Undercover Lovers (9 page)

Minutes passed. He didn’t
know how many. His feet refused to move, the page still remained
clutched in his hand. If he were a smarter man, he’d crumple the
paper into a ball, drop it on one of the nearby tables and walk
away.

Instead, at last, he folded
it into a square and tucked it into his trousers. Later, one
day—
someday
—he’d
read it. Not today, though.

Forcing his cheeks to lift
and his mouth to part into a smile, August pulled his shoulders
back and strode to table twenty. For everyone’s sakes, so they’d
know this funk wouldn’t get the best of him, he made a show of
greeting guests along the way. Even one of the busboys earned a
high-wattage smile.

Poor guy looked
terrified.

It pulled a strangled
chuckle out of him. If he hadn’t been so intent on figuring out how
to make it up to the busboy, he might have stopped three yards
sooner. Just a few steps and he would have avoided having to look
at her.

But Saffron was watching his
approach. He’d made it too close to turn back now without drawing
the curious attention of other patrons.

When he realized his smile
had fallen, August forced it back into place. It felt wooden and
stupid. Without a doubt it fooled no one. But just as his pushy
sous chef insisted, August smiled.

Despite the empty booth
across from hers and the missing place setting, he stood close
enough to the table to be heard, but far enough away he wouldn’t be
tempted to touch her.

Despite his bruised ego, he
was still very, very tempted.

“
Madame.”

She replied softly,
“Chef.”

An eternity
passed.

“
You look tired.”

“
I work very hard,
Madame.”

“
Oh. I didn’t mean to imply
you didn’t…I mean,
crap
. I’m sorry, I came to find out…I mean…did you read it? It
came out yesterday.”

Ice filled his veins. “I
made it a habit of mine a long time ago not to read reviews.
They’re very subjective.”

“
I see.” She nibbled on her
lip. The same lip he’d spent hours tonguing until swollen a week
ago. “Vicky said…”

“
What did she say?” The
anger he didn’t realize he harbored sharpened to a fine
point.

“
Listen,” she snapped. His
eyebrows arched in surprise. “I’m paying her three hundred dollars
to occupy this table until you talk to me. Money well spent, but I
damned well plan on getting every penny’s worth.”

He turned on his heel. “Save
your money,” he tossed over his shoulder.

“
August…
please
.”

The car ride back to the
restaurant that night still haunted him. The awful silence. The
tension wrapping around his neck, snaking into his lungs until he
almost couldn’t breathe.

She hadn’t cried. She hadn’t
begged. And that was almost worse than if she had.

 
Nine minutes passed as
the two strangers avoided looking at each other. Not talking. Not
touching. The previous hours vanished from their memories. Or at
least they must have vanished from hers. He couldn’t stop thinking
about them.

Too soon he pulled alongside
her car. When she stepped out, something in him screamed for August
to reach for her. To say some meaningful words to bring her back.
To accept the apology she’d offered.

But he’d remained frozen,
instead forcing himself to watch her get in the car and eventually
drive away. The begging
please
she’d cried on the verge of coming stuck in his
memory.

That single pleading word
made him slowly turn and face her now.

Barely above a whisper, he
asked, “What do you want from me?”

She seemed at a loss for
words for a minute. Finally, she said, “If I can only have one
thing, please read the article. Vicky said she gave it to
you.”

A jerky nod.

“
I want you to know what I
wrote. Read it and…just read it, please.”

Taking the paper out of his
pocket, he returned to the booth. Throwing caution to the wind, he
sat down. The restaurant could have burned down around his feet and
he wouldn’t have noticed. Everything seemed to have vanished; just
like the night he’d met her. What was it about this woman that she
could draw him in like no one else?

With a frown, he noticed his
hands shook as he unfolded the page.

He read the headline aloud.
“Secrets of Restaurant Week chefs.” Not a great start to an article
he didn’t want to read. “Francis Brun…”

His vision
blurred.

“
It’s alphabetical,” Saffron
hastily said. “Skip to a third down.”

 “
Celebrity chef August
Jaeger works fourteen hour days at his critically acclaimed fusion
cuisine hot spot. The secret he keeps...” His mind jumped to the
next words, processing and understanding them long before his lips
managed to form each one.

He looked up at her, a
smile—a
real
smile—curving his lips. “What is this?” he asked.

“
I worked like a dog to get
the information about every chef participating in Restaurant Week
in time for the story to run and hit the shelves
yesterday.”

“
This isn’t a review.” He
scanned the rest of the page quickly. “And you didn’t say what I
would be serving. There’s nothing about
any
of my food in here.”

She leaned forward. “It
wasn’t worth it.”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
I didn’t mean to hurt you
but I did. And it wasn’t worth it. I could offer my readers
something as enticing as your secret menu and they would still love
me for it. I just had to think outside the box a
little.”

“
So you did this? What did
your editor say?”

Saffron lifted her shoulders
in a shrug. “She loved it. So do the readers. I’ve got emails
asking for similar articles for other chefs.”

He stared at her. Those
honey-brown eyes offered him the apology a week ago he’d been too
furious to hear.

“
Anything else you’re
keeping from me, Saffron?”

“
Nothing.” She gave him a
hesitant smile.

“
You’re sure? Nothing?
Saffron’s your real name?”

Now she grinned and held up
three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

August slid from the booth
and stood next to the table. He held up two fingers of his
own.

Almost instantly Vicky
sidled up to him, pen and pad in hand.

