MacAllister's Baby (8 page)

The chocolate was warm and rich and it wasn’t what she really wanted. Elisabeth leaned forward a little more and let Angus feed her the strawberry, the tips of his fingers nearly touching her lips.

The taste exploded in her mouth. The juicy soul of summer, overlaid with chocolate as sweet as temptation. Pure pleasure. Her eyes fluttered shut as she savoured the fruit, and she knew that Angus was watching her. Knew he’d wanted to give her pleasure. Knew this was part of his seduction.

Feeding her was intimate, sexual. And only a faint echo of what it would feel like to have his tongue in her mouth, his hands on her skin, his body thrusting into her.

When she opened her eyes again, the strawberry gone, she saw Angus watching her face. Close, intense, his eyes hooded, mischief replaced by desire. He’d look this way when they made love.

‘You have chocolate on your mouth,’ he murmured, and brushed his thumb over her lower lip. His skin was warmer than the chocolate, somehow even only the pad of his thumb strong and male. He stroked the length of her lip, and when he was finished she ran her tongue over where he had touched.

A feeling, more than a taste, and so much more delicious than any food.

He raised his thumb to his own mouth and licked the trace of chocolate off.

She moaned, deep in her throat, before she could stop herself. It was just a step away from a kiss.

For a moment, they stood there, close enough to touch, their eyes locked, their breathing shallow. Her heartbeat roared in her ears.

They had just crossed a barrier. She couldn’t pretend any more that she didn’t want him.

‘I want a taste too,’ Angus said, and he took her wrist in his clever hand. Before she could react, he guided her hand to the bowl and dipped her fingers in the warm chocolate.

He held up her hand between them so they could both see the dark molten liquid on the tips of her three middle fingers. As she watched a fat drop of chocolate slipped down the length of her index finger.

Without taking his eyes from hers, he caught the bottom of the drop with his tongue and licked, slowly, up the length of her finger. Liquid heat. Only on her finger, now, but what this would feel like on her neck…her breasts…up the inside of her thighs…

When he reached the top he gently sucked on the tip of her finger, nipping it with his smooth teeth. ‘Delicious,’ he said, and started on her middle finger. His tongue moving round, his lips taking small kisses.

Elisabeth watched his mouth, unhurried, thorough, and sensual. When he slipped his tongue between her fingers it was so much like him licking her between her legs she nearly lost her balance. She gripped his shoulder, and heard his small throaty sound of approval.

It took ages. It didn’t take long enough. She saw the chocolate disappearing under his lips and she felt every single heartbeat as a powerful throb of desire.

And then Angus released her hand from his mouth and pulled it to his chest, bringing her body even closer. His face was only inches from hers. Near enough so his breath felt like kisses on her skin.

‘Tonight,’ he said, his voice a low, raspy sound that vibrated down her entire body, ‘I want to take you home and taste you everywhere.’ He leaned forward and touched his lips to her ear. ‘Say yes, Elisabeth.’

A shiver went through her. It was exactly what she’d been thinking herself. Exactly what she wanted. To touch Angus, to experience him. She breathed in the air full of Angus MacAllister and she opened her mouth to say yes.

There was a noise at the door. Angus smoothly stepped back from her and was stirring the chocolate with a spoon when Danny burst through the door, Jennifer trailing behind.

‘That is a wicked car, Angus!’ he shouted, throwing a bag onto the counter and rushing up to give Angus back his keys.

‘Hey, hold on, treat that fruit with respect,’ protested Angus, and went to rescue the bag.

While Angus was giving the chastened Danny some lessons on the correct handling of produce Elisabeth turned back to kneading her pastry. The pliant pastry was a poor substitute for Angus’s hard body, but she craved touching something.

‘You’re making it tough,’ Jennifer said softly beside her. ‘You should handle pastry lightly.’

‘Really?’ Elisabeth made her voice bright and interested. ‘Can you show me, Jennifer? I think this is going to end up like shoe leather.’

She listened and watched Jennifer, but she only gave her part of her attention. The other part of it was with Angus as he instructed Danny, taught the unteachable boy. He was apparently absorbed in what Danny was doing, but Elisabeth could feel the sexual tension still simmering between them although they were a room’s breadth apart and each with a teenager.

