Too Darn Hot (6 page)

Eric shifted position, locking them together hip to hip. His erection throbbed against her belly, and Lina whimpered with the force of the raw need that slammed into her in that instant. At the sound, he tensed, misinterpreting her response, and she knew a moment of panic. She arched against him, grasping his firm buttocks, clinging to him with her hands and mouth, silently beseeching.

He groaned and pressed closer still, their mutual hunger stealing her reason until, breathless and dizzy with need, she tore her mouth from his. She’d never felt more aching, more empty.

He pressed a hot kiss to the side of her neck, wringing a sigh from her. She held on to his shoulders, her head tipped back against the fence, staring up into the inky night sky. Clouds obscured the heavens. No moon...no stars...just a great dark void like the one she was spiraling into.

Her eyes drifted closed as Eric kissed his way across her bare shoulder to the very tip. They flew open again when she felt his teeth—the merest nibble, as if he were tasting her. Her gasp ended on a little shudder of pleasure, and she felt him chuckle softly into her shoulder, his breath warm and tantalizing against her sensitive skin.

God help her, she wanted to make love with him—needed to make love with him. Steve had never made her feel this way.

Eric cupped her cheek, his eyes locked on hers. Helplessly she watched as the soft glaze of passion gradually gave way to frustration and regret. He was pulling away from her, and there was nothing she could do about it.

He braced one arm against the fence and gazed beyond her into the fog-shrouded park. He ran a hand through his dark auburn hair and sighed before glancing back at her.

“This isn’t right,” he murmured.

Lina felt as if she’d been slapped. “That just dawned on you, did it?”

Her voice sounded acerbic even to her own ears. She took a few wobbly steps from him, consumed with shame that, if not for Eric’s sudden attack of conscience, she would willingly have made love with him. It seemed that all he had to do was snap his fingers, and her long-held values—her inviolable rules—vaporized just like that.

She finger-combed her hair and smoothed her clothing, trying to get a handle on her galloping emotions. At last she turned to face him, expecting to see a healthy dose of husbandly contrition in his features. Instead he was looking at her the way she’d looked at that wilted salad two weeks earlier.

He shook his head in wonder—or was it disgust? “Just dawned on me? News flash, Lina.” He gestured toward The Cookhouse. “That guy is with you, not me.”

She blinked. That guy...?

“Let me get this straight,” she said. “You’re talking about Mark?” He was chastising her for messing around behind her supposed date’s back? The unmitigated gall of the man. Where did his wife fit into the picture?

“Unless you have two or three more guys waiting in your car—yeah, I’m talking about Mark.”

She folded her arms over her chest and stared him down. “News flash, Eric. I’m not
married
to Mark.”

He smirked. “So anything goes, is that it?” He started buttoning his shirt.

Lina was speechless with outrage. Intellectually she knew the world was full of men who thought nothing of cheating on their wives, but this display of hypocrisy was not to be believed.

He raised a hand, forestalling further discussion. Dismissing her. “Come for the cooking class if you want. But I warn you, Lina. At the first hint of shrewishness, you’re out on your butt. Don’t underestimate me. I will take great delight in personally making good on that threat.”

And when the time comes, Mr. Reid, I will take great delight in personally informing you whose butt you just threatened.

“Just to set the record straight,” she said, “Mark is not my date. Not in a, you know, girl-guy way.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He’s a friend. A married friend.”

“You’d let that stop you?”

“Yes. Which is more than I can say for you.”

“Me?” He followed her gaze to his wedding band. When his eyes met hers once more, she detected something new there—a glimmer of comprehension. He ran a hand over his jaw. “I just assumed Joy told you about Ruth. It never occurred to me you didn’t know.”

“Know what?” But something in his expression told her.

“I’m a widower. My wife died eighteen months ago.”

“Oh, Eric...I’m sorry. I’m...I just assumed.” Recalling her brusque response when he’d tried to ask her out that first night, she cringed inwardly.

He was quiet for a few moments. Then he said, “It would seem our assumptions got the best of us. What do you say we start over?”

She couldn’t ignore the enticing implication, or the frank interest he radiated.

More than anything, she wanted to respond to that interest. She wanted to say to hell with restraint and professional ethics, and lose herself to the seductive promise in those mocha-java eyes.