Softly, he said, “Vicky,
please ask Edmond to prepare takeout for me and Ms. Burton.
Something simple…perhaps the saffron-chili dusted trout with sweet
potato grits. And uh, maybe…tell you what. Tell him to surprise
us.”

“
Chef,” she acknowledged, a
note of smug satisfaction in the single word. Vicky disappeared
from next to him as surreptitiously as she’d approached.

Saffron scooted over, making
room for him when he sat next to her. Leaning close, he murmured,
“Madame, would I be able to interest you in a more intimate dining
experience…in my home?”

“
Does that mean all is
forgiven?”

“
Not all, no.” He couldn’t
be less than honest. He was still a little hurt by her actions,
even if he understood them. But he could forgive them completely,
with time. “I think you and I had a good thing going. We shouldn’t
give it up so easily. If you can put up with my long
hours…”

“
And if you’re willing to
put up with burnt water…”

“
I think we can make it
work. But Saffron?” August leaned even closer, his lips grazing
hers with the most delicate of kisses.

“
Yes, Chef?”
Breathless.

“
If the line at the
McDonald’s next to my house is longer because you told all of
Denver I like their fries, I’m going to turn you over my
knee.”

She shrieked and then began
to laugh.

She was still laughing when
he put a finger beneath her chin and tilted it, forcing her to look
up at him. The sweet tinkle of her laughter faded as he pressed his
mouth to hers.

Dee Carney began writing
short stories in middle school, but did not attempt completion of a
novel until almost ten years later—which, despite good intentions,
she never finished. Almost ten years later, she challenged herself
to begin writing again, and her love for storytelling was
rekindled.

Now, Dee is a best-selling,
award-winning author who lives at home in Georgia with her husband,
two dogs, and a cat. When not writing, Dee is usually curled up on
the couch with a good book!

To learn more about all of
Dee’s books, please visit her on the web at
http://www.deecarney.com

To my husband and best
friend, Chip, for being exactly the man I thought he
was.

Oh! And for my CP Murphy for
the ice cube idea *air high five*

“
Oh my God. Oh, God.
Yeah
. Yeah, right there.
Yes. Yes!”

For the first half a minute,
Professor Tucker Lamb had tried to muscle through it, but the
sounds coming from the adjacent classroom had gotten more animated
and were now too distracting to ignore. His inseam was feeling
decidedly shorter than it had a minute ago and his students
couldn’t mask their reactions any longer.

Most of the girls wrinkled
their noses and laughed softly to one another. Some of the guys
tried to follow suit, but their half-hearted attempts came off as
wooden. They couldn’t hide their fascination or the fact that they
were extremely interested in finding out who was behind the very
vocal “O”.

Tuck knew exactly who was
responsible. Fortunately, his students were freshmen, so most
probably hadn’t met the Human Sexuality professor, Doctor Eleanor
Malloy. And it was a good thing, because there would have been a
stampede to get out of his classroom and into hers.

She didn’t look like any
“Eleanor” he’d ever seen and was better known as Cricket. She’d
told him that her dad had given her that nickname when she was a
child because she never liked to sleep, she just made noise all
night long. He had to bite his tongue to keep from asking her if
that was still the case and if she’d give him a shot to be the guy
behind all the noise.

He’d met her a bunch of
times since he started at Westside six months before, but he’d
never had the good luck to work in the same building with her until
today. The Psych building was cordoned off while a crew of
exterminators dealt with an infestation of hornets. The department
was scattered throughout the campus now, set up in every available
classroom until they got the all-clear.

“
Okay, guys. It sounds like
Dr. Malloy’s lesson is winding down now, so let’s try to focus,” he
said with a smile he hoped didn’t look as pained as it
felt.

He wondered how many times
she’d been slapped on the wrist for her outrageous classroom
antics. There was no question she was great at her job and her
students loved her. She was well known for making the material
relatable and easy to understand. Moreover, he respected her
because she practiced what she preached. She defended her subject
of expertise like a wolverine and was very vocal about the fact
that she viewed human sexuality as an integral part of life. There
was nothing dirty or tawdry about it, thank you very much. Her
attitude carried through to her teaching and no subject was taboo.
She was fearless and he admired that.

But that fearlessness came
with a price. In Cricket’s case, it made her a target for the
school’s administrators. Tuck suspected that her appearance did
little to help her case. Five foot nothing, a hundred and
thirty-five pounds comprised almost entirely of tits and ass, she
was like something from a tractor-trailer’s mudflap. A sailor’s
bawdy tattoo. Or, he admitted ruefully, a science professor’s wet
dream.

She was hell on wheels and
exactly the kind of woman he would have gone for
before
…

Now that he was on the up
and up, though, she was exactly the kind of woman he needed to
steer clear of. The kind of woman that stuck in deep and wouldn’t
let go, like a barbed hook in a trout’s gullet. When he’d met her a
few months back, he’d considered going for it anyway. But after ten
long years of struggling, he’d finally become a man he could be
proud of and he needed some time to settle into it. To make sure it
stuck.

But,
damn
.

As a rule, he tried not to
think about what Cricket’s uninhibited nature and utter
fearlessness would translate to in bed. Most of the time,
hell,
all
of the
time, he failed.

 
She was driving him
bananas. Absolutely fucking crazy and he had no idea what to do
about it. He rarely saw her for more than a passing hello, but
every time he did, he had to avert his eyes. It was that or walk
around campus sporting a massive boner. Not cool.