Chocolate Kisses (8 page)

It
was so opulent, Claudia thought, wondering what kind of picture she made seated
cross-legged on the polished floor with frosting spattered on her jeans.

“It’s
all right,” Ned was saying. She tilted her head only enough to see him ushering
Edie away. A good idea, too. Claudia was ready to strangle the old hag. There
had been something suspiciously deliberate in the way Edie had tossed down her
dry mop in front of Claudia’s foot. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

“Everything’s
not
going to be all right,” Claudia snapped. “We’re down one cake.”

“So
you’ll make another. Look, Edie will oversee the cleanup. We can get whatever
you need from your house and you can bake the cake here. I’ll be right by your
side, doing whatever has to be done. Come on, Claudia—we can do it.”

“You’re
not going to let her make another cake like that, are you?” Edie sputtered. “It
looked horrible. Repulsive! Much too pink.”

“Edie,
please,” Ned silenced her, evidently aware of the homicidal turn Claudia’s
thoughts were once again taking. “Just clean the floor, all right? Come on,
Claudia,” he said brightly, extending his hand to her and hoisting her to her
feet. “If we work really fast—”

Claudia
yanked her hands from his. If he touched her, they wouldn’t work really fast.
They’d get sidetracked. He’d dip his fingers into the next batch of cake batter
and he’d slide his arms around her…and they’d be lost.

“Don’t
help me,” she grumbled. “Just keep the official Wyatt cook away from me. She
tripped me on purpose, Ned.”

“Of
course she didn’t.” He turned to Edie, seeking corroboration.

The
plump white-haired witch shrugged innocently. “I couldn’t help myself. It was a
ghastly looking cake. I would never serve a cake like that.”

“Well,
I’ve got news for you,” Claudia declared. “I’m going to serve
two
cakes
like that. Out of my way,” she said, brushing past Ned. If she’d been
disconsolate a minute ago, she was fired up now. Nobody, not Ned with his
seductive hazel eyes and incandescent smile, not Edie with her territorial
testiness, not Melanie Steele with her haughty affectations—
nobody
was
going to keep Claudia from catering this cotillion successfully. If it meant
working nonstop for the rest of the afternoon, running the kitchen in jeans and
a ponytail, frosting the cake at the very moment Glenwood’s finest young ladies
were being presented to society, she would do it. If it meant locking Ned out
of the kitchen, out of her thoughts, out of her heart, she would do it.

The
party was going to be Claudia’s personal triumph. She refused to consider any
other outcome.

She
was swinging through the kitchen door when she felt Ned’s hand on her shoulder.
“I’ve got a lot to do,” she warned him, ordering her body not to respond to his
touch.

“I
know,” he said. She heard no suggestive undertone in his voice, only quiet
concern. “Listen, Claudia. Bring everything you’ll need for tonight.
Everything. You’ll have a room upstairs, your own private bathroom. We’ve got
towels, bath salts, beds, easy chairs…whatever you need. The house is yours.”

She
opened her mouth to object. She had a perfectly fine shower at home. She had towels.
She had a bed—which she hadn’t had time to make that morning.

She
could imagine what the upstairs of Ned’s childhood home would be like: the
sumptuous bedrooms furnished with antiques, the private baths with their brass
fixtures and inlaid tiles, the hallways as wide as Claudia’s entire house. The
elegance. The class.

Contrary
to Ned’s claim, this house wasn’t hers. But given how hard she was going to
have to slave during the next few hours to make this party come out right…

She
deserved the run of Wyatt Hall. She deserved to pretend the house
was
hers. And all these troublemakers—Melanie, Edie, and most of all Ned with his
alluring lips and his mesmerizing touch—had better stay out of her way.

Chapter Seven

4:45
p.m.

CLAUDIA
RESTED HER HEAD against the high lip of the claw-foot tub and sighed. The air
in the bathroom was steamy with the tart scent of apple blossoms. The water
swirling around her tired body was thick with fragrant bubbles.

