How to Knit a Wild Bikini (6 page)

“It’s probably a lot like cooking,” Cassandra said. “You take ingredients—like yarn—and use them to create something beautiful and useful. When I make a sweater or a purse or a scarf I’ll bet it’s the same kind of process you use to create a meal.”

Nikki glanced at Cassandra, surprised. “You know I’m a chef?”

“My Froot Loop ESP is working well today.” Then she laughed. “What you’re wearing gave you away.”

“Oh. Duh me,” Nikki responded, glancing down at her pants and tunic. She returned her gaze to the beach. The kids were horsing around, laughing as one of the boys bounced a volleyball off his friend’s head over and over. Fern wasn’t smiling, though, and Nikki’s stomach gave a queasy roll as that plastic bottle was passed to her once again.

“Would you like to give it a go?”

Nikki looked over at the other woman. “What?”

“I have some needles with stitches casted on, ready for a quick lesson. You could sit out here,” she motioned to the line of deck chairs on the right, “and see if knitting interests you.”

As far as Nikki knew, knitting
didn’t
interest her. But neither did getting involved in other people’s lives, including becoming a man’s lesbian girlfriend or the reluctant watchdog of his young cousin. “Sure,” she said. At the very least she’d have a good cover if Fern looked up and caught her spying.

I was just indulging in my new hobby. Not that I didn’t notice you weren’t all that thrilled with the possessive way that boy is touching you.

She was settled into the nearest deck chair when Cassandra came back with a pair of needles and a ball of yarn the buttery color of the middle of a good crème brûlée. “You’ve never knitted at all?” she asked.

Nikki shook her head as the other woman crouched close and then showed her how to make the first couple of stitches. “Now you try it,” Cassandra said.

Nikki tried copying the nimble movements, but she seemed to have grown four extra fingers. Making a little grunt of frustration, she shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head and frowned at the woman beside her. “I can take a radish and make a rose, for goodness sake. You’d think I could do this.”

Cassandra stared at her. “I…” Her voice died and she grabbed the arm of Nikki’s chair as she seemed to wobble on her feet. Pushing to a stand, she cleared her throat. “It…it takes some practice.”

“Or some talent that it looks like I don’t have.” Nikki tried handing off the items as Cassandra sank into the seat beside her.

The other woman pushed them back into her grasp. “Time,” she said, her voice husky. “It takes time, too.”

Nikki frowned. “Are you all right?” Cassandra seemed to have paled, and she was now rubbing her arms with her palms.

“I’m good. Fine. Try it again,” she encouraged with a little scoop of her delicate chin in the direction of the yarn. “It’s really not that hard.”

Movement on the beach distracted Nikki for a moment. Fern was trying to get to her feet, but the boy kept dragging her back down to the sand. When the girl glanced about, Nikki ducked her head and tried another stitch. “Maybe it’s like skiing. You need to learn when you’re little or you’ll never get the hang of it.”

Cassandra responded with an abrupt, off-topic question. “What are you doing in Malibu?” she said.

Nikki flicked her a glance. “I’m a private chef. For Jay Buchanan.”

“Ah. Jay.” Cassandra leaned into the back cushions of her deck chair as if forcing herself to relax. “Malibu’s own über bachelor. Known to all as Hef Junior.”

“No kidding.” Nikki wasn’t surprised. “You’re acquainted?”

“We have a population of 13,000, which feels a lot more like 300. Our regularly occurring natural disasters band us together. For example, when I and some others couldn’t get home last month due to the latest fire, four of us stayed at Jay’s for a couple of nights.”

Nikki took another long look at Cassandra. Knowing Jay’s reputation—and hadn’t it just been confirmed that he was an out-and-out player?—surely he would have made the moves on this beautiful woman.

She raised both hands as if she heard the unspoken question. “I spent those nights in the guest bedroom. We’re just friends.”

