Ready for King's Seduction Read online

  She pushed windblown hair off her face and asked, “Was there something you wanted, Lucas?”

  He looked at her for a long, silent moment, those blue eyes of his shadowed in the dim light. But his stare was just as powerful as it had once been, and Rose felt her heartbeat quicken again in response. It was an involuntary reaction, she told herself firmly, and refused to acknowledge it further.

  “Actually,” he said, “there is. You teach cooking classes in people’s homes, right?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Then I want to hire you.”

  She hadn’t expected that and wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. Lucas King was one of the wealthiest men in America. He could employ a dozen chefs and never once have to enter his own kitchen if he didn’t want to. So why learn to cook for himself? “Why?”

  He pulled his hands free of his pockets and folded his arms across his broad chest. “I should think that would be self-evident. I want to know how to cook.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” she said, still not willing to believe that he was serious. “What I don’t understand is why you want to hire me.”

  “Because I don’t want to have to go out to take classes. You coming to my home is more convenient.”

  “Uh-huh.” She was thinking fast and trying to see the trap in what he was saying, but she just couldn’t. Maybe he was being sincere. Maybe he really did want to learn how to cook for himself and seeing her here tonight had just been a happy accident.

  But even as she thought it, Rose told herself there had to be more to it than that. As far as she knew, Lucas and her brother hadn’t spoken in a couple of years. Though she had tried to find out from Dave what had gone wrong in their friendship, her brother hadn’t told her a thing.

  All he’d been willing to say was that Lucas King was out of their lives and she had better leave it that way.

  If Lucas felt the same, and she had no reason to think he didn’t, why was he trying to hire her?

  “How much do you charge?” Lucas asked, splintering her thoughts.

  She told him and he nodded. “I’ll pay you twice your usual rate.”

  “What? Why would you do that?”

  “For your undivided attention,” he told her. “I’d want you here every night. Teaching me.”

  She took a quick breath and tried to put out the flickering flames in the pit of her stomach. Every night. Teaching him. It sounded way more sexual than it should have.

  “I have other clients,” she told him, though the truth was, her new business was barely up and sputtering. Besides Kathy Robertson, there were only three other women who had hired her so far and they were only once-a-month commitments.

  “Three times your usual rate,” he countered, his gaze fixed on her, his expression unreadable.

  Rose blew out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. With that kind of money, she could get a running start on building her business. Yes, she didn’t have to struggle. She was a Clancy after all, and if she was in deep trouble, she would only have to tell Dave she needed money.

  But she really didn’t want to go to her brother. And she’d already invested everything she had into her business. So it was sink or swim. Lucas’s offer would make it much easier to stay afloat.

  “You’re not making it easy to say no,” she admitted.

  “Glad to hear it,” Lucas said.

  She took a deep breath and, shaking her head slowly, heard herself say, “I don’t know, Lucas. If Dave found out about this—”

  “So,” he interrupted, “you’re still letting your older brother run your life, is that it?”

  Her head snapped up, her gaze locked with his and a fast spurt of anger shot through her. “Dave has never run my life.”

  “Not how he saw it.”

  “Things change.”

  “Do they?” Lucas prodded. “Then take my offer.”

  Frowning to herself, Rose knew she was being manipulated and she didn’t like it. But she also didn’t like the fact that Lucas had a point. If she turned his offer down, she was kowtowing to the older brother who already thought he had a right to run her life.

  Well, times had changed and so had Rose. She was a grown-up. She had survived the loss of her father, the disintegration of a bad marriage and the bossiness of a brother who thought he knew best. She could handle Lucas King and the still-sizzling attraction she felt for him.

  “All right,” she said, holding out her right hand, “it’s a deal.”

  His hand enveloped hers in a warm shake that sent tendrils of something deliciously wicked streaming through her system. He gave her a half smile and said, “Great. We’ll start tomorrow. Six work for you?”

  He let her go but her skin was still buzzing from his touch when she mumbled, “Yeah. Six is fine.”

  “See you then.” Lucas turned and headed back to his house and Rose watched him go.

  Leaning against her car, she ordered her heartbeat to slow down and told her stomach to stop spinning. Neither of those commands had the slightest effect on her.

  When he disappeared into his house, Rose shook her head slowly and whispered, “I’m in so much trouble.”

  Two

  “Real men don’t eat mushrooms,” Lucas pointed out the next night as he sliced into the tiny white buttons. “They’re not even vegetables. Aren’t they a fungus?”

  Rose laughed, and Lucas stilled for a second, listening to the sound of it. Just as he remembered, that laugh of hers was damned infectious. Made a man want to smile in response, then pull her in close for a long, deep, wet kiss that would end in—

  “Technically, yes,” she said, when she’d stopped laughing at him long enough to speak. “They are fungi. For a long time, they were considered vegetables, but then researchers discovered they weren’t plant or animal, but their own species.”

  “Great. And I’m going to eat them, why?”

  Lucas waited for it and wasn’t disappointed. She laughed again and something inside him shifted, expanded.

