Hot to the Touch (8 page)

“I’m meeting friends for a beer later. Going to skip the weights today.” He hadn’t been planning to meet friends or skip the weights, but he wasn’t in the mood to listen to Missy’s cheerful chatter. He could still lift at home.

“Oh, too bad.” She sidled closer, tipped her head to look up at him coyly. “Listen, I was wondering…”

His body tensed. Back a few days, he would have been eager to hear whatever she was about to say. Now every instinct was telling him to make his escape.

“If you’d like to have a drink together sometime?”

There it was. The invitation he’d been planning to extend. He should go out with her. He had no reason to think The Woman wanted to see him again, or that she’d be able to find him even if she did. Troy wasn’t quite pathetic enough to sit hopefully at Esmee every night until she happened in again, though he was so taken with her it had crossed his mind.

Going out with Missy was a good idea. An excellent way to loosen the unfortunate vise grip this unnamed lover had his brain and balls in.

He opened his mouth to accept, but at the last millisecond his brain did an about-face without his permission. “Thanks, Missy, but I’ve just started dating someone and want to see where that goes.”

What the hell had he just said?

“Ah. Okay. I completely understand.” She pasted a smile back on her disappointed face and nudged him with her hard shoulder. “Let me know if it doesn’t work out, though, okay?”

He grinned, feeling like a lying piece of dirt. “Absolutely. Thanks again for the invite.”

“Sure.” She gave a sexy little wave and walked toward the women’s locker room, her virtually fat-free ass swinging invitingly.

What kind of idiot was he? She was a nice woman, seemed levelheaded and even-tempered, far from making the scenes Debby loved or playing his recent lover’s frustrating mind games. At very least they could have had a pleasant evening. By clinging to his fantasy of wild, lifelong passion, he risked setting himself up for a lifetime of hurt and alone, and a lifetime of hurt and alone didn’t appeal to him.

Except…how could he force himself to be eager giving someone routinely attractive to him a chance now that he knew it was possible to catch fire from a first glance?

He trudged to the locker room, showered, dressed and drove slowly home to Whitefish Bay, dragged himself inside his house, dragged into the kitchen to feed Dylan, who followed him around, tail wagging sympathetically. Dragged himself into a chair to stuff food down his throat. Dragged himself to the living room to find nothing he wanted to watch on TV. Dragged himself into his bedroom to be completely uninterested in a vastly complicated murder mystery novel.

C’mon, man.
Troy was acting like a lovesick teenager. So he couldn’t have That Woman. There were others. Single ones, desirable ones. He was paying to be part of the Milwaukeedates site so he could find those women easily. Sitting here moping was bull crap.

He fired up his computer, logged on to Milwaukeedates.com.
Man, twenty-six, seeking woman, twenty-three to thirty-three, within fifty miles of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin. No smoking. Pictures only.
Go.

The list came up, thumbnail photos with member-chosen nicknames and a few bits of basic information next to each. He’d already seen most of the profiles on the first page, so he clicked an icon to re-sort the list so the latest subscribers would show first.

The machine did its work; the list reappeared.

At the first picture, a woman who called herself Foodie101, Troy did a double take, then stared, mouth hanging open in a cliché of astonishment.

Her. What the hell?

Emotion punched him in the solar plexus, and it wasn’t pretty. He’d been trying to console himself with reasons she might have run, telling himself she was a free agent, not out for any kind of entanglement, uninterested in more than one night with a man. That it wasn’t him, it was her.

When that didn’t do much to quell his obsession, he’d told himself what they had was special, and maybe even though she’d panicked initially, eventually she’d move heaven and earth to find him again, because there was no way anyone could squander the chance to explore a connection so instantaneous and so powerful.

All of that sounded good, and he’d clung to it. Until now. Because here she was, the woman who’d wanted to avoid even exchanging names, right there in a public forum trying to find the love of her life.

So it wasn’t a matter of her not wanting a man, not wanting a relationship, not wanting more than one night.

It was a matter of her not wanting
him.

DARCY FLIPPED ON THE LIGHT AND stood for a moment, surveying her neat entranceway and small living room beyond. It was later than she usually got home. She’d been reluctant to leave Gladiolas, kept making excuses to stay, until the staff was ready to throw her out. Usually, her cozy matchbox of a ranch house in the working-class Milwaukee neighborhood of Washington Heights represented peaceful sanctuary, a place to relax, do a yoga or another of her workout tapes, let her mind wander over a cup of coffee, thinking of ingredients, flavors and techniques she could combine into a new recipe and a new page for her Chef Bible file.

Tonight, in the bone-chilliness of early June, restlessness had followed her home.

Shivering, she kicked off the black flats she kept in her office at Gladiolas to change into, since the shoes she wore in the restaurant kitchen were unspeakably dirty by the end of the evening. Down the hall to her bathroom, she stripped and immersed herself in the brisk, efficient shower she’d gotten down to a water-conserving, three-minute science, emerging refreshed and relieved of the overload of kitchen odors.

After such a crappy start to the day with her sous chef late and the delivery mix-up, the afternoon and evening had gone fine. Ken had shown up apologetically—at the last possible second—with enough celeriac to satisfy her and the diners who’d ordered it. The special—Fishing for Compliments—trout with roasted artichokes and pecans had been a hit. Right now she was supposed to be working out more summer specials, thinking sunshine, hot weather and long, lazy days on the beach.