Nikki cleared her throat and didn’t plan the next words that free-fell from it. “Well, um. So you know, we’re not. Just friends that is.” Why the heck was she saying this? It couldn’t be that she was staking a claim. “We’re dating. Um, exclusively.”

“You and Hef J—I mean, Jay?”

It wasn’t as if she could deny it now, though she felt miserable, and like a traitor to the IQ of her sex with the admission. No smart woman would think professional bachelor Jay Buchanan would become exclusive with anyone. “Yes.”

The other woman’s arched brows rose. “Well, well, well. You’ll have to tell Jay that Cassandra Riley expects a sooner-than-later invite to dinner, then. We should get to know each other better, Nikki.”

“May—” Movement caught the corner of her eye and she returned her attention to the beach. Both Boyfriend and Fern were on their feet and plastered together in a kiss that took the summer temperature up another ten degrees. Nikki started to look away, uncomfortable with the intimate display, but then Fern broke the embrace. Boyfriend tried to yank her back, but the teen broke off again, despite his obviously displeased reaction. When she turned to run up the beach in the direction of the path Nikki had seen the teens scramble down earlier, the boy took off after her.

Still clutching the knitting experiment, Nikki ran, too, exiting the store on unchecked impulse, her instincts compelling her to intercept and…do something as completely out-of-character as get herself involved in someone else’s personal life.

“Nikki!” Cassandra called after her.

But she kept on going, even as the odd thought struck that she didn’t remember telling the woman with the rippling hair her name.

Gritty dirt dug
into the soles of Fern Daley’s bare feet and her bag thumped against her hip as she hurried up the path leading to the highway. The minor discomforts didn’t slow her down. She had to get away from Jenner.

Up ahead, a car hesitated at the exit from the fish market parking lot. In the driver’s seat was Jay’s new chef…Nikki? Yeah, Nikki. She gave Fern a little wave and called over the sound of the traffic. “Need a ride? I’m heading back to your cousin’s.”

Fern didn’t hesitate to take her up on the offer. As the car turned onto the highway, over her shoulder she watched Jenner reach the head of the path. His scowl said he was pissed, but she was, too. She hoped he understood that…God, he didn’t think she was running away, did he?

But she’d told him to cut out the PDA and still he kept up with the too-public displays of affection, no matter how many times she said, “Not here,” “Not now,” “Not in front of everybody.”

She drew her bag onto her lap and hugged it against her chest as goose bumps broke out on all the skin between the top of her bikini and the low-rise waist of her denim mini-skirt. The blast of cool air from the car’s vents was downright frosty in comparison to the heat of her flesh after Jenner’s full-body contact. That was the part about sex nobody explained to you, whether it was your mom discussing “special” feelings or your fifth-grade teacher diagramming female organs. Nobody told you it could be like the sun, melting and burning you all at once.

“You’re a brave girl,” Nikki said, glancing over at Fern.

Because she was playing with fire? But this woman didn’t know anything about her. “What do you mean?”

“Living away for the summer.”

“Oh. It’s only for August. And this isn’t really ‘away.’ Over the years we’ve spent plenty of time at the house that used to be my grandparents’. I know a lot of the local kids from other visits.”

“Still, I bet you miss hanging out with your friends at home.”

“Janice is on a two-week college scouting trip. Marissa’s a counselor at a sleepover camp. My best friend, Emily, well, she’s…not really available.” Their whole group, the “Two Shoes,”—a name they’d adopted after being teasingly taunted with “Goody Two-shoes” for, like, the bazillionth time—were in different places. Fern had to wonder if they’d ever be back to the old place again.

Probably not. Not for Emily, anyway.

“So you have a cute boy to spend time with instead.”

Fern frowned. Was this woman just making idle conversation or was there more to it? Had her parents said something to Jay and had Jay then said something to his chef…? Nah. Jay had hired the chef just days before. His lesbian chef, she remembered him saying. And his girlfriend.

