Afternoon Delight (5 page)

Trish was curled up in one of the enormous squashy chairs facing the windows, iPad, Mac, and phone spread around her, with the more old-fashioned tools of a cookbook and a legal pad opened haphazardly on the table. She sipped a glass of white wine and looked Sarah over.

“Did you . . .”

With a sigh Sarah settled into the other chair and wiggled her toes. The view of Manhattan was intimidating, the sun setting behind the skyline making it seem very far away. “I did,” she said.

“It was ridiculous. Crazy. What were you thinking? You barely know him. Two meals at the truck and you go back to his place? Why?”

Despite the rapid-fire questions, there was no judgment in Trish's tone, just idle curiosity and a healthy dose of amusement. “Because he asked, with a self-deprecating sense of humor that appealed to me, and I wanted to. Besides, I've been here three weeks, and in that time I've met two guys you picked up at the bar in the kitchen, scarfing down Greek yogurt on muesli and reading
the Economist
. One of them had to look at the address label to remember your name!”

Trish scoffed. “Of course I've brought home guys I've picked up at
the bar
, but it's
the bar
. At night. You've waxed what needs to be waxed and done your hair and makeup and you're wearing sexy clothes and you've been drinking. Everyone picks up guys at the bar and takes them home. But in broad damn daylight, stone cold sober? You smelled like black beans and cayenne pepper! What were you thinking?”

Sarah ran her fingers through her damp hair. “I was thinking we had wicked chemistry and he looked like he'd be Superman in bed.”

Trish threw her head back and laughed. “Well? Was he?”

Yes. Without moving a muscle until the very end, he was Superman and Batman and Wolverine all rolled into one. A tremor ran through her at the thought of what he'd be like when allowed free reign with those big, long-fingered hands. “He was,” she said lightly, and sipped her wine again.

“Worth having to do all the prep tomorrow?”

“That and more. What's on the menu?”

“Back to the beef?”

“We don't have enough, unless you don't mind running out halfway through the rush.”

“I'll add that to the order for Friday,” Trish said. “It might be good marketing, advertising it then tweeting that it disappeared really quickly.”

Sarah breathed a small sigh of relief. Some business partners could be incredibly touchy when presented with order failures or unexpected costs, but Trish handled everything as data, nothing more, nothing less. “It's fine with me,” Sarah said.

“The brown rice and beans did surprisingly well,” Trish said. She handed Sarah the order paperwork and started tabbing between windows on her laptop. “A bigger profit margin than the bowls with chicken or beef.”

“Beans are cheap and sell well, and you can add lots of flavor to them. But I really think the secret is in the sauces. I want to keep experimenting with those. Tim liked the habanero one we tried today.”

“I'll set up a vote option on the Facebook page and run promo tweets for the new sauces,” Trish said, her eyes flickering over spreadsheet columns. “You must really be ready to live again to go home with a guy you've just met.”

She
was
ready to live again. The afternoon in Tim's bed just confirmed it, leaving her with a sweet sense of satisfaction she'd only just begun to walk off crossing the bridge. She made a noncommittal noise and stretched through the delicious ache in her muscles.

“A firefighter, though,” Trish added. “That's interesting.”

“He's a paramedic.”

“The uniforms all look the same to me. Are you going to see him again?”

“Dinner Saturday night,” Sarah said. No need to torture herself and tell Trish about the challenge. The less she thought about it, talked about it, the better.

“Where does he live?”

“Lower East Side, just around the corner from Seward Park. He has an efficiency apartment. It's got a Murphy bed, which I found quaint.”

“Charming quaint or tired quaint?”

“IKEA quaint, and pin neat. It was quiet, too.”

“It was four o'clock in the afternoon. Of course it was quiet.”

Sarah burrowed a little deeper into Trish's big squashy chair and focused on the order sheet. Remnants of sweet heat spangled over her nerve endings. “Perfect timing, as far as I'm concerned.”

***

Still on for Saturday night? What time should I come over?

I'll be around all day. Text when you leave. Any allergies or loathed foods?

No allergies. No Brussels sprouts or spinach.

Good to know.

Sarah slid her phone back into her messenger bag. She didn't ask how he was doing with their challenge. He didn't tell her.

