Annette Blair (24 page)

“I went to Kingston by the sea the other day,” Jason said to Melody. “Your crew tested the cooktop and preheated the oven. Looks like they got everything set for an easy shoot.”

Logan chuckled. “After a year Mel’s crew is prepared for disaster. Easy would shock them.”

An hour later Melody stroked the huge red metal coffee grinder on the marble peninsula countertop, beneath two rows of copper pots. A tureen sat beside a pressed-glass canister set and a rack of matching spice jars.

“Your crew had our caretaker set bamboo privacy screens before a few of the windows,” Kira said, while Melody preheated the oven and prepped pots with chicken stock, milk, onions, and butter to turn into French sauces during the filming.

Half an hour later the cameras started rolling. Melody, in a scarlet marvel of covert folds and overt sensuality, waltzed onto the set to the strains of “Do You Believe in Magic?”

“Welcome to Kingston by the Sea in beautiful Newport, Rhode Island,” Melody said. “Before I begin the show, I’d like to introduce my special guest, Mr. Jason Pickering Goddard.”

The applause track came on as Jason walked in, wearing a cappuccino turtleneck, matching slacks, and a black apron, his sleeves rolled up. Every woman’s dream hunk.

“Though he’s an NHL god and America’s very Best Kisser,” Melody said, “to which I can personally attest . . .” She sneaked a kiss, so Jason took her in his arms and bent her back for a real kiss, and the canned laughter rose.

Back on her feet, Melody fanned herself. “Jason is going to take a break from hockey and kissing, and he’s going to help me cook for you today.”

“I cook good.” Jason wiggled his brows.

Logan laughed at their antics, but Kira was jealous. How stupid was that? Jason didn’t belong to her. They were consenting adults playing a rabbit-hole game, no errors, no fouls, no pain.

Jason Goddard was
not
her property. She did
not
have a thing for him. End of snit!

Melody patted Jason’s cheek, ordered him to stir the sauce, and he saluted her and did her bidding.

He was playing to the cameras as he said he’d been taught, smiling for the cameras, kissing Mel for the cameras.

There had been
no
cameras to record his cocky grin in the shower that morning, however, which made Kira feel cheerful and . . . victorious.

“THIS
kitchen was once the height of domestic technology,” Melody told her
Kitchen Witch
audience. “Let’s see how it’s stood the test of time.” She went to the front of the counter and waved her wand.

“Glorious kitchen preserved in time,

Make the success of the French chefs mine.

Awaken ageless faith and fervor.

Inspire this cook, sustain this stirrer.

Bring us the best of the Gilded Age,

Drawn from that century’s cookbook page.”

To another round of canned applause, she returned to her position behind the counter.

“Most of the chefs during La Belle Epoch—the height of Newport Society—were French,” Mel said, “so my menu is a salute to Gilded Age gastronomy. Among my selections are: Beauvilliers’ Cheese Soufflé, Sauté de Volaille
au Velouté Réduit, and for dessert, Meringues à la Crème.”

Melody smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ll translate as I go. The Sautéed Chicken in Crème Sauce,” she said, “calls for tender young fryers flattened slightly with the side of a cleaver, like so.” She demonstrated and placed the chicken in a deep copper skillet with a long handle.

“After we sauté the chicken in butter, we’ll cover it with the crème sauce and warm it in the oven to marry the flav—”

Melody stopped talking and looked up.

A soundman checked his equipment.

Jason and Logan exchanged glances.

The odd hum rose in volume, and Kira thought the stove was giving a death rattle, until two bugs hit her in the face, one after the other.
Buzz thwack, buzz thwack
.

A dark cloud of bees spilled from the copper vent above the stove. A swarm asleep in the vent, awakened by the heat, as if summer had arrived, were leaving their winter quarters, via the kitchen, and making a cameo appearance on
The Kitchen Witch
show.

