All Fired Up (Kate Meader) (18 page)

She laughed, a sound that pulsed in his chest and made him wish that he hadn’t folded like a cheap suitcase when Cara said,
Hey, I have an idea.
If he’d denied that dark, greedy part of himself—the Packy Sullivan part—they could have started this out right.

You can separate this out, man.

“I didn’t think I’d be able to see the funny side of this but it seems I’ve gotten past it.” She looked at him from under her lashes. “Alcohol always helps.”

In Shane’s experience, alcohol only ever helped cowards become bullies and weak men dull their pain.

She nudged the glass toward him. “Another, barkeep.”

Hell no. She hadn’t even finished that one. They were not going down this road again.

“Did you have anything to eat since lunch? That chicken can’t have filled you up much.” With Jack out of town, he’d made sure to cook her meal to her requirements, though he’d jazzed it up with a little rosemary-lemon marinade.

“I’ll make something when I get home.”

“I could make you something now. We’ll pop into the kitchen and I’ll be your chef slave.”

He headed out, strangely gratified when she followed him without complaint. On the way to the kitchen, he grabbed a couple of stools from the main bar and put them against the countertop nearest the burners.

“Now sit and tell me what you’d like, and it’d better not be chicken.”

Her expression was pained. “I don’t usually eat this late. It messes up my metabolism.”

“Once in a while isn’t going to kill you.” He opened the walk-in and called out to her, “Your wish is my command.”

From inside the fridge, he could hear her noisy thoughts, which were finally punctuated with a small sigh of surrender. “Are there any morels left? I saw they were a special on the menu earlier.” Amazingly, there were some left on a cookie tray. Nice black ones that would go wonderfully with…he looked around. Steak? Cara wouldn’t be down with that.

“Will you eat eggs?” He popped his head around the door, eggs in his hands like he was getting ready to juggle them. “I think they’d be great with scrambled eggs.” It was simple and uncomplicated, for his far from simple and uncomplicated wife.

She nodded. “Can I help?”

He put her to work whisking the eggs, handing off the ingredients she needed: a splash of milk, a pinch of salt, a couple of grinds of pepper. Meanwhile, he sautéed the morels in butter and cracked pepper until the honeycomb surface browned up to a golden caramel color. The rich, muddy scent filled the air around them.

Looking over, he found her paused midbeat over the eggs. She caught his stare.

“I’ll mess it up if I cook them.”

“You? You couldn’t mess up anything if you tried.”

“You don’t know me very well.”

But God, he wanted to. So much for keeping it separate. He removed the morels from the heat and transferred them to a plate. “Just put the eggs in here.”

She poured them in carefully, as though she were dealing with molten gold, then stood awkwardly, almost childlike. The slender column of her throat bulged on a swallow. He’d never met anyone so nervous in a kitchen, not even Dennis-the-extern.

“You know,” he said, moving closer, “cooking is as much about confidence as it is about skill.” She tilted her big eyes up to his. “Sometimes you just have to play the part.”

“The part of a cook?”

“The part of a confident, sexy cook. Don’t be afraid to make a mistake and you probably won’t.” He pulled on the knot of her hair and enjoyed the sensuous unfurl from its constraint.

“There’s nothing sexier than a confident woman in the kitchen. You’re confident everywhere else, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be here, either.”

“Okay,” she said suspiciously, shaking out her hair.

He put a hand on her waist and felt a deep breath rack her body. “Do you mind if I…”

Without waiting for her answer, he undid the top button of her blouse and revealed that beautiful shadow in the valley of her cleavage. He let his knuckles graze the plump swell of her breasts while another unbutton produced a glimpse of the laced edge of her bra. Pink, sheer, devilishly designed to turn him to granite in zero point zero seconds. Pink was her favorite color and it was getting up there on his list as well.

“This is supposed to make me better at cooking eggs?” Her voice rasped a little, and it thrilled him more than he could have thought possible.

