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“The new dishwasher seems very nice,” she said with her cheekiest grin once she was sure her voice wouldn’t betray her.
He ran a hand through his hair. “She’s a critic who wants to do a profile of me forTasty Chicago.”
A critic.Someone clever and intellectual, who probably did Scrabble triple-word plays in her sleep and theNew York Timescrossword in under five minutes.
Silence ruled while they stared at each other. Clearly, he had forgotten his invitation for her to come over and learn about wine.
“We were going to…” she prompted.
“Right, right,” he said quickly, scrubbing his hair again. Wow, this woman must have done a number on him. What exactly had they been doing behind that closed door?
“I brought that mushroom bruschetta you said you liked.” She held up her Tupperware container, feeling more foolish with every painful, passing second.
He looked at it blankly before breaking out the usual Tad grin. “Awesome. I know just the fruity little number to go with this.”
Hesitantly, she followed him into the kitchen, desperately trying to get her inner envy monster under control. This was how it always was with Tad. The guy was a sex magnet—he loved women and they loved him. She shut her mind against the images of that clever bitch running her clever hands all over Tad’s body.
Serenity, bloody well now.
She had seen it before, but it still surprised her how small it was for a professional kitchen. Just two burners, two gleaming chrome prep counters, a fridge, and the brick oven for pizzas.
It was perfect.
“How’s the oven coming along?”
He shook his head. “Your boyfriend claims he’s coming out with the part tomorrow.” He grabbed a loaf of ciabatta and a bread knife, and started to slice it for toasting. “Maybe you should be here to turn on that special charm of yours and make sure the job gets done. Or perhaps you’ve already found his competition. How’s the dating going?”
“Nothing’s happened yet,” she said, her mind still abuzz with the stunning woman who had just left. She had an Elizabeth Taylor circaCleopatrathing going on that was rather troublesome. “Just getting my profiles up.”
“Profiles? Plural?” He looked up, a flash of something flitting over his face before leveling to a blank expression.
“Cara has a strategy. Fling the net wide and watch the fish flail. Her words, not mine.”
She tried to smile and cover how awkward it felt to be talking to Tad about this. It was never awkward when he talked about his dates, but now she thought of it, she had been hearing less and less on that score in the past year. Since The Incident.
He popped the bread in the toaster and dug out a corkscrew from his pocket. On the counter, he had put a bottle of red and two large bell-shaped glasses. The bottle’s label read “2010” below—she squinted—Chaka Khan?
“Funk soul queen Chaka Khan has her own wine now?”
His smile was dangerous with not an ounce of pity. Tad was the first person she had shared her literacy problems with when she came to Chicago and he had never once made her feel any less about herself.
“Close. Chakana. It refers to the Inca cross. Big in South America. This is one of the better known Argentinian Malbecs.”
Beneath the name was an image of an animal, a stylized version of a cat with large, dangerous teeth. Not unlike the man before her.
He watched her closely as she absorbed the label. “They call it theyaguerettein Spanish. Jaguar.”
Tad knew what she was doing. He knew more than anyone about her compensation strategies. She put it together as “Chaka-cat.”
He popped the cork and poured a small amount of inky-purple wine into the stemware. The air came alive with the aroma of earth and fruit.
Then he leaned in and buried his nose in her neck.
She jumped back, her skin buzzing from crown to toes. That was…something. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Smelling you.”
Her gaze flew to the wine, looking to lay the blame on alcohol that no one had yet imbibed. She felt color flaming her cheeks.