Fern’s eyes narrowed. Nikki didn’t look like any lesbian she knew, but then again, the only lesbian Fern knew was Cher Brooks, who’d cut her hair Marine-style and started dressing in hiking boots and oversized sweatshirts after they’d arrested her stepfather for molesting her. It seemed to Fern that Cher—and maybe Nikki, Jay’s lesbian girlfriend—might be as confused by sexuality as she was.

“What’s the boy’s name?” Nikki asked, glancing over again.

“Jenner.” He was nineteen and starting college in the fall. She didn’t really know what had happened to the year after he’d graduated from high school, but the mystery of that only made him more attractive. It was stupid of her, and stereotypical—she’d read the S. E. Hinton novels, and just think how teenage Lydia Bennet had been taken in by the disastrous Wickham in
Pride and Prejudice
—but when it came to Jenner…Well, the bad in that boy was something Fern found irresistible.

It was because of Emily in some part, she knew that. And because of Jenner himself. Of the way he made her feel when he kissed her and touched her. That’s where her confusion came from. She never could figure out, from minute to minute, whether she wanted him to stop or whether she wanted him to take it further.

It’s what came from being one of the Two Shoes, she thought in disgust. From being smart enough to figure out you could become popular by being the one to say no to the offers of booze and weed and wild sex. Everyone might like you, from your peers to their parents to the high school principal, but when the day came that you were truly tempted…When the day came when you were truly tempted and you discovered inside yourself a reckless streak that would freak out your family if they only knew…

Well, then you didn’t have enough practical experience to know how far you could edge your toes over the brink before falling completely into the abyss.

If Fern was as smart as her SAT scores said, she’d find a way to go back home for the rest of the summer or at least call it quits with Jenner. But when Emily had returned from her weekend visit to her brother at college, a deep, scary hole had opened inside Fern. Jenner with his dark moods and sullen looks, with his nimble fingers and insistent, sometimes stinging kisses, overwhelmed her fears and let her forget that frightening chasm by making her aware of other things—her skin, the blood running through her veins. Each and every cell.

Chef Nikki was filling the silence between them with questions again. What were some of her favorite foods? “Strawberries and vanilla yogurt.” Did Fern have any allergies? “No.” What did she plan to do with the rest of her day?

What
did
she plan to do with the rest of her day, now that she’d left Jenner and the other kids at the beach? More to the point, what would Jenner do?

A new Beetle convertible passed in the lane beside them and Fern caught sight of Shelby Templeton, her dark hair swirling like a vampire’s cape around her shoulders. Her gaze caught Fern’s and she rolled her middle finger up her cheek.
Beeyatch.
She’d had her eye on Jenner, rumor had it, but he’d switched his attention from the pampered Malibu princess to Fern.

And he could switch it back again just as easily.

Her lungs shut down and something that felt like panic twisted her stomach. It was stupid to like a guy so much. It was stupid to worry he’d forget about her just like that. But without Jenner, what would there be to do, to focus on? Without him, it would be thoughts of what happened to Emily, playing in her head 24/7 like some crazy cable news channel fixated on the latest white girl tragedy.

Her hand scrambled in her purse and then closed around her cell phone.

Speed dial #1.

He picked up immediately. “You shouldn’t have run out on me.”

“I didn’t!” That wasn’t what she’d done. This was all about
not
running. It was about staying and it was about the lure of sex. “But I’m sorry anyway. Can you come to the house?”

Mid-morning, on the Friday of Nikki’s first week of employment, Jay found himself wandering into the kitchen, as was his new habit. His chef had cleared away the remains of the zucchini-walnut pancakes she’d served him and Fern along with a citrus and coconut salad. But the coffee carafe was still more than half-full.

He told himself that’s what drew him. Caffeine.

It couldn’t be the chef. Not only had he sworn off women, but sitting on a stool pulled up to the bar, iPod headphones stuffed in her ears, this particular woman steadfastly ignored him as he filled his mug.

