Page 6 of Take Me Tender

“Sorry, but I wouldn’t let you within twenty feet of my sister, and she’s forty-five and shaped like a burrito.”

Jay frowned. “Should I be insulted?”

“You’re the one who made me swear to keep you away from women, remember?”

“Yeah.” Shit. Jay picked at a corner of the label on his beer bottle. “And it’s definitely a woman I hired to cook for me.”

“Uh-oh.” Jorge straightened in his chair and pushed back the brim of his hat to squint in Jay’s direction. “I take it she is not shaped like a burrito.”

“One of her eyes is blue and the other is green.”

“Ah.” The other man slouched in his seat again. “A bruja.”

Witch. That’s what Jay thought, too. She sure as hell wasn’t a lesbian, even though he’d played out that little farce with her. He couldn’t believe she’d fallen for it, really. There’d been that melting-sweet kiss they’d shared, one of his best, if he did say so himself, and then that moment in the kitchen when they could have cooked up something piping hot just from the sudden sexual heat sparking between them.

When he considered that, Christ, maybe he’d been right to hire her. By doing so he could consider himself a kind of good Samaritan. A woman who didn’t recognize the scent of that particular smoke obviously needed more exposure to the fire of mutual sexual attraction.

Yeah. Jay wouldn’t mind striking a match or two, just for the sake of her education.

Then he groaned aloud, bemoaning the direction of his thoughts. “That’s what got me into trouble in the first place.”

Listening to his cock instead of his common sense. He really, really had to quit doing that.

“Quick,” he said to his friend. “Give me an incentive. Make me a bet about the chef.”

“Okay.” Jorge tapped the mouth of his bottle against his lips. “Let me think a moment about the terms. What does the bruja look like?”

Jay thought about his first look at Nikki. “She wears braids. Two of ’em, one on each side of her head.” There was nothing in the least appealing about those, right? They’d been tied loosely enough that she’d still had to tuck strands of hair behind her ears. “She hasn’t pierced her earlobes.” He didn’t even realize he’d noticed that until now. “Though there’s a tiny diamond high in the rim of the one on the left.”

Jorge gave a noncommittal grunt. “And her figure? You said she’s not shaped like a burrito, but she probably likes to eat, since she’s a cook.”

“I can’t tell you much about that.” His shoulders relaxed. Surely he would have noticed if she was built like one of the magazine’s models. Imagine dealing with that in his kitchen every day! “She was wearing pants and a shirt. Her legs are long.”

And her ass was supreme, not that he would mention it to Jorge. When he’d been standing behind her while they talked to Shanna, its high, luscious curve had bumped his hip bone. Yeah, the chef baby had back. Mmm-hmm, there was definite junk in the cookie’s trunk.

Oh, hell. This was bad. Here he was, waxing as poetic as a Def Jam Records rapper. “Jorge. C’mon. Help a man out here.” It didn’t bother him that he sounded panicked.

“Tell me about those witchy eyes again.”

Jay’s head clunked against the back of his chair. Those eyes. Between thick, dark lashes were those incredible eyes of hers. One as blue as the summer sky, the other the sea-green of shallow Pacific waters. In the hour they’d spent together he’d seen a multitude of expressions caught in them: irritation, surprise, craftiness, attraction.

Lust.

She’d kept those eyes open when he’d kissed her. He remembered that now, remembered being unsettled by the contrasting glint of colors as he became acquainted with the pillowy softness of her full mouth. That goose’s tap dance had drawn shivers down his back and he’d wanted nothing more than to warm himself against her skin.

Her bare skin. Breasts to his chest, his hands cupped around the curves of that luscious ass.

Instead, he’d been smart and pulled away, but hadn’t gone far. No, he’d been laughing at himself, and at her, and at how damn startling and unpredictable sexual chemistry could be.

But it wasn’t funny now, was it? He sighed. “She has a dimple in her right cheek and she smells a little like vanilla and tastes like cherries.”

“Okay.” Jorge took a sip of his beer. “How’s this? Fifty bucks says you get the bruja into bed by Saturday night.”

