Take Me Tender Page 3

  But when she put a tall mug of coffee in front of him at the breakfast table, as well as a quick snack she’d made with the one egg, the one-half avocado, the wedge of hard cheese, and the frostbitten croissant she’d found in the freezer, he quieted down. Nikki leaned against the counter to give her knee a break and thought over the situation as he ate.

  If she got the job, she could drag one of the bar stools sitting on the other side of the counter to the chopping area and keep off her feet even during food prep. And though she didn’t know anything about the markets nearby, surely she could find ingredients for the meals Jay liked. He wasn’t picky.

  And then there was Malibu itself. Her gaze drifted out the glass to the curve of white-hemmed blue ocean that kept tossing itself against the sugary sand. Who wouldn’t want to work here?

  Though she’d have to fight traffic getting to and from, she couldn’t fault people for swarming to this spectacular place. Craning her neck, she took more of it in.

  The houses along this stretch of beach were built shoulder-to-shoulder. As she followed the curve of the sand, she understood what Jay meant about the out-of-character compounds. From here she could see some houses that looked like small resorts rather than actual homes. Right next door—Shanna’s house?—was a place that looked to be built with gleaming marble. A pool stood between it and the beach, and inside a threatening fence, a sun-hatted gardener was squeezed behind a Grecian-styled statue, manicuring an already perfectly trimmed box hedge.

  To her surprise, though, the beach itself wasn’t crowded in front of the houses, maybe because of the public access controversy that Jay had spoken of when she’d first arrived. On her way to his address she’d passed the packed state and county beaches, but here there were just a few towels and paraphernalia scattered in front of the homes, and those were set close to the waterline. No one seemed inclined to park themselves any nearer to the private residences.

  At that thought, a young couple came into sight and paused on the sand at the corner of Jay’s deck. The girl couldn’t be long into her teens. She had a gentle curve up top, but her string bikini was tied on either side of narrow, almost childish hips. What she lacked in womanliness, she made up for in mascara, however. Though her natural hair color was nearly as blonde as Shanna’s bleached stuff, her eye makeup was closer to Cleopatra’s. Her mouth was glossed the color of a raspberry lollipop.

  The black-haired boy with her leaned down to take a taste of it.

  The girl made an instinctive move away, and the boy’s eyes narrowed. The skin on Nikki’s nape crawled as she watched his lean fingers grab the girl’s chin. A memory reared from her subconscious.

  Dark party. Loud music. Dim lights. She had on the clunky black shoes she’d worn to her mother’s funeral and a skinny boy with thin hands was holding a glass to her mouth. The liquid inside it smelled like medicine and she hoped it would cure the cold, lonely sickness inside of her.

  The sound of Jay’s chair scooting against the floor yanked her back to the present. As he approached the coffeemaker with his empty mug, though, her focus drifted to the teen couple again. The girl looked both attracted and repelled by the boy, and Nikki could remember that same sensation, too.

  “What do you think?” a voice asked.

  “It has the feeling of a train wreck,” she murmured.

  “What?”

  Nikki started and turned to look at Jay. “I’m sorry. You were saying…?” Despite herself, she flicked another glance out the window. She wasn’t one to insert herself into someone else’s business, she of the keep-your-distance DNA, but the dynamics she read in the body language of the two on the sand unsettled her.

  Once upon a time she’d been young like that, with the intense, older boyfriend whose demands had for a while made her feel safe and loved.

  Until they made her feel small and afraid. Weak.

  She wiped damp palms along the sides of her pants and forced her attention back to Jay.

  He was studying her face as if he didn’t have anything better to do with his time. Thoughts of the teen couple, her past, anything but the way he was watching her evaporated in the sudden heat in the air. Nikki’s cheeks flushed at his still-lazy perusal and as the burn traveled down her neck toward her breasts she dropped her gaze from his. Naturally, it first landed on his bare skin and she desperately jerked it farther downward, seeking cover.

  There. The waistband of his shorts. Secure territory.

