How to Knit a Wild Bikini (7 page)

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 to night, 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.

He didn’t feel bad about it, because he was done with even the pretense of keeping his distance from her. Nikki was only growing more intriguing by the moment, arousing his curiosity almost as much as his sex. Both were equally demanding, and he decided at least one of them must be satisfied.

“A deal is a deal,” Nikki muttered to herself as she readied for the restaurant opening in Jay’s guest bathroom upstairs. It was the exact wording he’d used on her when he’d announced earlier that they had a social engagement for the evening. And he was right, she’d agreed to play his girlfriend as part of her job as his private chef.

She just hadn’t considered it would mean playing his girlfriend to such a large audience. But she’d make it work, she would. After all, to night’s event also gave her a chance to mingle and make contacts with others who could use her ser vices. She’d need a new job at the end of the month, even if she managed to successfully play gay for the remainder of this one.

“You’d better not be in commando boots,” Jay called from the bottom of the stairs. Nikki inched up her ankle-length skirt to inspect the kitten-heeled sandals she’d borrowed from Cassandra. They were stable enough to provide her knee the support it needed, yet pretty enough to go with the dress that Cassandra had created.

Nikki had borrowed that, too. After Jay’s party pronouncement, she’d returned to Malibu & Ewe following lunch preparations. Surely the shop owner could direct her to a local boutique and save her from fighting the afternoon’s beach traffic to get home and back again with the right kind of partywear.

“I have just the thing,” Cassandra had offered. “It’s hanging in my office. I was planning to display it in the shop, but you can wear it first.”

“No! I couldn’t…The size—”

“Will be perfect,” Cassandra had put in. “I made it to fit my measurements, and haven’t you noticed we’re a similar height and weight?”

Now that she mentioned it, Nikki did notice, though the other woman had it way over her in the chest department. Cassandra had waved that objection away, too. “Won’t matter. You’ll see.”

And when Nikki did see the dress…Well, something so beautiful was harder to resist than a plate of homemade potato chips topped with crumbled, smoky bacon and melted blue cheese—the decadent concoction she’d promised Cassandra as payment.

So instead of scooting around Malibu seeking something suitable to wear, she’d sat on the shop’s deck and fumbled through more rows of her very first swatch of knitting. Cassandra had joined her when she could, and laughed as Nikki complained her stitches were reproducing like rabbits. In frustration, she’d taken to counting the number on the needle each time she finished a row. By the time she’d left the shop, she’d become confident enough to count the stitches only every
other
row.

“Nikki?” Jay’s voice traveled up the stairs again. “Just so you know, I found Fern’s mascara and I’m not afraid to use it.”

Nikki dropped her own tube of Maybelline into her makeup bag and pressed her top and bottom lips together, setting her twenty-four-hour lipstick. Her afternoon outside had left a pink flush across her cheekbones, and the highlights around her face appeared a shade lighter. She’d taken her hair out of her usual working braids, and it waved in a tousled tangle around her shoulders.

With one last adjustment of the spectacular dress, Nikki reminded herself she had a job to do. Making Jay happy on the social circuit was as much her obligation as it was to make him breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “A deal’s a deal,” she murmured to herself once more.

She ignored the twinge in her knee as she made her way to the top of the stairs. There, she paused a moment, her hand gripping the railing for support before taking the first step down.

Jay was slouched against one of the banisters below, his hands in the front pockets of black linen trousers. He wore a white, thin cotton shirt with a thousand tiny pin-tucks in front. It looked like something a Miami drug lord would wear if you transferred him to Malibu and made him a golden-haired surfer.

He glanced up, froze, then his spine straightened as he slowly turned to stare at her.

She felt her sunburn heat and flow down her neck. “It’s Cassandra’s dress. She…she said it was okay for to night.”

“Christ,” he said after a moment. “Well, at least I can be fairly sure you left your strap-on at home.”

Her free palm slid over the soft, knitted fabric that covered her left hip. He was right—if crude, as usual. Cassandra’s dress didn’t leave room for anything besides the skin it covered.

“What…How…” Jay broke off and made a vague gesture, his gaze still glued to her form as he slowly ascended the staircase. “Is that thing truly going to stay on?”

