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Thirty minutes later Kalera was looking at Duncan making himself comfortably at home in her kitchen and wondering how on earth she had been persuaded to change her mind. Or had she changed her mind?
Talk about people who were astute at getting their own way!
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘IT’LL have to be something quick and simple,’ she reiterated for the third time in as many minutes, opening the fridge and removing an air-tight container of cooked pasta shells and a packet of bacon.
‘The simple things in life are always the best,’ quoted the man who epitomised the dictionary definition of complexity.
His aura of fatigue had been shed along with his well-used bomber jacket the moment he stepped over her threshold and now he looked disturbingly lively as his enquiring mind conducted an inventory of her possessions, investigating the contents of the set of pottery canisters on the counter and unashamedly perusing the stack of mail she had collected from the letter-box as they’d come in.
He paused in his snooping, his eyes flicking over her high-waisted green skirt and the yellow cotton shirt which had started the day so crisp and smart but which now felt as limp and clammy as warm lettuce against her skin. The weather had been very muggy and the house felt uncomfortably hot and stuffy after being shut up all day.
Kalera usually let down her hair as soon as she got home from work, both literally and figuratively, and changed into something loose and casual, but it would definitely be sending the wrong message if she excused herself with that old cliché about slipping into something more comfortable! She would just have to suffer the discomfort of her prim office armour until he had gone, she thought as she put a pan on the stove to heat and assembled the rest of her ingredients.
‘Anything I can do to help?’
‘No—yes.’ She changed her mind at the thought of him being free to hover about and stare at her in that distracting fashion. Better to give him an occupation—something that would keep his eyes and hands busy.
‘You can dice the onion and the rasher of bacon while I do the red pepper and tomatoes,’ she ordered, handing him a chopping board and a knife.
He didn’t turn a hair at being given the unpleasant half of the job. ‘With pleasure, ma’am,’ he said, joining her at the bench instead of retreating to the kitchen table, which was what she had intended.
Unexpectedly, the pleasure proved to be hers as she watched him from the corner of her eye, and noted the slightly clumsy way he handled the weighty chef’s knife. She responded to his humorous patter and pestering of questions about what they were doing with a faint air of superiority. So there was something at which Mr Genius wasn’t automatically brilliant, she thought smugly.
‘I take it you don’t do a lot of cooking yourself,’ she murmured, when he swore roundly at the bits of bacon which were balling into a sticky clump on the stainless-steel blade.
‘I can cook a superb
steak,’ he defended himself, peeling off the streaky mess. ‘And I’ve been told that my salad is to die for!’
She could just imagine one of his wafer-thin models batting her false eyelashes at him and massaging his ego with her simpering flattery. ‘I wouldn’t place any credence on the opinions of any of your Date-Me Barbies. They all look as if a stick of celery is their idea of culinary excellence.’
It was his turn to be smug. ‘Do I take it you don’t approve of my consorting with beautiful dollybirds?’
‘You can date anyone you like,’ she said, chopping furiously.
‘No; I can’t—that’s the problem,’ he murmured. He shifted his stance as he reached for the onion and his bare arm brushed against her shoulder. He cast her a sidelong glance as she edged away. ‘Don’t worry, Kalera, I do know the difference between a Barbie doll and a real woman.’
‘I’m so glad!’
He grinned at her sarcasm. ‘Barbie dolls are for playing—real women are for serious loving…’
Like Terri Prior? Was she his definition of a real woman? Kalera brooded. Their loving certainly had been serious enough to break up one marriage, even if it had failed to lead to another.
Maybe it had turned out that the illicit thrill of a secret affair had generated most of the excitement in their relationship, or maybe the burden of their collective guilt had made it impossible to start a new life together. Or maybe Duncan was so gun-shy of commitment that un-attainability was his chief defining quality of a ‘real woman’…
‘Hell and damnation, that stings!’
The onion had taken its acid toll and Duncan scrubbed his streaming eyes with the bottom edge of his T-shirt, unselfconsciously flashing a tanned strip of hard belly neatly bisected by the silky streak of black hair between his navel and the top of his button-fly jeans.
‘You’re just grinding it in deeper; you should let the tears do their proper job,’ Kalera advised, trying not to notice the ripple of satiny skin across his corrugated abdominal muscles as he rubbed the white cotton across his face.
‘I’ll have you know you’re the only woman who can do this to me,’ he said, letting the T-shirt drop and blinking furiously to clear his vision.
‘Make you chop onions?’ she mocked.
His bloodshot eyes captured hers. ‘Make me cry.’
