Summer Kisses (277 page)

I tried a stuffed tomato. The spicy flavors of peppers, tomato, garlic, cilantro, and cheese exploded in my mouth.

“How is it?” she asked.

I finished chewing, swallowed, and washed it down with a gulp of water. “A little spicy, but it’s heaven. I could easily eat about fifteen of these.”

A smile lit up her face, and I vowed to compliment her more. Picking up a tortilla chip, she dipped it in the guacamole she’d spooned on her plate and bit into it. She closed her eyes to savor the flavor and sighed.

This was a woman who clearly enjoyed food.

Katherine opened her eyes and realized I was staring. I couldn’t help it. The look of ecstasy on her face made me think of other things that would put that kind of look on her face.

God, my hormones thought I was seventeen again.

“Want to try the mango?” she asked.

I hesitated at the small chunks of fruit wrapped with thin-sliced ham and speared with a toothpick, cheese oozing out of the ham wrapper.

She grabbed one and held it out to me. “Just one?”

Eve holding an apple at that moment. Rather than taking the toothpick with my fingers, I took her hand and guided it to my mouth.

The delicate flavors of smoky ham, mild cheese, and tart mango combined perfectly. “Oh, God,” I whispered. “You are quite the chef.”

“Thanks.”

I plucked another from the plate. “Now you.” I held the toothpick out, realizing even as I did that this way only lay madness.

Her eyes locked on mine as she opened her mouth over the treat. My blood began to boil as she chewed, her eyes never leaving mine. I raised an eyebrow, for once at a loss for words.

“What’s in these?” I pointed to the plate of multi-colored, cup-shaped pastries made out of layers of impossibly thin dough. They were filled with a mix of finely chopped chicken in a red sauce and a bunch of other little bits.

She picked one up. “Chicken, spicy sauce, peppers, and a little bit of smoked Gouda.” Holding it out, she all but dared me to eat it directly from her fingers.

I took that dare, leaning forward and capturing the pastry—and her fingertips—with my lips. Katherine’s mouth fell open as she pulled in a quick breath. I ran the tip of my tongue over the end of her thumb as I slowly pulled back. “Mmm. Good.”

My temperature rose several degrees in a matter of seconds. I’d totally lost my resolve.

She raised another pastry with the same hand, putting it in her own mouth, her full lips capturing the thumb that had just been in my mouth.

The intimacy level jumped off the charts.

I started to sweat, and my hands itched to sweep the rest of dinner off the table and throw her on it. That very intention must have shown in my eyes because she blinked. Several times.

Katherine cleared her throat. “These did turn out well,” she said as if she hadn’t made me rock hard.

Putting a couple of each treat on her plate, she handed me the serving spatula.

“Spoilsport,” I said in a more gravelly tone than I’d intended.

The corner of her mouth twitched. Scooping a tortilla chip through the guacamole, she held it out to me. The smell of garlic in the dip whiffed before I got my mouth around the morsel.

I captured her wrist gently in one hand before nibbling a corner of the chip. “That’s the best guacamole I’ve ever had,” I said honestly. “But the chip’s getting in the way.” With the hand not wrapped around hers, I removed the tidbit only to smear the guacamole across her fingers before taking them directly into my mouth and swirling my tongue around her fingertips.

Her eyes widened, and she actually whimpered.
Outstanding
.

“You’re dangerous,” she said through tight vocal chords.

I couldn’t help but grin at that. “Takes one to know one.” I didn’t tempt fate any further. Taking a few of each item and placing them on my plate, I kept my hands to myself.

“You and Will met at Ohio State?” I looked for any reason to cool myself down.

She looked a little disappointed in the change of tone.

“Yeah. We were in a co-ed dorm, and he lived across the hall. We became fast friends by the end of the first week and have stayed that way since.” She hesitated. “Have you guys always kept in touch?”

“More so lately than right after high school.” I wondered how much to reveal. “Will and John had a big falling out our senior year. Will was pissed that I’d stayed friends with him. Will left town the day after graduation, and I didn’t hear from him for a couple of years.”

