eyes, his slow pace putting her so much more at ease than her noisy, in-your-face family where everyone competed to talk at once.
“But I just want to make sure you’re not married or anything. Are you?” She’d rushed the words out so fast she’d be lucky if he’d even been able to decode them. “Married, I mean.”
To his credit, he didn’t laugh. If Nico was here, he would have busted a gut over that one. Instead Hugh simply met her gaze with unblinking sincerity. “No. One would hope that if I had a wife, I wouldn’t be crawling the halls of a singles hotel at this hour.”
Relief mingled with a quick pang of envy for the picture he created. Too bad most men didn’t view marriage that way. The philanderer she’d gotten caught up with most certainly hadn’t given a rip about being part of South Beach’s club scene despite his wedding vows.
Willing her thoughts out of that dark time in her life and back to the wealth of possibilities epitomized by Hugh Duncan’s timely arrival, Giselle withdrew the chair from the table and nudged it in his direction.
“Then by all means, Hugh, have a seat while I find something to tempt you with.” She flashed him her most flirtatious smile and hummed a few more bars of “The Way You Look Tonight.”
What to feed a man one wanted to seduce?
She’d been given an ideal window of opportunity with the sexy stud in her kitchen and now she’d even been granted the chance to cook for him, when the culinary arts were her lone claim to fame. If she couldn’t reel this guy in for a serious between-the-sheets encounter, she had no one to blame but herself.
Sure, the spaghetti sauce she had simmering on the stove would be delicious, but it didn’t really send the right message. The pomegranate on the counter was one of the most sensual fruits in the world, but it could be messy for a guy with no experience eating one.
Of course, then there was her specialty—the erotic pastries all of South Beach had gone wild for since the restaurant opened a few months ago. What man could resist light, flaky pastries shaped like a woman’s breasts and filled with sweet cream? He’d be putty in her hands in no time.
And maybe Giselle would have a shot at remembering what a man-induced orgasm felt like.
She already had her head buried in the refrigerator when she heard his chair scrape along the ceramic tile. She peered out at him while she dragged essentials from the icebox. He seemed to be getting more comfortable, pivoting his seat to face her, stretching out long legs encased in light brown trousers. She recognized the distinctively male characteristic from life with her four brothers—take up as much space as possible to maintain control of the environment.
“Are you going to give me a hint what you’re celebrating, or am I going to have to guess?” He propped an elbow on the table, his green gaze warm and intimate even from four feet away.
“You’d never guess.” She set the pastry in a low temperature oven to take the chill off while she stirred a small batch of frosting in a peachy, skin-tone shade.
Glancing at the difference between her own bronze skin and the fair hue of the frosting, Giselle added a dash of brown and yellow to the mixture. If the man was going to be thinking about breasts, he might as well at least be thinking about the proper pair.
“I don’t know about that. I’m a pretty good guesser.” He scrubbed a thoughtful hand along a squared jaw. “Any woman singing Sinatra probably has romance on her mind.”
She stopped stirring. “Romance?” Odd how the word made her nervous.
“Yeah. You know—a man, a woman and a lot of sparks?” He crossed his feet at the ankles as if utterly content to play guessing games.
And she had to admit he was pretty damn good at them.
Slowly, she began to stir again. “I might have been thinking about sparks, I’ll grant you that much.”
She wanted to glance his way again as she pulled the pastry out of the oven, but to create an erotic confectionery masterpiece she needed to concentrate on the task at hand.
“She says yes to sparks while romance remains questionable.” Hugh seemed to mull over the notion, the words spoken more softly than the rest. “I’d have to say that means you were celebrating a wild, out-of-control affair. Am I getting closer?”
The deep timbre of his voice in her kitchen did wicked things to her insides as she frosted the treat and put the finishing touches on the nipples with tiny pieces of cherry.
“You’re definitely getting closer.” Her words ended on a husky note as she eased the pastry onto a small silver serving dish and dusted powdered sugar around the rim. “I was simply celebrating the freedom to have a wild, out-of-control affair since my watchdog big brothers are all far away from South Beach this weekend.”
She hoped she didn’t overplay her hand as she swayed her hips with blatant suggestiveness when she walked toward him with the plate.
“All that singing and dancing over a basic freedom like the ability to conduct a sensual interlude?” His eyes lingered on her hips before lifting to meet her gaze. “It stirs the imagination to think how you might react when faced with the reality of a man who would give his right arm for a chance at that kind of encounter with you, Giselle.”
She paused beside him, her legs mere inches from where his own sprawled across the floor. Heat crawled over her skin and made her tingle with anticipation. But it was nothing compared to the flash fire that sizzled through her when she leaned forward to set his plate on the table. Her breasts moved through his line of sight, almost close enough to his mouth to feel his breath.
Or so she wanted to think.
“You won’t have to use your imagination for much longer.” Straightening, she took shallow breaths in the too-warm air that hovered between them. The urge to lick her lips grew almost overwhelming as she stared down at him. “All you have to do is take a peek at the dish I’ve made for you to see what I would do to tempt that sort of man.”
2
NORMALLY, HUGH WASN’T THE KIND of guy who enjoyed surprises. He’d learned at an early age that being unprepared could have dangerous consequences, and he’d forged a personal quest to make sure his stories kept people so informed they’d never be caught off guard.
But Giselle’s late-night offering was the kind of surprise a man relished. And one he sure as hell would never forget.
“What do you think?” She stood over him, the scent of her vanilla cream confection mingling with the more earthy, herbal aroma that clung to her skin.
Even though he was curious to see her facial expression, to search for hints of the game she played in her mischievous dark brown eyes, Hugh couldn’t seem to tear his gaze from the bare breasts served to him on a—no kidding—silver platter.
He sensed her shift beside him while he searched for the correct response. She tugged out the chair across from him and eased into it.
Finally he managed to look up at her own cleavage, enticingly displayed in the killer scrap of red silk she wore for a dress. A plunging neckline edged in a tiny red ruffle seemed to frame the object of his attention.
“Quite