“A sexy cook makes sexy food.” He trailed his hands down her sides and over the flare of her hips. “Your skirt’s not short enough.” It fell a couple of inches above her knees, and while her calves were amazing, her thighs were spectacular. He wanted more thigh.

The snugness of her skirt was no match for his hands. Eyes never leaving hers, he pulled it up at her waist and folded it over so it revealed more skin than it covered. She made a breathy noise in her throat and his dick jumped.

“How are those shoes feeling?”

“What?” Voice in a tremble, she looked down, bending forward enough to give him another healthy glimpse of her gorgeous breasts.

“I’ve been wearing them for close to sixteen hours. How do you think they feel?”

“Take them off.”

She stared at him like he wasn’t the full shilling. “That’s against health codes—isn’t it?”

“I won’t tell if you don’t.”

Her eyes had been bright before but now they sparkled like stars. Something about what he had said appealed to a deep part of her, either the rule-breaking or the secrecy. Maybe both. Leaning her palm on his shoulder, she kicked them off, and they hit the metal-bottomed counter with a satisfying thud. Her toes shone a shimmery pink, like sanding sugar. He liked the toes.

“So now you’ve got me half naked and barefoot. You planning to knock me up next?”

“Patience, young padawan. Let’s see how you do with the eggs first.”

He spun her around and turned the knob on the stove, sparking the blue flame to life. Resting one hand on her hip, he passed her a wooden spoon with the other. “Now stir.”

He kept one eye on the eggs and the other on her mouth as she broke up the glossy mixture with jerky strokes.

“It’s not that hard,” she said, catching her fleshy bottom lip by her teeth.

If you say so.
All his blood had pooled in his erection and only sheer willpower prevented him from rubbing his body against hers. Unknotting her hair had released fragrant herbals that now filled his nostrils. Without her heels, she was several inches shorter than him so he would have to lift her up to get her to notch right in to the spoon of his crotch. While he pondered the logistics of that, he looked over her shoulder at the eggs that were cooking up quickly. They were eggs, and they had no clue that he needed more time breathing her in.

Bloody eggs.

“Your father didn’t teach you to cook?”

“No, it was more Lili’s thing. I wasn’t really interested.” She sounded sad about the way that had turned out.

“You’re doing a fine job there. So what do you eat at home? Takeout from DeLuca’s? Pretty handy living right above an Italian restaurant.” More than once, he’d stopped in to get a bowl of Tony’s famous gnocchi with brown butter and sage. The stuff was cracktastic.

He felt her shudder right down to his toes. “God, no. I’ve had enough pasta to last a lifetime. I load up on TV dinners and Whole Foods salads. I’m so busy that it’s easier to have a routine, not think about my eating. That way I won’t forget.”

My eating.
That was a curious way to put it, like it existed outside herself. A separate entity.

“Forget? Don’t you just eat when you’re, you know, hungry?”

“I’ve always been a picky eater so there isn’t much that I like. I tend to stick to the same things. I know it sounds boring but if I don’t plan it, I probably wouldn’t eat at all.”

He was about to ask more when she jerked back into his chest.

“This looks ready,” she said, removing the pan from the heat.

He would come back to that, but for now, he’d tend to her nutritional needs. He plated up and set their meals on the counter with a big glass of water. She’d have quite the head on her tomorrow if she didn’t start on the H
₂
O.

The first taste of the morel almost knocked him off the bar stool, its buttery nuttiness too gorgeous for words. The complex array of flavors—earth, butter, spice—was perfect with the simplicity of the eggs.

“Good eggs,” he murmured around chewing, giving the cook her due.

“Good morels,” she said.

He kept his focus on his own meal, unsure exactly why. She didn’t eat with the crew, she didn’t want to join them for a meal after the line dancing, she had looked positively panicked in her father’s kitchen that day he went there for lunch. There was something odd going on, independent of the usual womanly obsession about calories.

