LITMIR.BIZ

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her, watching the toes of one foot disappear into a three-inch-high pump.

      She slipped on the other, reaching back to tug the back strap over her heel as her glance darted toward the back hallway.

      “Do you mind if we wait a while? I need to stay here until Mikey wakes up. He won’t remember this house and he’ll be scared if I’m not here.” Her concern shifted uncertainly to the cookbook. “I need to figure out how to get this going, too. He’s going to be hungry.”

      Parker had been gone half an hour. “You haven’t found a recipe?”

      “I’ve found several. They just all seem…complicated.”

      One of the cookbooks she’d selected bore the title The Chef’s’ Book of Sauces, from Artichoke to Zabaglione. Another, Creative Italian Cuisine. The Art of Pasta sat atop Mastering Mediterranean Cooking.

      What she needed was Cooking 101.

      He nodded to the book open in front of her. “May I see that?”

      She handed it to him. The page she’d been so diligently studying held a recipe for Bolognese sauce and the marinara she’d been looking for.

      He indicated the latter. “What’s wrong with this one?”

      Her expression mirrored his. “I’m not exactly sure how to ‘sauté’ or ‘reduce.’”

      He hadn’t really noticed the faint shadows beneath her eyes before now or how tired she looked beneath her faintly frustrated smile. But then, he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge much of anything about her that didn’t directly affect the reason he was there. He considered himself a fair man, though, and to be fair, he had to admit that she didn’t seem much like the woman he’d expected. She was young, to be certain, and there was no mistaking that she knew privilege. Yet she hadn’t once acted spoiled, selfish, difficult or demanding. A little needy maybe, though he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was about her that made him think so. But so far she didn’t appear to be anything like the diva the press had portrayed.

      With hints of her fatigue staring him in the face, impressed by how intent she seemed to disregard it, he felt his priorities take a subtle shift. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning in the country she’d just left. The woman was probably dead on her feet.

      Telling himself he was only taking pity on the boy, he ignored his earlier insistence that he wouldn’t be her cook and handed her back the book.

      “They aren’t that complicated,” he told her, slipping off his tie. “But you shouldn’t practice on an unsuspecting child. I’ll make it.”

      Tess blinked in disbelief. “I can’t ask you do that.”

      “You didn’t ask.”

      “What I mean is that you don’t have to do it. I can manage this.”

      His response was the challenging arch of one dark eyebrow as he shrugged off his jacket.

      “Well, I can if you’ll tell me how,” she qualified.

      “It’ll be faster to just do it myself.” The jacket was dropped over the back of a chair at the staff’s table. “The pot by the stove will work for the pasta,” he said, rolling up the sleeves of his starched white shirt. “But I’ll need a small one for the sauce. Mind if I look in the pantry?” he asked, already heading for it. “All I need is garlic, olive oil, salt and basil. Fresh is best if there’s any growing outside, but dried will do.”

      Tess opened her mouth, closed it again. She didn’t know if her bodyguard wanted to speed up the dinner project so she could show him around as soon as Mikey woke up or if he thought her incapable of the task herself. The latter thought stung, especially since she already had the feeling he thought of her as either naive, young, helpless or some unflattering combination of all three. But whatever his rationale, she couldn’t allow him or anyone else to defeat her purpose.

      The man was accustomed to taking charge. He’d already found the olive oil and had removed a bottle of something green and flaky from a shelf when she stepped into the pantry herself.

      She’d been around big men before. A couple of her grandmother’s sentries had been built like tanks, and her own brothers were over six feet. But Parker’s body seemed to dwarf hers, and she wasn’t a short woman by any means. Barefoot, she stood an easy five foot seven inches. In heels, five ten. Even at that, she barely reached his broad shoulders.

      Terribly conscious of the scents of clean soap and warm male, she took the ingredients from him.

      “You don’t need to do this,” she repeated more firmly. “But I would appreciate it if you would tell me how.”

      She stood too close to look up without bending back her neck. Ahead, all she could see was the solid expanse of his chest. A woman would feel very safe held there.

      The unexpected thought brought a flush of heat, caused her to turn away. “Please.”

      Her request seemed to give him pause. Probably, she suspected, because he was accustomed to bulldozing ahead once he’d decided on a course of action and wasn’t used to anyone slowing him down.

      She rather envied him that.

      He finally muttered, “Fine,” as she set the ingredients by the tomatoes and pasta she’d left on the island. “Take off your jacket and get yourself an apron.”

      “I’ll leave my jacket on.”

      “You don’t want to ruin what you’re wearing.”

      A white silk Armani wasn’t the most practical thing to wear for her first cooking lesson. She would, however, have to make do. She didn’t want to leave to change clothes. “It’s okay.”

      Parker frowned at her slender back. Okay? he thought, absently watching her go through the drawers again. Okay because she could afford to stain two-thousand-dollar suits? Or okay because she was inherently stubborn and accustomed to getting her own way?

      “Tomato sauce stains,” he warned.

      An odd note of awkwardness slipped into her voice. “I don’t have anything on under it,” she explained, coming up with a white chef’s apron. “No blouse, I mean.”

      His glance darted to the V of flesh exposed between her lapels as she held the white cotton apron by its inch-wide strings.

      That was more information than he needed.

      “Here.” Feeling chastised, he jerked his glance to what she held. He did not need to be imagining her standing there in a skimpy lace bra. “Turn around.”

      Dutifully she did as he asked.

      “Lift your hair.”

      She did that, too, gathering the thick mane below the intricate clip already restraining it.

      His fingers felt clumsy as he tied the strings behind her neck—quickly so he couldn’t think too much about the appealing curve of her shoulder, the baby-fine hairs below her nape. Her skin felt like warm satin to him, the brush of her hair against the back of his hand like strands of silk.

      Her scent assaulted his remaining senses.

      The tightness low in his gut seemed to make its way to his voice.

      “The first thing you do is mince a clove of garlic.”

      She dropped her hair as she turned. Stepping back, she met his oddly guarded eyes. “I don’t think Mikey will like garlic.”

      “You can’t make a proper marinara without it.”

      “Then, show me how to make an improper one.”

      Tess could practically feel his eyes boring into her back as she hurried to gather a pen and notepad from the desk. “I need to write this down,” she explained. “I want to be able to do it again.”

      She had the distinct impression

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