Wishful Sinful (Rock Royalty Book 5) (27 page)

Not to mention that she never cried—not since she was fourteen and her father told her at her mother’s funeral that crying was something big girls didn’t do.
Don’t let anyone think you’re weak.

At the locked door of the employee break room, with nothing left to do but gather her things and head home, she keyed in the pass code and then pushed it open.

“Surprise!”

Startled, Nikki took an instinctive step back and felt that familiar, dangerous doughiness in her right knee. Her leg almost gave way, but she gritted her teeth and fought for balance. The small crowd in the room didn’t seem to notice, and then she was being dragged inside.

Colleen, the youngest member of Fleming’s full-time waitstaff, grinned at her. “You didn’t think we were going to let you go quietly, did you?”

Nikki had really hoped so. She didn’t know how much longer she could remain upright on her listing leg.

But slices of the pastry chef’s celebrated Chocolate Can’t Kill You cake were already set on a rolling cart beside champagne glasses filled with bubbly. The dishwashers, grizzled Joe and his baby-faced sidekick, Carlos, passed out forks. Colleen danced around with the champagne.

“To Nikki!” she finally said.

And everyone there, from the bartender, to the waitstaff, to her favorite prep cook who must have made a return trip just for the occasion, echoed the words, their glasses held high. The enthusiastic goodwill surprised Nikki all over again. She’d inherited her keep-your-distance DNA from her dad, so she didn’t get too friendly with people, not even coworkers.

In the convivial atmosphere, though, Nikki did okay through the next few minutes, sipping at the champagne she hoped would work like ibuprofen. Then Colleen asked her about her future plans.

“Do you have your next chef job lined up? You said you had prospects.”

It took a moment for Nikki to clear her throat of her latest swallow and her sudden awkwardness. “Not, um, yet. I’m still, uh, sifting through those prospects.”

“I have a friend—”

“What about—”

“Why not—”

The room filled with suggestions. Wearing a polite smile, Nikki listened to each of them. Her excuse for leaving Fleming’s was creative burnout, so their ideas ran the gamut from Japanese to Egyptian to a place that touted a Swiss-Argentinean fusion cuisine.

That last gave her pause. Swiss-Argentinean fusion cuisine. What would that be, exactly? Reuben sandwiches?

After the cake and champagne were consumed, the well-wishers walked her out to her car. She was forced to smooth her gait as she headed across the blacktop, pretending for the crowd she had two completely functional legs. She’d never wanted pity, or worse, the inevitable questions: Why not see a surgeon? Surely some doctor could…? There were reasons that wasn’t going to happen.

Once home, in the smallest rented condo Santa Monica had to offer, she called out, “Fish, I’m back,” then limped about to gather a 32-ounce bag of frozen baby peas and a week’s worth of unopened mail. With a sigh of relief, she perched on the recliner in the living room, setting the envelopes on the small table bearing a lamp, her answering machine, and the goldfish bowl.

Nikki switched on the light to cheer the early A.M. gloom, then tapped the aquarium with her fingertip. “How you doing, Fish?”

In seconds, she’d popped off her cooking clogs and shimmied out of her black-and-white baggy chef’s pants. Sucking in a breath, she stared at her knee. Swollen to the circumference of a summer melon, it throbbed with each one of her heartbeats. She slapped the bag of frozen peas on it, then pushed back on the chair to elevate the aching joint.

“I’ll take the anti-inflammatories before bed, Fish,” she said, glancing over at her finned roommate. Her eye caught on the top envelope in the pile of mail. Her name was written in a beautiful hand and the return address was Malibu, California, the famous seaside enclave just over the Santa Monica Mountains.

Curious, she picked it up. Leaving the hectic, ever-active restaurant business had become a necessity, thanks to her injury, but doing something else besides cooking—well, she wasn’t trained for anything else besides cooking. With a wonky knee and a decidedly private personality, she’d hit on the idea of working in a home kitchen where her work space and her contact with others would be limited.

So she’d advertised in L.A.-area neighborhoods where households might be interested in a private chef.

Bel-Air.

Beverly Hills.

Malibu.

Nothing had come of it…until now? Her pulse quickened as she tore open the seal—and then it slid back to a slow thud.

