Heat in the Kitchen

Title Page

Heat in the Kitchen

by

Sarah Fredricks

Book 1 in the Duval-Adams series

For further information about Sarah and her books, please go to:

http://www.sarahfredricks.com

http://www.amazon.com/Sarah-Fredricks/e/B0076I6CSI

https://www.facebook.com/SarahFredricksRomance

https://www.twitter.com/SarahFredricks1

To follow the Duval-Adams family go to:

http://www.duvaladams.moonfruit.com

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Copyright

Copyright © Sarah Fredricks 2012

Cover Design by www.cloudart.biz

Cover Photos by Yuri Arcurs and via Dreamstime.com

All rights reserved worldwide.

Heat in the Kitchen is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Please respect the author's work and ensure the copy you are reading has been purchased only for your enjoyment. Please do not copy or lend it to others.

Thank you.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Per Bressendorff for offering to undertake a storyline edit. There was no pulling the wool over his eyes! I had written a couple of incidences that I kind of hoped no-one would question, but Per wasn't letting me get away with them! You did a great job Per and I am extremely thankful.

I would also like to thank Bernie Hewitt for advising me on sentencing in Saudi.

Synopsis

Orphaned at eighteen, identical twins Matt and Zander Duval-Adams assumed responsibility for their twelve year old identical twin sisters, Tess and Ronnie.

'Heat in the Kitchen', the first book in a series of four, introduces you to Matt fourteen years after the death of their parents. Matt is a two Michelin starred, internationally renowned chef who has cooked for royalty and presidents all over the world.

As Matt settles in for an evening of creativity in the kitchen he discovers that Tess has lent his professional kitchen to her friend, Ella. Despite being disgruntled at the invasion, his 'big brother' instinct kicks in and he ends up helping her out of the jam she's landed in.

Ella is his baby sister's friend and out of bounds in Matt's eyes but that doesn't stop the raging attraction he feels towards her. As her life spirals out of control, Matt's 'big brother' act becomes just that, an act.

Ella is an internationally acclaimed pianist, fighting for her half-sisters' love, struggling to come to terms with her father's recent presence in her life and forced to confront a nightmare from her past.

She has secretly loved Matt for more than half her life but is panicked by the reality of their mutual attraction. Does she see Matt as someone who can only be a good friend and nothing more, or does his attention finally inflame a passion and love that neither can continue to deny?

Warning

This book contains one seriously hot chef, one beautiful and talented pianist, two sets of twins who love and support each other and a fictitious place called Quinaard. You will be transported from London to the Middle East and across to Long Island.

The sex scenes are explicit and the love intense.

Prologue

Fourteen years earlier

'No!'

A sob pierced the hallowed air.

Ella stopped, and stood silently beside a large marble headstone as she watched the scene unfold before her. She'd been on her way over to offer comfort, but now she stayed put, unable to move forward and unwilling to turn away.

'Matt, please! Let us stay with you and Zander. Please! Please don't send us away!'

Tess, one of her two best friends in the world was sobbing. Tears ran down her face and dripped off her chin.

Ella watched as Ronnie, Tess's twin, moved across to comfort her. Tears streamed down her face too. Identical in looks, yet the girls were very different in personality, one as quiet as the other was dramatic. Most people were unable to tell them apart unless they knew them really well and of course, Ella had known them both since they'd all been six years old.

'Oh for goodness sake, we're not going just yet.' Some old looking woman with a pinched face said, snatching her arm back from grabbing at Tess as if disgusted by the outburst.

She was dressed head to toe in black, with a dreary looking long coat and a stupid, round hat with a poncy feather and thick veil covering her eyes. Her makeup looked like it had been applied with a trowel, and in the heat of the May sunshine, it was beginning to run down her face in streaks. From the way she stood, all sharp angles and poker faced, Ella just knew the streaks had nothing to do with the shedding of any tears. On any other day she would have had a giggle with her friends over how hideous the woman looked.

At the moment though, to twelve year old Ella, she just looked like something out of a horror film - no wonder Tess didn't want to go with her.

From her vantage point she noticed Matt and Zander approach the girls with their arms out.

Tess ran into Matt's embrace while Zander wrapped his arms around Ronnie.

As they wiped away the girls' tears with their hands, Ella felt a twinge of jealousy that her best friends had such amazing and loving big brothers looking out for them.

Then she caught herself and guilt flooded her thoughts.

They were only here today because they were burying their parents. They may have been in boarding school for six years but Ella knew they'd loved their time with their brothers and parents during the holidays, falling over themselves at the start of each term, of where they'd been and what they'd done.

Ella couldn't comprehend how suddenly their lights had dimmed. A horrendous accident had made them orphans.

