Chocolate Kisses (9 page)

Tomorrow,
he promised himself. They’d get through this ridiculous party tonight, and
tomorrow he and Claudia could really get down to business.

***

THE
OVEN WASN’T ON.

Claudia
had entered the kitchen dressed in her black wool sheath—with a full-length
apron over it—her comfortable low-heeled black pumps and plain gold earrings.
She was ready to frost her chocolate cake.

She
was also ready to forge a truce with Edie Mueller. But Edie wasn’t there.

Claudia
checked the wall clock. The ovens should have begun preheating by now. She
twisted the dial on one, listening for the click and the
woof
of the gas
vents igniting.

Nothing.

She
twisted the dial again, off and then on, off and on. Nothing.

No,
she gasped under her breath. Enough
things had gone wrong for one job—for one lifetime. She’d had a near accident,
smashed two cakes and fallen in love.

And
now this.

The
oven had been working earlier. What happened?

She
raced down the hall in search of help and spotted Edie near the open front
door. “Edie!” Claudia cried, abandoning her pride. “Edie! The main oven isn’t
working.”

“Don’t
be silly,” Edie clucked. “you obviously don’t know how it works.”

Claudia
held her tongue. “Maybe you could turn it on for me,” she said sweetly, not
daring to risk the woman’s wrath. Who knew what she might sabotage if she
decided, once again, that she hated Claudia?

“It’s
that damned pilot light,” came a familiar voice from outside the front door.
“I’ll take care of it.” In swept Ned’s mother, dressed in an elegant burgundy
gown spangled with seed pearls. She passed her mink cape to one of the doormen
and sent Claudia a smile of sheer delight. “Don’t you look lovely!”

Claudia
glanced down at her pinafore apron and her plain black dress. If anyone looked
lovely, it was Mrs. Wyatt.

The
sight of Ned’s mother in a dress that probably cost an amount equal to Fantasy
Feasts’ catering bill for the cotillion took Claudia aback. She struggled to
recall the robust, down-to-earth woman she and Ned had visited earlier. The
statuesque woman who stood before Claudia now was every inch the town
matriarch, her makeup impeccable, each strand of hair meticulously placed.
Diamond-encrusted mabe pearls clung to her earlobes and her wrist was circled
by a tennis bracelet so thick it probably weighed more than a tennis racquet.

“If
it’s just a pilot light,” Claudia said deferentially, “I’m sure I can relight
it.”

“Nonsense,”
Mrs. Wyatt said. “Even Edie can’t relight it. My dear, departed husband
couldn’t relight it. I am the only person who knows how to relight it.”

Claudia
shot Edie a quizzical look. Edie confirmed Mrs. Wyatt’s remark with a nod.

“Now,
if you want to serve hot food, let’s get the thing lit.” Mrs. Wyatt strode
across the entry to the hall.

Claudia
hurried to catch up with her.” Are you sure you want to do this, Mrs. Wyatt?”

“I’ve
been blessed with a certain talent for repairing ovens,” Mrs. Wyatt said. “It
would be as wasteful for me to deny my talent as it would be for you to deny
yours.”

“Mine?”

“Those
cookies. They were superb, my dear. I hope Ned paid you a fortune for them.”

Claudia
didn’t bother to set Mrs. Wyatt straight. Ned’s mother was pushing up her
sleeves with the gusto of someone about to join a bar brawl. “Here, hold these
for me,” she said, removing her tennis bracelet and a pearl-and-platinum ring.
Before Claudia could stop her, she had pulled the wires shelves out of the top
oven and leaned into the oven chamber.

“Mrs.
Wyatt—”

A
loud clanking noise emerged from the back of the oven.

“Mrs.
Wyatt, I think—”

“Stubborn
little valve,” Mrs. Wyatt growled, pulling her head and shoulders out of the
oven. Her hair was mussed, her eyes glowing with purpose. “I’ll need a
screwdriver.”

“Mrs.
Wyatt, you shouldn’t be doing this. It’s such a special night—”

“I
am
not
going to eat raw veal,” Mrs. Wyatt declared, yanking open a
drawer and removing a screwdriver.

