Too Darn Hot Page 6

After a moment he murmured, “Fair enough,” and leaned closer. If she let him kiss her, not only would she say yes to the Yankees game, she’d probably jump him right there in his office. Deciding to git while the gittin’ was good, she spun on her heel and hustled back to the safety of the kitchen.

  Chapter Six

  “Give it up, Etsuko. I’m not selling you my car.” Lina eased into traffic on Queens Boulevard.

  Etsuko Flanagan, Bon Vivant’s executive food editor, had met Lina and Joy at their Forest Hills apartment, and now the three of them were headed out to Rocky Bay and The Cookhouse in Lina’s mint 1966 candy-apple red Mustang with a black vinyl roof. It was eight P.M. and not yet fully dark on this, one of the longest days of the year.

  The middle-aged Japanese woman snorted at Lina’s mulishness. “I’ll up it a grand, but that’s my final offer. Mind if I smoke?” She’d already slipped a pack of Virginia Slims and a gold lighter out of her sleek designer handbag.

  Lina said, “Put those coffin nails back, Etsuko. As I’ve already explained, this vehicle’s a virgin—it’s never been sullied by smoke, since the day my uncle Andy drove it out of the lot over forty years ago.”

  “Virginity’s overrated,” Etsuko grumbled, but she stuffed the butts back in her bag. “Twelve hundred more, and that’s final.”

  Joy spoke up from the backseat. “Is she always this irascible, Lina?”

  “Only when she’s awake.”

  “Only when I’m hungry,” Etsuko griped. “So. This Chuck Wagon place is a happening thing?”

  “Cookhouse,” Lina corrected. “And yes, it’s a happening thing.”

  Joy concurred that the eatery was well worth reviewing.

  “Good. We’ll put it in the October issue. Along with that Italian place in the Village...?”

  “Marcello’s,” Lina supplied.

  “Right. And what about Honeysuckle? Those three’d make a nice mix.”

  “I told you, Honeysuckle’s a lost cause. Too much tofu and not enough taste.”

  “Hey, don’t knock tofu,” Etsuko said in a rare display of Japanese pride.

  “I’ve got a cute little Greek place in mind. Brooklyn. Practically under the bridge. Trust me.”

  “Don’t I always?” Etsuko opened her purse. “Can I smoke?”

  Lina was merging with traffic on the parkway. “Yes, you can smoke, Etsuko, and no, you may not.” She reached over and snapped her friend’s purse shut.

  Joy said, “The Cookhouse is a striking place, Etsuko. Visually, I mean. It’s not just the art on the walls. It’s in all the little details. Like the funky salt and pepper shakers. The chef’s late wife collected them wherever she went.”

  Lina asked, “Is she responsible for the art, too?”

  “Well, yeah, she and Eric developed the whole idea of the place together, but she never got to see it—she died a few months before The Cookhouse opened.”

  “Crappy luck,” Etsuko said.

  Lina found herself asking, “How did she die?”

  “It was really tragic. Ruth interrupted a robbery in a convenience store. From what I understand, she went in for a carton of milk and a loaf of bread. The creep who was holding the place up panicked and shot her. They never caught him.”

  “Oh, that’s awful,” Lina said. “He must’ve been devastated. And the boys...” How much strength it must have taken for Eric to pick up the pieces of his life and pursue the dream he and his late wife had started.

  “The scuttlebutt is...” Joy leaned forward and grabbed the back of Lina’s seat. “Not long before she died, Eric caught Ruth in bed with an old boyfriend.”

  Lina gasped. “She was unfaithful? To Eric? What would make a woman cheat on a man like that?”

  Her passengers looked at each other.

  “I mean...” she stammered. “Not that I would...not that I care...”

  “Oh, this is gonna be good,” Etsuko cackled, obviously enjoying her friend’s embarrassment.

  Joy slapped Lina’s shoulder. “I didn’t know you had a thing for Eric.”

  “See, this surprises me,” Etsuko said. “I thought roommates had regular girl-talk sessions for that sort of thing. You know—sitting around in your jammies, painting each other’s toenails and talking about boys?”

  Joy said, “She never even asked me about him.”

  “Hell no, I didn’t ask you about him,” Lina fumed. “I didn’t want it to end up on the six-o’clock news.”