The coffee went down hot and smooth as he watched her fill out a shopping list. He’d been doing a hell of a lot of that lately, too—watching Nikki. It was wreaking havoc on the work he was trying to do from home, since more than once he’d dragged his laptop out of his home office to the living room with its closer proximity to the kitchen.

Of course, it meant that on occasion she offered him tastes of the things she was prepping or baking, but it was getting hard to deny those weren’t exclusively the kinds of tastes he was truly after.

Strange, that. She didn’t appear to like him much, her attitude decidedly take-him-or-leave-him, with emphasis on the leave-him, and he wasn’t accustomed to a woman so intent on stamping out the sexual sparks that continued flaring up between them. Yet still, he was drawn to the kitchen and to her. Yeah. Strange, that.

She stood, and he remembered why it wasn’t so strange after all. The girl had a body, he’d discovered, now that she was out of that chef shroud she’d been draped in the first day. This morning he could see her true form, thanks to the bright turquoise T-shirt she wore tucked into a pair of hip-hugging white jeans that were cropped at the calf. The tee exposed her delicate collarbones, some of her smooth-skinned shoulders, and was tight enough to advertise a nice set of breasts.

But his favorite part was on the other side of her. She had the most enticing sway at the small of her back, a pronounced dip that was just begging for the flat of a tongue. It sloped to a sweet curve that was the round little swell of her perfect ass.

He admired that in profile as she gathered up her purse that was perched on the end of the counter. As was usual for her, it looked as if she was headed to the market now, and so he let himself indulge a few minutes longer. She’d be off soon enough and then he’d boot her from his mind and get back to the business of editing
NYFM
’s online edition.

Her head turned toward him. She frowned.

He loved her frown. Her bottom lip pooched out and somehow her eyebrows turned all bristly over her two-color eyes. Who could take the disapproval of a pouting mermaid seriously? He smiled at her.

She hooked her pinkie around one earbud and pulled it free. “Don’t you have to work…not to mention wear a shirt?”

His grin widened. She’d threatened to put up a sign in the kitchen stating “No Shirt, No Ser vice” until he pointed out that these days he made up the rules and that how he wanted to be serviced was her sole consideration. Just to remind her of it, he let his palm rub a slow path from his heart to his hips, and watched her eyes track the movement. When his thumb hooked inside the waistband of his low-riding 501s, her gaze jerked back to his face, and then away from him altogether.

There she went again, tamping down those little flares of sexual heat, and it bugged him how good she was getting at it. She muttered something as she retucked the earbud.

“What’s that?” he called. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Never mind.” She tugged both headphone wires free and curled them into her hand, then withdrew her slim music player from her front pocket. “I’m going to the store. Can I get you anything while I’m gone?”

He shook his head, gesturing at her iPod with his coffee mug. “What are you listening to?”

“A self-help book. I’ll let you borrow it when I’m through.”

“
The Kama Sutra
?
Tantric Touches for Dummies
?”

She looked up, unbalancing him with her cool regard from the polar shades of her sky-and-ocean eyes. “
The Expert’s Guide to Strap-on Sex
.”

His last swallow of coffee bubbled back up his esophagus. He choked. “You didn’t just say that.”

Leaning toward him, she repeated the words. “
The. Expert’s. Guide. To. Strap-on. Sex.
”

He cleared his throat again, at the same time clearing away the images that had sprung to his mind. “Really. You didn’t just say that.”

“What you truly want to ask is if I didn’t just
do
that.”

“Not just now you didn’t.” Those images were back, but hey, he was a guy, and
NYFM
had done a study that proved his girl-on-girl flights of fancy put him squarely within the heavy majority.

Shaking her head, she tucked her purse under her arm. “No, Jay. Not just now. There’s no woman hiding in the broom closet. However, last night…”

It was a joke. She was yanking hard on his leg, because she didn’t really like girls. That was just their little game, right? Right? But hot damn, if the woman wasn’t playing it to win.

She started out of the kitchen, then paused. “Are you okay? You seem a little, I don’t know, poleaxed by the idea, which seems an overreaction from the hot stud of Malibu known to his friends far and wide as Hef Junior.”

