Wicked Games

“You know this is hopeless, don’t you?” Kinsey really wanted to smack whoever had started the rumor that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. “I burn microwave popcorn. I add too much water to packets of instant cocoa. Carryout was invented for a reason, hello. Doug is not going to want to eat anything that comes out of my kitchen.”

“It won’t be coming out of your kitchen.” Lauren climbed onto the bar stool behind the cooking island. “It’ll be coming out of Sydney’s.”

“With too many cooks spoiling the broth, it looks like,” Kinsey grumbled, glancing at the latest batch of hovering fairy godmothers. Calm. Collected. Ohhmmm. Why had she let herself be talked into such a ridiculous idea?

Now it was too late to back out.

She’d canceled the regular Sunday morning breakfast she shared with her parents to get in this quick cooking lesson before tonight’s date. She’d left Doug a message Friday afternoon after the infamous planning luncheon; he’d left her one last night on his way to a basketball game.

But a phone tag relationship was not what she’d been hoping to explore.

“So, what’s on the menu?” Wearing a royal-blue headband to hold back her short chunky dreadlocks bronzed with highlights, Izzy pulled open the refrigerator door and peered inside. “And do not tell me you’re thinking to fix up anything low or reduced or light. You will not win a man with a woman’s diet. Just ask my Gramma Fred. A man’s hunger has to be fed and fed right.”

Sitting beside Poe on a third bar stool, Kinsey buried her face in her hands. “Why do I sense a disaster rather than a home-cooked meal in the making?”

“Have a little faith here, Kinsey.” Sydney joined Izzy at the refrigerator’s open door. “You know full well Izzy grew up in her grandmother’s restaurant. And Ray hasn’t exactly wasted away since I’ve taken over the cooking, though Patrick’s been doing a lot of it since he’s been home.”

Kinsey sighed, then glanced over at Poe, who shrugged and said, “I’m only here for the show.”

One less pair of hands in the mix, anyway. And since Kinsey planned to do nothing but take notes…“Okay, then. Where do we start?”

“Hmm.” Sydney examined the labels on several packages of butcher-wrapped meat. “I bought pork and lamb and chicken and beef. Whatever you don’t use for Doug, I’ll freeze for Ray. I guess the first thing is to decide what you’re in the mood for, since you’ll be eating it, too.”

“If I’m supposed to eat my own cooking, then the deciding factor is what’s the easiest to fix and the hardest to screw up?” Sad, but true.

“No. The deciding factor is what you want your cooking to say.” At the sound of Patrick Coffey’s voice, five pairs of female eyes turned toward the doorway where he stood.

His hands hooked into the frame overhead, he leaned forward, his long, lanky body covered by nothing but a pair of low-rise jeans and a ribbed white tank-style T-shirt that showed off an intricately woven tattoo ringing the bulge of his right biceps.

His hair hung in dark twisted strands to his shoulders, hiding much of his face in the shadows. At least until he pushed away from the door frame and entered the room, raking all that hair back into a ponytail he secured haphazardly with a thick red rubber band.

Kinsey released the breath she’d been holding, heard Poe do the same at her side. Having seen him off and on now for over a year, Kinsey still remained clueless how the man managed to inspire equal parts lust and trepidation. But he did.

She supposed it was a normal reaction to his circumstances. After all, how many guys returned home after being held hostage for three years by Caribbean pirates?

Naturally, her heart pitter-pattered in a fan-to-movie-star response—one no more meaningful than the patter inspired by Brad Pitt, or the pitter brought on by George Clooney.

Now the trepidation…that part was real. That pirate thing was too bizarre to let go.

Totally unaffected by Patrick’s arrival, Sydney moved away from the refrigerator with a chicken in her hand. She tossed it to Patrick, who caught it without even looking her way.

“Believe it or not, ladies,” Sydney began, “here is the member of the Coffey household best suited to showing Kinsey how to turn a meal into magic.”

2

KINSEY TOOK THE CHICKEN from the oven and moved the golden-skinned bird from roasting pan to platter. She whisked butter along with half the papaya glaze she’d prepared earlier into the drippings, the way Patrick had instructed her to do.

