“Are you going to give me a hint what you’re celebrating, or am I going to have to guess?” He propped an elbow on the table, his green gaze warm and intimate even from four feet away.
“You’d never guess.” She set the pastry in a low temperature oven to take the chill off while she stirred a small batch of frosting in a peachy, skin-tone shade.
Glancing at the difference between her own bronze skin and the fair hue of the frosting, Giselle added a dash of brown and yellow to the mixture. If the man was going to be thinking about breasts, he might as well at least be thinking about the proper pair.
“I don’t know about that. I’m a pretty good guesser.” He scrubbed a thoughtful hand along a squared jaw. “Any woman singing Sinatra probably has romance on her mind.”
She stopped stirring. “Romance?” Odd how the word made her nervous.
“Yeah. You know—a man, a woman and a lot of sparks?” He crossed his feet at the ankles as if utterly content to play guessing games.
And she had to admit he was pretty damn good at them.
Slowly, she began to stir again. “I might have been thinking about sparks, I’ll grant you that much.”
She wanted to glance his way again as she pulled the pastry out of the oven, but to create an erotic confectionery masterpiece she needed to concentrate on the task at hand.
“She says yes to sparks while romance remains questionable.” Hugh seemed to mull over the notion, the words spoken more softly than the rest. “I’d have to say that means you were celebrating a wild, out-of-control affair. Am I getting closer?”
The deep timbre of his voice in her kitchen did wicked things to her insides as she frosted the treat and put the finishing touches on the nipples with tiny pieces of cherry.
“You’re definitely getting closer.” Her words ended on a husky note as she eased the pastry onto a small silver serving dish and dusted powdered sugar around the rim. “I was simply celebrating the freedom to have a wild, out-of-control affair since my watchdog big brothers are all far away from South Beach this weekend.”
She hoped she didn’t overplay her hand as she swayed her hips with blatant suggestiveness when she walked toward him with the plate.
“All that singing and dancing over a basic freedom like the ability to conduct a sensual interlude?” His eyes lingered on her hips before lifting to meet her gaze. “It stirs the imagination to think how you might react when faced with the reality of a man who would give his right arm for a chance at that kind of encounter with you, Giselle.”
She paused beside him, her legs mere inches from where his own sprawled across the floor. Heat crawled over her skin and made her tingle with anticipation. But it was nothing compared to the flash fire that sizzled through her when she leaned forward to set his plate on the table. Her breasts moved through his line of sight, almost close enough to his mouth to feel his breath.
Or so she wanted to think.
“You won’t have to use your imagination for much longer.” Straightening, she took shallow breaths in the too-warm air that hovered between them. The urge to lick her lips grew almost overwhelming as she stared down at him. “All you have to do is take a peek at the dish I’ve made for you to see what I would do to tempt that sort of man.”
2
NORMALLY, HUGH WASN’T THE KIND of guy who enjoyed surprises. He’d learned at an early age that being unprepared could have dangerous consequences, and he’d forged a personal quest to make sure his stories kept people so informed they’d never be caught off guard.
But Giselle’s late-night offering was the kind of surprise a man relished. And one he sure as hell would never forget.
“What do you think?” She stood over him, the scent of her vanilla cream confection mingling with the more earthy, herbal aroma that clung to her skin.
Even though he was curious to see her facial expression, to search for hints of the game she played in her mischievous dark brown eyes, Hugh couldn’t seem to tear his gaze from the bare breasts served to him on a—no kidding—silver platter.
He sensed her shift beside him while he searched for the correct response. She tugged out the chair across from him and eased into it.
Finally he managed to look up at her own cleavage, enticingly displayed in the killer scrap of red silk she wore for a dress. A plunging neckline edged in a tiny red ruffle seemed to frame the object of his attention.
“Quite honestly, they look delicious.” With an effort his gaze continued up to her face, her flirtatious smile and finally her sugar-streaked cheek. “I can hardly wait for a taste.”
He reached across the table—surprising her a little if the sudden biting of her lip was any indication—and swiped the powdered sugar smudge from one high cheekbone.
She stilled beneath his touch, her skin as warm and soft as he imagined, before he pulled away to lick his finger.
“Very sweet.” Desperate to distract himself before he leaned across the table for a much more thorough sampling, Hugh scooped up the silver fork she’d provided and speared a bite of the explicit pastry.
“Thank you.” She leaned back in her seat and pulled a thin wooden stick from the knot of hair piled on top of her head. A silky brown mane fell about her shoulders while she tucked the stick into a black leather satchel alongside the table. “My pastries have developed quite a following among the locals.”
Hugh watched the dance of her wavy hair against the smooth column of her neck as he swallowed another bite of sweet pastry and wondered when he’d ever been so sensually bombarded on all levels. For a man accustomed to an austere existence in one unstable foreign country after another, Giselle Cesare provided an electric jolt to his system.
“I can see why. Tasty, as well as provocative. You don’t find that too often in a food.”
She quirked a dark eyebrow while a smile played about her lips. “Then you don’t know your foods well enough. Spend a little time with a chef and I guarantee you’ll change your mind on that score.”
He would have jumped at the chance if his mouth hadn’t been full. And perhaps that was a good thing, he realized as he gulped another bite, because he wouldn’t want Giselle to think for a moment he was dating her to unearth information on Club Paradise.
He could develop an exposé on the scandal-ridden resort with his eyes closed as soon as he knocked the considerable chip off his shoulder over having to write it in the first place.
Before he could decide how to proceed with the enticing woman seated across from him, she leaned forward to speak.
“So what do you do besides roam the hallways at the crack of dawn? Are you a hotel guest? A nightclub partyer who didn’t heed the last call?”
“I’m a wanderer. I’ve been out of the country for the last few months and I’m settling back into the rhythm of South Beach. I just followed the crowd into the Moulin Rouge Lounge around midnight.” He wondered fleetingly if Giselle had slipped an aphrodisiac into his pastry because the longer he sat across from her, the more he wanted to reach out and touch the warmth of her skin, inhale her exotic, spicy scent. “I checked out the club, strolled the beach. Next thing you know, it was closing time.”
“Next thing you know?” She rolled her eyes. “That’s four hours. I can never do anything for four hours without getting impatient. And I’m pretty sure I’ve never ‘strolled’ at any time in my life.”
Somehow that didn’t surprise him. He pointed his fork in her direction. “You’re more of a charge through life kind of person, I bet.”
“Exactly. I’ve never been very good at waiting for anything,