  But the loose garment was even looser now, hitting just below his hip bones to reveal the saliva-stealing sight of the lines that traced from his lower hips toward his lower groin. Thanks to Colleen and one rainy, dead night at Fleming’s, Nikki knew those were the inguinal ligaments. A clunker of a label for the part of a man’s body that drew one’s eye from his lean hips to his…well.

  In the break room, Colleen had called up on a laptop the infamous, naked-to-there photo of a pop star. Her forefinger had followed the interesting pathways. “A glimpse of these make my nipples go hard every time,” the younger woman had confessed.

  Nikki now couldn’t disagree. Hers were tightening in a way she didn’t—

  Jay cleared his throat.

  Oh, God. Embarrassment burning her neck, she glanced up, because his eyes had to be a safer place to look.

  But the expression in them only made the heat in the room spike. It tasted like ozone, and incongruous chills broke over her skin again. She was aware of her mouth like she’d never been before—he was staring there—it felt swollen and her lips stung as more goose bumps chased across her skin. Her heart sped up, drumming in her chest to spread the astonishing news throughout her body: Hey! Look at this! That fantasy thing a few minutes ago wasn’t a fluke. The girl’s getting turned on.

  But she never got turned on—never like this.

  Jay spun back toward the counter, clearing his throat again. “You’ll have to leave your Doc Martens at home,” he said, his voice abrupt.

  “Huh?” She stared at his back as her head gave a woozy revolution, rattled by her body’s response and his sudden snap of the sexual connection. “What?”

  “You want the job, don’t you?” He named a sum that was in line with what she’d expected. And more important, what would keep her solvent for the next thirty-one days.

  Relief tasted sweet, but she quickly swallowed it down. “Yes, I want the job…” It was what she’d come here for, what she needed, but there was that kiss, his attraction, the way two minutes ago sex had seemed to bubble up between them without the slightest effort on her part. And sex had always meant effort—if not satisfaction—on her part.

  The last thing she wanted in her life right now was a man, even the temporary kind that he obviously was and the only kind she let herself sample when she felt the need to prove she was at least semi-normal. She heaved in a calming breath. “But…”

  His back still turned, he toyed with his coffee mug. “It’s only until the end of August.”

  “The end of August,” she echoed, sounding stupid.

  “It should be enough time to take care of that other problem.”

  What was he talking about? What other problem? Her mind wasn’t keeping up. But the month was doable, wasn’t it, no matter what her worries?

  “Like I said, though, Doc Martens and such are out. I’m going to insist you dress like a girl.”

  Nikki glanced down at her plain shirt, khaki pants, soft rubber clogs. She’d chosen them because they were close to a cook’s uniform without being one. She hadn’t wanted to presume. But now it seemed he was presuming—

  “Shanna will never believe I’d go into even a casual thing with a girl who dresses like a guy. That might be how you signal your sexuality, cookie, but that’s not the signal to be sending when you’re with me.”

  “Oh, no—”

  “Oh, yes. When she showed up I tried to rush you out as a one-night stand, but it was you who implied we had something more.”

  “As your cook!”

/>   He turned around. “So cook up something a little spicier. Surely you can fake it.”

  Fake it? Did he think she’d faked the way the temperature had jacked up fifteen degrees when he’d been looking at her a few minutes before? She swallowed. “Come on. You’re telling me you think…you didn’t feel—”

  She shut her mouth. Maybe he hadn’t felt the heat the way she had. Maybe it had been completely one-sided. She was sexually handicapped enough, she had to admit, not to be certain.

  Seriously, though. Even if the attraction didn’t run both ways, surely, surely he didn’t believe…

  Footsteps pattered on the wooden deck. They both turned to see someone—that young girl Nikki had watched on the beach—let herself into the house through the sliding glass door. She looked at the two of them, one over-plucked eyebrow rising.

  “Cuz.” Jay acknowledged the newcomer with his coffee cup. “Just in time.”

  The girl shrugged one shoulder with the universal nonchalance of teendom and came into the kitchen to reach for a juice glass beside the sink. The contents of Nikki’s stomach curdled as she noticed a dark bruise on the girl’s slender wrist.

