Page 51 of Sexy as Sin
Brett reached across her and tipped in a few drops just as a hiss and a puff announced the arrival of a cloud of steam, and she laid her head back, breathed in the scent of baby powder and flowers, and said, “It’s meant to be an aphrodisiac, ylang-ylang. Sandalwood in here, too, besides orange blossom and rose. Nice. Pity you’ll never want me again.”
He said, “Mm,” smiled some more, and put an arm around her. “I’ll give you the rest of the night off, maybe.”
“Cocky, mate,” she said, but rested her head on his shoulder anyway, because it was there, and it was so solid.
“Definitely.” This time, she could hear the smile. “When I first saw you, I thought—strong. Beautiful. Capable. Took me a little while to see the feminine side. It’s like a present I keep getting to unwrap all over again.”
“Never had a manicure, though.” She was getting sleepy. This fragrant steam—it was bliss. “Never had a purse collection. Barely had a purse. My uncle was a sergeant in the Army. My aunt gardens and raises chickens and hard men. Dunno if she’s ever had a manicure, either. I’m betting ‘no.’”
“Is that the definition?” He kissed her on the temple and smoothed her hair back, and she let her body melt into the warmth. “Because I’d say it’s French toast and flowers, and a pretty dress on a pretty girl. The way you smile at me, the way you laugh, and the way you make me feel like a man.”
It wasn’t fair. She needed to keep her composure, and her distance. Most of all, though, she needed to go to sleep. It had been a bad, bad night, and she had so much to deal with. So why, when she was wrapped up in his arms once again, between cool, crisp white cotton sheets with a thread count far above her pay grade, the open window letting in a breeze that carried off all the worst parts of the day, did she feel like sparkles and unicorns?
Like life was a rainbow, and it was beautiful?
It was morning now, though, and she had things to do. She used Brett’s toothbrush again, dressed in her clothes from the evening before, which he’d laid over the end of the bed—she wished he’d stop being so perfect, because it was confusing her—and went out in search of him. Him, and a cup of tea.
He wasn’t in his office, and he wasn’t in the living room. Outside, then? She made her cuppa, took a sip, found her tote bag, and located a hair elastic. Which was in a clear plastic food storage bag along with her phone and wallet. She should get a purse, if she were going to spend time with a multi-millionaire, but this was so much more practical. You could see everything in it, and when it got dirty, you swapped it out for a new one. How good was that? She twisted her hair into a knot, fastened it with the elastic, took her tea, and went out onto the front porch.
Brett was in a basket chair with a cup of coffee and his laptop in front of him, his fingers moving fast, looking completely focused. She asked, “You busy?”
He said, “One sec,” hit a few more keys, shut the lid, and said, “Nope,” and she felt a surge of warmth, somewhere down deep. “Come give me a kiss and tell me how you’re feeling.”
She set her mug down beside his, and he put an arm around her waist, pulled her to sit on his good thigh, and kissed her. Slow and sweet and soft, tasting like coffee with cream. She had one arm around his shoulders to keep her balance, her toes pushing off the stone-floored porch, and the other hand around his head, and he had both hands on her like that was where he wanted them.
“You know,” she said when he let go of her mouth long enough to allow her to say it, “this was one of the first things I thought about you. That you’d like a woman in your lap.”
His smile was moonlight on dark water. “I know I like you there.”
“Likely to hurt you, though,” she said, and stood up. “I’m feeling better, just a bit on the fragile side, and it’s after eight. I need to ring the hospital and ask about those two people.”
“I checked,” he said. “The pregnant one, whose name is Cherie—she’s going home. The older lady’s better off, too, though she’s still there. Stable, which is good.”
The relief had her sitting down and reaching for her tea. “Good. I have two missed calls from Amanda as well. I want a moment to think, though, before I ring her back. Now that I’m feeling better andcanthink. I’m going in to work after I get some toast in my stomach, by the way. I always bounce back fast.”
Brett looked like he wanted to say something about that, but he didn’t. She was glad. She said, “Only two things make sense. The icing on the cake or the pizza, and only one of those makesrealsense. I couldn’t have got that sick from a couple bites of veggies or salad, even if they’d been affected. Carrots and parsnips and pumpkin, sweet potatoes and agrias—potatoes—that’s what I roasted. You’re peeling them first, which would remove any toxins. The only way they could’ve caused those symptoms is if they were precut or the potatoes had been green. I’d never have used a potato that had turned green. Not possible.”
