“No, couldn’t put you out.”
Devin said grimly, “Happy to do it.”
“Why should you have to put up with clanging pots and swinging doors?” The old man’s face brightened. “Tell you what, we’ll join you.”
“JUST CALLING TO SEE how the date’s going with the rock star?”
Shifting her cell phone to the other ear, Rachel glanced in the direction of the men’s room. “I told you, Trix, it’s not a date. It’s—” an interrogation that’s taken a disturbing turn “—just dinner.”
“Rach, the guy’s been in seclusion for months. It’s a real coup … ohmygod!” Rachel held the phone away as her assistant’s voice rose to a non-Goth squeal. “You should be selling your story to the tabloids! I’ll be your agent.”
Rachel speared a green bean. “Here’s your headline—I Had the Fish, He Had the Steak.”
“Obviously you’ll need to have sex with him to make any real money.” The bean went down the wrong way and Rachel burst into a fit of coughing. Trixie read that as encouragement. “You can’t deny there are plenty of women who’ve got famous through sleeping with a celebrity,” she argued. “You could even get a place on a reality TV show … you know, celebs surviving in the Outback.”
Rachel dabbed her streaming eyes with a napkin. “Tempting as the prospect is,” she croaked, “I think I’ll pass.”
“You’ll never get famous as a librarian,” Trixie warned her.
“Oh, I don’t know. Melvil Dewey invented the Dewey Decimal System over one hundred and thirty years ago and everybody knows his name.”
At least Trixie’s nonsense was steadying Rachel’s nerves. So she’d been momentarily sideswiped by the guy’s sex appeal. She was female and he was prime grade male.
“For God’s sake, don’t tell him one of your hobbies is finding wacky facts on Wiki.” Trixie sounded genuinely horrified. “You’ll lose whatever credibility we have.”
Rachel laughed. “Goodbye.”
“Who was that?” Devin asked from behind her, and she jumped, her nervousness returning. Not for a minute did she believe he was seriously attracted to her, but she had an uneasy feeling he’d try anything—or anyone—once.
“Trixie, my assistant. She—” told me to sleep with you “—had a work query.”
Devin took his seat and signaled for their waitress. “There’ll be another two people joining us.” He filled Rachel in. “And this is all your fault.”
But she was impressed by his gesture—finally, signs of a conscience. And secretly relieved they wouldn’t be alone.
She was starting to have doubts about her ability to manage him.
The Kincaids—Kev and Beryl—arrived. Only halfway through the introductions did Rachel realize the downside of Devin’s generosity. She’d lost her opportunity to grill him further about his ethics.
“So, Devin, you’re a Yank,” said Beryl as they’d settled at the table. Plump and pretty, she was like a late harvest apple, softly wrinkled and very sweet.
Rachel tried to remember if Yank was an acceptable term to Americans.
“Actually, Beryl,” Devin said politely, “I was born here, but moved to the States when I was two. My dad was an American, my mother’s a Kiwi.”
Beryl looked from Devin to Rachel. “And now you’re repeating history. How romantic.”
“We’re not—” Rachel began.
“She’s my little ray of Kiwi sunshine,” Devin interrupted.
Rachel said dryly, “And he’s the rain on my Fourth of July parade.”
Devin chuckled. Beryl murmured, “Lovely.”
Her husband eyed Devin from under beetled brows. “What do you do for a crust?”
He looked to Rachel for a translation. “Job,” she said.
“Student,” said Devin, after a moment’s hesitation.
“You’re a bit old, aren’t you?” New Zealand country folk were only polite when they didn’t like you. Rachel hoped Devin understood that, but the way his jaw tightened suggested otherwise.
“Changing careers,” he answered shortly.
“From?” Kev prompted.
“Musician.”
“How lovely,” Beryl enthused. Rachel suspected she often took a peacekeeper’s role. “Would we know any of your songs?”
Devin’s smile was dangerous as he turned to the older woman. “Ho in Heels?” He started to sing in a husky baritone. “Take me, baby, deep …”
“Oh, Kev,” Beryl clapped her hands in delight. “Don’t you remember? Billy—that’s the agricultural student who worked for us over Christmas—played it in the milking shed.”
“Cows bloody loved it,” said Kev. “Let down the milk quicker.”
Rachel looked at Devin’s stunned expression and had to bite her cheek. “Was it a ballad by any chance?” Her voice was unsteady.
“Slow? Yeah, not that the other bloody rubbish … sorry, mate.”
Devin began to laugh.
“Did you know,” Rachel said, fighting the urge to join him—one of them had to keep it together, “there was a study done at Leicester University that found farmers could increase their milk yield by playing cows soothing music.”
“Is that bloody right?” marveled Kev.
Devin laughed harder.
Kev and Beryl looked to Rachel for an explanation and she dug her nails into Devin’s thigh to stop him. It didn’t. “Conversely,” she said, hoping the effort not to laugh was the cause of her breathlessness, and not the warm unyielding muscle under her fingers, “Friesians provided less milk when they listen to rock music.”
“Well, I never.” Beryl smiled indulgently at Devin, who was wiping his eyes with a napkin. “You Yanks have a different sense of humor from us, have you noticed?”
Devin bought the restaurant’s best bottle of vintage Bollinger for Beryl and Kev, who insisted that Rachel accepted half a glass for the toast.
Devin explained to the old farmer that even a sip of alcohol would kill him, then gave Beryl a ghoulish description of how his pancreas had almost exploded.
Rachel thought he was laying it on a bit thick, and told him so while Beryl and Kev debated the menu. He looked at her with a gleam in his eye. “You see right through me, don’t you, Heartbreaker?”
“Heartbreaker yourself,” she said tartly, but somehow it came out as a compliment.
“Frenzied Friesians,” he murmured, and Rachel gave in to a fit of the giggles.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DEVIN SAT BACK and admired her. Laughter lightened Rachel’s seriousness, made her accessible. He was pretty cheerful himself. For the first time in New Zealand he didn’t feel like an outsider.
However weird his life had been as a rock star, it had nothing on Beryl and Kev and the obscure facts that popped out of Rachel’s luscious mouth. There was something appealing in the librarian’s quirky nerdiness. She didn’t give a damn about his fame or his opinion and Devin wanted her.
In a corner