Page 8 of Take Me Tender

On her, his lesbian chef. Great.

“Are you all right?”

“Hmm? Fine.” Keeping her head down, she drew a bowl closer.

He leaned his hips against the counter a few feet from where she stood. “So tell me about you, cookie.”

“Why?”

“I shared something about myself. I told you about my family.”

She flicked him a glance. “And about how you screwed your next-door neighbor.”

“Ouch, that hurt.” Though he sounded more entertained than pained. “Are you saying you’ve never made a…uh…romantic mistake?”

Nikki had made plenty of mistakes, starting at age fifteen. “Well…”

“You’ve never gone to bed with the wrong woman?”

She could look up and meet his gaze without flinching. “I’ve never gone to bed with the wrong woman.”

A little smile played at the corners of his mouth.

It made her uneasy. Looking away, she used her right hand to crack the eggs into the bowl.

“Now there’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” he said. “I’ve never gotten the hang of using just the one hand.”

“If you weren’t so satisfied by the ladies, you could practice in the shower.”

There was another moment of silence. “Which I suppose is the only option open to me, now that we’re a couple. When I have a girlfriend, I’m sexually monogamous and you’re—”

“Sexually unavailable. To you.”

“But that has to be our secret, cookie. You can’t be traipsing around Malibu flirting with girls, since I don’t want my fellow residents to suspect we’re a sham.”

“I’ll tell them you’re into threesomes. That should up your cachet.” She wondered where all this mouthiness was coming from—and then she didn’t. Despite her desire to stay impersonal, a man like this deserved to be taken down a peg or two, and she was in a unique position to do it. It was practically a noble—if not holy—purpose. As a lesbian, she could act unimpressed by him even though Hetero Nikki would have found his masculine beauty downright intimidating.

He chuckled. “All right, then. Flirt away.”

Deflecting more of his questions, she managed to finish his breakfast and place it before him on the bar at the place she’d set. As he took his seat, he looked over the eggs, the crisp hash browns she’d shredded along with a smattering of onion, the creamy green avocado slices she’d fanned along the side of the plate. “Looks great, smells great. You won’t join me?”

She blinked. “Of course not.”

“Why?”

“I’m your chef.”

“With benefits, at least as far as the public’s concerned. And if you’re going to play my girlfriend, I really do need to know more about you.”

“I grew up in L.A., I went to culinary school in L.A. I’m still in L.A.” What else was there to say? She’d never acquired the knack for chitchat. Her father had been a taciturn man who could go for days without talking. Nikki had grown accustomed to quiet, and later, it developed into a self-contained remoteness that had offered her some protection in raucous restaurant kitchens.

In silence, she watched Jay take a bite of the huevos and could judge his approval by the expression on his face. Though she had plenty of confidence in her cooking skills, it was always gratifying to please the person for whom she’d created a meal. Satisfied, she turned back to the sink to take care of the cleanup.

“You won’t even stay still long enough for the compliments?”

She filled a pan with soapy water and gathered closer the utensils she’d used. “Your empty plate will be compliment enough for me.”

She felt him staring at her. “It can’t be this easy,” he finally declared. “It just can’t.”

“What?” She turned to face him.

“Seriously. I’ve devoted my life to finding a woman who makes things as simple as that.”

She’d read a couple of NYFM articles with his byline—the last a scathing exposé of the wasteful spending of one of the departments of the federal government—and so she doubted the only thing he was interested in was simplicity. But then she remembered those pictorials. “You’ve got women who fit that requirement plastered all over your magazine, my friend. A simple two digits for breasts, waists, hips, and brain.”

“That’s the fantasy, cookie. But in real life…” He interrupted himself to take another bite. “This meal is incredible.”

As she dumped the knives and the spatula she’d used into the suds, she discovered she was smiling. “Thank you.”

“So tell me, what inspired you to create good food?”

The answer flew to the tip of her tongue. “My mother’s spaghetti. Store-brand tomato sauce dumped over browned ground beef and limp sticks of noodles. Not a spice to speak of.”

With her grim father at the head of the table and plates of such banal food on top of it, Carmichael family meals had been mostly wordless and mercifully quick. All three of them had been thin.

Then her mother got thinner.

“And the first real meal you ever made was…?”

Jay’s casual prompt sent her to the past again. To when her mother was sick and Nikki had learned to do laundry and be her father’s silent partner on runs to the grocery store. During one of those runs she’d remembered a recipe she’d seen on TV or scanned in one of her mother’s unread magazines or maybe merely dreamed about after finally dropping off to sleep at night.

“It was pasta, too,” she said, recalling it with perfect clarity though it was years away from the Malibu kitchen. “I was fourteen years old and I put together fresh fettuccine from the refrigerator section, grated Parmigiano Reggiano, heavy whipping cream, butter, fresh mint, and basil.”

She’d made the dish with deliberation, as if each ingredient was an important element of a magic spell. And then she’d added a final, uncalled-for component: the salt from her very own tears. Never again had she cried with such abandon.

“My mother asked for a second helping. It was the only time I saw her eat like that. She asked for a second helping, smiled with more energy than she’d had in months, and told me I had a marvelous talent. And then…” Never mind about that.

“Then what?” When she didn’t answer, he prodded again. “Then what?”

“Then she was hospitalized the next day. She had cancer and she died.” The words came out cool and matter-of-fact, just how she’d wanted them to.

Still, the pain of the memory was sharper than anything her knee could deliver. She cried out, and staring down, was shocked to see blood floating in the sudsy water.

“You’ve hurt yourself.” Jay was beside her, his long tanned arm pulling at her wrist. He put her thumb under a cool stream, then dried it on a paper towel and took an elastic bandage from a cabinet.

Embarrassed, she grabbed it.

“Nikki,” he protested. “Let me take care of you.”

Let me take care of you? The words screeched in her head. No one could be relied upon for that. Backpedaling, she jerked out of his range, ignoring the puzzled expression on his face and the objection from her knee.

“What’s wrong? I said, let me take care of that for you.” He nodded toward the elastic strip she held. “The Band-Aid.”

“Oh. Of course. The Band-Aid.” Let me take care of that for you.

Her heart still pounding too fast, there was nothing she could do but let him wrap the sticky bandage around her thumb. As soon as it was over, however, she found herself scrambling to the other side of the room.

His eyebrows rose. “Are you all right?”

No, but she was halfway to the front door and the distance made her breathe easier.

“I forgot something at the market,” she said, speaking nearly as fast as her racing pulse. How could she have told him that stuff about cooking? And about her mother? It only made her feel vulnerable. Exposed. Weak.

What she’d forgotten was her good sense. But her vow to stay detached—that she wouldn’t forget again.

Four

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient….

One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—

waiting for a gift from the sea.

—ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH, AUTHOR

The main road through the twenty-seven miles of coastline that made up Malibu was clobbered with cars. But Nikki didn’t mind the slow speed she was making northward. It gave her a chance to lookie-loo through the dark lenses of her sunglasses. On the beach side of the Pacific Coast Highway were mostly residences, but there was little to see of them besides generic garage doors and mysterious gates. With so much endless ocean to face, the homes were designed with backsides turned to the road’s vehicle noise and public commotion.

The inland side was more interesting. Here was where most of the commercial establishments were congregated: surf shops with sidewalk displays of rubbery wetsuits and rental boards, as well as small clothing boutiques tucked between restaurants and real estate offices. But then the businesses petered out to expose stretches of undeveloped land that lent the place a decidedly rural feel. Looming over it all were the shrub-and-dirt faces of the Santa Monica Mountains that provided a natural barrier from the rest of L.A.

---