She shouldn’t. She wouldn’t. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to burn him off. She pushed her hair behind her ear.

A little smile started at his mouth and lit his eyes. That man’s smile ought to be illegal. She knew he interpreted her silence as a green light. Meanwhile the little traffic cop inside her, the part of her that at any other time would have blown the whistle and put a halt to this doomed flirtation, had suddenly been struck mute.

She took a deep breath and stuck out her hand. “Friends?”

He wrapped his large hand around hers. “Friends.”

Chapter Five

Eric sensed her presence even as he kept his eyes on the photocopied recipes he was collating and stapling. Somehow he knew the instant Lina walked into the kitchen of the Cookhouse, where he was preparing for that evening’s class.

“Hi, Eric.” At Joy’s buoyant greeting, he looked up. She was pulling a bottle of burgundy and two aprons from her enormous shoulder bag. She handed an apron to Lina.

He nodded. “Hi, Joy. Lina.”

Lina returned his greeting, with a quick little smile, before her eyes skipped away. Something about him made her skittish, and he had yet to figure it out. Still, skittishness was preferable to hot and cold running Lina.

When he’d found out why she’d been running hot and cold, he’d felt like an idiot. She’d assumed, quite reasonably, that he was married. At least he’d gotten that straightened out.

Daniel was readying utensils and cutting boards, and Adam was in the process of hauling eight pounds of chicken legs out of one of the enormous steel refrigerators lining a wall.

“Are we the first ones?” Joy asked as she slipped a Paddington Bear bib apron over her head and tied it around her waist.

“You are indeed.” He handed each of them a packet of recipes. When he let his fingers brush Lina’s, she flinched. He indicated the small half apron in her hand. “Quite a fashion statement.”

She inspected the design on it—apparently for the first time. “This is all you could come up with, Joy? Smurfs?” She held the garment gingerly between thumb and forefinger, as if she expected the whimsical blue figures with white hats to suddenly sprout fangs and snap off her fingers.

“Hey, that thing’s a classic!” Joy protested.

“Exactly when does junk cease to be junk and become a classic?”

“I’ve had that apron forever,” Joy proudly announced. “It’s B.G.”

At Eric’s inquisitive look, Lina translated. “Before Gary.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “The detested ex-husband.”

Joy strolled around the center work island—composed of a butcher-block counter and two steel counters arranged in a U shape—checking out the ingredients Eric and the boys were setting out. Ten steel stools had been placed around the work island. “Lina, on the other hand, owns almost nothing that’s B.S.”

Daniel and Adam snickered. Lina sighed, the soul of patience.

“Is that true, Lina?” he asked. “No B.S.?”

She said, “Anything that’s Before Steve would have to be...Good grief. Thirteen years old.”

She drew the apron’s strings behind her waist, but before she could tie a bow, Eric commandeered the task. She tensed and jerked her hands away from his. She was wearing that same stirring scent he remembered from her first visit. He smiled, wondering if there was a perfume called Indignation.

“How long have you been divorced?” he asked.

She hesitated, clearly reluctant to open up to him. He wished he knew why.

“Two years,” Joy supplied. “They met in college.”

“Joy...” Lina’s sapphire eyes shot warning sparks.

“Steve was her first—”

“Joy! I don’t think Eric’s interested in my past, as scintillating as it is.”

“Nonsense.” He grinned. “I love stories of despoiled innocence. So do the boys. Right, guys?” He winked at his sons. “Please continue, Joy.”

“Whose despoiled innocence are we talking about?” a booming male voice demanded from the doorway.

Joy said, “Hi, George. I was wondering if we’d see you tonight.”

George Quinn was a jovial bear of a man, and one of the regulars at Eric’s cooking classes. After introductions had been made, George deposited a bottle of Mexican beer in a refrigerator and donned his own bib apron—an enormous green and white thing festooned with Leprechauns and an invitation to visit the Emerald Isle.

Eric looked from George’s apron to Lina’s as he placed containers of spices on the butcher block. “Tonight anyone wearing pygmies gets to peel potatoes.”

George slathered on a thick brogue and fondly patted his apron. “Potatoes! Well, the little people’ll not be mindin’ that one bit, begorra!”

