closed.” Okay, so that wasn’t exactly the kind of come-on line she issued effortlessly to gorgeous men in her dreams, but she was damn rusty at this. There’d been a time in her life when she’d been a bit of a hellion just so she could wrangle some occasional freedom from her family’s relentless watch over the only daughter in the brood. But she’d been too busy pulling her weight to get Club Paradise off the ground this year to expend any energy on man-hunting.
The sexy stranger grinned back at her, never shifting his lazy stance against her stainless steel rolling cart full of sterilized dishes.
“Officially closed? Does that mean all the activity going on in here is of an unofficial nature?” He sounded amused at the prospect.
Giselle looked him over more carefully as she wondered whether or not to be offended. Was he laughing at her song and dance routine with his sly smile and all-the-time-in-the-world body language?
She examined more clearly his striking green eyes set in an angular face. His hair was every bit as dark as her own, sort of brown bordering on black, but his skin lacked the bronze hue of her Italian heritage. She had him pegged for Irish ancestry. Or maybe those deep green eyes were making her see something that wasn’t there.
He possessed a lean, rangy body with none of her brothers’ muscle bulk. Nevertheless, he had a definite don’t-mess-with-me stance that suggested he could hold his own.
She took in the dark khakis and black T-shirt covered by an unbuttoned jacket. With the eye of a woman who’d bought dozens of shoes for her four brothers over the years, Giselle recognized expensive leather moccasins that had seen some high mileage. In fact, from the lightly scratched face of the understated gold timepiece he wore to the premature laugh lines around his eyes, everything about the man said he’d seen a lot of living, though he couldn’t be too many years past thirty.
And the heat emanating from those green eyes assured her he wasn’t laughing at her.
A hungry shiver rippled over her skin.
“Unofficially, I’m doing some prep work for tomorrow,” she admitted, juggling the pomegranate to a nearby counter as she blew a stray lock of hair from one eye. Why, oh, why did she have to reek of garlic when she met the most intriguing man she’d laid eyes on in more years than she could count? “Giselle Cesare, executive chef.”
He straightened as he reached for her hand. “Hugh Duncan. Nice to meet you.”
If she thought it odd that he didn’t follow her lead and mention a little something about himself, she forgot all about it when his fingers enveloped hers. The warmth of his touch surrounded her palm, communicating some spark of life force that made her tingle with awareness.
Hello.
Her whole body seemed to sit up and take notice.
“Do you always have this much fun working, Giselle?” He relinquished her hand too soon, leaving her feeling just a tad bereft without the electric buzz of his touch.
“No. Tonight is special because I’m celebrating.”
“I take it if you refer to 4:30 a.m. as tonight, that means you’re a night owl who hasn’t gone to bed yet instead of a morning person who likes to rise before dawn?”
“Mornings are for sleeping,” she confirmed, although a man like Hugh Duncan could inspire a woman to use the morning for other things. Like taking handsome strangers to bed, peeling off their clothes and—
“I have to admit you’ve got me curious.” Hugh pinned her with a level look, his green eyes divining too much.
Had she spoken her wayward thoughts aloud?
“What exactly are you celebrating?” he prodded when she remained silent.
Relieved he hadn’t read her lascivious thoughts, Giselle backed up a step and gestured him to follow her deeper into the kitchen. “Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll tell you? The kitchen may be closed, but that doesn’t mean I can’t locate something snackable for a fellow night owl.”
When he didn’t move to follow her immediately, Giselle knew a moment’s panic. Hugh Duncan was her ticket to a week of sensual delights, and she had no intention of letting him slip away easily. The man had entered her turf after all, proving he must be at least moderately interested. And he wore no wedding band on his left finger.
Not that a girl could count on a missing ring as evidence of no commitment. Giselle had learned that the hard way the last time her brothers had been out of town over a year ago.
She couldn’t be in over her head already, could she?
“I wouldn’t want to impose.” His feet followed her more slowly, his gaze moving around the kitchen with unhurried thoroughness. “But it’s not often I run into such a tempting offer.” His gaze shifted back to her at the same moment the word “tempting” eased from his lips.
Giselle thought she’d have heart palpitations as she reached the small table where she’d planned to offer him a seat. But, damn it, now the whole issue of whether or not he was married danced irritatingly around the back of her brain. After the major screwup she’d committed by sleeping with a married man who’d claimed he was single, how could she not clear the air straight out of the gate?
She gripped the back of one of the chairs pulled up to the butcher-block table and hesitated. “It’s definitely not an imposition and I’d be glad for the company.”
Still she hesitated. Awkward.
“But?” Hugh Duncan stared at her with patient eyes, his slow pace putting her so much more at ease than her noisy, in-your-face family where everyone competed to talk at once.
“But I just want to make sure you’re not married or anything. Are you?” She’d rushed the words out so fast she’d be lucky if he’d even been able to decode them. “Married, I mean.”
To his credit, he didn’t laugh. If Nico was here, he would have busted a gut over that one. Instead Hugh simply met her gaze with unblinking sincerity. “No. One would hope that if I had a wife, I wouldn’t be crawling the halls of a singles hotel at this hour.”
Relief mingled with a quick pang of envy for the picture he created. Too bad most men didn’t view marriage that way. The philanderer she’d gotten caught up with most certainly hadn’t given a rip about being part of South Beach’s club scene despite his wedding vows.
Willing her thoughts out of that dark time in her life and back to the wealth of possibilities epitomized by Hugh Duncan’s timely arrival, Giselle withdrew the chair from the table and nudged it in his direction.
“Then by all means, Hugh, have a seat while I find something to tempt you with.” She flashed him her most flirtatious smile and hummed a few more bars of “The Way You Look Tonight.”
What to feed a man one wanted to seduce?
She’d been given an ideal window of opportunity with the sexy stud in her kitchen and now she’d even been granted the chance to cook for him, when the culinary arts were her lone claim to fame. If she couldn’t reel this guy in for a serious between-the-sheets encounter, she had no one to blame but herself.
Sure, the spaghetti sauce she had simmering on the stove would be delicious, but it didn’t really send the right message. The pomegranate on the counter was one of the most sensual fruits in the world, but it could be messy for a guy with no experience eating one.
Of course, then there was her specialty—the erotic pastries all of South Beach had gone wild for since the restaurant opened a few months ago. What man could resist light, flaky pastries shaped like a woman’s breasts and filled with sweet cream? He’d be putty in her hands in no time.
And maybe Giselle would have a shot at remembering what a man-induced orgasm felt like.
She already had her head buried in the refrigerator when she heard his chair scrape along the ceramic tile. She peered out at him while she dragged essentials from