have called off your engagement.”
Josh barely clung to his temper. “We were never engaged, sir.”
“Semantics. We all knew you were headed in that direction.”
“You were the only one who really believed that,” Josh corrected. “Fortunately Stephanie and I realized before it was too late that
it would be a mistake. Look, sir, this isn’t really a good time. Perhaps we can discuss this later.”
“Now’s good for me,” Creighton Williams insisted. “You realize what this is going to do to your future here at Brevard, Williams and Davenport, don’t you?”
“I assume it’s over. If so, that’s fine.”
His ready acceptance of the end of his career clearly caught his boss off guard. “Now let’s not be hasty, Madison. You’re a good lawyer. This might get you off that fast track, but I don’t want to lose you over this. Besides, Stephanie made it clear she’d be furious if I fired you. We’ll work something out when you get back.”
“That’s very generous of you, sir, but I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
“What the devil are you saying?”
He finally risked a look at Ashley and noted that she was listening avidly to every word. “I’m saying that I’m on vacation. We’ll discuss it another time. Thanks for calling. I mean that, sir. It was very gracious of you.”
He shut the phone off completely and barely resisted the urge to toss it out the back door. He waited for the litany of questions to begin.
“Go ahead, ask,” he said finally.
She grinned. “That was about work, right?”
He nodded, uncertain where she was going. It didn’t seem to be in the direction he’d expected.
Ashley held up a slip of paper with little marks on it. “I counted half a dozen references to work, minimum. That’s six dollars in your pot, please.”
Josh fought a laugh. “You counted that conversation in our bet?”
“Of course. We had a deal. We sealed it with a toast before the phone rang.”
“Oh, brother, you must be hell on wheels in a courtroom.”
She grinned. “That’s another one. Seven dollars.”
He frowned at her. “Dammit, I was referring to your work, not mine.”
“Did we differentiate?” she inquired sweetly.
He sighed. “No, we did not differentiate. This is going to be a lot trickier than I expected.”
“Which means we should probably change the subject, even though I’m winning,” Ashley conceded with a magnanimous air. “Do you know anything about baseball? I’m a Red Sox fan myself.”
Josh stared at her, not entirely sure if she was serious. “Really? When was the last time you went to a baseball game?”
She faltered a bit at that. “I don’t actually go to the games,” she confessed eventually. “That doesn’t mean I don’t follow the team.”
“Then you watch them on TV?”
“Not really.”
“Read the sports pages?” he asked, his amusement growing.
“Okay, okay, I don’t know a damn thing about baseball,” she finally said. “But people in the office mention it. Obviously it’s something some people care about. I thought you might be one of them. I was just trying to make conversation.”
Josh grinned and held out his hand. “I’ll take a dollar, please. You mentioned your office.”
She stared at him with apparent dismay. “That doesn’t count.”
“Of course it does. Office, work, it’s all the same thing.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” she muttered, as she dug in her purse and tossed a dollar onto the table. “I’m still winning.”
“And we have a week to go. Don’t get overly confident, sweetheart. It’s unbecoming.”
She frowned at him. “Seen any good movies lately?”
“Not a one. You?”
“No.”
“Read any good books?” he asked, fully expecting her to slip up and make some reference to a law journal.
Her expression brightened. “Actually, I read a great one yesterday afternoon. It almost made me late for dinner.”
“Would I like it?”
“I doubt it. It was a love story.”
“Hey, I’m all in favor of love.”
She regarded him with blatant skepticism. “You want to read this?”
“Sure, why not? The fish was very good, by the way. You follow directions well.”
She seemed startled by the praise. Her gaze shifted to his clean plate, then to her own. “I do, don’t I? Maybe I’ll learn to cook while I’m here.”
“I’d be happy to be your guinea pig,” he offered. “I have a cast-iron stomach. I have to, given how lousy I am in the kitchen.”
“Maybe Maggie could give us both lessons,” she suggested. “That could be fun.”
“Even relaxing,” he retorted. “As long as you don’t turn it into some sort of competition.”
“Not everything has to be a competition with me,” she insisted.
“Really? I’ll bet by the time you were three, you wanted to know if your hands were the cleanest when you came to the supper table.”
“I did not,” she said, but there was a spark of recognition in her eyes that suggested she saw herself in his comment just the same.
