tore into the boxes. Mr. Big watched, his mouth dangling open. Ingredients for the soufflé, arrayed in a row on one section of the counter, elements for the crepes on another. Her mind whirled with logistics, timing, sequence. Should she get the soufflé in the oven before starting the sauce for the crepes? If the soufflé was done too soon, they wouldn’t be ready to serve it on the spot. It might fall. She couldn’t serve a flat soufflé to those guys. They had guns. They would shoot her.
She decided to grate and chop the savory ingredients, then whip up the orange sauce, then assemble the soufflé and pop it in the oven, which left exactly twenty-five minutes to bake the crepes on the griddle and get the ham browned, the fruit blended and the bread toasted. Assuming she had six arms, and that somebody else would deal with linens, dishes and cutlery. And she thought she had job stress at the club.
Mr. Big proved to be worse than useless as a line cook. He was slow, sullen, clouded and uncomprehending.
“What do you mean, orange zest?” he grumbled. “What the fuck is fucking orange zest?”
“If you have to ask, never mind,” she snapped. “Grate the cheese into this bowl, fast. Then wash the grater. I need it for the zest. And cut these herbs. Very fine. That should be simple enough for even you.”
“Stop bitching,” he muttered. “Nobody asked you to get mixed up in this.”
“I just came back for my glasses and my keys,” she whispered fiercely. “I had to! I’m blind as a bat without my glasses! You might have warned me about this last night! Instead of—instead of—”
“Warned you?” he shot back. “Jesus Christ, I tried to scare you away from here last night. At least until I—we, I mean—got distracted. But any female with half a brain would have run like hell. What was the matter with you?”
Her fault, huh? Asfuckingif. She wrenched the bowl of grated cheese away from him and dumped it into her warm bechamel.
Half a brain, her ass. Hah. Scare her? Sure, if scaring her included kissing her senseless and giving her a transcendental orgasm. And now the jerk was mangling her herbs, too.
“Stop that,” she snapped. She yanked his cutting board away and tossed him a peeled onion. “Chop this,” she ordered. “Very fine.”
He whacked his knife down on the board. The two halves of the guillotined onion flew off the board and rolled to opposite corners of the room. “Christ,” he said, in a savage undertone. “What a fucking mess.”
“Tantrums do not help,” she pointed out sweetly.
He collected the onion, chopped it with a glower that would have intimidated her if she had the time to be intimidated, which she did not. She stared at his chopping technique. “Finer,” she said snippily.
“What do you mean, finer? Any finer than this, and it’ll be paste!”
“Finer,” she reiterated. “Then put them in the saucepan, and stir them constantly. Do not let them burn. They need to caramelize.”
He muttered, dumped, stirred. She turned her back to deal with the eggs, sifting through the words he had just said as she separated the whites from yolks.
She dropped the yolks into her bechamel, stirred them gently into the mix until the mixture was tinged with bright sunny yellow. “So, what you’re saying is…last night you were trying to scare me away? You didn’t want me and I just didn’t catch on?”
He grabbed a paring knife off the counter and stabbed it into her cutting board, in the midst of her heaps of chopped herbs. They scattered. She stepped back with a soft gasp.
“Wrong,” he snarled. “We did what we did because we both wanted to. But I sure as hell didn’t think you’d come back. I hoped you wouldn’t. Now shut up, do as you’re told, and do not fuck with me. Clear?”
She plucked the quivering knife out of the board, and delicately reassembled her piles of herbs, before sprinkling them into the mix.
“I think all this macho bullshit is just for the camera,” she whispered. “I really think it is. You’re as scared as I am.”
“Fuck and double fuck. On top of it all, you’re delusional. For the love of Christ, Becca. Shut up and cook.”
Clink, clink. The utensils against the china made a delicate, musical sound. Becca bent over Zhoglo’s plate to lay another slice of ham on it, at such an angle so that her tits practically fell out of her blouse. Her face was pale, but composed. Eyes demurely lowered.
Mouth closed, for once. Zhoglo’s poisonous vibe shut even her up.
She had class, he had to admit. Iron self-control, too, except when Nick needled her. Most girls he knew would be curled up in the fetal position sucking their thumbs under this kind of performance pressure.
The meal had gone well, so far. The fragrant, steaming food had been completely demolished. The platters were bare.
Becca leaned over again with the crystal pitcher of mixed fruit and fizzy wine, filling champagne flutes with a geisha’s detached but sensual grace. Four sets of male eyes fastened onto her body. Five, if he counted his own. His jaw hurt from clenching so hard.
She’d make a good undercover agent, he thought. Who would guess what lay beneath that sex bunny exterior? Watching the woman put that meal together had been like watching an Olympic sporting event. Every gesture choreographed for maximum efficiency.
So far, so good. The cook ruse was holding. The meal had been consumed. They had made another shuffling step forward on the tightrope over the pit of man-eating lions. If only she weren’t so fucking pretty, she might have a chance in hell of getting through this alive.
Zhoglo polished off the grilled ham, wiped his mouth, and turned his pale gaze upon Nick. “Does she understand this language?” he asked in Ukrainian.
“No,” Nick replied.
“I would like for her to satisfy some other appetites, after I digest, of course. The food was delicious. I was betrayed by greed.”
A fist grabbed Nick’s vital organs and squeezed. “That wasn’t part of our understanding when I engaged her services,” he said. “My first priority was to make sure the food would be good, Vor—”
“And your second priority was to have something pretty to fuck while you waited on the lonesome, boring island, no? You simply do not want to share. You do not impress me, Solokov.”
Nick opted not to reply. There was nothing he could say.
“But after such a tasty meal, I can be reasonable,” Zhoglo went on. “If I am sufficiently entertained.”
Nick’s dread deepened, widened. “Entertained?”
Zhoglo’s eyes sparkled. “We have nothing to do this afternoon but stare at this oppressive greenery. So entertain me. With your little friend.” He jerked his chin at Becca. “I like spectator sports.”
Nick’s eyes flicked to Becca. She’d sensed the vibe, gone on alert. Her hands wound together, white-knuckled and pressed against her belly. Her mouth was tight, her eyes big. Silently beseeching
