SLOW PLAY (7-Stud Club #4) - Christie Ridgway Page 0,79
but they would never take the hint. Why couldn’t they appreciate fun and games? Why couldn’t they accept when the fun and games were over? But no, they’d always come back—
“Mr. Buchanan,” her low-pitched voice was forced to find its way through the narrow crack in the door, yet still he could hear it over the rumble of the traffic on the highway and the surf’s crash-and-shush at his back. The goose made another march down his spine. “You called me. Remember?”
Right. There was that. With a sigh, he pulled back on the knob to gaze on her again, girly as all get-out. “Look,” he said, “it’s nothing personal. It’s just that I’ve sworn off women.”
His last chef had worked out great. Sandy was businesslike, quiet, and a lesbian to boot. When she’d recommended her friend Nikki, Jay had assumed—which reminded him of one of his grandfather’s favorite old saws, “Assume makes an ass out of u and me”—that she’d be of the same sexual persuasion.
But after studying the woman on his doorstep…well, to put it bluntly, this leggy darling was no dyke.
“Mr. Buchanan—”
He held up his hand, once again wishing like hell he’d had a cup of coffee waiting for him when he rose, which was just another reason to regret this pretty chef person wasn’t an ardent fan of The L Word. “I’ve got enough trouble right now, okay? Believe me, I’ve sworn off women.”
Those eyebrows slammed over her nose again. “Then we’re even, because I don’t like men.”
Jay stared in surprise. Could it be? Could his lack of caffeine have impaired his usually impeccable, spot-on radar? “You…” He shook his head, because now he noticed something even more remarkable about her. Pretty chef person, Leggy with Braids, Nikki-who-said-she didn’t-like-men had the most amazing eyes. One was blue, and one was green. Like a mermaid, like a witch, like a…?
Could it really be? He frowned. “You don’t like men?”
She took a breath.
He leaned forward so as not to miss her answer.
Another female’s voice found him first. From the vicinity of his back door floated a light, sugary voice that he was painfully familiar with. “Jay? Jay, darling. I can’t go another minute without seeing you.”
Tension tightened a strangling hand around his neck. He closed his eyes, opened them, and was distracted for a second from the sticky problem coming up behind him by Nikki’s pretty, pretty face and those witchy, witchy eyes.
Hmm. Was she or wasn’t she?
“Jay?”
Uh-oh. The sticky problem was getting closer.
“Jay, honey, where are you?”
Nikki’s bi-colored eyes were big and full of questions.
Jay had one of his own, of course. Did she really dislike men or didn’t she? But there wasn’t time to speculate, not with the minty breath of his worst double-X chromosome mistake bearing down on him.
And then, bam, it hit him. Call it an impulse, call it a brilliant idea, call it both. He kicked aside the unsettling warning that not all his impulses or even his brilliant ideas had panned out to be oh-so-successful.
Like Mom said, Jay was a hoper.
And now he hoped to kill two birds with one stone. A single, simple move—and oh, how he liked things simple—could clear up one little question as well as one big problem.
As high heels clacked on the tile behind him, he grabbed Nikki-who-might-not-like-men, yanked her across the threshold, then pulled her close for a kiss.
The children of America’s premier rock band learned early to sleep through anything. Late night jam sessions, liquor (and worse) -fueled arguments, raucous parties raging from dark to dawn that were peppered with wild laughter, breaking glass, and the squishy thud of fists against skin. At twenty-four, Cilla Maddox had not lost that skill, though she’d recently come to view it as something less than a gift.
Still, she didn’t stir from her curled position on the edge of the king-sized bed when a tall, broad figure entered the room in the middle of the night. No streetlights disturbed the darkness this deep in Laurel Canyon and the newcomer found the bed only by deduction. When, at his sixth cautious step, his shin met an immoveable object, he dropped the motorcycle boots and duffel bag he carried to the