***

Tim hunkered on his heels and watched Casey try to find a vein in an elderly, somewhat dehydrated patient. Another few seconds and he'd do it himself, but the only way to learn to insert an IV was to insert a bunch of IVs. Every organism with a circulatory system had arteries and veins, but no two were exactly the same. There was no standard routine, just a procedure practiced often enough to become second nature.

And the thing was . . . he followed a pretty standard routine with women, too, one that had started to feel like going through the motions. Get her number, ask her out, get her into bed. With Sarah, he'd done exactly that, and far more efficiently than he usually did, only to have it spin sideways like hot tires on black ice when she pulled off casual with a shocking, unexpected intensity that set him back on his heels.

Christ, what she'd done to him. She'd bared him just enough to fuck him, which set his blood boiling and left him wanting more. But he knew when he was being played, when a woman showed up with a set of rules she was following about who called whom and when, how many days to wait before calling or texting, when to have sex, when not to have sex.

There wasn't an artificial bone in Sarah's curvy body.

“I can't get the vein, LT.”

“He's never been sick a day in his life,” the wife fretted, hovering in the background, watching them try to stabilize her husband.

Casey didn't let his emotions show in his voice, but they both knew success or failure on an entire call depended on how fast the paramedic found the vein. Tim would compliment him on his calm presence later, but now, he was already reaching for the needle. The patient was eighty-seven and on blood thinners; his future held quite a few sick days, probably growing progressively worse until he was hospitalized. Tim had seen this before.

He felt his way along the inner arm, found a vein not visible in the man's thin skin, pulled the skin taut to anchor the vein, showed Casey the shallow angle of his needle, and slid the needle in. Bingo. He advanced the catheter while Casey watched carefully, all his attention focused on something Tim found so routine, he could get caught up in memories of the previous afternoon. Tim shouldered the bag while Casey jockeyed the gurney into the back of the bus. He trotted around to the driver's seat and hoisted himself up while Tim stayed in the back.

“Shit. Move!” Casey hit the horn, his gaze focused on a narrow gap through traffic on First Avenue. He was flushed, and his voice had jumped half an octave. He was young, riding the adrenaline rush of learning everything he could. The day when this would become routine, just another day at the office, was far in the future.

Tim peered through the window into the driver's compartment and pointed at the gap. “You'll fit through there. Just keep it straight and lay on the horn.”

Muttering to himself, Casey set the heel of his hand to the horn and edged into the narrow space. Two inches on either side of the bus. Plenty of room.

Tim focused on the patient's breathing and pulse. Steady. They cleared the traffic and edged into the ER entrance. They off-loaded the vic, transferred the gurney into the back of the bus. “Speed and skills. Work on both of them. Practice at home. When you're watching TV, whatever, practice finding your own vein, and if you've got family members who will let you near them with a needle, practice on them,” Tim said as they swung up into the cab.

“I do,” Casey said, just a hint of wounded in his voice.

Tim sighed.

***

It took practice to get fast. Efficient. Untouchable. Casey would learn that soon enough.

Tim walked into his apartment and tossed his keys and wallet on the kitchen counter, then headed for the bathroom. While the water heated, he stripped off his uniform. As he bent to unlace his boots, a shock of pleasure coursed through him, undeterred this time by work. His cock lifted and pulsed when he shoved off pants, boxers, socks, and boots in one push. Ignoring it, he stepped into the tall, thin box of a shower and ducked his head to wet his hair. Dinner was twenty-four hours away. He could wait that long.

But her challenge threw off his sense of time, made him aware of its edges, the changes in current he'd learned to ride out. She made him think about what was coming, anticipate the future more than he had in a long time. Both sets of his grandparents lived in a six-block radius. They'd watched him grow from a long, gangly infant into a New York City paramedic, and he'd watched them decline from vitality into dementia and a host of age-related illnesses before slipping away. It happened. The joys of a long life came with the sorrows of decline; combined with what he saw on a daily basis, that was reason enough to stay in the present. His present—the job, a sweet, sexy girl with the same attitude, basketball games as the weather warmed up—was all he needed.

He remembered Sarah sitting on her heels at his feet as she unlaced his boots. Electric heat shot through his veins, pooling low in his pelvis. It was entirely possible he'd never be able to take off his boots again without thinking of Sarah at his feet, her hair losing the battle with gravity, her face serious and focused as her hands worked at his laces. Serene. That was the word. She looked serene, completely present, an attitude he would have entirely overlooked if he'd met her at a bar or in a more adrenaline-jacked situation, like the St. Patrick's Day parade. But then she'd beaten him, using his own cocky attitude against him.

