Too Hot to Handle (Romancing the Clarksons #1)(9)

It had thrown her off a little, his gesture of passing over the helmet, but she recovered to grant him a speculative look. Mumbling under her breath, she threw a leg over his bike and gripped the back bar. “You might not recognize me, but I’m famous for what I can do with a knife.”

Jasper joined her on the bike in one smooth movement, groaning inwardly when her thighs gripped his waist. Had her breath caught? “I hate to disappoint you, but this isn't the first time a woman's threatened me with a knife.”

“Yeah, but it would be the last.”

His laughter was lost in the roar of the bike’s ignition, the Suburban growing smaller and smaller in his rearview mirror.





Chapter Four



There was a reason Rita had gravitated toward the kitchen. Recipes. They were precise. They had instructions. You either added the correct textures and flavors, or you didn’t. There was no gray area in cooking. It was all right there before her, written on a glossy page. Even she couldn’t fuck up step-by-step instructions.

Wrong.

It had become starkly apparent while working under Miriam that there was a definite knack. And she’d apparently gotten in the “sarcasm” line instead of the “knack” line the day God had been doling out talent. She’d found fail-safe recipes and stuck to them, perfecting them in the privacy of her one-bedroom apartment, praying something new wouldn’t be thrown at her the following day. Learning on the fly had been a constant fear, day in and day out.

So join a nationally televised reality show, right?

Perhaps throwing herself to the sharks had been Rita’s way of grieving, of trying to find a way to feel close to her mother again. Or trying to flame out hard enough—once and for all—that she’d be forced into quitting the job she never quite performed more than adequately. Whatever the reason, she’d applied for the show knowing they couldn’t deny Miriam Clarkson’s daughter a spot, while somehow also knowing things would change afterward. Things would finally shift. Either she’d prod some dormant talent into animation or she’d cut herself off at the knees and it would be blessedly over.

At the very least, she’d learned a thing or two about people through working with food. What they chose to order from the menu, more often than not, classified them. Had they lived abroad, were they adventurous, extravagant or cheap?

Jasper Ellis was a twenty-ounce hanger steak with a side of garlic mashed potatoes. Easy. He didn’t require much effort or imagination. It had a lot to do with the way he wore his jeans. Like he’d picked up the first pair he’d stumbled across on the floor that morning and slung them up around his cowboy hips. And son of a bitch, look at that! They fit like a dream. She could even picture him saying it in the mirror as he splashed water on his hair—and damn! Didn’t his rich brown locks—with a touch of auburn—just style themselves!

Appetizing, yet effortless. Hanger steak.

Weirdly, she couldn’t seem to shake the memory of how he’d zeroed in on her, only looking away when addressed by someone else. This good ol’ boy had barely spared Leggy Peggy a passing glance, making Rita vacillate between classifying Jasper as a hanger steak and a porterhouse. A cynical part of her had taken the ride just to see how fast he would become predictable. Typical. Because while she could swear there’d been a spark of interest in his sky-blue eyes, men like Jasper were the opposite of her type. Not that she necessarily had a type, since she tended to find dating rituals repellent. In her world, small talk was on par with Chinese water torture, so her infrequent dates were usually men who’d been within her orbit for a while, like fellow chefs or market employees who sold her ingredients. Even then, date two was a stretch.

So, yeah. If an online dating service matched Rita up with a Jasper Ellis type, she would consider suing them for false advertising. To put it bluntly, he was walking, talking sex. Kind of like a younger, more realistic, twice-as-magnetic version of Matthew McConaughey. Rita was a little surprised that a mob of women wasn’t sprinting after the motorcycle as they cruised back toward Hurley. None of those women would be a social maladroit without a pinch of color in her wardrobe. Most likely, they hadn’t threatened him with knife violence, either.

Between her thighs, his hips shifted just a fraction and she almost laughed at the way her body reacted. Warmth trickled into her stomach on cue, and she fought the insane urge to rub her stiffening nipples against the sun-heated back of his leather jacket. Honestly, the man must have trouble just walking down the street without being propositioned. She hadn’t been propositioned in—ever.

Definitely not each other’s type.

They were almost to town when Jasper slowed the bike to a stop at a red light, the engine purring beneath them. Their eyes met in the circular rearview mirror. “You’re thinking awfully hard back there.”

Rita hid her surprise in a shrug. “I was wondering why there’s a stoplight here when I can’t see another car for miles.”

He cast a glance in both directions as if the thought had never occurred to him. “You reckon I should go through the red light?” He revved the bike’s engine. “Think about it hard, now. You and I would be fugitives from the law. The Bonnie and Clyde of New Mexico. It’s a big decision.”

This man was ridiculous. “Clyde was impotent.”

“Was he?” Jasper twisted his upper body around, appearing genuinely perplexed. “How did he keep such a beautiful woman around without all his parts working?”