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‘Go grab the bag of crawfish from the freezer,’ he said, the teasing glint instantly gone again, ‘and then I’ll show you how to make Jambalaya.’
She was so relieved that he seemed as disinclined to flirt as she was, that she was halfway across the kitchen before she thought to turn around and ask, ‘What does a crawfish look like?’
He paused while grabbing a pan from the rack above the kitchen island, a low chuckle bursting out of his mouth. ‘Hell, cher, don’t you know anything?’
Apparently not. But suddenly not being able to cook didn’t seem like her biggest problem, when the rusty rumble of spontaneous laughter rippled over her skin and made the ever-present weight in her stomach start to throb.
Hello, downside, my old friend.
* * *
Whose dumb idea was it to give her cooking lessons?
Luke watched Cassandra’s forehead crease as she shook the skillet. The sizzle of frying scallions and garlic was doing nothing to mask the smell of his pine shampoo on her hair. She scraped the pan with the spatula.
Oh, yeah, your dumb idea.
‘Just tease it,’ he said, wrapping his fingers around her wrist to direct her movements.
Her pulse jumped under his thumb and she jolted. The stirring in his groin, which he thought he’d taken care of an hour ago in the mud room shower, hit critical mass. He let go of her wrist as if he’d been burned. Because that was what it felt like—as if she were a live electrical socket which he couldn’t resist jamming his fingers into.
‘That’s it...you got it,’ he said, regretting his spur-of-the-moment decision even more as he got another lungful of her clean scent over the pungent smell of frying garlic. His burgeoning erection hardened and he stepped back, far too aware of the urge to press it into the curve of her backside.
He cursed silently.
By rights he should be exhausted.
By rights he should have taken care of this yearning in the shower and during twelve hours of chores and outdoor pursuits.
By rights he should want to have nothing whatsoever to do with this woman.
She’d lied and cheated and had intended to use the connection between them to spy on him for her boss. So why couldn’t he get his hunger for her under control? And why had the look on her face when he’d demanded she cook him supper, then asked her about her mama, torn at his insides?
When she’d come back from the cellar where he kept a chest freezer, holding a bag of frozen crawfish aloft like a fisherman with a prize catch, the smile of accomplishment which had split her face had hit him square in the chest. And he’d known he’d made another major error of judgement. Because spending any time with her, let alone teaching her something she should have been taught long ago, was going to be pure torture.
Why did she have to look so hot in Mrs Mendoza’s jeans? And why had the truth about her mama made him aware of her fragility instead of her duplicity?
He set about dicing bell peppers and then instructed her on how to sift and rinse the rice and make the broth. All the while trying to persuade himself that he had been played again.
How did he know that the brave, motherless girl act wasn’t as much of a con as the forthright, artless sex goddess act of yesterday?
But somehow, as she worked diligently to follow his instructions to the letter and make as little eye contact with him as possible, he couldn’t shake the memory of the look of devastating loss which had shimmered in her eyes when he’d harassed her about her cooking skills.
And somehow he knew, even though he wanted to recapture his previous cynicism and harden his attitude towards her, that Cassandra James wasn’t that good an actress.
He’d touched a nerve somehow. A nerve he’d never meant to expose. And he couldn’t quite bring himself to exploit it.
Picking up the rice she’d sorted, and the sausage he’d fried earlier, he chucked it into the skillet on top of the vegetables.
‘Is your mother still alive?’ she asked carefully over the sizzling of the food.
‘No, she died when I was sixteen,’ he said, not only surprised by her decision to break their truce, but also by the pulse of connection he felt. Just because they’d both lost their mothers when they we
re still kids, it didn’t make them friends.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘She was very beautiful.’
‘How would you know?’ he asked, pushing his cynicism back to the fore. Damn, was she still spying on him?