Rolling of pastry, cutting of fruit, making of custard. Jennifer and Danny thought they were assembling a dessert, but Elisabeth knew better. They were building trust and self-confidence and a future. And Elisabeth and Angus were building something else, though she wasn’t sure what it was yet.

He caught her eye as the tarts went into the oven, and his tongue just touched his lips. She looked away quickly.

The kids weren’t the only people learning things. Angus had learned that Elisabeth wanted him, and he was apparently eager to capitalise on what he’d learned.

Elisabeth had learned that she liked Angus. Despite her suspicion of his motives; despite the fact that she’d sworn to stay away from men like him; despite the fact that the last thing she needed was temptation.

How come it was so easy to make pastry tough and so hard to make herself strong enough to resist Angus MacAllister?

Angus’s and Jennifer’s tarts were perfect when they came out of the oven. Danny’s didn’t look as good, but he’d experimented with the spices, and it tasted incredible. Elisabeth’s was awful: irregular, sunken in the middle, and charred on the outside.

Elisabeth was an English teacher. She recognised a symbol when she saw one. The lesson here was:
Pay attention to your goal, and don’t get distracted by sexy men who are no good for you.

‘You’ll do better next time, Miss Read,’ Jennifer told her.

Elisabeth glanced at Angus, who was regarding her with a twinkle and a grin, and doubted it.

As they were cleaning up Angus made a detour to stand beside her with his dishcloth. ‘Thought any more about your plans for this evening, Miss Read?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘I’m eager to discuss the main course, after the appetisers we tasted earlier.’

‘Do you always talk this way, or do I bring out the bad metaphors in you?’

‘You bring out a lot in me, Elisabeth.’ He subtly flicked his dishcloth in the teenagers’ direction. ‘So I’ll pick you up at six?’

‘No, thank you.’ She wiped her hands on a tea towel, picked up her wonky tart, and handed it to him. ‘Take this, though. In case you haven’t satisfied your sweet tooth yet.’

CHAPTER FIVE

‘I
WANT
you to close your eyes,’ said Angus, sitting on top of a table, leaning back on his hands, ‘and remember the best thing you’ve ever eaten. I don’t care it if was the fanciest, or the most expensive—I mean the best.’

From his perch on the table, he looked at the faces of the three people sitting around him on chairs. They’d closed their eyes. Danny’s brow was furrowed with the intensity of his attempt to remember. Jennifer’s face was slightly pinched. And Elisabeth’s face, as always, was beautiful.

The most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

And he knew it, because even though he only saw Elisabeth herself two days a week for two hours at a time, he’d seen her face in his mind for twenty-four hours of every day for the past four weeks. Working at his restaurant, travelling around London, and especially lying in his bed at night.

He hadn’t been so obsessed with anything since he’d discovered that he could cook. And he hadn’t been this horny since he was a teenager.

The woman was sexy as hell, even more so because she did her best not to show it. He flirted with her outrageously when the kids weren’t looking and she never once flirted back. And yet the toss of her head, the sway of her hips, the firm line of her lips, the defiant sparkle in her eyes all turned him on more than any superficial flirting could do.

Except for last Friday, when he’d touched her lips, eaten chocolate from her skin. And that had turned him on more than anything in his life had done.

Angus let his eyes settle on her face, travel over her delicate eyebrows arched over closed lids, her fine, straight nose, her satin skin. A hint of a smile passed over her lips, and he knew that she had remembered the best thing she’d ever eaten.

He hoped it had been the chocolate-dipped strawberry he’d fed her. Though there wasn’t much chance of her mentioning it in front of the kids. She was as scrupulously professional in the classroom as he was in his kitchen.

‘Okay, open your eyes,’ he said. ‘Danny, what’s your best meal?’

He always started with Danny. If you didn’t listen to Danny first, he just burst in anyway. The boy had a compulsive need to be noticed, a feeling that Angus recognised in himself.

There was a lot of Danny that Angus recognised in himself, as a matter of fact.