“Yeah. I’ve heard all about...” She paused, and I raised my eyebrow. She shrugged. “...what happened with them.”

John and I never discussed it. Not after he and Will split. Not before either of his marriages to women. Not after them either. Not when he’d walk through the gym and be far more interested in guys on the weight machines at the back of the gym than the gym bunnies running in lycra short shorts and sports bras in the front. He’d never admitted to being gay, and I suspected he never would.

The mood had turned a bit depressing. But now, at least, I wouldn’t embarrass myself if I left the table.

Katherine stood and started to gather the dishes.

“Would you like some help?”

“Sure. I want to set this stuff in the kitchen, out of the way. The dishes can wait.”

We carted everything in and dropped it in the sink.

When she was done, she opened the fridge and took out two small orange plates, each containing a small white dish. “I thought about making flan, but I don’t really like it, even if it’s theme-appropriate. So I went with crème brulée.”

Oh God. Kill me with temptation.
Crème brulée was easily my favorite dessert, not that I eat it much. I might as well give up and start taking off my clothes now. After this, I was going to need some exercise, and the treadmill wouldn’t cut it.

I must have made a face or a noise or something.

“Oh, come on. You don’t have to eat all of it. At least taste it.” She fired up a cooking torch and browned some sugar on top.

Finished, she stuck a spoon in the dessert and held it out to me, again daring me to let her feed me.

I stepped far closer than was required, our legs brushing, and closed my mouth over the spoon.

The browned sugar crust crunched against the roof of my mouth as the creamy custard wrapped itself around my tongue.

“More?” Katherine used the same spoon to take a bite for herself.

A bit of custard clung to her upper lip. I leaned in to lick it off when she beat me to it.

Jee-zus
. What was I thinking?

This couldn’t continue. My number-one priority
had
to be the launch of the new location and the ad campaign.

No matter how
hard
it was to stay away. No pun intended.

I deliberately looked at my watch. “It’s getting late. I should probably go.”

Her face fell. “Sure. Okay.” She led me to the door, and I remembered the last time she’d seen me out.

“Thanks again for dinner,” I said quietly.

“You’re welcome. It was fun.”

I leaned toward her almost by accident. She wouldn’t stop me, I was sure of it. Katherine waited patiently, seeing if I’d go through with it.

I couldn’t.

My eyes strayed from hers down to her lips and back again. This was a fool’s errand. Far too many reasons why this wasn’t going to work. I shouldn’t lead her on, but I had an intense desire to touch her. I settled for stroking her upper arm with the backs of my fingers in a casually affectionate way. “Good night.” I turned for my car.

Even as I climbed in
to
the driver’s side, disappointment doused the awakening flames of arousal.

Turns out the smart thing sure as hell doesn’t feel like the right thing.

I woke to the delicious memory of Quinn licking guacamole—quite possibly my new favorite food—off my fingers and then got sacked like a daydreaming quarterback by the recollection of his abrupt and decidedly non-demonstrative departure. Needing an outlet for my pent-up frustration, I spent the day catching up on household chores. I stopped by the dry cleaners, picked up a few groceries at the market, and cleaned the house. Around mid-afternoon, I finally collapsed in my favorite chair with a book I’d wanted to read for some time.

My sister, Grace, interrupted with a phone call.

“How are you doing, Katie?”

I rolled my eyes. I’d asked my family more than a million times not to call me Katie. “Good. You?” I hoped she’d make this conversation short as my book was getting good.

“How was your date?”

“What date?” I put the book down. Could she know about last night’s dinner with Quinn? I hadn’t talked to Grace in a week. Sure, she worked for a newspaper, but this was reporting at its scary best.

“Your blind date? Boss’ cousin or something?”

Oh, crap.
I’d let myself get talked into a blind date with the nephew of our VP in charge of accounts, and only because I needed her support to keep my creative director title. Blind dates and I had a very rocky history, and I normally didn’t allow myself to get lassoed into them.

Had I missed it?
“Hold on,” I said to Grace. I brought the calendar on my phone up.
Double crap.

“How sad is it that you pay more attention to my love life than I do?” I asked.

“You’ll have fun.”