Losing, and slowly at that, was fucking hot.

Water coursed over his body. He followed its path with the soap, and a quick wash turned into a couple of slow strokes, working his thumb over the head. His balls tightened, lifted, the water warm, his shaft slick with soap and thickening in his grip.

He'd wanted her again mere moments after she left, and when it came down to it, fuck cleansing his palate. She couldn't possibly be serious, couldn't mean to deny him this, something as natural as breathing, as elemental as desire. Lost in the memories, he thought about the few things they'd done and the many, many things yet to do when he had the full use of his hands and body and mouth to turn her inside out.

He came with a gasp, release thudding through him as his cock jerked in his grip.

Sanity returned. “Fuck,” he said, then bent his head forward under the spray. The thing was . . . rubbing one out didn't stop him from thinking about his upcoming date with Sarah. He was still focused on the future, but now with a sense of sheepish dread.

Bottle of wine in a brown paper bag, he took the train to Borough Hall and walked the rest of the way to her address. She opened the door barefoot, dressed in a denim skirt and a sweater belted over a tank top. Her hair was loose, wild corkscrew curls tumbling around her shoulders. She caught it in both hands and settled it between her shoulder blades in a practiced, automatic move. “Hi,” she said. “Did you have any trouble finding us?”

“I worked at a Brooklyn station for a couple of years,” he said.

“Oh, you brought wine. Let's have a look.” She studied the bottle. “Fire Island. That's near here, right? Thank you.”

“You're welcome. Want me to open it?”

“Please. If I don't turn the mushrooms they'll scorch.”

He looked around the space as he followed her into the apartment. The living area was one big open room, with a gorgeous, open view of the East River and the Manhattan skyline. The kitchen windows overlooked the street but were high enough that the street noise was muted. The room was furnished in overstuffed chairs in shades of green and cream. A desk sat against one wall, and the shelves above it held pictures of graduations and weddings interspersed with finance textbooks. “Nice,” he commented.

She took her gaze off a pan for a split second. “It's Trish's. She used to work for some big investment firm.”

He completed his circuit of the room and came to stand beside Sarah at the counter. He picked up the corkscrew and opened the bottle. Sarah slid the mushrooms onto a plate and added more oil to the pan. “Glasses are in the last cabinet,” she said.

He poured them both a glass. “Cheers,” he said.

“Well?” Her eyes were dancing as she peered at him over the glass.

“Well what?”

“Did you make it?”

“Nope,” he said, unrepentant. “You?”

“Yes,” she said. “For someone who claims to be ultracompetitive, you're making this pretty easy for me. Unless . . .” Her gaze clouded over. “Did you have a difficult day at work?”

He stopped for a moment to appreciate a woman who understood sex, either alone or with a partner, as a perfectly reasonable response to a hard day at work. This gave him an easy out: lie. The only people who really understood what he did were other first responders, but this week was no better and no worse than any other week lately, and she'd know if he lied. He didn't know how he knew she'd know, but she'd know.

The truth was, he'd gotten caught in the moment of remembering her.

“No worse than usual,” he said, but his voice lacked his usual teasing note.

She turned back to the stove and stirred the sauce simmering on the back burner. “I'm torn,” she said slowly. “You do have a very stressful job. But you also took the challenge.” She peeked at him over her shoulder, the sweater hanging to the curve of her biceps. “Somehow I think you'd respect me less if I didn't hold you to the terms of our bet.”

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, because she was right, although how she knew that was beyond him. Sex was easy, but games were serious business, and he was going to have to win back some ground here.

He set his wine on the counter and crossed the kitchen. “I have the ultimate respect for you after what you did on Wednesday,” he said, purposefully pitching his voice low and rough, waiting for her response. He knew so little about what turned her on, but that did, his honest reaction to the memory of what she'd done to him. He was a little aroused and a little embarrassed and a whole lot desperate to do it again.

She'd done all the heavy lifting last time, so it was a relief to brace his forearms on the stove's hood and explore the curve of her ear, using only his lips until she shuddered and her eyelids drooped. He gently traced the inner whorl with his tongue, then nipped less gently at her lobe, noting that her hand, automatically stirring something thick and yellow, halted entirely at the use of his teeth. She liked the edge, but then again, he already knew that.

