Divorced, Desperate, and Delicious

Chapter 9

 Chapter Nine

  

“Only five bucks?” Lacy turned and stared at him. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“You okay?” His breath whispered across the back of her neck and she flinched.

She hadn’t noticed that he’d finished his conversation. His hand pressed against her shoulder; it felt warm, strong, and . . . masculine. She swallowed, and tried to remember where her brain had been before he touched her. Oh yeah, she’d been thinking about how she didn’t need sex.

“I’m fine. Not a need in the world.” Every nerve in her body slow-danced to a song of passion. She pressed the chilled bottle to her forehead, amazed that between her body heat and the cold beer, a puff of steam didn’t float up to the ceiling.

“Just getting a beer to marinate the steaks.” She looked at the half-emptied bottle in front of her nose. “But I think I’ve drunk my marinade.” Bending over, she hit the button that ejected the cooler from the side of the chair and grabbed another beer.

“Wow!” Chase said.

“Every man’s dream chair,” she said. “It massages, cools, heats, can lift you up when you don’t feel like lifting yourself, and you have your own minibar within arm’s reach.”

“Pretty neat.” He looked from the chair to her as if he wasn’t altogether convinced.

“I hate it,” she confessed, running her hand over the blue leather. She’d used more than two cans of Lysol on the piece of furniture, yet to her, the chair still smelled like Peter’s aftershave.

“Then why do you have it?” he asked.

“Because I’m not a selfish person. There are others to consider,” she said. “Others who love this chair.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Really? Who do you keep it for?”

“Watch this.” She hit the button on the chair’s side. The recliner started vibrating and immediately, Samantha, Leonardo and Sweetie Pie came running down the hall. Samantha, of course, spotted Chase and hightailed it back into the bedroom.

“They love it,” Lacy said, and waved her arm as the two other cats piled into the seat.

“You bought an electronic chair for your cats?” he asked, clearly disbelieving.

“Bought it? Are you kidding? This thing runs about ten thousand dollars. No, it was given to me. I work a clause into most of my contracts. I get free or amazingly discounted merchandise when I do product shoots.”

His laugh was deep. “That explains all the high-tech appliances. And here I thought you were just some kind of weird electronic gadget collector. The TVs, the fridge, the microwave.” He touched his head. “The fish.”

She smiled. “I just take pictures. And the fish was a gift from my friend Kathy’s little boy.” She took another sip of beer. “But if you ask my mother, nothing is weirder than a photographer. She’d rather I work at Wal-Mart.” Lacy gave the wedding photo of her mother one last glance, hoping it would give her strength to resist the temptation standing in front of her. “You want a beer?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Retrieving one from the opened cooler, he pushed the door closed as if to see how it worked. “Pretty neat.” Standing up, he followed her into the kitchen.

“Thanks for talking to Jason,” he said into the silence.

“It was nothing.” She doused the steaks with beer, then pushed them into the broiler and turned around. Their eyes met—blue to green, green to blue.