Pushing her cleaned-off plate back, she looked up, a slice of sunshine lifting her face. “That was great, Shane. Thanks.”

“Dessert?” Before she could balk, he was back in the fridge. There were a few lemon tarts left over but he took only one—the sharing of dessert was one of those rituals perfect for the creation of intimacy.

She raised an eyebrow when he placed the tart down. She had such pretty eyebrows. Dark blonde crescents that were usually pinched or hitched or in the process of becoming pinched or hitched. Holding the fork up, he signaled with his eyes.

“Cute, Paddy.”

It took him a moment to get it. “When I put this on the menu, LT, I didn’t know about your nickname with the crew. They seem to think you don’t like them.”

“Oh, I like them fine. I just don’t eat well with others.”

He waited for her to elaborate, but for once his usual ploy of keeping mum didn’t get the result. It wasn’t that Cara didn’t like food so much as she didn’t like the social part of it. Food and people were the problem, or one of the problems, yet here she was eating with him. He felt some small measure of victory in this, though he wasn’t sure he had a right to it. Where Cara was concerned, he didn’t have any rights.

He carved a piece out of the semihard disc, making sure he got a decent chunk of the pastry crust. The citrus scent, faint because the tart was cooler than the optimum temperature, still snaked its way into the back of his nose and ratcheted up his taste buds to mouthwatering levels. The sweet-tart combination as he scooped it off the fork invoked so much pleasure he almost forgot where he was. The barest moan escaped his throat.

Cara stared at his lips, then licked her own. “That good, huh?”

“I am.” He grinned. “Tart’s not bad either.”

She took the fork from him and sliced a sliver off the top layer, careful to avoid the crust. He wanted to tell her both pieces should be paired together, but he’d never been one of those prescriptive chefs with instructions for how things should be eaten. Food was too exciting for rules. Instead he watched her, and hell was he glad he did. It never ceased to amaze him how a face could be transformed by the taste of food, especially something sweet. There was a reason why dessert is the favorite part of every meal, why people skip appetizers or store up their Weight Watcher points.

The reason was the look of pleasure on his wife’s face.

He really needed to stop calling her that, but it sounded so right in his head.
Better make sure you keep it in your head, idiot.

She licked the fork, then licked it again, this time with a graveled
unh
of satisfaction. When she looked up, she wrinkled her nose. “What?”

“I’ve never been jealous of a fork before now.”

Smiling, she passed the fork back to him, and he looked at it, thinking he should dash it to the ground because it was getting more action from Cara’s mouth than him. Not one to dwell on injustice, he got over it and helped himself to another bite.

On her next sip of scotch, her shoulders danced a shiver shimmy, which did marvelous things to her breasts. He pushed the water toward her and got an endearing glare in return.

“You’re very talented, Shane.”

“Thanks.”

“It must be wonderful to be so good at something,” she said on a sigh.

“Ah, sure, everybody’s good at something.”

She rubbed the lip of the glass. “I suppose.”

“Now that doesn’t sound like sexy, confident, cooking-up-a-storm Cara. You’re good at a million things.”
Kissing, nipple sucking, a hip sway that could topple governments…

She gave it her careful consideration. “I’m good at managing things and people. It’s not creative—I’m not bringing great joy like you with your desserts or Lili with her art—but it’s necessary. Control is necessary. Otherwise, it’s just chaos.”

He understood that to a certain extent. He wasn’t in Cara’s league of extraordinary control but he knew all about sticking to a plan and keeping your eye on the prize. Or he thought he had before his life took a crazy left turn a couple of weeks back.

She plucked the fork from his fingers and helped herself to another lemony morsel. At this rate, he was going to have to eat all the pastry, which screwed up the ratio. The pain of being a pastry chef.

“You’re much better than the last guy,” she said on a swallow.

The last guy who had fallen victim to Cara. “He was no good?”