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She stepped into the tub. The hot bubbles buffered tired calf muscles, and a contented sigh eased out as she settled onto the ledge a few judicious feet from him. The water rose to her breasts, making them jiggle and float despite the restrictive spandex, and lifting her nipples into ruched peaks.
She couldn’t make out a thing under the surface of the water thanks to the steam and bubbles, so she’d just have to take his word for it he’d kept the boxers on.
Her gaze lifted to his face, to find him watching her, and she began to feel a bit light-headed. Which had to be the heat of the water, and the pounding jets massaging sore muscles. Obviously.
‘How come you don’t weigh five tons when you’re surrounded by all those amazing cakes the whole time?’ he murmured.
The appreciative look had her heart bobbing up to join her floating boobs. ‘I may not weigh five tons, but I’m also nowhere near as trim as I used to be,’ she said, then felt annoyed with herself for employing the thirty-something woman’s automatic fallback position. Po
int out your every flaw before others do it for you.
‘Neither am I,’ he said.
Yeah, right. If he wasn’t as trim, that was only because every extra ounce was now pure muscle. He stretched to hoist the wine out of its bucket and pour them a glass and she got fixated on the bunch and flex of his biceps.
Solid definitely works better on a man.
He handed her a glass. ‘You look incredible.’
She shifted on the ledge to let the jets of water pummel her thighs and take her mind off the pumping pulse elsewhere.
‘Then cheers.’ She clinked her glass to his. ‘I never say no to a compliment.’ She took a long sip of the wine, the chilly oaken taste easing the dryness in her throat. ‘I’d like to say it had something to do with the cross-trainer that’s been sitting in my basement for over a year. But it’s actually the demands of the show.’
‘It’s a tough schedule?’
‘Not too bad. We tape two a day for two weeks. It’s not so much the workload. It’s the nerves. I get terrible stage fright. But I try to manage it without relying on my happy pills.’ She sent him a quelling look—recalling his reaction to her Xanax on the plane. ‘So far I haven’t acquired a prescription drug habit and the extreme stress means the last thing I want to do during a taping is eat. So it’s all good.’ She sipped her wine to interrupt the babble. Momentarily. ‘Except for the two grand I splashed out on that cross-trainer, of course.’
‘You always look really chilled on screen.’
She sputtered, choking on her wine. ‘You watch the show?’ she squeaked, so astonished she didn’t even mind she was squeaking.
‘Sure, I catch it when I can if I’m not on assignment. Try to record the episodes I miss. They broadcast it in Europe on BBC Worldwide.’
‘You’re joking, right?’ Surely that earnest expression was faked? It had to be. He hated pop culture.
‘I like watching it. You’re exceptionally good at what you do.’ A wry smile split his face. ‘Smart, funny, sexy. The nerves don’t show. And there’s all that great bakery porn, too. I did your triple fudge indulgence cake for Lizzie’s birthday this year. It turned out OK, even though I had to substitute a few things. It’s hard to get exactly the same ingredients in Paris.’
Her jaw sagged. ‘I don’t believe it. You? Baking?’ And from one of my recipes?
Why couldn’t she get the stupid heart bumps under control? The stupid heart bumps that reminded her of when she was a teenager and she’d basked in even the smallest praise from him. Funny to think that while she really didn’t care what he thought of her physical imperfections—or not too much—his opinion of her show mattered enough to cause those heart bumps.
He hooked a finger under her chin. ‘Close your mouth, and stop looking so astonished. I cook for myself all the time. It’s called being a new man.’
‘When exactly did that happen? Because, as I recall, you were pretty old-school when it came to cooking at our flat in Hackney.’ As in, he’d been more than happy to mind Lizzie, do laundry, even hoover the living room, but the kitchen had always been her domain. To the extent he hadn’t even been able to make a decent cup of tea, if she remembered correctly.
‘You were so good at cooking, and you loved it. So it never made any sense for me to learn back then. But when you’re on your own six weeks of the year with a toddler who doesn’t do table manners, you have to pick up the basics quickly, or get banned from every café and restaurant within a two-mile radius.’
‘None of your many girlfriends ever offered to cook for you and Lizzie?’ The question sounded cynical and maybe a tad waspish. Probably because she’d always had this galling picture in her head of him being waited on hand and foot by scantily clad, wafer-thin Frenchwomen.
His brow crinkled in a humorous frown. ‘If they had offered, I would have refused. My time with Lizzie was precious. I didn’t want to share it.’
The comment brought a bubble of guilt to the surface to go with the ones pummelling her thigh muscles at the thought of how she’d so easily dismissed his devotion to their daughter before this trip. ‘But didn’t any of them ever move in with you?’
He choked on his wine, shaking his head as he punched his solar plexus. ‘Jesus. No, thanks. On the whole, Frenchwomen are way too high maintenance.’
‘But surely you must have introduced some of your girlfriends to Lizzie?’
‘Not much point,’ he said. ‘None of them lasted very long.’
