Page 44 of Take Me Tender

“But I am taken, cookie,” he murmured, narrowing his eyes and pulling her forward by the elbow. “Stephanie, meet Nikki.”

The other woman’s gaze jumped between their faces. “Your…?”

“Chef. For the time being,” Nikki answered. “And I really need to get back to it. If you’ll excuse me?”

She slipped from Jay’s grasp before he could anchor the eel to his side.

For the time being.

Yeah, she was preparing to run out on him, he was sure of it.

Stephanie’s eyebrows were raised and speculation was written all over her face, but he didn’t have any more time for her. He started edging toward Nikki. “You can find your way to the folks?” he asked the other woman.

“Sure.” With a long look over her shoulder, she headed toward the deck.

He headed toward his chef. With benefits, and she better not be forgetting it.

She shot him a quick glance. “Month? Year?”

Brat. “The December 2005 issue. I grew up with her brother; he’s one of my best friends.”

Her lip curled. “So she used her connections to get the cover.”

“Actually, I didn’t know anything about it until she had the job.”

She busied herself pulling a baking sheet holding three foil-wrapped loaves out of the oven. “Next you’re going to tell me she has her master’s from MIT.”

“Stanford. And it’s just a bachelor’s degree in biology.”

The scent of buttery garlic wafted through the air as she unpeeled the foil to check on one loaf. “But of course, as cover bimbo, more important was her past experience with plastic surgery.”

Jay ran his hand along his chin. “I’m pretty sure they’re real.”

“Riiiight.” She refolded the foil and bent to shove the pan back in the oven.

“One hundred percent sure.”

Nikki froze, then straightened to face him. An oven mitt shaped like a lobster poked out from under an elbow as she crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re shattering my illusions.”

“That she’s not stupid, that sometimes they’re real, that not every model sleeps her way to a photo shoot?”

“That you wouldn’t lie about sleeping with her in order to make your life easier.”

He pulled her by the lobster claw toward him, so that her starchy shirt scratched his softer one. He linked his hands at the small of her back. “Are you going to make life hard for me, cookie? I’m really hoping not.”

“I don’t understand you, Jay.”

“I was with Stephanie before I ever met you. And, for the record, she broke it off.”

“Really?”

“All right, I wasn’t exactly writing Dear Abby about my lovesick woes after it happened, but the fact is, we dated for a while, and then we didn’t. We’re still friends.”

Yet Nikki had a point. Not coming clean about it would have been simpler. And wasn’t that what he always was after? Keeping things uncomplicated? But he’d already discovered that lying to those blue and green eyes was damn difficult, and if what he wanted with her was a relationship, then honesty—

A relationship?

Was that what he wanted?

And an inner voice answered him quickly: He wanted it all.

The knowledge was like a California temblor inside of him. He took a steadying breath, even as he acknowledged that he had to make it the same for Nikki. He must shatter her illusions. He must shake her up. He must rock her world, because that’s what it was going to take to break down her self-sufficient, I-don’t-need-anyone attitude.

“What are we doing here?” she whispered. “Why are you with me? Why are you with me and not with one of them?”

Her honest beauty, his former shallowness. He couldn’t find fault with her doubts. “Nikki,” he said. “Because not one of them is you.”

A flush warmed her cheeks. “Jay…” She leaned into him.

He had her! It was relief, not triumph, and God, wasn’t that a bitch.

Like karma.

Like what goes around, comes around.

He lowered his forehead and touched hers.

“Jay! Jay, I need to talk to you.”

He stiffened. This new voice he recognized instantly. Shanna. “What’s up?” He held Nikki’s gaze with his own.

He felt his neighbor enter the kitchen. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but this is an emergency.”

Nikki eeled out of his hold again. “I have things to do.”

Damn, now checking out Shanna’s face, it looked as if he did, too.

With a sigh, he turned to her. “What’s the matter?”