“You're playing dirty,” she said.

“This surprises you?” he murmured into her hair. “I thought you were sharper than that.”

“I'm not surprised,” she said. Her hand hovered dangerously close to the hot pot, so he slid his fingers along her forearm and guided it to the counter. “I'm letting you know I see what you're doing.”

Wild curls tickled his cheek as he smiled. “What am I doing?”

“You're looking down my shirt, for one.”

He outright laughed. “I am. I didn't see anything last time.”

“You certainly did,” she said.

“All right, I didn't see enough.”

“And you're trying to seduce me out of taking a forfeit.”

“Right again,” he said. He unfastened the knitted belt of her sweater and opened the fabric. It was warm to the touch, perhaps from the heat of the stove, but more likely from the heat of her body, radiating like the scent of the sauce and whatever grain was slowly bubbling at the back of the stove.

“Hmm,” she said as he rested his hands on her rib cage, just below her breasts. “What will you give me in exchange for releasing you from our agreement?”

“Orgasms,” he said, and stroked his thumbs against the soft undercurves. “As many as you want. I won't come until you're done.”

Her head lolled forward, the wild spill of her hair tilting with the movement. He had her. He knew it as well as he knew his own name. A quick swipe of his thumbs over her erect nipples had her trembling.

“Shit! The polenta!” In one movement she snatched up the spoon and shoved him back a step with her hip; in the next she'd whisked the pot off the burner and was stirring heavy clumps up from the bottom, returning the thick mixture to its creamy state.

“You are a very bad man,” she said, gesturing with the spoon.

He folded his arms and grinned at her. “You're still not surprised.”

“That you'd try? No. At how successful you were? A bit. I am saved by my own polenta.”

“You're really not going to have sex with me, are you?”

She set the pot on the granite countertop and looked him straight in the eye. “No. We had a bet, which you lost. If you want to leave now, I understand.”

No way was he leaving. She'd respect him a hell of a lot less for storming off in a huff than she did for giving in to the demands of his cock. Up his game, and he could save this. “What would I stay for?”

“Mushrooms sautéed in white wine and garlic over polenta, fresh spring greens with pears and feta, and individual chocolate lava cakes with homemade whipped cream and raspberries for dessert.”

Saliva gathered in his mouth. He swallowed it and said, “That's it?” Like her menu was the usual takeout he'd bring home for a Friday night in front of whatever sport he could find on TV.

“If you're a masochist, you can watch me get myself off after we eat. I was absolutely desperate for an orgasm before you and your wicked mouth started to have your way with me.”

He was no masochist, but he'd give up his apartment for the chance to see that. “Deal,” he said, lightning fast. “You have to take your clothes off. And I get to talk.”

“Fine, but no touching,” she said, brandishing the spoon again.

“Your rules, darlin'.” She wrapped her sweater around her waist and knotted the belt, then smoothed her hair back again. “You look like a pigeon settling its feathers after a fight.”

Her eyes narrowed. She picked up the bowl of polenta in her left hand, then stepped into his body and cupped his balls through his jeans. “Do you have any idea how badly I wanted you in my bed tonight? It's all I could think about, sex with you, releasing all that anticipation. So if I seem a little flustered, it's all your fault, and you're going to pay for it later. But first,” she said, and handed him the bowl, “we eat.”

***

She'd set the table in basic white dishes, silverware, and linen napkins. Votive candles floated in large glass bowls, reflecting off the silver ring on her thumb as she set the mushroom dish next to his place and the salad in the center. This was a galaxy away from fast food.

Sarah held out her hand for his plate, scooped some polenta onto it, dabbed a shallow depression in the polenta, then spooned mushrooms over it. “Salad?”

“Please,” he said.

It was like being in a really nice restaurant, with amazing views and time to enjoy the food, except they were alone as alone could be. He could feel his brain jerking like a slipping transmission, trying to find the correct gear for the road. When his fingers flexed with the urge to hoist her over his shoulder and take her into the nearest bedroom, he cleared his throat and said, “Where's your roommate?”

“The Hamptons?” she said with an uplift to her voice. “Something about a summer share. She'll be gone every weekend for the rest of the summer.”