Josh wondered if a woman who obviously thrived on challenges would ever be content with a slower, less stressful pace, or if she would always need to be in the thick of some battle. It was something he needed to decide about himself, as well.
He’d come down here to simplify his life, to cut through the clutter of being on the fast track and see if he wanted to get off entirely. He suspected Ashley wasn’t in the same place at all. If anything, she was probably champing at the bit to get back on that fast track. It might be the kind of complication that meant they were doomed, but it was hardly something that needed to be resolved tonight.
Tonight it was enough to be with a woman who stirred his blood and kept him on his toes mentally. At some point during the evening, he’d gotten past the triumph of being invited to Rose Cottage by one of the un attainable D’Angelo sisters. Now it was all about being with a woman who intrigued him, a woman with strengths and vulnerabilities he wanted to understand, a woman whose bed he wanted to share.
When that thought cavorted through his head, he immediately slammed on the brakes. He was getting ahead of himself, way ahead of himself.
He glanced across the table and saw Ashley studying him intently. There was an unmistakable and totally unexpected hunger in her eyes. He told himself it had to be for the chocolate.
“Ready for dessert?” he asked, his voice thick and unsteady.
She nodded, her gaze never leaving his.
“Cake?”
She shook her head.
“A brownie?”
Again, that subtle shake.
Josh swallowed hard. “Eclair?”
“Not right now.”
“What do you want?”
“You,” she said quietly.
Amazement flooded through him. “But—”
“No questions, no doubts, unless you don’t want me,” she said.
“That is definitely not the issue,” he admitted.
Her lips curved slightly. “Then why are you still sitting there?”
“Because I’m an idiot,” he said, trying to ignore the way his pulse was racing with anticipation. He was a nice guy, dammit, and she was vulnerable. He would not take advantage of her.
She stared at him for an eternity. “You’re saying no?”
He nodded. “I don’t know what brought you down here, but having sex with me isn’t the answer.”
“It could be the answer tonight,” she said lightly.
He smiled at that. “Indeed, it could be spectacular, but when you and I get together for the first time—and we will, Ashley—then I want it to be because it’s inevitable, not because it’s convenient.”
Patches of red flared in her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m the idiot,” she said, instantly stiff and unapproachable again.
“Don’t you dare say that,” he chided. “You have no idea how flattered I am that you suggested this or how hard it was for me to say no. We’ll get around to making love, make no mistake about that.”
“I’m only here for three weeks,” she remind
ed him, as if to define the urgency.
He grinned. “Which means we still have twenty days left. Since we barely got through one without tumbling straight into your bed, I suspect we won’t waste too many.”
She stared at him quizzically, as if she were trying to discover if he was making fun of her. Apparently she recognized just how serious he was, because she laughed. The tension evaporated.
But Josh knew that thanks to his noble gesture, sleep was going to be a very long time coming.
5
Ashley still felt like a first-class idiot in the morning. Josh had been amazingly gracious when she’d hit on him, but she’d clearly misread all the signals. She’d thought all those sparks were going to lead to something that would help her to forget her problems. Fishing, pleasant as it had been, sure as hell wasn’t going to do that. A steamy, meaningless affair might have.
Oh, well, no one died of acute humiliation. She simply wouldn’t make that mistake again. For all she knew, Josh wouldn’t even set foot on the grounds at Rose Cottage again, despite all those pretty words and promises.
She was still beating herself up as she lingered over her second cup of coffee when someone knocked on the kitchen door, then walked right in. She glanced up, fully expecting it to be her sisters, only to find Josh there in another pair of faded shorts and another of those equally disreputable T-shirts. He looked incredible. Her resolve to forget about an affair sizzled and died.
Without saying a word, he walked over to the table, leaned down and kissed her. The first touch of his lips on hers was a shock. She had a hunch he’d meant it to be nothing more than a casual, good-morning kind of kiss, but it set off enough heat to boil eggs. Her head was spinning, and she was pretty sure her eyes had to be crossed by the time he pulled away. If he’d been trying to prove that he’d meant what he said the night before, he’d accomplished that and then some.
“I thought you might be over here beating yourself up about trying to seduce me last night,” he said as he casually turned to the coffeepot and poured himself the last cup. She’d drunk all the rest of the coffee herself.
Indignation flared at his comment, even though he’d guessed exactly right. “So what? You decided to come over and toss me a consolation prize?”
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