  “Oh! That’s not fair.”

  “Is, too. A busybody like you? I’d have never heard the end of it if I’d said word one about Eric, and you know it.”

  Etsuko sobered. “Listen, Lina, I know I don’t have to remind you to keep your hands off the hot chef. When it comes to the owner of a restaurant you’re evaluating, even the merest hint of involvement could blow up in your face.”

  As it had for Mercy Litton. Not that Mercy ever dated a restaurateur, as far as Lina knew. But bribe taking was even worse. And both were violations of the same basic canon, after all: impartiality.

  Keeping a professional distance had never been a problem for Lina before she met Chef Reid.

  She gripped the steering wheel tightly. “You’re right, Etsuko. You don’t have to remind me.”

  Joy asked, “Is he interested in you?”

  “Joy...”

  “Did he ask you out?”

  She sighed. “Yes.”

  “Jeepers!” Joy sat back. “What a shame. The first guy to spin your wheels in two years, and it’s ‘look, don’t touch.’”

  Etsuko drawled, “Can’t wait to meet this guy. According to Bob, he’s a—now, how did he put it?—an insolent boor.”

  Lina jerked toward Etsuko, nearly careening into the next lane of traffic. “Talk about a busybody. What possessed you to fill your nephew’s head with all that crap about how horny I am?”

  Etsuko grinned like a Cheshire cat. “My nephew? I prefer to think of Bob Flanagan as my sister-in-law’s evil spawn. Was it really awful?” She cackled again, with malicious glee.

  “I’ll get you for that one, Etsuko.”

  “Ooh...I’m shaking.” She opened her purse. “Mind if I smoke?”

  *

  Lina couldn’t remember when she’d been more uptight.

  Eric was politely attentive to the three of them during their brief interactions that evening, while it was all Lina could do to maintain her composure. She felt like a twelve-year-old with her first crush, not a comfortable feeling for someone accustomed to calling the shots in most every situation she found herself in.

  Her dining companions didn’t help her jangled nerves. Joy and Etsuko hung on every word that passed between Lina and Eric, like mastiffs leaping at meat scraps, storing up juicy tidbits for the long ride home.

  Eric stopped by the table one last time while they were finishing dessert. “How do you like the bourbon pecan tart, Lina?”

  She groaned rapturously, scraping the last flecks off her plate. “I have never tasted anything like this. You’re a master with desserts, Eric, but this one is not to be believed.” She licked her fork clean.

  Etsuko’s tone was arid. “I think she likes it.”

  Lina felt his warm hand on her back, just for an instant, just long enough to make her nerves run a relay race. “We aim to please,” he said, and headed for the next table.

  As they left The Cookhouse, Lina turned back from the door and caught Eric’s eye across the gallery. He held her gaze for one long, sizzling heartbeat, before disappearing through the door to the kitchen.

  *

  Lina awoke at three A.M., breathless and disoriented. She’d had an erotic dream, fading fast, in which Chef Reid devised imaginative uses for his sinfully luscious bourbon pecan tart.

  Perhaps it was just as well she couldn’t recall the details.

  She turned on the lamp, swung her legs off the bed, and located her slippers. She knew from experience that the best way to purge a disturbing dream was to get fully awake and
apply her gray matter to the rigors of work. She made a pot of coffee and finished polishing her review of The Cookhouse—in retrospect, a less-than-ideal distraction.

  Later that morning when she opened her apartment door to retrieve the Sunday Times, she found a white bakery box sitting atop the newspaper. Inside was an entire bourbon pecan tart.

  Chapter Seven

  A gull glided overhead, its black-tipped wings outstretched, its white and gray body stark against the deep azure of a warm, cloudless morning. It swooped low over the white sand before a few powerful beats of its wings caught an air current and its sleek body soared skyward once more. Its fellows reconnoitered in a cluster near the water’s edge, scavenging for breakfast. Their sharp cries and the muffled snore of the waves were the only sounds as Lina made her way across the beach.

  A lively ocean breeze tossed her hair and molded the soft cotton of her sleeveless white T-shirt and cutoff shorts to her body. She carried her white canvas sneakers, luxuriating in the feel of warm sand under her bare feet.