“You didn't get one, too?”

“We're living together and working together. I thought it might not be a good idea to be in each other's pockets twenty-four-seven,” she said with a quick smile. “How about you?”

“Yes, but mine doesn't start until later in May,” he said.

“I hear it's a quintessentially New York thing to do.”

He shrugged. “The city's pretty hot and humid in July and August. Better to be by the ocean. Either way, you're not going to want to make soup.”

“That's all right,” she said, although her smile was a pale shadow of itself. “I'm not really ready to make it again anyway.”

She watched him take his first bite of mushroom and polenta. To his total shock, it was really, really good, and he said so.

“Better than you expected?”

“Yeah,” he said, and watched her smile at his honesty. “I don't mean that the way it sounds. It's not just okay for now. I'd ask you to make it again.”

“Best compliment you can pay a chef,” she said, as if she were relieved that he enjoyed it. She speared a bit of salad with her fork, and they dug into the meal.

Making conversation was step one in both distracting him from the tension simmering in the room and changing her mind about not sleeping with him. “What brought you to New York?”

“My aunt died of ovarian cancer a few months ago. I took care of her, and afterwards, was at loose ends. Trish's cousin handled my aunt's financials. Towards the end she told me about Trish opening Symbowl and asked if I'd be willing to help her get the business off the ground. I was looking for a new challenge, something different, a change of pace. I'm picking up extra cash working private dinner parties a couple of nights a week as a sous-chef-slash-server.”

“I'm sorry,” he said quietly.

“She lived a good life. A full life. Towards the end she was greedy for the smallest things. Sunshine on her face. Fresh air. Flowers and butterflies in her garden.”

His gaze flicked from her face to the windows, then down to his empty plate. “This was delicious. Thank you.”

She'd made him uncomfortable. “You're welcome. It's a pleasure to cook for someone who really enjoys food.”

“Is that a crack at how fast I eat?”

Her eyes widened. “Thirty minutes for a single course is pretty good,” she said.

A quick glance at the clock confirmed her words. “Usually it's in and down in less than five.”

“Sometimes we have to eat to live,” she said with a smile. “Other times we can live to eat.”

“You mentioned dessert?”

“They take a few minutes,” she said. “I'll put them in the oven now.”

He cleared the table while she placed twelve small ramekins onto a cookie sheet and slid that into the oven. The open kitchen window kept the room's temperature comfortable as he washed the dishes and she whipped powdered sugar into heavy cream and mashed raspberries. The scent of chocolate blended with an earthy smell rising from her skin.

“What perfume do you wear?” he asked absently.

“I don't,” she said over the churning beaters. “I got out of the habit when I worked the front at Greens. It competes with the food, and diners who appreciate good cooking want to smell the food, not my scent du jour.”

He bent over and put his nose to the nape of her neck. It was her. A hint of sweat, musk, the detergent from her T-shirt, and over it all, chocolate and sugar and cream.

A shiver chased across her spine. She flashed him a quick smile, tapped the beaters on the bowl's edge to knock off the newly thickened cream, and ejected them from the handheld base. “Want one?” she asked.

He nodded. She held one out. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist, holding her, and started to lick the beater clean. By the time he was finished, some of the cream had melted enough to drip down her knuckles. He cleaned those, too.

“My God, you're a menace,” she whispered.

Good. Fluster her. He reached for the other beater, but she held it back and away. “This one's mine,” she said, and proceeded to clean it off with her finger.

“More efficient,” he observed.

“Not nearly as sexy,” she said. “Points to you for tongue work.”

“Those points going to get me anything?”

“No.”

“You say no a lot,” he mused. “Someday I'm going to make you say yes. Again and again and again.”

“But not tonight,” she said. The oven beeped. She grabbed the oven mitts. “Watch out.”

He got out of the way. The door opened and hot air richly steeped with dark chocolate rolled into the room. She extracted the cookie sheet, turned two of the ramekins upside down on plates, and tapped them with her index fingers. When she lifted them, warm chocolate quivered on the white surfaces, the interiors barely contained by the baked sides. Then a dollop of whipped cream and a sprinkling of raspberries topped by a sprig of some green thing that might have been mint or hemlock for all he knew.

She shooed him back to the table, waited until he sat down, then set the plate in front of him. “Individual chocolate lava cakes,” she announced.