Page 13 of Take Me Tender

He might have suggested he wait in the car and while away her errand listening to his favorite Sirius satellite channel, but for the first time Nikki’s composure cracked a little. She bit her bottom lip—when he wanted to do that—and white-knuckled her leather bag.

“It’s embarrassing to ask, but will you come in with me?” she said, not quite looking him in the eye. “You know her, I believe, and I kind of, um, shoplifted the last time I was here. You can vouch for me.”

Shoplifted? She continued to surprise the hell out of him. He pretended to hesitate. “I don’t know…”

“Please?”

He considered another long moment. “Well, okay, but only if you promise to let me break out the fur-lined handcuffs when we get home. That way I can honestly tell Cassandra I’ll punish you myself.”

Shaking her head, she ignored his clever riposte, but still he followed her as she moved slowly—reluctantly?—across the parking lot. He just had to figure this woman out. Had she actually shoplifted? And could she possibly get more fascinating?

Bells jangled as he held open the door for her. Inside, a gaggle of women were gathered on the couches in the center of the shop. A swift attack of TP allergy—a phrase coined by the editors of NYFM to refer to the well-documented male aversion to all-female gatherings like the Tupperware Party—prodded Jay to make a hasty retreat, but then Nikki beat him to it, her butt bumping his groin like a practiced grind of a stripper.

Her hesitance only made him more interested in getting into the shop—not to mention he needed to limit their body-to-body contact before things got any harder. So with his hands on her shoulders, he guided Nikki forward, speaking to Cassandra in his best hardened cop imitation when she looked up. “I’ve brought in the perp, ma’am.”

Nikki flashed him a quick I’ll-kill-you from her amazing eyes, then walked out of his reach to approach the shop owner. From her purse, she pulled out a ball of yarn and a pair of knitting needles. “I can’t believe I left the other day without returning these first. I’m so sorry.”

Cassandra rose from the couch and met Nikki halfway. The smile on her face looked welcoming, but she watched the other woman as if she was a skittish animal. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. Can you stay? We’re having an impromptu klatch.”

Nikki didn’t hesitate now. “Oh, no. I’m on my way to the grocery store and, to be honest, I didn’t really get very far”—she looked down at the items in her hands and held them toward Cassandra again—“with these.”

“You can give it another try.”

“Jay wouldn’t have the patience to wait for that,” she said, without looking at him. “He’s already tapping his toe over there.”

He was not. Well, not now, not now that everyone in the knitting circle was looking at him with the identical question on each of their faces. So when did you stop beating your wife?

“You go ahead,” he said, trying to appear charming and accommodating and not like he was afraid to offend more women in his world. “I’ll just hang over here for a while and, um…”

“There’s coffee in the kitchen around the corner,” Cassandra said, giving him a bright smile even as she tugged Nikki toward the center of the room. “And Gabe Kincaid’s someplace nearby puttering.”

Jay didn’t go looking for either coffee or male company. Now that he’d made it past his initial knee-jerk, let-me-outta-here, he thought he’d take a look around, not to mention a listen-in. One of his sisters used to cross-stitch, but lately she’d been yakking about the size of her stash and wailing about the stitch she’d dropped two Wednesdays before. The ladies on the couches could probably clue him in to what that meant.

And he could clue in to Nikki. It was maddening, how damn hard she was to read. As a journalist, he had an idle interest in almost everyone, and when it came to her, his idle was running fast. It could prove enlightening to eavesdrop.

Except she dropped next to nothing. Maybe learning to knit was more difficult than he thought—and to be fair, one woman on the couches was making something that looked very complicated and required a dozen needley needles and several small balls of thread—because Nikki stayed focused on the materials in her hands and was monosyllabic when pressed.

And Cassandra was pressing.

That also seemed strange to Jay. Not that he was surprised that Cassandra was chatting up a customer—she was an outgoing person and he’d heard she was passionate about her craft—yet this seemed like something more than friendly interest. But thanks to her unflagging interrogation, he did learn a few bare bones about his personal chef.

Any brothers and sisters? None.

