Gentlemen Prefer... Brunettes

‘Is that a promise?’

‘You are appalling, Nick. When are you going to grow up?’

His grin was an admission that Beth was right. But he wasn’t contrite, far from it. ‘Never, I hope. How’s Harry?’

‘Harry, bless him, is content with a tubby redhead. Long may it continue.’

‘Not tubby, Beth. Deliciously curvaceous,’ Nick murmured.

Beth snorted. Cassandra felt like snorting too. You could have too much honey. ‘You’ll never change. But mark my words, some woman will steal that playboy heart of yours one of these days. Just when you’re least expecting it.’

‘Common gossip has it that I don’t have a heart to steal, Beth.’

‘I know, but who listens to common gossip?’ She linked her arm through his and gave it a squeeze. ‘Is this a social call, darling, or are you buying?’

‘I’m looking for a present for Helen; it’s her birthday next week. I saw you had a celebrity book signing...’

Nick Jefferson glanced across at the table piled high with books and found himself being soaked up by a pair of butterscotch eyes, eyes that were regarding him with the kind of look more usually bestowed upon a naughty puppy. Exasperated and trying very hard to be firm. But not quite making it.

Any sensible puppy worth a chocolate button would simply have rolled over and offered his tummy to be tickled. Nick wasn’t a puppy so he contented himself with crossing the shop for a closer look.

He’d been on his way into the office when he’d noticed the poster announcing that Cassandra Cornwell, celebrated television cook, would be signing copies of her new book that day between eleven and twelve o’clock. He’d sent his secretary down at eleven, but she’d come back saying the place was mobbed and she’d go back later. But later she’d been rushing to get out some figures for him.

He could have called Beth and asked her to have a signed copy put by for him, but it occurred to him that if she was that busy it wouldn’t be kind to drag her away to take a phone call when he was just a few floors above her. So he’d come himself. He was rather glad he had.

If he’d thought about Cassandra Cornwell he might have expected some middle-aged matron with red cheeks, greying hair and a slightly bossy manner. But she was none of those things. She had clear translucent skin, thick, glossy brows, eyes that smiled even when they were trying not to and dark, lustrous hair that was escaping her attempts to pin it tidily away from her face.

And she had the sweetest mouth. Like her eyes, it seemed to smile all by itself and he had this disconcerting urge to kiss it, certain that it would taste exactly like the strawberries he’d stolen from his mother’s kitchen garden as a boy.

‘...and you know how she loves to cook,’ he finished, slowly.

‘I’m not sure that I’d want a cookery book for my birthday,’ Beth was saying as she followed him across the store. ‘But heck, I’m not above parting a customer from his money, especially one as well endowed with the stuff as you. Cassie, do you know Nick Jefferson?’ Behind his back she silently pointed upwards at the office block rising above them, indicating that he was that Jefferson.

Cassie tried to keep a straight face as Beth continued her pantomime, pointing at her wedding ring and shaking her head and then doing a melodramatic death scene which Cassie took to mean that he was the kind of man a girl would die for.

Apparently sensing something was going on behind his back, Nick began to turn but Cassie swiftly stuck out her hand and said, ‘No, we haven’t met.’

‘Why?’ he said, enfolding her hand—there was no other word that described the way he took hold of it, Cassie decided. He enfolded it, very tenderly in his own. His long, cool fingers seemed to reach up to her wrist, their tips resting lightly against a pulse that was fluttering in a quite ridiculous way. ‘If you live in Melchester...’

She blinked at the casual ease with which he flirted. ‘It’s a big place, Mr Jefferson.’ And she avoided the social circuit.

‘Nick,’ he urged.

‘Nick, this is Cassandra Cornwell, a woman whose pastry could break your heart. She catered for my wedding, met a television researcher my brother was dating at the time and the rest is history.’

He glanced back at Beth, now fully recovered from her dramatic rendition of Nick Jefferson’s bachelor status and leaning against the cash desk. ‘History?’

‘Television history. Cassie has the biggest television ratings for a cookery programme in the history of broadcasting. Women watch her programmes to learn how to cook the way their mothers used to. Men watch her television programmes and drool.’ She gave Nick a thoughtful look. ‘It may be her sticky toffee pudding that attracts them, but somehow I don’t think so.’

‘No, I don’t think so either.’

‘She’s just come back to Melchester to live.’

‘Lucky Melchester.’ Despite the fact that she was at least six inches short of his gold standard and, like Beth, her figure leaned towards cuddly rather than super-model slender, Cassandra Cornwell, he decided, was exactly the kind of woman a man might fantasise about finding in his kitchen at the end of a hard day at the office. Warm, comforting, homely. Someone to massage your neck and put a drink in your hand to keep you happy until she served a meal fit for the gods. In short, the kind of girl a man would marry just to keep her all to himself. Not his type at all, in fact. Except for those lips.