  “Nikki, this is my cousin, Fern, the one I mentioned was living with me while her parents and mine are on a cruise through Europe.”

  Fern filled her glass with water.

  “And Fern, meet our latest lesbian chef.” He threw Nikki a smile. “Who’s coincidentally my new girlfriend.”

  Fern showed no sign of surprise, though Nikki was rendered speechless by the no-frills, all-chills introduction. There it was. Nikki Carmichael, professional bachelor Jay Buchanan’s new lesbian chef girlfriend.

  Okay.

  Well.

  Apparently she’d gotten the job she needed—and way more than she’d ever anticipated.

  Three

  Move to California. Malibu is paradise.

  —DAVID GEFFEN, RECORD EXECUTIVE, FILM PRODUCER

  Jay carried out to the deck a second round of long-necked beers. Lifting his foot, he popped off the tops with the bottle opener the shoe manufacturer had conveniently embedded in the arch of his beach sandal. Then he dropped into a chair and passed a beer over to the man seated beside him.

  “Gracias.” Jorge Santos took a long pull, then slouched lower in his chair and propped his ankle-length work boots on the railing in front of him.

  Jay followed suit, closing his eyes against the rays of the setting sun that were washing over his right shoulder and the right side of his face. Malibu’s coastline faced south, allowing the waves generating from the southern hemisphere to reach shore with organization and power, contributing to half its status as the West Coast’s surfing mecca. The other half was thanks to the goofy Gidget-style movies filmed here in the 1950s. Just up the way and past the pier was the Surfrider Beach Hollywood had made famous, and today there were dozens of modern Moondoggies out on the water making their California dream come true.

  It was summer in paradise and it didn’t seem right that a single guy had to spend even a single second being so pissed off at himself.

  And Jay had been pissed off at himself all morning and all afternoon. He guzzled down a quarter of his beer.

  “I’ve got a question for you, Jorge,” he said.

  “Mexican men only talk about their kids and soccer.”

  “Neither one of us has any kids.”

  “I don’t think the U.S. will ever take professional soccer as seriously as the NFL,” Jorge replied in his precise English.

  “Do I seem stupid to you?” Jay asked, ignoring the soccer gambit. He opened his eyes a slit, but couldn’t see the other man’s expression beneath his wide-brimmed straw hat, the same as the ones worn by the lifeguards in their blue-painted towers.

  “Stupid? Only, hermano, if you think low-scoring games will ever truly engage an American man’s competitive spirit.”

  Jay continued ignoring the smart-ass. “I hired myself a new chef today.”

  “Bueno. There’ll be better leftovers for me to mooch in your refrigerator. I’m tired of gnawing on steak bones.”

  “I think I made a mistake, though. You should have let me hire your sister like I wanted after I tasted her tamales.”

  “Sorry, but I wouldn’t let you within twenty feet of my sister, and she’s forty-five and shaped like a burrito.”

  Jay frowned. “Should I be insulted?”

  “You’re the one who made me swear to keep you away from women, remember?”

  “Yeah.” Shit. Jay picked at a corner of the label on his beer bottle. “And it’s definitely a woman I hired to cook for me.”

  “Uh-oh.” Jorge straightened in his chair and pushed back the brim of his hat to squint in Jay’s direction. “I take it she is not shaped like a burrito.”

  “One of her eyes is blue and the other is green.”

  “Ah.” The other man slouched in his seat again. “A bruja.”

  Witch. That’s what Jay thought, too. She sure as hell wasn’t a lesbian, even though he’d played out that little farce with her. He couldn’t believe she’d fallen for it, really. There’d been that melting-sweet kiss they’d shared, one of his best, if he did say so himself, and then that moment in the kitchen when they could have cooked up something piping hot just from the sudden sexual heat sparking between them.

  When he considered that, Christ, maybe he’d been right to hire her. By doing so he could consider himself a kind of good Samaritan. A woman who didn’t recognize the scent of that particular smoke obviously needed more exposure to the fire of mutual sexual attraction.

  Yeah. Jay wouldn’t mind striking a match or two, just for the sake of her education.

  Then he groaned aloud, bemoaning the direction of his thoughts. “That’s what got me into trouble in the first place.”