I snorted, but she continued, undeterred. “You should date. You’re too special to be all alone.”

Yes, but
all alone
hurt a heck of a lot less than rejection from strangers on the Internet or blind dates. I thought of Quinn’s sudden departure the night before. Or even the questionable exit strategies of dinner companions in your home.

I held none of Grace’s hopes that I’d have a good time on my blind date, but I’d promised Sherri I’d give her nephew a shot and I would. That didn’t mean I’d anticipate it like... well, like another dinner with Quinn, even if he had left like the hounds of hell nipped at his heels.

“I promise it won’t kill you.”

Grace couldn’t promise that.

While I focused on the dread of going out on the blind date, Grace shared the family’s plans to delay Mother’s Day until the following week since my dad had taken Mom out of town this weekend.

I thanked her for the info and hung up.

Why had I accepted the damned date in the first place?

I could email the guy—Rodney—and cancel. Glancing at the clock over the mantle, I realized I was only giving him a couple of hours’ notice and that was poor form. Sherri wouldn’t like that. I sighed and resigned myself to my fate.

A short while later, I stood in front of my closet in a pair of white panties and a bra that made up in comfort what it lacked in lace and frills. Surveying my clothes, I prayed for something that would call out to me be comfortable and look good.

So far, nothing. I moved a few hangers to the side. Nope. That black skirt, while possessing fantastic potential, did not come close to fitting.
Hmm
. What about the teal sweater with black jeans? I pulled the garment down from the top shelf and slipped it over my head, enjoying the softness of the chenille yarn. Digging through my dresser, I found jeans. “Please fit. Please fit,” I begged the cosmos, sliding my legs into the denim.

Zipping up required laying back on the bed. But once they were on, I had to admit that not only were the jeans a fairly comfortable fit, they also looked pretty good.

Not
great
, but good. Nothing short of a miracle, six to eight months of hard dieting, or ten-thousand-dollars of liposuction was going to give me a great ass.

Short black boots complemented the outfit fairly well.

Twenty minutes later, after brushing my hair until it shone and adding powder, lipstick, and mascara to my face, I felt satisfied, if not ecstatic, with my appearance.

Grace had suggested meeting my date at a favorite café of hers. I’d seen a picture of him, but it had been a small, grainy, low-res affair, so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when I arrived.

I should preface my complaints about Rodney’s appearance with this: I’ve always had a thing for redheads. Shaun White and Seth Green still rank toward the top of my ten celebrities I’d love to meet/date/sleep-with list.

Rodney, however, was red-haired in a bad way. Balding, flushed, with a freckly face, gummy smile, and loose lips. However, since I really wish people wouldn’t judge me on appearance alone, I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt. And besides, he did have a pretty well-maintained bod. Not a spare ounce on him.

Don’t get me wrong. He was no Quinn Mitchell. But below the neck, at least, he was put together nicely.

The first thing he said was, “I don’t drink coffee.” Which as far as I’m concerned is as close to blasphemy as he could get. He followed that with, “How about if we go down to the street to Paccino’s and have dinner?”

I agreed despite the fact I dreaded a full meal. I mean, coffee could be over in fifteen minutes if the conversation was bad. But dinner? That was an hour-long commitment.

We entered the restaurant, a nice, upper-class place with good jazz music over the speakers and an interesting atmosphere of upwardly mobile types. The maitre d’ moved to seat us next to the window. Rodney’s eyes narrowed on me then on the busy sidewalk outside the window. “Do you suppose we could be seated away from the front?”

I tried not to take it personally. It might not have anything to do with being embarrassed to eat with me. Maybe he didn’t like the distraction. Or he had a thing about other people watching him eat. Or he was actually a vampire and got twitchy when he was too close to the sun.

“So what do you do, Rodney?” I asked after we were finally seated, figuring I’d better get the conversation going or we were going to be looking at an hour of strained silence.

“I’m an accountant. A partner at Simon and Ressinger. I’m making upper eighties.”

Why is it people feel the need to blurt out their salaries like that?
Make nice. He’s Sherri’s nephew.
Then he started ranting about his gym. This was a conversation that could go nowhere fast.