Nikki shrugged. Most of the dress was a delicately knitted tube of a lightweight, seafoam-colored yarn. She’d had to step into it and shimmy the garment up the length of her body, then dip her head to slip the keyhole in front over her neck. It was halter-style, but the keyhole dipped halfway down to her belly button. A string running beneath the blue-and-seafoam crocheted cups that were the bodice tied at the center of her body, leaving plenty of exposed skin above, below, and between them.

On Cassandra, with her more generous breasts, the dress would present a wealth of naked flesh. With Nikki’s more modest cleavage—well, she felt plenty bare, thank you very much.

Jay reached the step below hers, leaving them eye to eye. But it wasn’t her face he was surveying. “Christ,” he said again. “You’re not actually wearing that dress, you’re drizzled in it.”

Drizzled. There was a word that fit. With Jay’s focus on her, with the heat of his body so close, everything inside her melted. Her hand tightened on the banister and she hoped he couldn’t see beneath all that naked skin to the way her blood was moving like heavy sugar syrup through her veins.

“What are you doing?” she asked, as he put a finger beneath her chin to nudge it higher.

“Those amazing eyes of yours,” he said, gazing at them now. “When I look into them I don’t know whether I’m going to sink or fly.”

Oh, God. Everything female inside of her went more liquid, even as she tried to move her mouth into a sneer. “Does that line work well with the hetero chicks?”
I don’t know whether I’m going to sink or fly
. As it echoed in her head,
both
of her knees felt weak. “Because it seems just short of ‘What’s your sign?’ to me.”

“Shut up, cookie.” His head drew nearer. He was wearing a subtle, spicy scent that seemed to drug her with each inhalation.

She closed her eyes as if that would keep him away. “Jay—”

“Just shut up,” he said against her mouth.

It was that first, movie-theater type of kiss all over again, tender and warm. She could have resisted aggression or turned her cheek to blatant seduction, but this was something else altogether. This was a timeless, all-the-hours-in the-world kind of mouth to mouth that lured instead of demanded, that showed more patience than outright passion.

The melt happened all over her, all over again. Her lips softened against his and he licked across her bottom one, then tugged it gently with the edges of his teeth. She shivered, and his palms closed over her wrists then slid to her shoulders and drew her against him.

Her mouth parted—for air? to protest? to plea?—but he didn’t give her time for any of that before he slid his tongue inside. At the silky touch she shivered again, and liquid warmth rushed between her thighs.

He slid one large, heavy hand to the small of her back, and heat prickled across her flesh. His mouth tilted to adjust the fit of their lips even as his tongue circled hers, dizzying her with desire.

More vertigo made her head spin when he retreated from the kiss, only to draw his lips along the edge of her jaw. She swayed closer, and then she froze as she felt his fingertips graze the bare skin of her midsection that was left naked by the deep keyhole of the dress. At the slight stroke, her nipples tightened in an aching rush that was mirrored by another wave of wetness between her legs.

Her instant response made her giddy with both embarrassment and excitement. She shouldn’t react to him for so many good reasons…but right now she couldn’t remember what any of them were.

Her head fell back as he continued to explore her neck and shivers had her body quaking inside and out.
Oh, God
. Arousal had never been like this before, this quick, this intense, this uncontrollable, not when she was drunk on sadness and vodka at fifteen, and certainly not on the rare occasions since, when she’d forced normalcy on herself and taken a man to bed.

With her goose bumps leading the way, Jay’s drifting hand trailed upward, tripping over the narrow string that kept the cups of the bodice from springing outward. His mouth moved back to hers as he twisted one forefinger in the crocheted string. He thrust his tongue between her lips, sure and hot, and at the same time he tugged on the cord, pulling together her breasts as if they’d been palmed by unseen hands.

With a gasp, she broke their kiss. “
Jay.
”

He tugged again, his mouth wet against the side of her neck, and she moaned. Jay stilled, then gently freed his finger from the string.

“Nikki. We need to talk a minute.” His hands cupped her shoulders and squeezed. “Look, you’ve gotta see…You’ve gotta realize this isn’t going to work.”

Her lashes shot up as panic dashed over her like icy water. What? What did he mean? This had to work. She didn’t have another employment prospect, she had a pile of bills, and this job was supposed to tide her over as well as provide her with new contacts.

