SLOW PLAY (7-Stud Club #4) - Christie Ridgway Page 0,77

employer of her fellow cooking school student Sandy Bivers. For two months, Sandy had worked for him while he wrote a journal-style account of the bachelor joys of having a woman in his kitchen who wasn’t also warming his bed. The attention had garnered Sandy a gig on one of the food channels.

Nikki’s mind flashed on what her fellow chef had told her about the man. Like that yarn shop, Jay Buchanan was a resident of Malibu, and though he was credited with the magazine’s sexist signature tagline, “Men are boys and women are toys,” Sandy claimed the worst thing anyone had ever said about him was that he was born under a lucky star on a sunny day at a Southern California beach.

“I’ve seen him charming water from the devil,” Sandy had gone on to say, “at the same time he was slipping the panties off an angel.” Nikki had caught a glimpse of him herself, in a pictorial layout in NYFM. Leaving a charity function at an L.A. club with a starlet on his arm, he’d appeared both classy and capable. A guy in black tie who looked as if he could make a mixed drink or change a car tire with the same aplomb.

“I need a cook—a chef,” the man was saying now. “Just for August. I’ve got a house guest for the next few weeks and then a big event to host at the end of the month.”

Her heartbeat ratcheted up another notch. Okay, it wasn’t long-term, but it was something, not to mention a likely way to make future contacts. And anyhow, she’d do whatever she had to if it meant cooking and keeping off her knee at the same time.

“If you’re interested, come by tomorrow. Ten A.M.” The address he gave was on the Pacific Coast Highway. “We’ll talk.”

Her gaze flicked to the time. Given the late hour and the traffic she’d likely encounter heading to the beach on a summer morning, if she went to bed now, she’d have enough time to get four hours of sleep. Her knee needed at least seven, but she’d make do.

“Oh, yeah,” the male voice added. “And bring your best batch of cookies.”

Two hours of sleep.

Optimism would keep her awake, though, and maybe work as an analgesic as well. “Jay Buchanan, you’re the answer to a prayer,” she said, though still not allowing herself even a single grateful tear. But God, how much she needed—

The chance. Not him.

No, not him.

She might be in a tight spot, but long ago she’d learned the hard way what it was to need a man and she wasn’t about to make that same mistake again.

Bleary-eyed and fuzzy-brained from lack of sleep, Jay Buchanan yanked on a pair of shorts and stumbled barefoot toward the front of his beachside house, where someone had the annoying gall to knock on his door at the early hour of—

He paused, then leaned back and craned his neck to read the clock on the coffeemaker in the kitchen. Why, oh why, was the carafe empty when he needed it full, and why did the digital numbers claim it was almost 10:00 A.M.? He’d just woken up and…oh, yeah. He’d just woken up because he hadn’t hit the sack until after 4:00. An idea for a couple of ManTalk columns had nagged him until he’d stopped tossing and turning around midnight and headed for his computer instead.

The idea was worth it. It was all about New Year’s resolutions and he’d had a sufficient number of words on the subject to fill the required inches for NYFM’s print edition with enough left over to offer a slightly different slant for the online version.

Not so different, actually. They were both about giving up women for the forthcoming three hundred sixty-five days. The columns were for the January issues because magazines worked ahead—and Jay did, too.

While in his latest writing for the magazine he resolved to give up the fairer sex in the new year, though it was only August he’d already made that commitment to himself.

As of today, no females.

No how.

It was going to put a hiatus on his popular “In Search of the Perfect Woman” articles, a series inspired by his discovery of his grandparents’ old Broadway cast album of My Fair Lady in the back of a cabinet. Rex Harrison rapping his way through “A Hymn to Him,” which asked the immortal question, “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” had sent Jay on the