'We'll sort something out pumpkin. We don't know what, but everything will be fine.'

Ella looked up to where the unsure sounding voice had come from. She caught the look of uncertainty and pain that flashed between Matt and Zander across the heads of the girls. Every time Ella had set eyes on the boys at boarding school, they'd always been so confident, so full of life. Zander quiet to Matt's gregariousness. There was just a rawness to them today. Despite their height, they looked small and unsure.

Two good looking young men who'd only just celebrated their eighteenth birthday. Themselves identical twins but Ella could tell them apart too. She'd had a case of hero worship for Matt since the day the Duval-Adams family had come into her life. As she faced turning thirteen in a few months, that hero worship was shifting from a starry eyed wish that he was her brother to an embarrassing desire that he actually saw her as a potential girlfriend.

Her heart broke for the helpless look on Matt's face and for the tears that glistened in his eyes as he fought to stay strong.

No-one would be comforting him or Zander today and Ella was too young to offer. The boys didn't even know she was there most of the time anyway. When they came looking for the girls at school, they did so with a single-minded focus and escaped from the adulation of another thirty-odd, pre-teenage, giggling girls as fast as they could.

Ella was distracted from her thoughts by a shrill voice that seemed to bounce off the headstones.

'Ungrateful, the lot of you!'

Ella winced and watched the woman's chest heave as she took in a hurried breath. 'My brother married below his station and the fool has left you with nothing. I'm taking you girls in, when I don't have to, and you stand there behaving like the ungrateful wretches that you are. Well, my offer is on the table only until I leave. If you don't come with me, then I shall wash my hands of the lot of you. Four children! What were they thinking!' 'Poker faced' turned on her heel and huffed her way back to her chauffeured car.

Zander put his hand out to restrain Matt. 'She's not worth getting into bother for Matt. No matter what we've found out about our parents, they brought us up to be better than that.'

Ella saw Matt take a deep breath and give a subtle nod of his head. How they could read each other was a constant source of fascination to her. She hadn't noticed anything to indicate Matt's intentions.

The boys embraced each other with the girls stood between them. A family of four united in their grief, huddled together by the side of their parents' grave - silent tears now from them all as they stood there, oblivious to the movement of people around them.

Ella wasn't the only silent observer of the scene though and she continued to watch as Mr Brown, the school's headmaster, walked over and rested his hands on Matt's and Zander's shoulders.

'Come Matthew, Alexander. Bring Thérèse and Véronique with you too. I think I know a way you can all stay together if that is what you wish.'

As he led the family away, Ella finally found the strength to move and she turned to leave the cemetery, her own face awash with silent tears as her heart shattered into tiny pieces. Shattered for Matt, whose pain just then she'd felt so keenly; shattered for her friends' loss, and selfishly shattered for herself too, as she just somehow knew that nothing in her young life would ever be the same again.

Chapter 1

Present day

What the…!

Words failed him.

He went from irritation to admiration in the blink of an eye.

Stressed and knackered he may be, but he could always summon up the energy to admire the female form. This one stopped him in his tracks just inside the door - a profusion of purple and a touch of pink that halted his irritation and anger.

But it was the long legs - clad in skin tight, purple, knee high boots - disappearing up into a very short, frilly, purple skirt that caught his attention first. This purple vision then bent over the table and reached for something the other side allowing the skirt to tantalise him with what might, or might not, be underneath.

He did a double take.

Wow! She had legs to die for.

He'd never really thought he was a legs man until seeing those legs, perfectly formed and sexy as hell. He closed his eyes momentarily as he felt them squeezing around his waist. His eyes sprung open in shock at the speed of his thoughts. He was more stressed than he realised and clearly in need of female company, if he could have thoughts like that over a pair of purple legs. His lower body stirred. He shuddered at his reaction.

She moved.

Oh boy!

Standing up and stretching up into a cupboard gave Matt a side view of breasts that looked so round and perfectly formed - restrained under the pink, stretchy tube thing, the like of which he'd never seen before. He could see the protrusion of a nipple straining at the front of her top. No bra, if he was any judge. He hardened. Before he could dwell on what those breasts would feel like in his hands, they bounced, breaking the moment. His eyes moved on and up. She was swaying, he realised, and then saw the white cord hanging down from her ear. That explained why she had no idea he was there.

Her face was shrouded in an abundance of purple hair that seemed to be bursting out of the constraint holding it in place. Matt wondered how far it would fall down. His eyes closed again on an image of her hair cascading over bare breasts, caressing pink nipples and teasing him with a hint of their lusciousness.

Man! He'd definitely been working way too hard and ignoring his pleasures for far too long when he was fantasising over a stranger.

He shook his head in disbelief.

A pink and purple stranger.

A stranger that looked more like a high class tart.