  Their first cooking lesson was going more smoothly than he’d expected. Sure, there had been some tension when she first arrived, but that had dissipated quickly enough when she got a look at his kitchen. He smiled to himself when he realized that she was the first woman to be seduced by his subzero fridge and Viking stove.

  Hell, when he remodeled the house after buying it five years ago, he had insisted on top-of-the-line, and the designer had been given free rein in the kitchen. From the bamboo flooring to the glass-fronted cabinets, the granite counters and workstations and the island sink, the kitchen was the kind of room every cook dreamed of.

  And the most Lucas had ever made in it himself was the occasional plate of bacon and eggs.

  Now, though, he thought as he watched Rose moving through the room, he would always see her here. He would hear the echoes of her laughter. See the way she practically danced around the room with a sort of balletic grace. She cooed over the copper pots and pans and sighed deeply when she first opened the nearly empty butler’s pantry.

  She might have been a little nervous when she’d first arrived, but in his kitchen, she was right at home.

  “We’re using button mushrooms because they’re the most common. You can find them in any grocery store and they add just enough flavor to any dish to give it a hint of something…more.”

  “More fungus. Great.” He shook his head, reminded himself that he wasn’t here to enjoy himself—or her. He had set this up as a way of paying back a friend for the kind of betrayal that Lucas never forgave. Rose wasn’t a date.

  She was a tool.

  Grimly, he went back to the task of slicing mushrooms while Rose gathered up the supplies she’d brought along and set them out on the cooking island.

  “I brought enough with me for tonight’s lesson,” she said, “because this was all so sudden I figured you wouldn’t have the right ingredients.”

  “Good call,” he said, his knife sliding through button after button.r />
  “But it’s just a crime that you have this amazing kitchen and nothing in it,” she said with a long sigh. Shaking her head, she looked around the room as if studying an abandoned puppy and wondering how to find it a good home. “I’m going to leave a list of supplies for you to pick up. With a well-stocked pantry and refrigerator, you’ll always have options.”

  He lifted his head to look at her, and their eyes locked. A second or two of pulsing tension passed before he said, “Until I learn how to cook, being well-stocked really isn’t necessary, is it?”

  She plopped one hand on her hip. “How am I supposed to teach you how to cook if there’s nothing in your house to cook with?”

  “Good point again,” he muttered, then rallied. “Okay, leave your list. I’ll have my secretary take care of getting whatever you think I need.”

  “Your secretary.”

  He frowned at her. “Something wrong with that?”

  “Oh, no,” she said, lifting both hands in surrender. “Just typical, that’s all.”

  “Typical of what?”

  “Men like you. And Dave.”

  “Excuse me?” He stiffened. “I’m nothing like your brother, let’s get that straight right now.”

  Now it was her turn to stiffen up, and Lucas noted the flash of emotion in her eyes. “Look, I know you and Dave don’t speak anymore—”

  “That’s right, we don’t,” he said, cutting her off before she could try to do something as fruitless as attempt to salvage a friendship that was dead to him.

  It was good that she’d brought him up, though. Good to reinforce the fact that Rose was the sister of his enemy. A man he had once trusted. And the only reason Rose was standing here, driving him insane with her soft scent of lemons, was that Lucas was going to use her to get back at the man who had betrayed him. Revenge. Pure. Simple. Sweet.

  A minute or two of strained silence passed before she said, “All I meant was that men like you most often delegate work to your secretaries—even when it’s not something that’s really part of their job descriptions.”

  He looked at her, the knife in his hand still. “My secretary’s job description includes pretty much whatever I say it does.”

  “Uh-huh. Even grocery shopping?”

  “There’s something wrong with that?”

  She leaned both hands on the cooking island’s cool granite surface. Her skin looked even paler against the gleaming black stone. “How will you know what to get in the future? You plan to always have your secretary do the work for you?”

  Actually, it sounded like a good plan to Lucas. If he wanted to grocery shop, there would be actual food in his house right now. But why would he when there was a great diner just a half block away and enough restaurants in the city of Long Beach that a man wouldn’t have to eat at the same place twice during a six-month span?

  Rose shook her head. “Maybe I should be giving your secretary the lessons.”

  Okay, that was a little insulting. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll get the groceries. Make a list, and I’ll take care of it before tomorrow night.”

  Smiling, she said, “How about we do it together tomorrow? We’ll call it part of the lesson. I’ll show you how to choose your produce and what to look for at the meat counter.”

  Lucas nodded, and she smiled even wider. Grocery shopping. Not exactly a high-end kind of date, he told himself, but then he wasn’t dating her, either. This was a planned seduction. What he wanted to do was get her off guard and keep her there. Then, when she was relaxed enough, he’d tumble her into bed. Once that was done, Lucas would tell her brother just how good she had been, and he’d have the kind of revenge that would tear at Dave Clancy for the rest of his life.

  “But for now,” Rose was saying, “you finish slicing the mushrooms, then I want you to chop three tablespoons of fresh parsley.”

  He paused and frowned. “Isn’t parsley the decoration on plates that no one ever eats?”

  “Some of us actually do eat it.”

  “Amazing,” he muttered, but went back to his task. While he worked, he managed to keep one eye on Rose as she explored his kitchen. She drew down plates and wineglasses from the cupboards, opened up the fridge and grabbed the sour cream, cheese and butter she’d brought with her for tonight’s recipe.