This piece of mail wasn’t what she needed. It was an advertisement—granted, a beautiful advertisement—for a yarn shop, address on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

Join us each Tuesday for

Knitters’ Night at Malibu & Ewe!

Make a Connection!

Make something beautiful…friends, too.

An enclosed brochure showed the exterior of a cottage-styled shop overlooking a golden beach and an endless ocean. Other photos captured the displays of yarn and a cozy, comfortable-looking seating area filled with women chatting and knitting. There was an open spot on a particularly inviting sofa.

Shaking her head, Nikki tossed the papers back on the pile of mail. What she needed was a job, not a hobby.

“And who needs friends, Fish,” she murmured, glancing at the aquarium as she pulled the bands free of her braids and untangled her gold and brown hair, “when I have you?”

With a frown, she noticed his tail sinking southward and used her fingers to spoon him out of the water. Then she wound the tiny screw on his side and tossed him back in, gratified as he whirred around his little pond just as if he was a real, live pet.

He was perfect, wasn’t he? Perfect for her, anyway. She didn’t have a good track record keeping things that lived and breathed. And a twenty-seven-year-old woman with culinary school loans and without a job couldn’t afford to feed another mouth anyway.

“Yes, you are perfect, Fish,” she said aloud.

And she wasn’t going to cry, even though her knee was still throbbing like a bitch.

It was then she noticed the light blinking on her answering machine. Who would be calling? Her parents were dead and her social life was practically nil. Was this something about a job? Her heartbeat picked up again, even as she remembered how disappointing the envelope from Malibu & Ewe had proven to be.

Make a Connection!

She needed a way to make a buck or she wouldn’t be able to afford the water to fill Fish’s bowl, let alone the rent on her condo.

Crossing the fingers of her right hand, she reached over with her left to press Play. A man’s voice rumbled into the air.

“Yo. Nancy? Nellie? Whatever. Your friend Sandy gave me your number. Said to call. This is Jay Buchanan.”

Nikki crossed the fingers of her other hand. “Fish…” she breathed. Jay Buchanan. Editor for the hip men’s magazine
NYFM
, L.A.’s man about town, and former employer of her fellow cooking school student Sandy Bivers. For two months, Sandy had worked for him while he wrote a journal-style account of the bachelor joys of having a woman in his kitchen who wasn’t also warming his bed. The attention had garnered Sandy a gig on one of the food channels.

Nikki’s mind flashed on what her fellow chef had told her about the man. Like that yarn shop, Jay Buchanan was a resident of Malibu, and though he was credited with the magazine’s sexist signature tagline, “Men are boys and women are toys,” Sandy claimed the worst thing anyone had ever said about him was that he was born under a lucky star on a sunny day at a Southern California beach.

“I’ve seen him charming water from the devil,” Sandy had gone on to say, “at the same time he was slipping the panties off an angel.” Nikki had caught a glimpse of him herself, in a pictorial layout in
NYFM
. Leaving a charity function at an L.A. club with a starlet on his arm, he’d appeared both classy and capable. A guy in black tie who looked as if he could make a mixed drink or change a car tire with the same aplomb.

“I need a cook—a chef,” the man was saying now. “Just for August. I’ve got a house guest for the next few weeks and then a big event to host at the end of the month.”

Her heartbeat ratcheted up another notch. Okay, it wasn’t long-term, but it was something, not to mention a likely way to make future contacts. And anyhow, she’d do whatever she had to if it meant cooking and keeping off her knee at the same time.

“If you’re interested, come by tomorrow. Ten A.M.” The address he gave was on the Pacific Coast Highway. “We’ll talk.”

Her gaze flicked to the time. Given the late hour and the traffic she’d likely encounter heading to the beach on a summer morning, if she went to bed now, she’d have enough time to get four hours of sleep. Her knee needed at least seven, but she’d make do.

“Oh, yeah,” the male voice added. “And bring your best batch of cookies.”

Two hours of sleep.

Optimism would keep her awake, though, and maybe work as an analgesic as well. “Jay Buchanan, you’re the answer to a prayer,” she said, though still not allowing herself even a single grateful tear. But God, how much she needed—

The chance. Not him.