“Couldn’t
we call a repairman?”

“At
five-thirty on a Saturday night? He’d charge an arm and a leg.” She climbed
back into the oven and tackled the broken valve.

Claudia
gazed at the jewelry in her hand. It had probably cost enough arms and legs to
fund an Olympics swim team.

“Mother!”
Melanie Steele screeched as she bounded into the room. Her dress, a bright pink
brocade gown, was less regal but probably more expensive than Mrs. Wyatt’s. Her
hair was a frightful array of curls. her throat was strung with so many gold
necklaces, she looked like a pampered dog who’d broken free of its leash.
“Mother, get out of the oven right now!”

“I’ll
get out when I’m ready to get out,” Mrs. Wyatt said, her voice emerging from
the oven in a distorted echo. “Claudia, dear, I need a different screwdriver, a
phillip’s head. In that drawer. An adjustable wrench, too. There should be one
in there.”

Claudia
glanced at Melanie, who was wringing her hands. “Why is my mother in the oven?”

“She’s
trying to get the pilot light started.”

“And
why is there only one cake on display in the ballroom? We’re supposed to have
two.”

“The
other one isn’t frosted yet,” Claudia explained.

“Mother,
you’re going to ruin your hair,” Melanie whined as Claudia placed tools in Mrs.
Wyatt’s outstretched hand.

“You
can fix it for me,” Mrs. Wyatt assured her. “How is Amy? Excited to death?”

“Amy
and her friends are upstairs listening to some grating rap singer. I don’t know
where she picked up such terrible taste in music. We should never have let her
go to Bennington.”

No
response from Mrs. Wyatt.

Melanie
turned her sharp eyes on Claudia. ‘Well? Frost the cake!”

Not
knowing what else to do, Claudia tucked Mrs. Wyatt’s bracelet and ring into the
pocket of her apron and tackled the cake. Fortunately, she’d made extra
frosting. As long as Ned didn’t show up and start stealing tastes from the
bowl, what she had would cover all three layers.

Melanie’s
eyes shuttled from Claudia’s efficient labor to her mother’s visible bottom,
shifting and twitching as she plied her tools inside the oven. “I swear,” she
muttered, “that woman is the most humiliating mother a person could have.”

Claudia
doubted Melanie’s daughter would agree, but she kept her opinion to herself.

“Aha!”
Mrs. Wyatt crowed, at last wriggling out of the oven. “All set. Where are the
matches?” The pilot light ignited without an explosion, and Mrs. Wyatt dusted
off her hands and smiled smugly.

“You’re
a mess,” Melanie said, grabbing her mother by the elbow and hauling her out of
the kitchen.

Claudia
finished frosting the cake, then slid her trays of stuffed mushrooms into the oven
to heat. As she dappled the cake with chocolate kisses, she felt her pulse rate
return to normal. Everything was going to be fine. The party was going to go
well. She was going to survive.

Not
just survive—to triumph.

She
lifted the cake and started for the door to the hall—and discovered Ned filling
it, clad in a gray silk tuxedo. His bow tie was a muted red, thin, underlining
his thin lips. His hair was barely tamed, curling down over his collar in back,
and his eyes danced with pleasure as he regarded her.

“You
look good,” she let slip.

“You
look almost as good as you looked in the bathtub,” he told her. She blushed,
partly from embarrassment and partly from arousal. “Don’t drop the cake,” he
said, hurrying into the room and taking the tray from her.

“Thanks,”
she whispered as he set the tray on the counter. “I don’t think I can handle
another disaster.”

“You,”
he murmured, “can handle anything. That’s one of the things I like best about
you.” He took her hands in his and drew her toward him, lowering his mouth to
hers.

She
held her breath, waiting for his kiss, needing it. Just as his lips were a
whisper away from hers, his sister’s voice blasted into the kitchen, preceding
the rest of her by a good couple of seconds. “Where are they? All right, I want
them
now
. Where are they?”