Oh, yeah. Jay smiled, drifting away on the thought. Then Sunday brunch in bed, too, with those summer eyes of hers gleaming down at him from her position on top while he lifted his head to take a suckle of her mystery breasts…

“Oh, hell. I am stupid.” He shot a disgusted glance at Jorge who was snickering through his next swallow of beer. “You know damn well you were supposed to bet me not to bed the bruja.”

Jorge was still laughing as Jay fished in his pocket for his cell phone. “That’s it.” On Mondays, the editorial staff could hump in bags of Sausage McMuffins and maybe Fern could at least learn to make a good cup of coffee—though so far it appeared to be a familial defect. Nikki was too big a risk when he had sworn off women. “I’m telling her I changed my mind.”

“Telling who you changed your mind about what?”

Jay’s feet dropped from the railing to the deck with a clunk. “Shanna,” he said, guilt jabbing him in the gut. Hell. Shanna. She’d come up along the beach, the sand muffling the sound of her approach.

He tried to make his expression pleasant, yet noncommittal. “Hello, neighbor. That makes it two times in one day.”

Which didn’t come close to her record. Last Saturday she’d made three impromptu visits and called him four times on the phone. She shoved her hands into the back pockets of her white jeans, then cleared her throat. “I…I wondered if the mailman delivered my Victoria’s Secret catalog to you by mistake.”

“Nope. Sorry.” God, he was so damn sorry. Six months ago he’d shared a bottle of wine with Shanna by her pool. And then a second bottle. They’d started on a third and that’s when she’d suggested they finish it…in her bedroom.

What had there been to worry about at the time? Two healthy, single, consenting adults. He’d accepted her offer at face value—and that’s where he’d gone wrong.

You’d think he would have been smarter, being a man who’d sifted through dozens of letters to NYFM’s relationship expert that all began with this same lament: “What did I do? Saturday night’s casual hookup now thinks we’re going steady.”

He didn’t have the answer for his brothers-in-the-wrong-arms, nor had he been wise enough to keep himself out of their ranks. But by messing around with someone who not only lived next door but who was pictured in Buchanan family photo albums going back dozens of years, he’d made himself the General of the Bad Decisions Brigade.

The fact was, you couldn’t take out a restraining order on, let alone be in-her-face rude to a woman you remembered attending your seventh birthday party wearing a polka-dot hair ribbon.

A polka-dot hair ribbon and the identical fragile smile that flickered across her face now. “And my kitchen faucet is dripping.”

See, that’s where the restraining order would be helpful. Day after day since the night he’d stumbled back to his own bed after a drunken romp in hers, there’d been dripping faucets, missing mail, back zippers she couldn’t reach, heavy boxes on high shelves that only he could retrieve for her.

And every response of his, from brotherly warmth to distant politeness, hadn’t kept her from returning to his door.

Over and over and over again.

He swallowed a sigh. “Shanna…”

“I know, I know. I shouldn’t have asked.”

Jay stared. “What?”

“I shouldn’t have asked.”

Hallelujah. Praise God. Just as he was wondering if Shanna would never accept reality, she said this. On high, angels began to sing.

If Shanna had finally moved on, then paradise would return to Billionaire’s Beach. Jay could go back to his single, carefree life.

Still, his fingers tightened on the cell phone he’d located in his pocket. Even though it looked as if he might be out of the frying pan, he had to be careful about setting any new fires. So yeah, his decision was a sound one. Nikki wasn’t going to work out.

And a little more celibacy wasn’t going to kill him.

“I can help with this faucet, Ms. Ryan,” Jorge suddenly said.

Jay and Shanna turned their gazes on the other man. He’d gotten to his feet and was fumbling with the buttons on his shirt to cover the tattoos that were sprinkled across his chest.

Shanna shook her head. “I couldn’t…aren’t you my gardener?”

“Sí,” Jorge answered, ducking his chin.

Jay rolled his eyes. “Jorge is the owner of the landscaping company that takes care of your property.”

“No, no,” Jorge corrected, his accent thickening. “She is right. I am a gardener. Today, when one of my employees went home to his mother in Tecate, I worked on Ms. Ryan’s hedge.”

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