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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 editor mad. But he’d written a hell of a story. Not sure how much he should tell Giselle, he opted for the truth. “Yes, but that’s work-related. It’s up to you whether or not we want to open that door. I don’t want you to think I’m mixing business with pleasure.”
Pausing, she dug her bare bronze toes into the soft white sand. “And which did we say this was again?”
She made a back-and-forth gesture between them with her finger, referencing the definite spark of connection that linked them.
He drew close to her, near enough to catch a slight whiff of her fragrance beneath the earthy aromas of the kitchen that still clung to her. “I don’t know about you, but I decided this is definitely pleasure.”
She nodded, a curly strand of her dark brown hair brushing against her cheek as she did. “Then maybe we could forget the business aspect of this relationship altogether so we don’t have to worry about it. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know a damn thing about the newspaper business, but is there any chance you could hand off the story on Club Paradise to another reporter?” She drew an idle pattern in the sand with her toe. “I’m not just the chef in charge of overseeing the restaurants. I’m also a part owner in the corporation that runs the whole property, so if we were to, you know…take many walks on the beach together, it could get a little awkward.”
Did she really say what he thought she just said? “Part owner?”
“The controlling partnership is divided among me and three other women.” She met his gaze with a straightforward honesty too rare in people according to his experience.
He’d read all about the split ownership in his research, and knew a little bit about it from letters he’d exchanged with his aunt. He didn’t have a chance to mention it before Giselle hastened on.
“Two of us were working at the club last year when the former owners absconded with the profits, and the other two women who joined us were connected to the old partnership. We pulled together to keep the business afloat and create something bigger and better.”
Ah, damn. All of which he’d gleaned from the old articles he’d printed off on Club Paradise. Even though he’d never actually met his sort-of distant cousin Brianne to quiz her about the resort, plenty had been written about the embezzlement scandal attached to the hotel’s former incarnation as a popular couples resort.
But he’d been too furious about an assignment he’d considered beneath him to really pay much attention to the names of the key players.
Apparently he’d started off his job by drooling over one of them.
“That might be a problem.” For the first time in his journalism career, he knew a moment’s regret at having so thoroughly aggravated his editor. “I definitely don’t have the option of handing off this assignment.”
A fact he regretted all the more the longer he stared at the amazing woman in front of him. A guy didn’t stumble into a walking sensual feast like Giselle Cesare every day.
“But you don’t have an ethical problem with hanging out with me, even though you might have to write about the restaurant, right?” She edged forward a bit, her lips suddenly much too near his own for any rational thought to actually take place.
“No.” Of course there wouldn’t be an ethical problem if he wrote a simple freaking piece on the food.
Unfortunately, he’d never written just a simple story on anything in his entire career.
“Then there shouldn’t be any problem if I decided to do this…” She stretched up on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck, planting her mouth to his in a kiss that would have set off fire alarms if they’d been indoors.
3
FOR A WOMAN WHO HAD BUILT a career around understanding all the subtle nuances of taste, Giselle marveled that she couldn’t quite define the exquisite flavor of Hugh’s kiss.
She’d been dying for a drink from his lips since the moment she’d laid eyes on him, and had finally flung herself in his arms for lack of a better strategy. Now that she was right where she wanted to be, she struggled to identify the darkly complex taste of desire as intoxicating as any burgundy wine. Her knees swayed at the onslaught of sensation, and she held on to him for dear life on the quiet stretch of South Beach that didn’t normally see much action until noon.
Lucky for her, she and Hugh were changing that in a hurry.
“Giselle.” He murmured her name against her mouth, levered himself away from her by a fraction of an inch.
She couldn’t seem to clear her head enough to answer. In fact, the only response she could think of involved more mind-drugging kisses. So she simply waited and tried to remember how to breathe.
“You’re sure you’re okay with this? With me? The article?” He lifted a hand to her cheek and skimmed her jaw with his palm. His fingers toyed with a stray dark curl.
“I’m very fine with this.” She had faith in her abilities as a chef, and the more she talked to Hugh the stronger her impression that he wouldn’t use his position to hurt her or her business. “I think we can work around the article and not let it interfere with—” she sidled closer, allowing her thigh to graze his. Heat streaked through her like a flash fire “—what we both want.”
He caught her hips in his hands, steadied her when she would have fallen against him. He closed his eyes for a long moment, providing her with a secret thrill. Feminine intuition told her she was testing the man’s restraint and, damn, but she liked that idea.
“Maybe you should make that decision after you see the article.” His green eyes bored into hers. Intent. Serious. And maybe a little worried? “I wouldn’t want you to ever regret having been with me.”
Normally, when a man tried to protect her from anything, Giselle’s first instinct was to bristle. She’d been practically smothered to death by masculine attempts at protection in her family, so she didn’t usually appreciate it from anyone else. But the warm concern in Hugh’s eyes, the sincerity of his fear, softened any resentment she might have felt.
“How soon can you have your story written?” Patience wasn’t her strong suit on a good day. And this week she was operating on an even tighter schedule than normal given that one of her brothers would be back in a week.
