hands on her shoulders steadied her as she slid into the three-inch heels she’d kicked off after the nightclub closed for the night.
“Wait. Stop.” His touch permeated the silky fabric of her dress as if it wasn’t even there. His fingers curved around to her back, his thumbs dipping into the soft terrain at the base of her neck.
Ten minutes ago she’d longed for a chance to have his hands on her. Now she stood paralyzed, unsure how to proceed from here with a man who held the balance of her career in his hands as surely as he held her body.
Her hot, aching body that still longed for him.
She blinked up at him. Waiting.
Hugh shook his head, his brow wrinkled in obvious confusion. “What did I miss here? We went from racy flirtation to I-can’t-stand-the-heat-so-let’s-get-the-hell-out-of-the-kitchen in record time, and I’m not quite sure how it happened. You seem upset that I work for the paper.”
He hadn’t made it a question, yet he seemed content to wait for her to speak. To explain.
“I’ve been trying to get your paper out here for weeks to review my food.” She cleared her throat in an effort to remove the hesitant sound from her voice. She wouldn’t compound tonight’s problem by appearing ungrateful to the poor unsuspecting food critic who only wanted a taste test and wound up walking in on the chef flashing her panties in a moment of unbridled enthusiasm. “And while I realize it is often customary to make a surprise visit to a restaurant in order to sample the average food preparation capabilities on any given night, I can guarantee that my welcome would have been much different if you’d at least made your visit during business hours.”
Hugh’s hands slid from her arms. “I’m no food critic, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Yet you’re here from the newspaper and you’re working on a story about the club.” She lifted a skeptical brow. Just because she’d never seen the man’s name on a restaurant review didn’t mean he couldn’t write one.
“Yes.” He frowned, perhaps realizing how unconvincing he sounded. “But I haven’t even thought of what angle I’m going to take on the story yet, so I’m not sure that food will come into play.”
“Well, just in case, I’m going to make certain I don’t feed you any more X-rated cream puffs, okay?” She finished putting her shoes on and was surprised to find herself closer to eye-level with Hugh Duncan as she did.
The bright green of his steady gaze made her belly turn a little flip. What a waste that this god of a man had just happened to walk into her life at one of the few times she could have actually had some fun with him, and now she’d need to keep her hands off.
Fate had a really sadistic sense of humor.
Hugh peered over the progress of her spaghetti sauce on the stove. “Then how about we forget all about food and restaurants and go for a walk on the beach? Assuming you can leave the sauce, that is. I have no idea how much baby-sitting this sort of thing requires.”
A food critic who didn’t know much about cooking? Giselle couldn’t decide if he was putting her on or if there remained a chance he wouldn’t realize how much of a faux pas she’d committed by dancing around the kitchen barefoot.
Hope flared to life inside her along with remnants of desire. “It needs to simmer for hours. But isn’t there some sort of ethical problem with me…fraternizing with the reporter who’s doing a story on my resort?”
He shrugged. “If there is, it’s me breaking all the rules, not you.” He glanced down at the high heels she’d donned. “Those shoes will never cut it on the beach, though.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “You’re really serious? You want to walk on the beach at this hour?”
Her brothers would have warned her that the drunks would be out in full force just before dawn, and that no woman belonged in a deserted area like that alone. She really shouldn’t go…
Still, he held out an arm. “If we hurry we can still see the sunrise.”
He’d appealed to the one hot button Giselle Cesare had never been able to resist—her sense of adventure.
Even knowing she’d probably regret it, Giselle didn’t stand a chance of saying no. With the strains of Sinatra growing louder in the back of her mind, she reached for his arm and hoped she could still find a way to take this sexy stranger to her bed before her week of freedom ended.
HUGH WATCHED GISELLE’S LONG legs eat up the beach as she ran to chase a flock of seagulls. Dispensing with her high heels on the sprawling back patio of Club Paradise long ago, she shouted at the birds and sent them fleeing in a cloud of white feathers as they trekked back toward the resort.
The sensuous woman who baked erotic pastries and sang while she cooked obviously harbored another side. The youthful free spirit who liked to chase birds seemed totally at odds with her provocative red dress and her dark eyes full of naughty promise.
She turned to him now, the dark hair that had earlier been loosely coiled at the back of her head bounced around her shoulders, the dark mass highlighted by intermittent coppery strands that glinted in the warm pink light cast by the rising sun.
She’d brought peaches to the beach with them and she ate hers with relish, the juice spilling down her chin as she waited for him to catch up.
He’d been an idiot to invite her out here, to develop any sort of friendship with a woman who might be hurt by a story he crafted on the resort that employed her.
She turned to walk in-step beside him as he came shoulder to shoulder with her. “The sunrise is gorgeous. I can’t believe how many times I’ve seen the sun come up through the windows of the hotel and yet I’ve never hauled my butt out here to be a part of it.”
Shading her eyes, she glimpsed toward the eastern horizon, balancing the last of her peach between two fingers.
He could have stared at her all day, taking in the little details about her full, juice-slick lips or her Sophia Loren curves in the fire-engine red dress. But he forced himself to also listen to her words, to pay attention to what she said and not just what he wanted to do to her.
“I’ve missed Miami. I always like coming back to the great sunrises.” He hadn’t realized as much until he told her. For years he’d tried to tell himself he didn’t have a home, that he was simply a wanderer by nature.
But he’d been born here, still had a stepaunt in town who he liked to visit once in a while. He’d lived in Miami for nearly a decade before his mother took him overseas to be with her new husband of exotic foreign descent. Only to be diplomatically trapped inside an ass-backward country that viewed him and his mother as “property” of the man she’d married for more months than he cared to remember.
He shook off the thought, distracting himself from unpleasant memories by watching another drop of juice roll down Giselle’s chin and drop to her breastbone.
He might have reached out to swipe the liquid if she hadn’t finished the fruit then. And tossing the pit into a wire trashcan they passed, she turned to him. “You mentioned you were overseas until recently?”
Pissing off diplomats from a myriad of countries and generally making his