‘I had this mate Azhar, right?’ Danny said. ‘This was when I was like ten. And one night he invited me round his for tea. His mother was the best cook ever. She had this lamb, and these lentils, and rice. I didn’t know it then, but it was her spices made it taste so good. She must’ve ground them herself, and she used loads of coriander and that. It was just like—oh, I don’t know, like every mouthful was different. I’ve had curries since, but never like that one.’

Elisabeth had been listening to Danny closely. ‘I know Azhar,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you were friends.’

‘Nah. We sort of stopped being mates when I came up to school here,’ Danny replied, looking uncomfortable.

Angus got it. Danny’s favourite food was the taste of innocence, the days when he was a kid and his friends could be any race, belong to any group. A time when he’d been allowed to express wonder.

Angus caught Elisabeth’s eye and saw that she understood, too.

When had he been able to communicate like this with a woman?

‘What about you, Jennifer?’ He leaned forward to catch her words.

‘Chicken soup. With noodles. When I got a cold. My mother used to cook a whole chicken all afternoon to make it for me. Before she died.’

Angus didn’t like to push Jennifer too much; he knew the girl liked him, but he wasn’t sure of her comfort zones yet, even after four weeks. But Elisabeth seemed to know how to draw the girl out.

‘What was it like?’ she asked.

‘Deep. Golden. With some sort of green herb. The noodles were like slippery velvet.’ She raised her eyes from her lap, to meet Elisabeth’s. ‘I only had it two or three times.’

‘It must have been delicious,’ Elisabeth said, and he could hear her unspoken words.
You must miss her very much.

She was always doing this.

He’d had to work at getting the trust of these two kids. He’d had to plan what he was going to say, to put himself in their shoes and imagine how they’d react. He’d actually sat down before he’d met them and worked out a strategy based on the information that Elisabeth had given him.

But she just seemed to do it naturally. She knew how to clear a space so that people could be themselves around her. And she didn’t even have to think about it first. Angus could charm people; Elisabeth could understand them.

God, he liked her. And on top of that, he liked who he was when he was with her.

Without her, he would probably have barrelled in here, given some cooking lessons, talked to the press, and forgotten about the entire thing. Because of her, he’d taken the time to get to know Danny and Jennifer. He’d thought about how he could actually help them.

And that felt good. As if some of her passion had rubbed off on him, filled up some of the emptiness he’d been feeling for so long.

‘What’s your favourite, Elisabeth?’ he asked.

‘Oatmeal cookies,’ she said, and she looked so surprised at her own words that he grinned at her.

‘Who made them?’ he asked.

She tilted her head as she remembered. ‘There was this woman who lived down the street from us when we lived in Calgary. Her name was Miss Wood. I must have been about twelve years old and she caught me stealing her lilacs.’

‘Miss!’ Danny exclaimed.

Elisabeth smiled and shrugged. ‘My parents believed that property was theft. I didn’t think she’d miss a bunch or two. Anyway, she caught me before I could cut any. Miss Wood had a sixth sense about her flowers, I think.’

‘I hope you were very ashamed of yourself,’ Angus said in mock seriousness. She’d never said this much about herself before. He’d like to think it was because she’d grown more comfortable with him; he thought it was probably because she was trying to make the students more comfortable with her. But as long as he had the chance to get to know her a little better, he didn’t care why.

‘I was pretty embarrassed,’ she admitted. ‘But Miss Wood said she would give me the lilacs, if I asked her after tea. And she invited me inside.’

‘For oatmeal cookies,’ Angus guessed.

‘First, for books. She was a retired English teacher and she was English herself. I’d never seen so many books in my life. She told me she never took tea without reading a bit of Shakespeare first. So she pulled out two copies of
As You Like It
and made me read the part about Orlando writing his love for Rosalind on all the trees of Arden forest. After that, she gave me oatmeal cookies. And Earl Grey tea.’

‘She’s the reason you came to England and became a teacher.’

‘She was one of them. Miss Wood and her cookies and her Shakespeare. We read all the comedies and half the tragedies before I had to move again.’

With those last words, Elisabeth’s smile faded, and she glanced at her watch.

Ah. Like Danny and Jennifer, Elisabeth’s memories centred around loss.

Angus looked at her and wondered when he’d stopped just wanting to know what Elisabeth was like in bed and started wanting to know everything else about her, too.