He winced. “Don’t go there.”

“Why not?”

“First, because the one-and-only Hef—may he continue resting in a bed of infinite sexual bliss—likes to consider himself an original. And second…well…” Suddenly he didn’t want Nikki viewing him as some randy alley cat always on the prowl. “You don’t see a bunch of women traipsing in and out of here as if it was the Playboy mansion, do you?”

“Only because I scare them off.”

She threw a mean curveball. “You did? How? Who?”

“A brunette named Alicia. Another one with black hair who calls herself M.K. And there was a Trudy, who teared up when I told her you weren’t home—and that you’re currently taken.” Her blue and green eyes were wide with innocence. “I did the right thing, didn’t I?”

Oh, yeah, if she wanted to make him feel like a dog as well as look like that alley cat he’d been thinking of. “Sure. Great. Fine,” he mumbled.

Wait a minute. He didn’t remember any Trudy. And wasn’t M.K. the fifty-something Judi Dench duplicate who picked up his FedEx packages? “Hey, hey, hey. You—”

“Not to forget Shanna. Your neighbor came over yesterday afternoon while you were out surfing and explained to me all about your single night of sin.”

Guilt pierced him as deeply as Nikki’s knowing gaze. Shit. While he’d had a few affairs-gone-bad and one-night stands he wasn’t so happy to remember, he’d never botched it so badly as he’d done with Shanna. Sin was the right word. What for him had been the simple act of scratching an itch had wounded the woman who lived next door. A woman he’d known his entire life.

It meant he had a hell of a lot to make up to the fairer sex, even as he resented the hell out of them that they couldn’t look at things as light and loose as a man. Running his hand over his hair, he trailed Nikki toward the front door, resenting her just a little bit, too.

She’d shut him up, hadn’t she? And she did it every time: turned him upside down with her little gibes, turned off the sexual heat between them with the flick of an eyelash, turned away without a second glance, even when he was following like a goddamn puppy at her heels.

She opened the door, her every move casual and relaxed.

Easy.

Breezy.

It made him nuts and he was glad she was leaving the house, by God.

“Oh, damn,” she muttered, her back turning stiff.

He peered over her shoulder. “What?”

“My car’s boxed in.”

Sure enough it was. Her Volkswagen was parked close to the curb, with both her front and back bumpers just a kiss away from cars that were more massive than hers and very expensive to fix. She sighed and lifted her palm over her shoulder. “Give me your keys.”

He stared at the back of her head. “What?”

Turning, she spoke to him like a kindergarten teacher. “Your car is in the garage. The driveway is not blocked. If I take your vehicle, I’ll be able to get to the market and buy the milk and graham crackers you requested for your afternoon snack.”

So snarky and cool. So unruffled, even though they stood toe-to-toe. Her hand was still proffered, waiting for the keys, and he could smell on her fingers the grapefruit and oranges she’d cut that morning. Fresh. Sweet as well as tart.

He imagined himself drawing a digit into his mouth and sucking on a fingertip. Her nails were unpainted and short, not the long, elaborate canvases of most women he knew. What would she do if he took her littlest finger between his lips, teasing it by running his tongue along the inner skin of her pinkie until he could tickle the pale web at the juncture of her palm? How would she react if then he wet each of the whorled pads of her fingers and drew them down his chest to cool his hot skin before making introductions to the other heat she fired in him? Would she greet his happy cock with five warm welcomes? The idea only made him hard.

But knowing Nikki as he was beginning to, she’d likely look at him just as she did now, her bi-colored gaze revealing nothing as it stayed patiently trained on his. Unaffected. Undisturbed.

Or not. Because then his own gaze managed to escape the snare of hers and drop. The pulse at her throat was throbbing, the thin skin over it trembling with each beat. Lower down and three inches away from his chest were her breasts, and topping those luscious handfuls like berries on top of ice cream were her nipples. Her hard, aroused nipples.