But he’d taken her on, assuming her sexual interest was girls, and that fact would keep his kitchen uncomplicated. Now, though, she’d messed that up by making out with him.

Taking a hasty step back, she wiped away his stupid, drugging kiss with the back of her hand. It was all his fault. He was too good—too golden, too tender, too subtle and sneaky where most men were in-your-face and blatantly aggressive.

Below, the front door swung open. Fern ambled in, her gaze traveling upward to find the two of them at the top of the stairs. Jay turned toward his cousin, his expression as casual as if they’d been interrupted discussing desserts. “Hey, there.”

“Hey.” The teenager looked at them a moment longer. “Nice dress,” she told Nikki.

She managed a smile for Fern, using the moment to gather herself together. “Thanks, I’m wearing it to a restaurant opening.” A couple of kisses weren’t going to ruin what she had going here, she promised herself. All was not lost—at least not yet. “And we’d better leave or we’ll be late.”

Without looking at the man, she breezed past Jay. “Let’s go, Sonny.”

He followed, she knew, because his question came from a step behind her. “Sonny?”

She threw him a look over her bare shoulder. “That’s who you’re going as, right? I figured from the looks of you we’re both acting to night. I’m playing straight, and you’re Sonny Crockett from
Miami Vice
.”

He did have a sort of Don-Johnson-in-the-eighties vibe, and she couldn’t tell from his expression whether the comparison amused or annoyed him.

She kept on talking. “So how’d I do with that, um, kiss? I tried to make it work by closing my eyes and thinking of Madonna. Are we two partners going to make it through tonight’s undercover assignment with flying colors? Did I pass your test?”

She held her breath as he pulled the front door open for her. “You aced the thing,” he said, his voice dry. “Just don’t tell Tubbs I said so. That dude has a jealous streak wider than the wake of the cigar boat we used to ride around in.”

Jay blamed the
damn dress. If Nikki’s body hadn’t been wrapped in an ocean-colored garment that was as tight to her skin as a mermaid’s scales, then he wouldn’t have to glue himself into a corner of the restaurant’s glassed-in, ocean-view deck in order to keep his hands to himself.

He’d decided to go to the damn party to satisfy his curiosity about her and now he was at the party and reluctant to get within ten feet of her. She was that bewitching.

How in hell had she gotten so far under his skin so fast? The kisses on the stairs had rattled him, and her bullshit response to it—
I tried to make it work by closing my eyes and thinking of Madonna
—only pissed him off. Instead of being honest enough to acknowledge they rattled her, too, she’d tried instead to prick his ego.

Okay, she
had
pricked his ego. The mind-blowing little episode had left him edgy and angry while she appeared perfectly calm and self-contained as she inspected the food offerings set out on long banquet tables.

The air around him shifted, but he didn’t look away from Nikki.

“Hi, Jay. How are you?”

It was, perhaps, the only voice that could break his concentration. Cassandra’s voice. He turned toward her, narrowing his eyes. “You,” he said. “You should know that dress needs to come with a warning label.”

Cassandra had the innocent eyelash flutter down pat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He took her by the arm to face her in the right direction. “Just look what you’ve done to my chef.”

Across the deck, Nikki brushed her sun-streaked waves of hair over her sleek, bare shoulder. He’d had that smooth skin in his hands, cupped it in his palms, and Christ, he wanted that again. He wanted to caress her skin and suck on her nipples and bury his fingers knuckle-deep in the creamy center of her body.

“She looks like she should be lying on a treacherous rock somewhere singing siren songs to sailors,” he muttered.

Cassandra made an amused sound. “Well, if anyone can handle navigating such dangerous waters it would be you, Hef.”

“You’d think.” He
had
thought. He’d thought their gay charade would work to keep their mutual attraction under control. But he was tangled up with Nikki just the same. Then Cassandra’s last word sank in.
Hef
.

He turned to her again. “So it’s you who’s been telling her stories about me.”

“Sorry. At the time, I didn’t realize you two were dating.”

“She told you that?”

Cassandra gave a little smile. “Fairly emphatically, as a matter of fact.”

“No.”

“I thought I was being warned off,” she said, shrugging a little.

No
. He swung back to watch Nikki, only to catch sight of a pair of men on the approach, their lustful intent obvious. “That damn dress,” he muttered, starting forward.