AZUL WAS LOCATED INSIDE the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. The restaurant was a serene, sunlit dining experience complete with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the bay, white tablecloths and gleaming crystal and silver.
In the center of the place was a white, marble, open kitchen, where guests could watch culinary miracles being shaped to appear on their tables. The staff was unfailingly polite and unobtrusive, and the head chef appeared regularly on national television.
Nikki had never been to a restaurant as nice but as low-key as this one. This hotel was nothing like the glitzy Fontainebleu or the quaint little art-deco hotels along Ocean Drive on South Beach. It had its own clean, modern, Asian flair, not to mention a feeling of peace and space.
The maître d’ showed them to a corner table overlooking the water and Adam pulled out Nikki’s chair for her. Once he was seated, the host handed them menus and a wine list and said their waiter would be right with them.
Nikki stared, mesmerized, at the water of the bay below and the way the waning sun glittered at the surface. The view was so very Miami: a trompe l’oeil painting of a thousand diamonds on blue, gems that would run through the fingers the moment one’s grasp tightened. Sun, sparkle, sex and sin—that was Miami. An intoxicating blend, a Pied Piper’s dream, a mirage.
“Would you like a bottle of wine, Nikki?” Adam asked her, smiling at her enjoyment of the view.
“Only if you’re planning on drinking at least half of it.” She smiled back.
“Red or white? Or champagne?”
“I never turn down champagne.” A girl would have to be crazy to do that.
So when the waiter approached, Adam said, “The lady would like champagne.”
Nikki liked this
lady
stuff. It made her feel respected and appreciated, almost regal. She straightened her spine and crossed her legs.
The waiter bowed. He pointed to a small section of the wine list, which Nikki couldn’t see, so that Adam could make a choice of labels.
“The Taittinger. Very good, sir.”
She’d never heard of it, but that was probably a good thing, considering the brands she was familiar with. Those were best mixed with a lot of orange juice and chased with ibuprofen to ward off the instant headache they brought on.
The champagne appeared in a silver bucket, with a white cloth around its royal neck. When poured into flutes, its color was stunning, like antique rose gold.
Nikki thought it was almost too pretty to drink, as the bubbles rose to greet her from its pale, fluid luminescence.
Adam raised his glass, and she followed his lead. “To our first real date,” he said. “And to many others.”
Hmm. She wasn’t at all sure about the
many others
thing. Despite the perfection of the restaurant and the view and his obvious attempts to impress her, she wondered if she really wanted to be with someone whose full attention she’d have for, oh, maybe a couple of hours per week. Aunt Dee’s ex must have taken her on nice dates in the beginning, too…and she must have been wildly attracted to him if she’d put up with his schedule.
But Nikki smiled at Adam and drank. The wine was perfectly dry and just sweet enough without being cloying. The bubbles popped seductively on her tongue and then burst, as all bubbles—and fantasies—eventually did.
Well. She wasn’t going to worry about the future. She’d enjoy tonight. There was no harm in that, was there? And Margaret wasn’t going to walk through the door of Azul and see her fraternizing with Adam.
As they sipped their champagne, the sun streaked the sky with pink and gold, showing off for the diners. Jealous, the clouds added tempestuous violets and purples, while the calm sea reflected the magnificence and then began to drink it down in the west.
Adam’s hair looked almost bronze in the fading light. He’d taken off his glasses for a moment while he savored the taste of the champagne, and she studied the blunt, masculine beauty of his face. He had a slightly Roman nose and his hair was a little wavy, curling at the edges. His jaw was strong and his lips sensual. She didn’t like men who had what she called lizard lips—meaning very narrow, fleshless ones.
“Do I have a growth?” he asked, with a small smirk.
Startled, she realized she’d been staring. “No! No, I was thinking that you look like some kind of movie star without your glasses on.”
He made a choking noise. “You might want to get your eyes checked. Though, come to think of it, I really like that blind quality in you.”
“Uh-huh. I notice you’re not reaching to put the glasses back on.”
“Well, you know. It’s nice to be adored. It beats being pelted with cheese and olives,” he said dryly.
“Does it?”
“Yes. But I will eventually have to destroy your viewing pleasure and put on my glasses to look at the menu.”
“Oh, I like you in the glasses, too,” she told him. “They make you look intelligent.”
“Ah. Smarter than I really am, you mean?” He winked.
“Most people don’t get into med school. So I think you must be brilliant. Just not so much around
women.
”
His lips twitched. “I take her to a nice place,” he said to nobody in particular. “I buy her champagne. And she pays me backhanded compliments…”
“No, I said you were incredibly smart and I touched on the truth.” Was he offended? She couldn’t tell.
Adam reached out for his glasses and settled them onto his face again. “Listen, sweetheart, they don’t teach a class called Women 101. I can assure you that if one were offered, every guy for miles around—well, every guy except for my buddy Dev—would be wait-listed and dying to get in. Instead, we have to try to figure you out on our own. And some of us don’t do such a great job of it.”
Nikki laughed.
“Haven’t you ever done anything dumb around a guy?” Adam asked.