The bees gravitated toward the exposed windows, sluggish and seeking sunlight, hundreds, it seemed, getting so thick on the panes they darkened the room like furry undulating shades, their buzz slowing to a dull hum.

“Keep rolling the cameras!” the director shouted. “This is good,” he said. “It’s so Melody to pull something like this.”

“Hey,” Mel said, battling the bees with a wooden spoon. “I didn’t—”

Logan ran in and grabbed her by the hand to drag her out.

“I’m not allergic,” she said.

“But I am,” Logan said, “so the baby might be.”

“Oh, gosh,” Mel said, moving faster.

Jason called for an evacuation of the kitchen and told the director to shove his rolling cameras.

Kira wondered if they’d keep that in the show.

Jason lifted her off the floor, set her on her feet in the hall, and shut the kitchen door. “Call the exterminators!” he yelled to Weston, the caretaker. “Now!” Then he looked at Kira with a grin. “There were bees swimming in
my
sauce.”

Mel did the second half of her show the next morning, starting with a spell to keep the bees away.

Jason talked about the mansion, the foundation, and St. Anthony’s, while Mel slid a cheese soufflé into the oven. They’d started on the meringues, when the oven hiccupped with a bright flash, and everyone dived for cover.

The oven door flew halfway across the kitchen. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

The laughing cameramen did a close-up of the oven, the ancient heating element split but connected by a crackling blue and yellow arc, zapping the soufflé, literally, to death. When the dish exploded, only the cameramen had egg on their faces.

“I think we can safely call this a
Kitchen Witch
classic,” Jason said. “Weston, cut the electricity.”

Jason took Kira in his arms and leaned his chin on her head. “This is what we get,” he said, “for cutting costs on mansion upkeep.”

“The foundation is getting better every day,” she said, to console him. “Three hundred people are coming to Mel’s reception Saturday at five-hundred dollars a ticket.”

“That makes me feel almost as good as your arms around me,” Jason said.

They concluded the segment on the third day, station management chomping at the bit to get the show in the can.

On Saturday, for viewing during the reception, huge, flat-screen TVs were set up in each corner of a ballroom flanked by a swimming-pool patio with an ocean view where the orchestra was tuning up.

Melody did a live intro of the taped show in the kitchen—where electricians, carpenters, and conservators had been working for two days straight—and waved her
wand for the fun to begin. Then she joined the reception upstairs.

With her show on in the background, Melody was the center of attention and a gracious guest.

The bees arrived on screen, and the room went silent. That Logan rescued Melody because the baby might be allergic started a round of applause and congratulations, turning the exploding oven into an anticlimax.

The
Kitchen Witch
crew, and several news crews, had set up on the patio. There Melody went live to end the show. She introduced Logan, Kira, Vickie, and Jason again. Then she handed her wand to Kira and faced the cameras for a close-up.

“In a minute,” she said, “you’ll see footage of the boys from St. Anthony’s. You heard Jason speak about them on the show.”

Melody became a voiceover to the footage of the boys. “I’m pleased to announce that the Seabright Foundation will be making a one-hundred-thousand-dollar contribution to St. Anthony’s,” Mel said. “Please jot down the address on the screen where you can send
your
tax-deductible donation.”

She looked earnestly at the cameras. “I’m offering you a challenge. The Seabright Foundation will also match every hundred thousand dollars donated to St. Anthony’s between now and December thirty-first.”

Jason took Kira’s hand and squeezed, and she thought he might as well have squeezed her heart, she was so hooked on him.

“Call the number on your screen if you’d like to make a donation, meet the boys, or if you’re interested in adoption. The Pickering Foundation’s development director and her staff of volunteers are manning the phones right now to take your pledge and answer your questions.”

Kira and Melody raised their wands together, twirling them as practiced. “Until the next time we meet,” Melody said, “we wish each and every one of you a generous
heart, a giving spirit, and bright blessings for the Yuletide season.”