Hard and aroused like him.

He had a boatload of work to finish in his home office. He was minutes away from a peaceful house without a distracting, attracting faux-lesbian in the kitchen. All he had to do was hand her his keys and get that caffeinated, quiet atmosphere he was after. But right now work happened to be the last thing on his mind.

So sue him. It was high summer in Malibu and what man could resist playing hooky with a woman who smelled like citrus and who was doing her damnedest to resist sex?

It was like waving a red flag in front of an angry bull.

“As if I’d let you drive my Porsche,” he scoffed. “C’mon, cookie, I’ll play chauffer and you can take the role of the rich missus who’ll later lure me into the master bedroom before hubby arrives home for his martini.”

She didn’t blink. “Just as long as I get to use my strap-on.”

Good God, Jay
thought. It was almost as if the woman could read his mind. Because though Nikki hadn’t taken the bull that was him into a china shop, what she had done was close enough. Ten minutes after leaving his house she had him escort her into a
yarn
shop, Cassandra Riley’s Malibu & Ewe.

He might have suggested he wait in the car and while away her errand listening to his favorite Sirius satellite channel, but for the first time Nikki’s composure cracked a little. She bit her bottom lip—when he wanted to do that—and white-knuckled her leather bag.

“It’s embarrassing to ask, but will you come in with me?” she said, not quite looking him in the eye. “You know her, I believe, and I kind of, um, shoplifted the last time I was here. You can vouch for me.”

Shoplifted? She continued to surprise the hell out of him. He pretended to hesitate. “I don’t know…”

“Please?”

He considered another long moment. “Well, okay, but only if you promise to let me break out the fur-lined handcuffs when we get home. That way I can honestly tell Cassandra I’ll punish you myself.”

Shaking her head, she ignored his clever riposte, but still he followed her as she moved slowly—reluctantly?—across the parking lot. He just
had
to figure this woman out. Had she actually shoplifted? And could she possibly get more fascinating?

Bells jangled as he held open the door for her. Inside, a gaggle of women were gathered on the couches in the center of the shop. A swift attack of TP allergy—a phrase coined by the editors of
NYFM
to refer to the well-documented male aversion to all-female gatherings like the ubiquitous Tupperware Party—prodded Jay to make a hasty retreat, but then Nikki beat him to it, her butt bumping his groin like a practiced grind of a Pussycat Doll.

Her hesitance only made him more interested in getting into the shop—not to mention he needed to limit their body-to-body contact before things got any harder. So with his hands on her shoulders, he guided Nikki forward, speaking to Cassandra in his best Joe Friday when she looked up. “I’ve brought in the perp, ma’am.”

Nikki flashed him a quick I’ll-kill-you from her amazing eyes, then walked out of his reach to approach the shop owner. From her purse, she pulled out a ball of yarn and a pair of knitting needles. “I can’t believe I left the other day without returning these first. I’m so sorry.”

Cassandra rose from the couch and met Nikki halfway. The smile on her face looked welcoming, but she watched the other woman as if she was a skittish animal. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. Can you stay? We’re having an impromptu klatch.”

Nikki didn’t hesitate now. “Oh, no. I’m on my way to the grocery store and, to be honest, I didn’t really get very far”—she looked down at the items in her hands and held them toward Cassandra again—“with these.”

“You can give it another try.”

“Jay wouldn’t have the patience to wait for that,” she said, without looking at him. “He’s already tapping his toe over there.”

He was not. Well, not now, not now that everyone in the knitting circle was looking at him with the identical question on each of their faces.
So when did you stop beating your wife?

“You go ahead,” he said, trying to appear charming and accommodating and not like he was afraid to offend more women in his world. “I’ll just hang over here for a while and, um…”

“There’s coffee in the kitchen around the corner,” Cassandra said, giving him a bright smile even as she tugged Nikki toward the center of the room. “And Gabe Kincaid’s someplace nearby puttering.”