“Yes. I jumped out of a cake once and smashed my elbow into some poor slob’s nose.”
“I’m a poor slob,” he said to the waiter, who’d returned to take orders for hors d’oeuvres.
“You look very neatly dressed to me, sir,” was all the startled man could find to say.
“Thank you. We’d like the oysters, please.”
After he’d gone, Nikki added to her list of dumb things. “I got bitten on the butt by savage mosquitoes the size of raptors. And I tried to do a strip tease with clumps of mud and grass stuck to my heels. Other than that, though, I’ve maintained
total
dignity around men.” She laughed and upended her champagne glass.
Adam strong-armed the bottle out of the bucket in spite of the waiter’s sudden lunge toward their table to do the same thing. He waved him away and refilled Nikki’s flute. “So what you’re saying is that we only do stupid things around each other?”
She frowned, nodded and took another sip of the wine. Adam did, too, trying not to imagine her on top of his olive bedspread, wearing nothing but those same tiny bubbles.
“Why do you think that is?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head and looked out over the bay again. “Maybe we’re just—” she gestured with her glass “—star-kissed lovers.”
“Um, I think that’s star-
crossed
lovers,” Adam said, struggling to keep a straight face.
“That’s what I said.”
“Nope. You said star-kissed.”
“Oh. Well, doesn’t that sound more romantic?” she reasoned.
“No. It sounds like a brand of tuna at the grocery store.”
She couldn’t help laughing. “Only to a
guy.
To a woman, it’s a romantic image, being kissed by stars.”
He was puzzled, and probably looked it. “But a star is a burning ball of fire. Any woman it kissed would be instantly incinerated.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s scientific, not romantic.”
“Yeah, I know. My point exactly…not romantic.”
She was laughing at him again. “You really are all guy.”
He looked down at himself. “Yes. Last time I checked, anyway.”
“Never mind.” She sipped again at her champagne. “Enough with the stars. I’d rather be kissed by
you.
” She shot him a provocative look from under her lashes.
He stared at her lips. “Is that so?”
“Yes. You’ve never done that, you know. Kissed me on the lips.”
“I haven’t?”
“No. Of course, it could be because you thought I was a hook—”
“Let me remedy that right now.” And Adam leaned across the table, took her face between his big hands, and ever-so-gently touched his mouth to hers.
“Oh…” she breathed.
And then he turned it into a real kiss, the way a man kisses a woman when he really means it—and he did. He delved into her mouth with his tongue and made a hungry noise, a kind of groan mingled with a growl. And electricity shot from his throat to his toes, shock after shock of it.
Whew.
“Ohh.” She opened her eyes as he released her. He was pretty sure that it was a good
oh,
as opposed to a bad one.
Adam became gradually aware of their surroundings again. He noted that the waiter was practically dancing a jig with their appetizer plates, not sure whether now was the most opportune time to approach the table.
“Why haven’t you ever done that before?” Nikki said to Adam, putting her fingers up to her lips and staring at him.
He shrugged. “Because I’m stupid when it comes to you?”
“Oh, right.”
He swallowed convulsively and poured some champagne down his throat to ease the odd tightness there.
“You’re a little goofy in fuchsia lipstick,” she said. “Not the best look for you.”
With a self-conscious laugh, he put his napkin to his lips and wiped it off. “I don’t think I did anything to improve your look, either.”
Nikki wiped her lipstick off, too, and the effect was unfair. Her nude lips reminded him of the rest of her naked, too. So very, very naked.
Mmm.
And they weren’t even through the appetizer stage of dinner yet. Adam looked out at the bay and imagined that it was icy-cold. Then he imagined immersing himself in it. And by the time he added a particularly vicious, flesh-eating Florida lobster to the scenario, his man-part was finally subdued and ready to remain civilized at the table with the rest of him.
Damn it.
In the meantime, he was going to have to watch his luscious, golden-haired date as she nibbled on some morbidly phallic bread sticks—probably whipped up by the chef just to torture him—and downed oysters on the half shell.
“Have one,” Nikki prompted him.
“I will.” But the truth was that he’d rather have
her.
The image of a tiny Nikki sitting nude, legs crossed and dangling off the edge of one of the little iridescent half shells, entered his mind. He’d probably had too much champagne on an empty stomach, because then he imagined picking her up, King Kong to her Fay Wray….
16
NIKKI FELT ADAM’S EYES on her as she savored one of the crispy oysters, which were wrapped in slivers of beef, tuna and salmon. She didn’t know if it was possible to have an orgasm from eating food, but she was sure that she was alarmingly close to having one, right there in front of the waiter, Adam and everyone. The oysters were to die for.
With a bemused smile, Adam took one and began to consume it, a blissful expression crossing his face the moment it entered his mouth. “These are almost better than sex,” he said.
She nodded. “Almost.”
“But not quite,” he said with a grin.
A flash of heat hit her between the legs, so powerful that it almost made her dizzy. That smile of his was as intoxicating as the champagne. A floating sensation traveled through Nikki’s veins as she had another oyster.