Read Online Chocolate Kisses by Judith Arnold - Free Book Online Page B

stroking her, enveloping her breasts and
rippling between her thighs. She moaned out loud.
    “Claudia?
Are you all right?”
    Oh,
God!
    She
pushed herself up to sit, causing the water to splash against the sides of the
tub. The frothy suds parted to reveal her breasts, and she quickly sank below
the water again and stared in panic at the narrow space where the bathroom door
stood ajar. “Ned?”
    “Are
you okay? I heard you—” He pulled the door open, saw that she was perfectly
okay, as well as very wet and naked, and slammed the door shut. His eyes burned
an afterimage into her mind, wide and surprised…and unmistakably
appreciative.
    “Sorry,”
he called from the other side of the door, sounding not the least bit sorry. “I
came upstairs to tell you Edie thinks she should start heating the ovens. I
wanted to check with you. And I heard—well, it sounded like you were in pain.”
    She
recalled the tortured moan that had escaped her—and the tortured thoughts that
had prompted it. She supposed there was a kind of pain involved in what she’d
been feeling. And she wasn’t about to share those feelings with Ned.
    “I’m
just a little tired,” she called through the closed door. “What time is it?”
    “Quarter
to five.”
    That
gave her an hour and fifteen minutes until the first guest arrived. “Tell Edie
she can start the ovens at five-thirty.” She had plenty of time to heat the
canapés, then the entrées for a seven-thirty dinner.
    “All
right.” He hesitated. “I’m going to have to go home soon. I have to change into
a monkey suit for this gig.”
    Claudia
conjured a mental picture of Ned in a tuxedo, his long legs flattered by crisp
black trousers, his broad shoulders filling an elegant evening jacket, his
collar accented by a bow tie. Not one of those big foppish bowties, she hoped,
but something sleek and sexy.
    “You’d
better go,” she called to him, partly in self-defense. Imagining him in his
evening clothes—or more accurately, imagining him tugging loose whatever tie he
had on and then undoing the collar of his dress shirt, kicking off his shoes…
It was all she could do to keep from moaning again.
    She
had to put him out of her mind. She had to focus on the cotillion and nothing
else. That was what mattered: catering a great party and boosting her company’s
reputation. Ned was a diversion, an infatuation. Their lives had intersected
today, but tomorrow they would go their separate ways. Unless he’d been serious
about finding her a silent partner. In which case they might have a few
professional dealings. Nothing more.
    “I’ll
see you later,” he shouted through the door. She had to strain to hear his
footsteps crossing the bedroom to the hall. For a crazed moment she’d wanted to
call him back, to invite him into the bathroom, into the tub with her. If
tomorrow they were doomed to become business acquaintances, they could still
have tonight.
    No,
they couldn’t. Tonight she had to do her job so magnificently Ned would have no
trouble finding financial backers for her. And then she could set up shop
downtown, as he’d suggested, and put up a big bright sign in front and hire an
assistant.
    That was what she should be dreaming about,
she decided. Fantasy Feasts. Not a fantasy man.
    ***
    THE
SMELL OF CHOCOLATE cake lingered in the kitchen. Claudia’s valentine-shaped
pans lay scoured and sparkling in the drying rack beside the double-basin sink.
Edie was seated in her armchair near the window, thumbing through a magazine,
her face set in a grim frown.
    “The
ovens go on at five-thirty,” Ned said, surveying the orderly room on his way to
the back door.
    Edie
nodded without looking up.
    “Claudia
will be down in a while.”
    Again,
a surly nod.
    “Edie.”
Ned hunkered down next to her chair and pulled the magazine out of her hands,
forcing her attention to him. “Why are you being so grouchy?”
    “I’m
not being grouchy,” Edie retorted. “Just because she came in