  Listening to his cock instead of his common sense. He really, really had to quit doing that.

  “Quick,” he said to his friend. “Give me an incentive. Make me a bet about the chef.”

  “Okay.” Jorge tapped the mouth of his bottle against his lips. “Let me think a moment about the terms. What does the bruja look like?”

  Jay thought about his first look at Nikki. “She wears braids. Two of ’em, one on each side of her head.” There was nothing in the least appealing about those, right? They’d been tied loosely enough that she’d still had to tuck strands of hair behind her ears. “She hasn’t pierced her earlobes.” He didn’t even realize he’d noticed that until now. “Though there’s a tiny diamond high in the rim of the one on the left.”

  Jorge gave a noncommittal grunt. “And her figure? You said she’s not shaped like a burrito, but she probably likes to eat, since she’s a cook.”

  “I can’t tell you much about that.” His shoulders relaxed. Surely he would have noticed if she was built like one of the magazine’s models. Imagine dealing with that in his kitchen every day! “She was wearing pants and a shirt. Her legs are long.”

  And her ass was supreme, not that he would mention it to Jorge. When he’d been standing behind her while they talked to Shanna, its high, luscious curve had bumped his hip bone. Yeah, the chef baby had back. Mmm-hmm, there was definite junk in the cookie’s trunk.

  Oh, hell. This was bad. Here he was, waxing as poetic as a Def Jam Records rapper. “Jorge. C’mon. Help a man out here.” It didn’t bother him that he sounded panicked.

  “Tell me about those witchy eyes again.”

  Jay’s head clunked against the back of his chair. Those eyes. Between thick, dark lashes were those incredible eyes of hers. One as blue as the summer sky, the other the sea-green of shallow Pacific waters. In the hour they’d spent together he’d seen a multitude of expressions caught in them: irritation, surprise, craftiness, attraction.

  Lust.

  She’d kept those eyes open when he’d kissed her. He remembered that now, remembered being unsettled by the contrasting glint of colors as he became acquainted with the pillowy softness of her full mouth. That goos
e’s tap dance had drawn shivers down his back and he’d wanted nothing more than to warm himself against her skin.

  Her bare skin. Breasts to his chest, his hands cupped around the curves of that luscious ass.

  Instead, he’d been smart and pulled away, but hadn’t gone far. No, he’d been laughing at himself, and at her, and at how damn startling and unpredictable sexual chemistry could be.

  But it wasn’t funny now, was it? He sighed. “She has a dimple in her right cheek and she smells a little like vanilla and tastes like cherries.”

  “Okay.” Jorge took a sip of his beer. “How’s this? Fifty bucks says you get the bruja into bed by Saturday night.”

  Oh, yeah. Jay smiled, drifting away on the thought. Then Sunday brunch in bed, too, with those summer eyes of hers gleaming down at him from her position on top while he lifted his head to take a suckle of her mystery breasts…

  “Oh, hell. I am stupid.” He shot a disgusted glance at Jorge who was snickering through his next swallow of beer. “You know damn well you were supposed to bet me not to bed the bruja.”

  Jorge was still laughing as Jay fished in his pocket for his cell phone. “That’s it.” On Mondays, the editorial staff could hump in bags of Sausage McMuffins and maybe Fern could at least learn to make a good cup of coffee—though so far it appeared to be a familial defect. Nikki was too big a risk when he had sworn off women. “I’m telling her I changed my mind.”

  “Telling who you changed your mind about what?”

  Jay’s feet dropped from the railing to the deck with a clunk. “Shanna,” he said, guilt jabbing him in the gut. Hell. Shanna. She’d come up along the beach, the sand muffling the sound of her approach.

  He tried to make his expression pleasant, yet noncommittal. “Hello, neighbor. That makes it two times in one day.”

  Which didn’t come close to her record. Last Saturday she’d made three impromptu visits and called him four times on the phone. She shoved her hands into the back pockets of her white jeans, then cleared her throat. “I…I wondered if the mailman delivered my Victoria’s Secret catalog to you by mistake.”