Cassie, very much afraid that she had been doing a little drooling on her own account, swallowed and smiled politely. ‘Hello, Nick.’

It was her cue for him to release her hand. He ignored it. Beneath her neat white shirt Cassie was uncomfortably aware that her skin was beginning to tingle dangerously and she threw a silent plea for rescue in Beth’s direction, but her friend had been buttonholed by a customer and was disappearing towards the rear of the shop. And Nick Jefferson was showing no inclination to surrender her hand as her cheeks and quite a lot else began to heat up.

Maybe that was why he reached out and with just the tip of his finger touched the corner of her mouth. Maybe why, when she was still too startled, shaken, entranced to move away from this unexpected gesture, this most gentle of touches, he leaned forward and kissed her.

It was quite shocking. She should have been shocked. He was a total stranger... well, not total exactly, they had been introduced...and they were in the middle of a classy bookshop in the atrium of a very classy high-rise building. She should have stopped him; she knew it. The trouble was, it just wasn’t the kind of kiss that a girl wanted to stop. Ever.

He didn’t seem in too much of a hurry to bring it to an end, either. His lips moved over hers lightly, inquisitively, as if he was seeking out something rare and precious. And when finally he did stop she heard herself give a little, regretful sigh.

That was when she realised with horror that she was the one actively seeking to prolong the kiss, her face lifted invitingly, her lips slightly parted. She snapped her eyes open to see Nick Jefferson regarding her with the dark, knowing eyes of a man used to making instant conquests.

‘I was right,’ he said, before she could ask him what the hell he thought he was doing. Actually, he sounded surprised, which threw her a little.

‘Right... ?’ Cassie began, distracted from her legitimate indignation. Then, realising that she was still looking up at him in a way that almost begged him to kiss her again, she made a determined effort to pull herself together. ‘Right about what?’ she demanded, straightening and attempting to retrieve her hand, but he was having none of that.

Aware that several people had stopped browsing amongst the shelves and turned to stare at them, she allowed her fingers to remain in his. Rather than provoke an unseemly struggle. At least that was what she told herself she was doing. But somewhere, at the back of her mind, there was the faint sound of hollow laughter.

‘I was right about your mouth,’ he said. ‘It tastes of strawberries.’

Strawberries! Cassie was very much afraid that the blush had finally materialised beneath the twin assaults of his touch and the intensity of his gaze. And she was furious with herself. The man was an incorrigible flirt; he probably couldn’t help himself but that was no reason to encourage him.

‘Really?’ she enquired, her voice considerably cooler than her body, which was pounding from the jolt of sexual awareness provoked by his touch. She had forgotten that sudden, unexpected collision of desire when a stranger reached for your hand. Or maybe she’d just been avoiding it for such a long time that she had fooled herself into believing that it would never happen again...

Whichever it was, she told herself firmly, she was too old to be taken in by such an obvious pass. He was just doing it to impress Beth. Except that Beth was nowhere to be seen. Whatever. He was impressing the hell out of her and that would never do. ‘Strawberries?’ she repeated, thoughtfully. ‘What variety of strawberries?’

If she had hoped to crush him with this put-down, she was doomed to disappointment. His eyes crinkled into a slow, wide and infinitely seductive smile. ‘The small sweet ones that are bright red all the way through,’ he murmured. ‘The kind that when you squash one between your fingers it dribbles dark red juice into your mouth.’

‘Oh.’ The image evoked was so sensuous, so real that Cassie sincerely wished she hadn’t asked. But at least he had surrendered her hand, finally.

Her reprieve was short-lived, however, since he used the hand to hitch an inch or two of expensive lightweight suiting over his knee and prop himself on the edge of the table at which she was sitting. Then he leaned across her to pick up one of her glossy new cookery books.

She steeled herself against the warm man-scent of freshly laundered linen, soap and an elusive trace of the kind of cologne they didn’t sell in the local supermarket. Nick Jefferson, on the other hand, began idly flipping through the pages as if nothing had happened. Seriously tempted to take it from him and hit him with it, she restrained herself. It would undoubtedly be wisest to follow his example and pretend that nothing had.

Easier said than done. Her lips were singing from his delicate touch and she found herself wondering what it would be like to have Nick Jefferson hold her face between those long, sensitive fingers and kiss her seriously. Then she wondered if she was going quite mad.

‘I’m sure Helen will love this,’ he said, making her jump.

‘Helen?’

‘My sister,’ he told her.

‘Oh, yes, of course.’ Again that knowing smile as if he had sensed the ridiculous flash of jealousy at the mention of another woman’s name. Lord, but the man was arrogant. And she was an idiot.