Claudia
sprang back and jerked her hands away from Ned’s. “Where’s what?”

“My
mother’s jewels.”

“Oh—right
here,” Claudia said, pulling the ring and bracelet from her apron pocket.

“Thief!”
Melanie howled. “She’s a thief! Arrest that woman!”

Chapter Eight

7:48
p.m.

MORE
THAN TWO HOURS had passed since Melanie Steele had accused Claudia of stealing
her mother’s jewels, but the accusation still smarted.

The
kitchen was redolent with the aromas of delectable entrées. A battalion of
waiters conveyed trays of food from the kitchen to the dining room. The
chocolate and vanilla valentine cakes stood in proud display in the ballroom,
where a chamber orchestra played to a rapidly dwindling throng. The
presentation of the town’s richest young ladies was grand, dancing was amusing,
checking out one another’s gowns was important—but Claudia’s gourmet catering
was currently the major attraction for the first annual Glenwood debutante
cotillion’s ravenous guests. Claudia ought to have taken satisfaction in that.

Edie
was treating Claudia with surprising courtesy. In fact, it was she who had
suggested that Claudia step outside for a breath of air. “I’ll make sure
everything stays hot until it’s served,” Edie assured her. “you go out and clear
your head.”

She
stood outside the kitchen door, trying not to shiver in the frigid night air.
Everything was going smoothly. She had endured calamity after catastrophe after
debacle and somehow she’d pulled this thing off.

So
why did she feel miserable?

Surely
it had nothing to do with the fact that once Ned had chewed out his sister and
ordered her to apologize to Claudia, he’d vanished into the glamorous swarm of
guests. The party had begun and Ned had transformed into a full-blooded Wyatt.
Flirting benignly with the giggling debutantes, ushering blue-haired dowagers
to chairs, schmoozing with other male guests about golfing and investments, he
was the proper Wyatt host. Claudia could almost see the Roman-numeral IV in his
posture, his demeanor.

Who
was she kidding? All day long he’d been nothing more than a man on the prowl,
trying his luck with the lady caterer. But he knew his place—in the ballroom
with the guests. And she knew hers.

The
orchestra played gamely on; she heard the strains of music coming from the
ballroom.

“Care
to dance?”

Claudia
flinched and spun around to see Ned stepping through the kitchen doorway. She
suffered the same acute reaction to him as she had earlier: he was as suited to
suave gray silk tailoring as he was to black denim. He looked as sexy shaved
and combed as he did scruffy and windswept. Dressed up or dressed down, he was
irresistible.

She
resisted, anyway.

“You
ought to go back to the party,” she said quietly, turning back to gaze at the
cars parked beyond the tiny porch.

Ned
sidled up next to her and slung his arm around her shoulders. “I’d rather party
with you.”

“Ned.”
She didn’t hide her exasperation. “I’m working.”

“Edie’s
holding down the fort. Dinner is a major success, by the way. They’re scarfing
it up like there’s no tomorrow.

“Why
don’t you go back inside and scarf it up, too?”

“Because
there
is
a tomorrow,” he said, urging her around to face him. “I’ve done
my duty to my niece, danced with my mother, made chitchat with the garden-club
ladies and their boring husbands—and now I’m on my own time. I want to spend it
with you.”

His
eyes were luminous in the silvery light. His smile was earnest yet surprisingly
seductive. She had to force herself to remember that, just as he’d said, there
was
a tomorrow. Whatever silly dreams she’d entertained about a romance with him
would vanish as soon as the moon set on Valentine’s Day.

“Come
upstairs with me,” he murmured.

Her
bones seemed to melt in the heat of his gaze. She couldn’t give this man her
heart, and she couldn’t give him anything else without giving him her heart as
well.

Who
was she kidding? Her heart was already his. She was going to wind up despondent
whether she went upstairs with him or not.

He
leaned toward her, brushed her lips with his…and she resigned herself to the
inevitable, to her own imperative yearning. She loved him. He had stood by her
all day, helping her, supporting her, rescuing her, defending her. She loved
him.