Hot to the Touch

“Sure.” She gave a sexy little wave and walked toward the women’s locker room, her virtually fat-free ass swinging invitingly.

What kind of idiot was he? She was a nice woman, seemed levelheaded and even-tempered, far from making the scenes Debby loved or playing his recent lover’s frustrating mind games. At very least they could have had a pleasant evening. By clinging to his fantasy of wild, lifelong passion, he risked setting himself up for a lifetime of hurt and alone, and a lifetime of hurt and alone didn’t appeal to him.

Except…how could he force himself to be eager giving someone routinely attractive to him a chance now that he knew it was possible to catch fire from a first glance?

He trudged to the locker room, showered, dressed and drove slowly home to Whitefish Bay, dragged himself inside his house, dragged into the kitchen to feed Dylan, who followed him around, tail wagging sympathetically. Dragged himself into a chair to stuff food down his throat. Dragged himself to the living room to find nothing he wanted to watch on TV. Dragged himself into his bedroom to be completely uninterested in a vastly complicated murder mystery novel.

C’mon, man. Troy was acting like a lovesick teenager. So he couldn’t have That Woman. There were others. Single ones, desirable ones. He was paying to be part of the Milwaukeedates site so he could find those women easily. Sitting here moping was bull crap.

He fired up his computer, logged on to Milwaukeedates.com. Man, twenty-six, seeking woman, twenty-three to thirty-three, within fifty miles of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin. No smoking. Pictures only. Go.

The list came up, thumbnail photos with member-chosen nicknames and a few bits of basic information next to each. He’d already seen most of the profiles on the first page, so he clicked an icon to re-sort the list so the latest subscribers would show first.

The machine did its work; the list reappeared.

At the first picture, a woman who called herself Foodie101, Troy did a double take, then stared, mouth hanging open in a cliché of astonishment.

Her. What the hell?

Emotion punched him in the solar plexus, and it wasn’t pretty. He’d been trying to console himself with reasons she might have run, telling himself she was a free agent, not out for any kind of entanglement, uninterested in more than one night with a man. That it wasn’t him, it was her.

When that didn’t do much to quell his obsession, he’d told himself what they had was special, and maybe even though she’d panicked initially, eventually she’d move heaven and earth to find him again, because there was no way anyone could squander the chance to explore a connection so instantaneous and so powerful.

All of that sounded good, and he’d clung to it. Until now. Because here she was, the woman who’d wanted to avoid even exchanging names, right there in a public forum trying to find the love of her life.

So it wasn’t a matter of her not wanting a man, not wanting a relationship, not wanting more than one night.

It was a matter of her not wanting him.

DARCY FLIPPED ON THE LIGHT AND stood for a moment, surveying her neat entranceway and small living room beyond. It was later than she usually got home. She’d been reluctant to leave Gladiolas, kept making excuses to stay, until the staff was ready to throw her out. Usually, her cozy matchbox of a ranch house in the working-class Milwaukee neighborhood of Washington Heights represented peaceful sanctuary, a place to relax, do a yoga or another of her workout tapes, let her mind wander over a cup of coffee, thinking of ingredients, flavors and techniques she could combine into a new recipe and a new page for her Chef Bible file.

Tonight, in the bone-chilliness of early June, restlessness had followed her home.

Shivering, she kicked off the black flats she kept in her office at Gladiolas to change into, since the shoes she wore in the restaurant kitchen were unspeakably dirty by the end of the evening. Down the hall to her bathroom, she stripped and immersed herself in the brisk, efficient shower she’d gotten down to a water-conserving, three-minute science, emerging refreshed and relieved of the overload of kitchen odors.

After such a crappy start to the day with her sous chef late and the delivery mix-up, the afternoon and evening had gone fine. Ken had shown up apologetically—at the last possible second—with enough celeriac to satisfy her and the diners who’d ordered it. The special—Fishing for Compliments—trout with roasted artichokes and pecans had been a hit. Right now she was supposed to be working out more summer specials, thinking sunshine, hot weather and long, lazy days on the beach.