Nico had sent plenty of her dates running. No matter that women thought he was gorgeous, something about his multibroken nose spoke volumes to other men and made them give him a wide berth. And, as a result, forced them to stay away from Giselle, too.
She didn’t want to wait around only to have Hugh flee.
His fingers slid along the silky fabric of her dress, whispered over her hips and up to her waist. “I can hurry up the process in this case. But it often takes me a few weeks to gather my research.”
“Weeks?” She’d been wondering how she could wait a few hours.
Hugh’s touch skated up her ribs, paused just beneath her breasts.
“I like to be very thorough in my work.” His thumbs drew idle circles on her ribs just below the hem of her bra.
“Oh, really?” Awareness flared through her, made her breath catch in her throat while her breasts tingled and tightened in anticipation.
Just looking at the man made her want to jump him. That sinfully dark hair falling over his brow, combined with the thoughtful way he looked at her—and really saw her—made her want to tangle tongues, limbs and sheets with Hugh.
“Definitely.” His hands flexed against her, pressing lightly into the folds of her dress. He leaned closer to whisper against her ear. “I never do anything in half measures.”
Ooh. She liked the sound of that. And she most certainly liked the feel of what he was doing to her.
She might have moved in for more kissing if she hadn’t caught a glimpse of movement on the beach a few feet away. An older couple Giselle recognized as guests at Club Paradise strolled past them, smiling and winking as they set out for a morning walk.
Given the hour of the day, she really shouldn’t be openly trysting here, on the property of the business she ran. “You’re right. Patience could be a very good thing in this case.”
She tugged him closer to one of the resort’s beach-front tiki huts that housed a minibar and a few stools for patrons seeking shelter from the sun.
He followed her underneath the cool cover of dried palm leaves threaded through the framed roof. “Then you don’t mind waiting?”
“Well I can’t wait for weeks.” Her protective force would be back in seven days. Surely he could write a story before then. Especially if given a little incentive.
She slid her hand beneath his jacket to rest on the solid muscle of his chest. “How about if I help you with your research so you can finish up all the faster?”
The wall of muscles rippled under her fingers.
“Works for me.” His voice grew more strangled as she skimmed her fingers lower. He caught them in a steady grip, halted her progress just as she hit his abs. “My editor will coordinate the auxiliary stories off mine. In other words, if he wants to send a food critic, that’s her call, not mine. I tend to write more hard-hitting news.”
“Hard-hitting?” She frowned, not sure she liked the sound of that. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned fluff? She decided not to mention her favorite part of the paper was the society page.
“Yeah. Something with some news value.” He propped an elbow on the bar as he warmed to his topic. “I’ve been meaning to take a closer look at the reports on the scandals going on here before I went overseas last year. Did they ever find all the embezzlers who cleaned out the hotel’s profits? There were a few guys involved. Melvin Baxter was the front man, and then there was his silent partner. I’m trying to remember his name….”
The intoxicating current of desire that had flowed through her veins moments ago now morphed into a painful morning-after hangover at the mention of the embezzlement scandal. The reminder of how she’d unwittingly helped one of the criminals…
“Giselle?” Hugh peered at her more closely.
“No.” She wouldn’t allow herself to go there. She’d had enough of the recriminations. The guilt. And if she ever felt the need for more, all she had to do was initiate a conversation with her partner Lainie Reynolds. The woman’s skill with a dark glare had the power to remind Giselle of every way she’d done the woman wrong by inadvertently sleeping with her husband. “They never did capture them all.”
Hugh stared out to sea, his eyes roaming the distant horizon as the sun filtered across the Atlantic. “But they got the first guy. Melvin Baxter, king of the local Rat Pack. That’s what they called them, I remember. A group of slick players who took the whole city on a wild ride.”
“Enough.” Her skin turned icy at the memory. Her judgment in men had sucked back then because she’d never been allowed to exercise it. What made her think her B.S.-alert system worked any better now? “I don’t care to remember the club’s darkest hour.”
Hugh smiled as if totally oblivious to her discomfort. She made a mental note that the man’s keen observation skills seemed to go down the toilet when he got wrapped up in a new idea.
“The power of journalism is that it can shed new light on those dark places, Giselle. That’s what I do best.” His cocky smile might have been a tad arrogant, but then again Giselle didn’t have a problem with people who were certain of themselves.
She just had a problem when those people wanted to resurrect a past she’d tried hard to bury.
“I think some things are better left alone.”
“You’d never make it as an investigative reporter with that kind of thinking.” He grinned as he plucked a wind-tossed strand of hair out of her eyes.
While Giselle struggled to think of a way to redirect this conversation before it unsettled her anymore, Hugh snapped his fingers.
“I’ve got it.”
“What?”
Hugh’s eyes seemed to turn an even brighter shade of green. “The name of the silent partner in the old management group that ran this place. It was Robert Flynn.”
Robert.
Giselle gripped the planked surface of the bar in the tiny tiki hut for support as the name from her past knifed right through her.
Not that she still cared about the man who’d lied to her in the very worst way. No, the pain in her chest had nothing to do with a broken heart and everything to do with her guilt at having been sucked in by him. At having deeply injured his wife.