He’d sent her home after this morning’s cooking lesson with the chicken marinating in orange juice, shallots and brown sugar. All she’d had to do was strain the marinade into the food processor she’d borrowed from Sydney, add the Dijon mustard, papaya, garlic and additional seasonings Patrick had measured out, and baste the bird as it cooked.

So far, so good. Nothing burned, nothing broken, nothing blown to bits. Her kitchen had never smelled this mouthwateringly yummy. If the food tasted half as good, well, she’d have to confess to Doug that she was really a terrible cook and tonight’s dinner was a fluke.

Or, she supposed, such a confession could wait.

Sydney had even offered Kinsey use of the baking and serving dishes. Expert cook that she was not, she’d had nothing appropriate in which to roast and serve Patrick’s Caribbean Chicken with Orange Papaya Glaze.

Her cooking instructor had been equally as generous as his soon-to-be sister-in-law. He’d proposed he come do the cooking for her. Kinsey had declined. Cooking for one man while using another’s recipe was bad enough.

But cooking for one man while another worked to seduce her didn’t seem exactly copacetic.

Patrick’s equal-opportunity flirtation was flattering, but meaningless ten minutes later—a fact to which both Izzy and Poe could attest. Both women had fallen victim to his mercurial moods this morning, one that had him walking out of the kitchen in the middle of a lively conversation.

Still, Kinsey had left the Coffey home feeling much more competent than she had when she’d let her girlfriends talk her into this plan for entrapment. Okay, she admitted, she hadn’t actually been talked into anything. She’d pretty much been her own ringleader.

And now the circus was coming to town…no, wait. That was ringmaster. Whatever.

The wine was chilled, the salad freshly tossed, the chicken warm and ready to serve, and the table set with dishes, flatware and linen that actually were her very own. She might not be able to cook, but she knew how to dress a table as well as she knew how to dress herself.

Tonight she wore a brand-new outfit, one she’d just added to the gROWL gIRL partywear line—a pair of low-rise leisure pants with a fold-over waistband and a matching knit camisole covered with a fluttery chiffon top.

Both the pants and the cami were white, a brave decision if she did say so herself, but the red-and-zebra stripes of the sheer topper made it too much fun to resist. And besides, she looked damn good in the black, white and red combination.

Or so said her fashion diva’s sixth sense.

Now, as long as she didn’t start blabbering incessantly, or throw up due to the unexpected nerves turning her stomach inside out, and as long as Doug arrived before the chicken cooled completely, leaving her with too much leftover food for one person to eat in a lifetime—

The doorbell chimed.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, looked up again…and realized she had totally forgotten dessert. Oh, yes. Definitely the start of a great impression. She should’ve gone with her original instinct not to mess with what was a really good friendship. This trap-setting idea was going to backfire with all sorts of regrets.

The doorbell chimed again, and Kinsey found herself wearing a wry smile. Doug never rang twice; he simply walked in with a loud “Yo!” and called out her name. That told her he shared her expectant sense of this evening being different than any they’d spent together in the past.

And since that was causing butterfly fountains to bubble in her stomach, she gave up worrying that a lack of dessert meant she’d flubbed the entire evening, and reached for calm, cool and collected. Ohhmmm.

But when she opened her front door and saw him standing in the porch’s yellowed light, she didn’t know how to react, because the idea of never seeing him again hit her like a blow to the center of her chest.

When had he become so integral to her life, and when had she started taking him for granted?

She released the lock on the glass storm door and pushed it open, nearly breathless when she said, “Hi.”

The smile he’d originally given her deepened, his eyes going wide and his brows coming down as he took her in from head to toe. “Wow. And hi yourself.”

His “wow” made all the effort she’d taken with her appearance worth every minute of the tweaking spent on hair and makeup. “Back atcha.” Back atcha in a very big way.

He looked better than she remembered, and she had to wonder if she’d really ever noticed him before, or if she was simply caught up in the moment.

He wore charcoal-gray trousers and a heather-green sweater over a pale yellow dress shirt. He walked into her living room, and she turned to close the door, leaning back against it and thinking she’d never seen a guy’s backside look better than Doug Storey’s did in gray wool.

He stopped, one hand shoved into a pocket, the other holding a bottle of wine, and turned back, smiling. “It smells great in here. You should’ve told me you cooked. I would’ve been over more often.”