Her high heels clacked on the floorboards as she backed into the relative privacy of the dim, narrow hallway, and with another sigh, he followed her. “I’m looking for Jorge,” she said.

“What? Your sprinklers aren’t coming on when they should? Weeds invading the potted pansies?”

“No.” Her hands made a nervous slide down the silky fabric of her party dress. “He…he was going to be my date, but he didn’t show up at the time we agreed upon.”

Jay stared, not sure what surprised him more, that Shanna was dating the man she considered her gardener, or that she’d been stood up. “Jorge gets straight As in responsibility. If he really wanted to be someplace, well, he’d be there.”

Too late, he realized how that came out. “I mean—”

“I know what you mean.” Shanna backed farther down the hall, toward the front door. “You’re saying he probably didn’t want to be with me after all.”

Oh, damn. That wasn’t what he meant to say, and yet Jay didn’t know how to make this right—or even if he could. It wasn’t that long ago that she’d been making up excuses to see him. Many times over in the past six months she’d called him, needing an escort to this event or that party. Perhaps she’d just transferred her fixation to Jay’s friend and Jorge wasn’t any more interested in being involved than he had been.

Before he could do anything about determining the truth or repairing the damage, she was gone.

And cad that he was, he was relieved, because he could return to Nikki and work on cementing her to his side.

Except she wasn’t in the kitchen.

In the empty space, he instead saw her as she was the day before, facing her half-sister and wearing an earnest expression.

I’m Weasel Number Two.

The kind that did better on their own, she’d said. Independent of close relationships. The words had sent those icy goose feet trekking down his spine then, and they did now, too. Where the hell was she?

He shot out of the kitchen.

His skyrocketing pulse fell as he saw her offering a tray of hors d’oeuvres to his parents. Trying to get his cool back, he ambled over to join them as his dad was popping one into his mouth. Jay slid his arm around Nikki. “Mom, Dad, I don’t think you’ve had a chance to meet my girlfriend.”

His father choked.

His mother’s eyes rounded, but that might have been due to anxiety over her husband’s health. Jay was forced to step away from Nikki in order to thump his dad’s back. Even then, he still kept an eye on his chef, and a good thing, because he caught her arm with his free hand as she started to sidle away.

Damn woman. “Don’t go,” he ordered.

“I can’t do the Heimlich with my hands full.”

His dad waved. “I’m…” He coughed. “Okay.” Two more coughs and then he managed a smile for Nikki. “Just surprised that Jay…”

Too late, Hugh Buchanan realized that perhaps “surprise” wasn’t the best sentiment to express. Gee, thanks, Dad.

His mom jumped in to smooth the moment over. “Surprised that Jay…that Jay…that Jay…”

Christ, could his parents make it any clearer that he’d lived the life of a confirmed commitment-phobe? Nikki would never believe he had the least bit of long-haul in him. With a sigh, he took the tray from her and placed it on a nearby table. “This is Nikki Carmichael. Nikki, my mother and father, Ellen and Hugh Buchanan.”

They exchanged handshakes, and before Nikki could get away again, he snagged his sisters, and then his aunt and uncle, in order to make those introductions as well. “My girlfriend,” he said each time and as his relatives hid their astonishment at the term—with more or less success—he could sense her growing bewilderment.

Which only contributed to his own unease. He linked his fingers with hers to draw her closer to his side as she suffered through his sisters’ inevitable nosiness. She shot him an uncomfortable look, but he wasn’t sure if it was because of his possessive touch or because she had to respond to his sister Susan’s probing questions.

“I don’t know exactly why I turned to cooking as a career,” Nikki said.

“You must have learned your love for it from a mother or grandmother,” Susan asserted. “A family tradition kind of thing.”

“No.” Nikki tugged on the hand holding hers, signaling her need to escape.

Jay squeezed her fingers. “Enough of the third degree, Sue. She doesn’t have to know exactly why she makes meals for other people.”

“It’s the connections,” his mother said. “That’s obvious.”

Nikki stopped pulling on his arm. “What?”

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