Dressed in her favorite nightgown—full-length soft cream flannel trimmed with blue—and its matching blue fleece robe, which she’d generally put away by this time of year, she started the coffee and visited her chocolate stash for three Hershey’s Special Dark miniatures. Less than three wasn’t enough. More than three and she risked inviting a binge like the ones she used to have after a night of excessive partying, when her sugar-craving body would demand a whole bag.

Those days were behind her, stopped by her beloved late boss and mentor, Chef Paul, at the restaurant Gold Bistro where she got her start. He’d casually let drop one evening that if she wanted to stay a dishwasher, coming in to work drunk would be fine, but if she wanted to become a chef, she better cut out that behavior immediately. Since Darcy had only given fantasy time to that dream in her most secret heart of hearts, she’d been shocked into silence. And sobriety. Good thing, because with the alcoholic gene in her family, she could easily have landed herself in serious trouble like her sister, Brit, now nearly a decade into recovery.

Shortly after that conversation, Chef Paul had given her a thrilling tryout on the kitchen line, then followed that test with a promise that if she kept her grades up in high school, he could see about recommending her for a scholarship to the hospitality program at the University of Wisconsin. From then on, her life had direction and meaning, and she’d blossomed so far beyond where she thought she’d end up that she still had to pinch herself sometimes.

Before Chef Paul, no one had ever treated her as if she had the potential to be anything but a pain in the ass, a reputation that she’d done her very best to live up to. When he died, she’d grieved more for him than the loss of anyone or anything else, before or since.

Decaf brewed, she poured herself a cup and took it over to her laptop, set by the kitchen window with a view of her minuscule backyard—fifteen minutes to rake or mow. One by one her friends had paired off and moved farther out to bigger yards and houses that would hold their growing families. That life wasn’t for her. She loved living in the city, loved her private rhythms and space, loved to feel the beat of humanity right outside her walls.

Her email program opened and loaded new messages; she scanned the list. The first was the forwarded profile from Marie, which she deleted unopened as she promised herself, though admittedly she did have a twinge of curiosity. One from Brit, one from a guy she used to work with, one from…who was this? [email protected]. Hunterman? Below that, another. From [email protected].

Spam? These weren’t from Marie, but had someone hacked Marie’s site and generated crap mail using a stolen address book?

Darcy opened the first email. The picture of a guy leaped out at her, model-handsome, caught by the camera in a ridiculous top-of-the-mountain, look-how-rugged-I-am pose.

Hi there. Thanks for the ‘hello,’ I’m glad you found me. I’m interested right back atcha. You are very good-looking and obviously articulate and intelligent. I’m a wine salesman, and would love to tell you more about what I do over a glass of fine Merlot. Or if you’d rather keep it to email for now, tell me about yourself. I’d love to know more.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Chaz.

Chaz?
Chaz as in,
Ew, his grandfather probably founded the Milwaukee Yacht Club?
The guy Marie was trying to shove down Darcy’s throat? What the hell was he talking about? Thanks for what, “hello”? What made him think she was articulate and/or intelligent?

How did he get her email address?

Marie? No, no way. Marie liked to meddle, but even she wouldn’t stoop to something that invasive and obnoxious.

But then…who was this other person?

She opened the second email from TallGuy; her heart started pounding violently at the same time the rest of her froze solid.

Him. The picture was unmistakable, and even looking into a digital replica of his eyes Darcy felt that crazy burst of energy.

I want to see you again.

Thrills. An amusement park ride of them roller coastering all over her body.

I want to see you again.
That was it. Short and sweet. Not asking permission, not begging, not apologizing, not negotiating. Stating a want. Leaving it at that. Hers to do with as she chose.

Oh, my lord.

Her in-box notifier chimed, startling her back to the real world and this bizarre email intrusion. She gasped and put a hand to her temple. What was this? Another
three
emails from Milwaukeedates. Three introductory “hellos” from three more guys. It was almost as if she were signed up on the site, and men were able to find her and—

No.
No way.

She shoved her chair back from the table, pounced on her phone and dialed, not caring what time Marie went to bed or what might be a decent or polite hour to call.

“Hey, Darcy, what’s—”

“Why the hell am I getting emails from Milwaukeedates.com guys? Specifically from Chaz, who you were just trying to fix me up with, but also this other person, TallGuy.”

“Troy?” Marie gasped. “
Troy
wrote to you?”

Something turned ice-cold in Darcy’s chest. “Troy?”

“Justin and Candy’s friend. He signed up months ago, in February. I guess he found your profile. I was only going to leave it up a while longer, to make sure Chaz—”

“That guy, TallGuy, is
Justin and Candy’s friend Troy?
”

“Yes.” She sounded surprised, undoubtedly by Darcy’s incredulous and slightly hysterical reaction. “That’s him. Isn’t he gorgeous? Get now why Candy always fans herself when she talks about him?”

“Yeah. Um, I guess.” She could barely think, barely get her mouth to form coherent words. In some sickening coincidence, she’d unwittingly slept with someone her friends all knew. If they found out, the matchmaking would be relentless.

So. They wouldn’t find out. She wouldn’t see him again, and that would be that. As long as he didn’t find out who she was…