No, not him.

She might be in a tight spot, but long ago she’d learned the hard way what it was to need a man and she wasn’t about to make that same mistake again.

Bleary-eyed and fuzzy-brained from lack of sleep, Jay Buchanan yanked on a pair of shorts and stumbled barefoot toward the front of his beachside house, where someone had the annoying gall to knock on his door at the early hour of—

He paused, then leaned back and craned his neck to read the clock on the coffeemaker in the kitchen. Why, oh why, was the carafe empty when he needed it full, and why did the digital numbers claim it was almost 10:00 A.M.? He’d just woken up and…oh, yeah. He’d just woken up because he hadn’t hit the sack until after 4:00. An idea for a couple of ManTalk columns had nagged him until he’d stopped tossing and turning around midnight and headed for his computer instead.

The idea was worth it. It was all about New Year’s resolutions and he’d had a sufficient number of words on the subject to fill the required inches for
NYFM
’s print edition with enough left over to offer a slightly different slant for the online version.

Not so different, actually. They were both about giving up women for the forthcoming three hundred sixty-five days. The columns were for the January issues because magazines worked ahead—and Jay did, too.

While in his latest writing for the magazine he resolved to give up the fairer sex in the new year, though it was only August he’d already made that commitment to himself.

As of today, no females.

No how.

It was going to put a hiatus on his popular “In Search of the Perfect Woman” articles, a series inspired by his discovery of his grandparents’ old Broadway cast album of
My Fair Lady
in the back of a cabinet. Rex Harrison rapping his way through “A Hymn to Him,” which asked the immortal question, “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” had sent Jay on the hunt for just such a one—and his readers voraciously feasted on every account of his failures. So while he’d yet to find a breezy, sexy, sloppy-emotions-unnecessary female, now he was determined to go without looking for the rest of this year and all of the next.

There was that irritating bam-bam-bam on his door again. Obviously, the irritator wasn’t giving up. Fine, he’d send them on their way and return to bed.

The soles of Jay’s feet registered the rug in the entry, then his hand found the knob and he wrenched open the door. Heat wafted over him, as well as the scent of car exhaust and hot asphalt mixed with something sweet. The Pacific Coast Highway was as close to the house’s front entry as the ocean was close to his back one and the four lanes were already bumper-to-bumper with Angelenos out for their sand-and-surf fix.

He blinked against the bright sunlight, his gaze now taking in the leggy teen on the doorstep, her hair in two loose braids and her hands clutching some kind of lunch pail.

“Fern’s out,” he said, making the assumption about his young cousin since she hadn’t answered the knock herself. “Don’t know when she’ll be back.” Without waiting for a response, he swung shut the door.

It bounced off the toe of a bright yellow rubber clog. “Mr. Buchanan?” the braided girl said. She had a curiously low, intriguingly husky voice. “I’m here to see you.”

He’d written a ManTalk column last year debunking the myth of the hunch, so it was ridiculous of him to feel cold, webbed feet goose-stepping down his spine. Ignoring the sensation, he inched back the door and peered again at the intruder.

Leggy. Braids. Now that he looked more closely, she wasn’t the teenager he’d first thought. He made a vague gesture to his right, still hoping he could shoo her off. “No, you can’t use the bathroom. And the public beach access is three doors down.” He couldn’t hold back a little grin. “Right between Geffen’s mansion and that equally over-built monstrosity next to it.”

Her brows, he noticed as they came together over her small nose, were a shade darker than her brown hair that was heavily laced with lighter streaks. “What?” she asked.

It was one of Malibu’s longest-running feuds—the privacy-obsessed celebs versus the public’s right to beach access. Newspaper articles and court battles had proven that some of Hollywood’s most liberal were anything but when it came to sharing the sand in front of their homes. Jay wasn’t entirely unsympathetic. In the summer, he’d had his share of sun worshippers trespassing while in search of showers and toilets. But even when his grandparents had built this house in the 1950s, they hadn’t assumed the beach bordering it was theirs and theirs alone.

“It’s the price of privilege,” he explained to the girl. “You get the incredible property, but you have to share it from the high-tide line to where the surf breaks. There’s a public path to the water two hundred and fifty feet down that way.”