Downstairs,
the third batch of chocolate cake layers was chilling in the refrigerator. She
didn’t trust Edie not to sabotage her cake yet again, but Ned had promised to
protect it with his life. He had a way with Edie.

He
had a way with Claudia, too, she admitted. More than the lavish decor of this
bathroom, more than his generosity in opening a bedroom suite for her, more
than his insistence on guarding her chocolate cake… Oh, yes, Ned had a way
with her.

The
scented bubbles of her bath caressed her flesh and made her think of him. The
warmth of the water melted her tension the way his hands had when he’d rubbed
the small of her back. The rising vapor whispered across her skin the way his
breath had an instant before he’d kissed her.

And
kissed her. And kissed her.

She
forced her eyes open and looked around once more, taking note of every
luxurious detail in the room.
This
was what John Edward Wyatt IV was all
about. She mustn’t let herself forget that.

Pandemonium
reigned downstairs, but tucked away in her cozy second-floor retreat she was
completely shut off from the musicians setting up on the balcony, the
bartenders in the solarium, the waiters, the grounds crew stringing spotlights
along the driveway. She couldn’t hear anything but an occasional bubble braking
against her chin.

So
much still to do. The cake to frost, the entrées to heat, the appetizers to
arrange on trays. But all she wanted to do was soak in the tub, imagining what
her life could have been like if what Ned’s mother had said about love at first
sight were true. She closed her eyes again and fantasized that the warm,
lulling water was Ned’s fingertips, stroking her, enveloping her breasts and
rippling between her thighs. She moaned out loud.

“Claudia?
Are you all right?”

Oh,
God!

She
pushed herself up to sit, causing the water to splash against the sides of the
tub. The frothy suds parted to reveal her breasts, and she quickly sank below
the water again and stared in panic at the narrow space where the bathroom door
stood ajar. “Ned?”

“Are
you okay? I heard you—” He pulled the door open, saw that she was perfectly
okay, as well as very wet and naked, and slammed the door shut. His eyes burned
an afterimage into her mind, wide and surprised…and unmistakably
appreciative.

“Sorry,”
he called from the other side of the door, sounding not the least bit sorry. “I
came upstairs to tell you Edie thinks she should start heating the ovens. I
wanted to check with you. And I heard—well, it sounded like you were in pain.”

She
recalled the tortured moan that had escaped her—and the tortured thoughts that
had prompted it. She supposed there was a kind of pain involved in what she’d
been feeling. And she wasn’t about to share those feelings with Ned.

“I’m
just a little tired,” she called through the closed door. “What time is it?”

“Quarter
to five.”

That
gave her an hour and fifteen minutes until the first guest arrived. “Tell Edie
she can start the ovens at five-thirty.” She had plenty of time to heat the
canapés, then the entrées for a seven-thirty dinner.

“All
right.” He hesitated. “I’m going to have to go home soon. I have to change into
a monkey suit for this gig.”

Claudia
conjured a mental picture of Ned in a tuxedo, his long legs flattered by crisp
black trousers, his broad shoulders filling an elegant evening jacket, his
collar accented by a bow tie. Not one of those big foppish bowties, she hoped,
but something sleek and sexy.

“You’d
better go,” she called to him, partly in self-defense. Imagining him in his
evening clothes—or more accurately, imagining him tugging loose whatever tie he
had on and then undoing the collar of his dress shirt, kicking off his shoes…
It was all she could do to keep from moaning again.

She
had to put him out of her mind. She had to focus on the cotillion and nothing
else. That was what mattered: catering a great party and boosting her company’s
reputation. Ned was a diversion, an infatuation. Their lives had intersected
today, but tomorrow they would go their separate ways. Unless he’d been serious
about finding her a silent partner. In which case they might have a few
professional dealings. Nothing more.