  In a few minutes, they were working together amiably. But when she turned on the radio and soft jazz spilled from the speakers, Lucas began to worry.

  He was actually enjoying himself.

  And that wasn’t part of the plan.

  “So?” Rose asked an hour later, “what do you think?”

  She was sitting opposite him at the glass-topped table at the far end of the kitchen. Beside them was a bay window that overlooked a wide backyard. The garden lights were on, spilling small circles of golden radiance across the grass and neatly tended flowerbeds. The winter garden was sparse, but even in the dimly lit darkness, Rose could imagine how beautiful it all was in daylight.

  She didn’t usually stay after the lesson and join her students for the meal they had created, but Lucas had insisted and frankly, Rose thought with an inner sigh, she hadn’t wanted to leave. Probably not a good idea to start getting attached, she warned herself sternly, but then she had always had a soft spot for Lucas King. She couldn’t explain it. It just…was.

  Still, after two hours of working closely together in his amazingly wonderful kitchen, Rose still couldn’t have said that she knew Lucas any better than she once had. Oh, he seemed friendly enough, despite the thin thread of distance he insisted on keeping between them.

  But then, she reminded herself as she looked back at her memories, Lucas had always been a little closed off. That’s probably what had drawn her to him in the first place, Rose realized. In her own family, the men had been outgoing, gregarious. Whatever they were thinking, they didn’t keep to themselves. They were loud and emotional and easy to read.

  Meeting Lucas had been like brushing up against a gorgeous mystery. His blue eyes held secrets, his almost unreadable expressions tempted her to delve deeper and his quiet self-assurance had been a welcome difference from her brother and father.

  He’d attracted her with his quiet thoughtfulness and, apparently, that hadn’t changed.

  “Earth to Rose,” he said, snapping his fingers in front of her face.

  She came up out of her thoughts fast and gave herself a shake. “Sorry. What?”

  Lucas gave her a half smile. “You zoned out. Was it the sparkling conversation or the slightly charred chicken breast?”

  She laughed a little. “The chicken is just a little well done,” she said, glancing down at the salsa-covered meat on her plate. “Not bad at all for a first try.”

  “So the conversation put you to sleep?”

  “No,” she said, taking a bite of the mushroom au gratin casserole. “But the lack of it might. You haven’t had a lot to say in the last hour or so, Lucas.”

  “Cooking takes concentration,” he said with a shrug.

  “Is that all it is?”

  He looked at her. “What else would it be?”

  “I don’t know,” she mused, taking a small sip of the chardonnay he had poured for both of them. “Maybe you’re regretting hiring me? After the way you and Dave left things, I’m still not sure why you hired me in the first place.”

  His features tightened briefly at the mention of her brother, and, once again, Rose really wished she knew what had come between the two men. One day, their friendship was just…over. Lucas hadn’t come around anymore, and Dave had refused to talk about it with her. Unfortunately, that hadn’t changed two years later. Neither of them seemed willing to satisfy her curiosity.

  “Dave’s got nothing to do with this,” Lucas murmured. “You teach cooking, I need to learn, end of story.”

  “If you say so.” She didn’t believe him. Sure, there had been the coincidence of him seeing her at his neighbor’s house. But what had moved him to ask her to help him learn to cook? Why would
he suddenly be willing to talk to the sister of the man he hadn’t spoken to in years? There was more here and she’d eventually get to the bottom of it. But for now, she was willing to let it go.

  “So what did you think of the mushrooms au gratin?”

  He grinned and took a big bite of the casserole side dish in question. Once he’d chewed and swallowed, he said, “It proves that with enough sour cream and cheese, anything is edible. Even fungi and parsley.”

  “A lovely compliment,” she said, chuckling. “But you have to admit, the first meal you cooked turned out pretty well.”

  “Better than Kathy Robertson’s?”

  “Why are men so competitive?”

  “It’s a gift. So?”

  “Yes,” she reluctantly admitted. “I don’t really like to talk about my clients, but yours was way better. Kathy burned the onions so badly, I had to throw one of my favorite pans away.”

  He shuddered. “Hope she kept the name of the last caterer she used.”

  Laughing, Rose said, “That was just mean. She’s going to get the hang of it.”

  He studied her for so long, Rose began to shift uneasily in her chair. “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said with a shake of his head. “But you really are a positive, glass-is-half-full kind of woman, aren’t you?”

  Rose tensed briefly. For most of her life, she had pretty much been the Pollyanna type. She looked for the good around her and generally found it. Until, of course, her ex-husband had not only snatched off her rose-colored glasses, but also ground them to dust under his heel.

  After that, she’d had to fight to regain her sense of well-being. She’d had to force herself to smile until, eventually, it had become real. And now, she wasn’t going to go back to the dark side again. She wasn’t going to apologize because she liked rainbows and puppies and laughing children.

  “Seeing the empty half doesn’t make you more mature or more intelligent,” she said softly. “It only means you’re looking for what you don’t have. How is that a good thing?”

  “I didn’t mean—”