Father? Passed away from a heart attack two years before.

Mother? More than ten years before that.

Jay—who to this point had been loitering by the deck and faking a fascination with the view—couldn’t stop himself from turning toward Nikki. Nothing about her demeanor hinted at an inner wound—the same as when she’d told him about preparing her first meal…and her mother’s last. She sat on the couch as composed as ever, her down-turned eyes allowing her lashes to hide their incredible colors.

And any reaction to the memory of her mother’s death.

But she’d only been fourteen! Younger than Fern. A child, really, who unexpectedly became a motherless child.

He found himself rubbing his chest as if to quiet a phantom pain. Her mother was gone. Her father, too.

Nikki didn’t have anybody.

Cassandra was talking at ninety miles an hour now, perhaps as thrown by Nikki’s calm as he was. Other women joined in the general conversation as well, yet Nikki, no longer being questioned, retreated into a silence that surprised him yet again. He’d never met a woman who wouldn’t open up like a bachelor’s wallet at a lap dance table when welcomed into a group of other friendly, chattering females.

He was still mulling over the enigma that was his chef when he was joined by Gabe, a tool belt at his waist and a smattering of what looked like sawdust in his hair. He braced his shoulders against the same patch of wall that Jay had found. “What’s up with Cassandra?” he asked.

“Huh?” Jay switched his gaze from Nikki to the other woman. “What’s wrong with her?”

“That’s what I’m asking you. She’s all revved up.”

“Don’t know,” Jay replied with a shrug. “Maybe it’s the subject matter. One of those women just related a story about her bad blind date.”

Gabe snorted. “Did Cassandra set her up? For a woman with zero romantic life herself, she’s damn quick to badger everyone else into having one.”

Jay’s gaze drifted to Nikki again. He didn’t know what she did on her evenings off, did he? That she’d agreed to play his girlfriend didn’t mean she was without a real lover of her own. Though it was hard to picture prickly Nikki opening herself up to any man. Or maybe he just didn’t want to picture it.

“I edited a piece for the magazine last week,” he told Gabe. “It posits that women who are the most skeptical about romance end up with a better caliber of mate.”

Gabe snorted again. “Then Cassandra should find herself a prince of a guy, because she’s celibate.”

“Really?” Jay’s eyebrows rose.

“That’s what she tells me,” Gabe grumbled. “Often.”

Jay swallowed his smile. He didn’t know the other man well, but he certainly wasn’t stupid, so Jay didn’t need to point out that a woman “often” flaunting her celibacy at a particular person might have something other than celibacy on her mind. Gabe would figure it out sooner or later.

“Well,” the other man went on, “don’t say I didn’t give you fair warning.”

Jay looked over. “What?”

Gabe’s tone was matter-of-fact. “But if you do somehow get in her bed, and then you make her unhappy, I’ll have to kick your ass.”

Clearing his throat, Jay glanced over at Nikki. How had she come to make a conquest so quickly? He glanced back at Gabe and noticed he was focused not on Jay’s private chef, but the yarn shop owner instead. Oh. “I’m not after Cassandra,” he said.

Gabe’s expression didn’t betray any kind of relief—it didn’t betray anything at all. “Then why are you here?”

“I…uh…” He shrugged, helpless to explain how his fascination with his cook had become so damn compelling. “I just had to get out of the house,” he offered. “I’ve been going a little stir-crazy and my chef—that’s the woman next to Cassandra—needed a ride.”

“You should come to the opening of that new restaurant tonight, then,” Gabe said. “Somehow Cassandra made me promise I’d escort her there.” His gaze moved off Jay’s face and settled on the women again. “Bring your chef with you. Cassandra seems fond of her.”

And wasn’t that just the oddest thing, too? This whole episode in the yarn shop had that goose Jay’d discovered on the first day he met Nikki traipsing up and down his spine again.

“A restaurant opening,” he said slowly. Why not? “Cookie and I wouldn’t miss it.” He’d make it a condition of her employment, and just like his demand that she wear more revealing clothes, he figured she’d capitulate.

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