“I’ll
see you later,” he shouted through the door. She had to strain to hear his
footsteps crossing the bedroom to the hall. For a crazed moment she’d wanted to
call him back, to invite him into the bathroom, into the tub with her. If
tomorrow they were doomed to become business acquaintances, they could still
have tonight.

No,
they couldn’t. Tonight she had to do her job so magnificently Ned would have no
trouble finding financial backers for her. And then she could set up shop
downtown, as he’d suggested, and put up a big bright sign in front and hire an
assistant.

That
was what she should be dreaming about,
she decided. Fantasy Feasts. Not a fantasy man.

***

THE
SMELL OF CHOCOLATE cake lingered in the kitchen. Claudia’s valentine-shaped
pans lay scoured and sparkling in the drying rack beside the double-basin sink.
Edie was seated in her armchair near the window, thumbing through a magazine,
her face set in a grim frown.

“The
ovens go on at five-thirty,” Ned said, surveying the orderly room on his way to
the back door.

Edie
nodded without looking up.

“Claudia
will be down in a while.”

Again,
a surly nod.

“Edie.”
Ned hunkered down next to her chair and pulled the magazine out of her hands,
forcing her attention to him. “Why are you being so grouchy?”

“I’m
not being grouchy,” Edie retorted. “Just because she came in here and took over
my kitchen and then she went parading around the ballroom with that ridiculous
cake—”

“It
was a beautiful cake. Melanie special-ordered it. And Claudia’s just doing her
job.”

“I
don’t like her job,” Edie blurted out. “It used to be
my
job. No one
ever asked me to make cakes like that.”

“Oh,
Edie…” He clasped her hands within his. “No one can replace you, you know
that. But you’re retired. You’ve earned the right to take it easy. I just want
you to kick back and enjoy yourself.”

“I
see that girl working in my kitchen,” Edie complained, “and she’s doing
everything different from the way I did it.”

“She’s
a different person. She does things her own way.”

Edie’s’
eyes narrowed on him. “You’ve got the hots for her.”

He
grinned unapologetically. “Is it that obvious?”

“I’ll
grant you, she’s young and pretty. But she’s got a chip on her shoulder, Ned.
She doesn’t understand the Wyatt way of doing things.”

“Neither
do I, sometimes,” Ned confessed. “Frankly, I’m kind of interested in the
Mulcahey way of doing things.”

“You
should find a girl from your own world, Ned.”

“I
should find a woman I admire—and love,” he said, half to himself. Straightening
up, he walked to the refrigerator, opened it and sneaked two chocolate kisses
out of the bowl. He gave one to Edie. “Taste that,” he ordered, “and see if you
still don’t like Claudia.”

Eyeing
him suspiciously, Edie bit into the chocolate. Her eyes grew round, her jaw
grew slack and she popped the rest of the candy into her mouth and sucked on
her fingers. “Oh, my,” she said weakly. “That’s something.”

“It’s
something, all right.”

“What
did she put in there?”

“Magic,”
he joked.

“I
can see why you’re in love,” Edie said, reaching for the candy in his hand.
“Give me another.”

Ned
shook his head. “This one’s for me. Treat her nicely, Edie, and maybe she’ll
give you a few herself.”

“Well…I
suppose I can tolerate her for an evening,” Edie conceded gruffly, although her
smile remained, along with a trace of chocolate on her teeth. “Go home and get
dressed. I’ll make sure her cakes stay in one piece.”

“Thanks.”
Ned winked and headed for the door. Not until he was outside did he eat the
chocolate kiss he’d taken for himself. He bit into it and was reminded of his
brief glimpse of Claudia’s body beneath the rainbow-flecked bubbles in the tub,
her hair pinned up and glistening with drops of water, her face dewy, her
throat pale and her eyes as blue as heaven.

His
body grew hard as he swallowed the kiss, hungry for more kisses,
her
kisses. If Claudia’s chocolate could win Edie’s grudging respect, it was no
wonder it won Ned’s respect—to say nothing of his lust.