The show ended to a deafening round of applause from the ballroom. Logan and Melody went inside, and Bessie was first in line to thank them.

Kira was pleased when Jason directed the orchestra to play and took her in his arms to waltz her around the pool.

“Sorry I’m not smooth. This is about as good as I get on the dance floor. I’m better on the ice.”

“Feels good to me,” Kira said, shivering in his arms.

Jason stroked the side of her breast with a thumb. “Feels good to me, too.”

Since the guests and the cameras were focused on Mel, Kira felt free to indulge in Jason’s seduction.

“Did you realize that we all asked Melody and Logan to visit St. Anthony’s,” Jason said, “and I didn’t even know she had a foundation?”

“Guess it was destiny,” Kira said.

Jason lowered his lashes. “Like us in the rabbit hole.”

Kira gazed into the silver depths of his eyes. Her mother would call them bedroom eyes, and her father would warn her away from him. “I think the rabbit holes were more like—”

“What?” Jason slowed, held her tight, his breath tickling her ear. “What?” he whispered.

“Oh, I don’t know. A natural charmer creating fantasies. A natural seducer setting up a seduction.”

“Hey, who got into bed with whom?” Jason asked.

“I
said
I wanted to cuddle,” Kira said.

Jason wiggled his brows. “And didn’t we ever.”

Kira smiled. “Just remembering gives me a mini . . . you know.”

Jason groaned and slipped his hand between the folds of her full skirts to pull her against him. “Your hair brings out the tempting bits of scarlet in that gown. Have I told you how beautiful you look?”

“Yeah, a couple of times,” she said. “Have I told you that I can feel Harvey knocking at my door, hard?”

“Let me help you take off that dress later and I’ll show you hard.”

Kira sifted her fingers through the hair at Jason’s nape, raising her knee the slightest to tease his erection, the music closing the world out, and them in . . . until the floor disappeared from beneath them and a shock of icy water swallowed them whole.

Kira finally broke the surface and couldn’t see Jason, but when he shot up, everyone applauded.

When had they become the center of attention?

Jason swam over and took her in his arms. “Are you all right?” he asked, holding her to his racing heart.

“S-s-sure,” Kira said, warmed by embarrassment.

Jason looked up and saw the crowd, the cameras, so close, it was a wonder the videographers didn’t fall in the pool with them, Kira thought. She shivered and pushed the hair from her eyes as Jason bent toward her, his lips offering the kiss she had anticipated, and yet—

“Let’s give them something else to talk about,” Jason said, and he kissed her for the first time.

She put herself into the kiss, but it didn’t take long to realize that Jason wasn’t . . . present to the experience.

He was kissing her as if he’d stepped away from himself, as if everything inside him had gone cold and vacant, the way he’d kissed Melody and every model and starlet on that reality show.

The son of a bitch was playing to the cameras. What had he said? Like kissing a rotten rutabaga? Well, now she knew what he meant.

Kira fought his embrace and levered herself, feet against his crotch, to push away from him and swim to the edge of the pool. Jason’s groan of pain was something of a consolation as she fought to keep her cumbrous skirts from swamping her.

Logan pulled her from the water, then Bessie and Melody placed a warm leopard coat around her shoulders.

Jason pulled himself from the pool and stood outside her circle of comforters.

When he cut into the circle and gave her his best TV grin, Kira punched him in the nose.

That night Melody’s gift to St. Anthony’s was the lead story on one channel. But she and Jason had not been overlooked on the others. One news anchor began the story with “NHL’s Best Kisser, Benched.”

The instant media blitz included the bees swarming, the oven exploding, and, praise the goddess, Melody’s gift and challenge grant, and where to send donations.

As far as Kira was concerned, they made too much of her and Jason kissing, of her world-class punch, and even of Jason’s shock and nosebleed.

As far as the foundation was concerned, the publicity would likely be termed either wonderful or horrible, depending on who you talked to, and how they looked at it.