As Joy tied George’s apron for him, four more students entered. Lina introduced herself to Bill and Barb Harmon, a middle-aged black couple, and to Frank and Irene Duffy, whose matching freckles and orange hair made them look more like siblings than spouses.

While the others flipped through the recipes and discussed them, Lina began a slow perusal of the kitchen. She paused at the bank of refrigerators, where some papers were mounted with magnets.

She turned and smiled. “Who’s the Trekkie?” A poster of the Enterprise adorned the middle fridge.

“Daniel.” Eric cocked his head toward the storage room, where the boy had gone in search of confectioner’s sugar.

Without hesitation she crossed the kitchen and entered the storage room. Eric was near enough to hear snippets of conversation, and intrigued enough to feel no compunction about eavesdropping. She seemed to be speaking to his son as an equal, not patronizing him as most adults tended to do with kids. They were laughing. Eric strained to hear, and was able to make out references to James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard. He smiled. Trek talk.

The two abruptly exited the storage room, nearly mowing him down. He answered the suspicious twinkle in Lina’s eye with a sheepish grin.

“So you’re a Trekkie, too,” he ventured.

“Have been my whole life. Daniel favors the New Generation, but I’m still hooked on the original three seasons. Call me an old fogy.”

“Never.”

She was dressed more casually than he’d ever seen her, in a light pink polo shirt and black jeans. The Smurfs cavorting below her waist added just the right touch of
je ne sais quoi.
He was glad they’d made up and he wouldn’t have to follow through on his threat to toss her out on her butt. It looked too darn good in those snug jeans. His gaze lowered to her feet, clad in black leather Keds.

He placed a hand over his heart.
“Quel dommage!”

She grinned crookedly, obviously remembering his comment last Saturday about her sexy shoes.
I think if I ever saw you in sneakers, I’d cry.

“Am I in the right place?” a female voice called from the doorway.

The speaker was a pretty young woman in her early to mid twenties, with long, honey blond hair and a perfect, petite figure. Her huge green eyes swept the room before lighting on Eric. She smiled.

He extended his hand. “You are if you’re looking for the cooking class. I’m Eric Reid.”

“Hi. Amy Dalton.” Her soft hand lightly squeezed his. “I guess you don’t remember, but we met a couple of weeks ago when I had dinner here.” She flipped her hair behind her shoulder and smiled again. He smiled back and watched her cheeks pinken.

Hmmm...

He handed Amy a pack of recipes and studied her, covertly, as he counted tomatoes. Six, seven, nice legs, eight...

Lina and Joy found seats together, while Amy pounced on the stool nearest to Eric.

“French bistro cuisine is really French home-style cooking,” Eric began. “The meal we’re making tonight is fairly heavy, more suited to fall or winter, perhaps, than late spring, but I think you’ll like it.”

Lina was listening attentively, like a good little pupil. The Harmons and Duffys were already beginning to crack jokes, as usual.

“Our appetizer is tapenade—page one in your recipes—which we’ll serve with toasted rounds of French bread. The main ingredient in this spread is oil-cured olives.” He tipped the bowl of glossy, wrinkled black olives to show the group. “One of you lucky people will get to pit these.”

He noticed Lina’s dark eyebrows rise as she read the ingredients—in appreciation or distress, he couldn’t tell. He wondered if she liked capers and anchovies.

He continued, “On the next page you’ll find
soupe poireaux, pommes de terre, et lard fume.
”

Amy looked aghast. “Lard?”

He translated. “Bacon. This is a thick, chunky soup with leeks, potatoes, and bacon.” He lifted a great hunk of slab bacon with the rind still on it, for all to see.

He went on to explain how to carefully clean the sand out of the leeks. As he spoke, he lifted one and ran his fingers over the smooth green and white vegetable. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Lina watching intently. He remembered how he’d caught her staring at his hands that first night when he cut the pear....

His train of thought vaporized.

“What’s this?” Lina asked, lifting a celerylike vegetable from a huge bowl.

“Fennel. Here, smell.” Wrapping his fingers around hers, he urged her to sniff the stalk. God help him, she could even make the act of smelling a vegetable look sensual.