  When she’d tried calling Eric at his home in Rocky Bay, Adam had answered the phone. He’d told her his dad had escaped on his usual solitary Sunday morning sojourn to the local beach. Within forty-five minutes Lina was pulling into the tiny parking area next to Rocky Bay Beach. She’d parked her new gold Subaru next to a battered blue Volvo station wagon.

  She’d peered into the Volvo’s littered interior: an empty chips bag and soda bottle, two cardboard coffee cups, and a couple of unfolded maps. The contents of the trunk were more revealing: a baseball, wooden bat, well-worn mitt, insulated chest, tackle box, three fishing poles, and a cardboard carton containing model rocket parts.

  Certainly looked promising. She’d sobered thinking how difficult it must be for a widowed father to raise two active teenage boys on his own.

  Scanning the beach now, she saw an elderly couple ensconced on sand chairs, fully dressed and soaking up the warmth of the sun, and a well-oiled redheaded, red-skinned youth broiling himself on a beach towel.

  But no Eric Reid.

  The bourbon pecan tart Eric had sent to her apartment—or had he left it there himself?—sat on the floor of her car. This was a first for her—never before had she been wooed with baked goods. As touched as she was by the gesture, she had no choice but to return it. She’d always been so conscientious, scrupulously avoiding even the appearance of favoritism.

  As she crossed the sand, Lina nodded good morning to the couple on the sand chairs, with their paperbacks and matching Mets caps. She shielded her eyes from the sun and peered to the left, at the uninhabited expanse of white sand on this small, out-of-the-way beach.

  To the right the shoreline curved around a beach-grass-studded dune. She ambled in that direction, carefully avoiding the more dangerous-looking shell shards. Rounding the dune, she watched three gulls squabble over a crab carcass. A flash of blue about a hundred yards down the beach caught her attention, and she stopped. She squinted to make out the form loping toward her.

  “Good Lord,” she whispered.

  As Eric closed the distance between them in ground-eating strides, jogging along the tide line, she stared, mesmerized. Her greedy eyes took in every detail, from his sun-burnished, breeze-ruffled hair to his long, powerful legs and bare feet. Above royal blue running shorts hugging lean hips, his broad chest was bare. A wave broke and surged onshore, to tease his toes and lick away the footprints stretching behind him in the wet sand.

  Although his eyes were shielded by dark glasses, Lina could tell he hadn’t yet noticed her. All concentration was on his run. She stood close to the dune, out of his direct line of sight. As he neared her, she noticed the graceful motion of his arms, the sleek ripple of shoulder and chest muscles, the way his sweat-sheened body gleamed in the sunlight. Not once did he falter, his body as smoothly efficient as a well-oiled engine.

  Make that a warm, supple, thoroughly male engine, Lina thought, remembering all too vividly the intoxicating thrill of his aroused body pressed against hers during their stolen minutes behind The Cookhouse...the whisper-soft seduction of his lips against her bare shoulder under the starless cloak of night.

  Groaning, she tried to redirect her thoughts to the purpose of this excursion. When he was about fifty feet from her, she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and pushed her hair behind her ear.

  His head pivoted in her direction. His churning legs lost their rhythm and the well-oiled engine stumbled to a graceless stop. A slow smile spread on his face. Gesturing for her to follow, he turned and jogged away from her, disappearing behind the dune.

  She followed the curve of the beach, emerging at last in a secluded nook tucked into the sheltering embrace of high, sloping ridges of sand. The breeze was minimal here, the sun now almost directly overhead, bathing the entire cove in the crystalline light of early summer.

  Here Eric had left a large yellow beach towel and a small plastic cooler, along with a gray T-shirt and white sneakers. His back was to her as he removed his sunglasses and wiped his face and chest with the towel. He extracted a bottle of ice water from the cooler and tipped back his head for a long swallow.

  Lina hated the way her breath grew shallow at the sight of Eric’s barely covered body, hated the way she couldn’t keep her gaze from dropping to zero in on his well-shaped buns. The thin blue nylon of his shorts served more to enhance than conceal what lay beneath. With merciless acuity she recalled their encounter behind the restaurant, and the way his denim-clad muscles had tightened and flexed when she grabbed his bottom to pull him closer.