“Lettuce?” he suggested. “Seems I’m always reading about bagged lettuce and food poisoning.”
“E. coli and salmonella,” she agreed. “Which is why I don’t buy bagged greens. The biggest risk is when the leaves are damaged. The juices from the cut ends allow the bacteria to multiply, which is one reason to eat the whole bag as soon as you can after you open it, by the way. You can get it when you harvest greens as well, just from those same cut ends at the base of the leaves, but the fresher it is, the less the chance of that. Freshness isn’t just about taste, or even about nutrition. I bought all the veggies Saturday morning from my best organic supplier, and he’d just harvested the greens. That’s fresh. I’ve been in his veggie beds, and I’ve seen him harvesting. The timing’s wrong as well.” Brett didn’t say anything, but the tilt of his head told her he was listening, and she went on. She needed to talk it out, and he always asked the right questions. “Twelve hours to get sick from salmonella. Days, usually, for E. coli and listeria. It was too fast. A few hours. Only a couple things that can be.”
“Lamb?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Again—E. coli would be the only real possibility, and lamb’s safe cooked rare. The farmer’s careful, and so is the butcher. I had two bites at most, too. It wasn’t the lamb. The sweet was hummingbird cake. Listeria’s one possibility, from the cream cheese, which I don’t buy in packets. I buy it from an organic dairy instead. The taste is night and day. Again, though, listeria takes too long to develop. The other possibility there is staph. That’s definitely possible.”
“From...” Brett said.
“Food handling. I didn’t make a mistake, though the cheese maker could’ve. The milk to make the cheese was pasteurized, but an infected food handler? That could be it. I tasted only a couple bits of icing, though, to make sure I had the sweetening right. Staph wouldn’t affect everybody, mostly people who are already vulnerable for some other reason, and it turns up fast and causes those symptoms, so that’s plausible. Nausea and vomiting, which ticks the boxes. The cake itself isn’t possible, because the only thing that could’ve done it was the pineapple, and I cut it myself. Mashed bananas, toasted macadamia nuts, and unsweetened coconut aren’t going to make people ill, and neither are cooked eggs or oil or spices and vanilla. Flour and sugar? No. Besides, I only tasted for sweetening before I baked it. That isn’t enough.” Here came the truth. “If it’s staph, we’ll know it, because everybody who got sick will have tested positive, and if thatisit, it’ll be hard to prove whose fault it was. Small-batch cheese, and with no widespread infection across distributors, you don’t have a convenient trace back to a packaged-goods producer. The only other possibility is the goat cheese, which came from a different dairy, or the mushrooms on the pizza. Any of those would be bad. Correction. Any of those would be terrible.”
An hour later, having left Brett looking resigned but not happy, she arrived at Nourish to find three ovens and two burners going, Amanda whisking meatball dipping sauce and looking angry, Jamie stirring pots on the stove with both hands and looking sulky, Crystal using tongs to remove chocolate shortbread shells onto racks and looking gently martyred, like she thought she was Cinderella, and a stranger half-inside the walk-in cooler, a woman with a too-thin nose, too-narrow eyebrows, an iPad, and a general air of officiousness, who said “Government” all the way.
Amanda said, as sharply as in her messages, though the content was exactly opposite, “You cannot be here, Willow. The Food Authority prohibits working with food while ill. You know better.” Which wasn’t what she’d said last night, but was clearly, from the glance Amanda shot the woman, aimed at the iPad bearer.
“I’m no longer ill,” Willow said, keeping it calm. She may have done a little channeling of one Mr. Brett Hunter in order to succeed with that. “I’ll be wearing a mask and gloves, though, just in case.” She washed and dried her hands, then went to a cupboard and got them down, not waiting for an objection.
Ms. Thin Eyebrows said, her voice as hard-edged as Amanda’s, “Are you the caterer who fell ill last night? Good. Finally. I need to interview the other person as well. The waitress. Nobody seems able to tell me where she is.”
“Vomiting into a toilet, still,” Willow said, pulling on her disposable gloves and checking the menu attached by a magnet to the cooler. “I rang her an hour ago. You probably don’t want to interview her yet, in case this is something contagious. I’ll fill the tarts, Crystal. You might take over one of those pots from Jamie. Excuse me,” she told Eyebrows, pulled the paper mask up over her nose and mouth, and retrieved an enormous, covered stainless-steel bowl from the cooler. Chocolate filling.