  She dropped her sneakers to the sand and shoved her hands in the pockets of her cutoffs, fighting a crazy impulse to reacquaint herself with the feel of him. A gull shrieked and swooped in low, startling her, and she laughed nervously. He dropped the bottle back into the cooler.

  She broke the silence. “This is a lovely little cove. Do you come here often?”

  He gave her that toe-curling smile. “If you’re trying to pick me up, you’ll have to do better than that.” He squatted beside the cooler and struggled with the release catch. “I hate using this contraption, but when I don’t, the gulls have a feast. The minute I turn my back, bags and wrappers get torn open, food goes flying. It’s not a pretty sight.” He fished out a foil-wrapped parcel and wagged it at her. “Have you had breakfast?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’ll share my Fluffernutter with you.” He unwrapped the sandwich.

  “I don’t believe it.” Peanut butter and sticky white goo—Marshmallow Fluff—oozed from between slices of white bread. “It is a Fluffernutter! I didn’t think they even made that stuff anymore.”

  She joined him on the large towel, facing him cross-legged, and accepted the half sandwich he offered. “Chef Reid’s secret ingredient revealed at last.” She turned it this way and that, sniffed it, and took a tentative bite. It was delicious. “Takes me back to my youth.”

  He said, “When you have kids, you rediscover the damnedest things.” His gaze lit on her mouth. She stopped chewing. He reached across and scooped a bit of fluff from the corner of her mouth with his index finger. He touched it to her lips, and she opened them.

  The stuff stuck to his skin like glue. Lina would have liked nothing better than to take his fingertip into her mouth and suck it clean. Opting for a more dignified approach, she nibbled ineffectively at it. His skin tasted better than the marshmallow.

  Eric appeared amused as he examined the inadequate results of her efforts. He finished the job, licking his finger clean. When he dropped his hand, her eyes remained riveted on the faint scar on his bottom lip. At last she raised her eyes to his. Say something, she commanded herself.

  “How did you get the scar?”

  He touched the tip of his tongue to the vertical line on one side of his bottom lip. “A bike accident. On my tenth birthday.”

  “Ouch. Happy birthday.”

  “It could’ve been worse. I was lucky. Got skinned up pretty bad, though. N
othing serious, but I looked like hell and scared the bejesus out of my folks.”

  In the unforgiving sunlight and so close to him, she could see every crease in the spray of little lines that framed his eyes. She liked those creases.

  He chucked the last bit of his sandwich across the sand, where a gull quickly pounced on it, and leapt to his feet. “Let’s go for a swim.”

  Lina followed Eric’s lead and fed the last of her Fluffernutter to the voracious birds. “Aren’t you supposed to wait a half hour after eating?” She let him pull her to her feet. “Won’t our guts twist up or something?”

  “What can I tell you? I like to live dangerously. Good thing you wore a suit.”

  He was staring at her white T-shirt, where the outline of her bikini top was clearly visible. He raised his eyes to her face and grinned shamelessly.

  “Okay, but if I turn into shark bait—” she pulled off the shirt “—I’m dragging you down with me.”

  “Fair enough.”

  She felt his eyes on her as she dropped her cutoffs to the towel. It was the first time she’d worn the bandanna-printed red and white bikini. With its ultra-high-cut legs, it showed more of her bottom than she was accustomed to displaying.

  “Isn’t the water cold this early in the season?” she asked as they strode toward the ocean. When her toes encountered the wet sand, she scuttled back. Yikes!

  “Don’t think cold,” he said. “Think bracing. Invigorating.”

  “Right.”

  “Last one in—”

  She didn’t wait for him to finish, but barreled into the ocean at full speed. The shock of the freezing water nearly unbalanced her. Sheer momentum—and pride—kept her legs moving even as the “bracing” cold squeezed a howl of outrage from her lungs. Not one to back down from a challenge, she set her sights on the wave cresting a few yards away and dived headlong into the curl of water.

  In that moment she knew they were all wrong about hell.

  Hell is cold.

  *

  Eric surfaced near Lina, gasping for breath. Okay, he thought, so perhaps “bracing” didn’t quite cover it. “Startling,” maybe. “Coronary-inducing” was probably closer to the truth.