Silver Fox (Silver Shifters 2)

Joey led the way, taking her over the neat rows, which Xi Yong had weeded at dawn while Joey was prepping the fish. “Chinese meals are a communal fare. The food is customarily chopped into bite sized pieces, unless it’s something like my fish, which will be so tender that pieces can easily be picked up with chopsticks. People would select their portions from the communal plate.”

Doris said, “It sounds like Chinese cooking is similar in a lot of ways to traditional Jewish cooking. Variety was not always possible, so people learned to be imaginative with few key ingredients. Or cook around basics that were easier to get.”

“In China, that was rice,” Joey said.

She nodded. “As for meals, they were definitely communal. Still are, when a family is in reach of each other.”

They were talking alone. It was just about food—a vital subject, of course, but not personal. Still, Joey counted it a great victory.

When she ran out of questions about how spices were preserved and treated, he led the way back to where Bird was chatting with Vanessa. Mikhail and Xi Yong spoke in Chinese, watched with fascination and total incomprehension by Vic.

Joey resisted the impulse to draw Doris off alone. Any movement toward private conversation must come from her. Meanwhile everyone was hungry, and he could smell that the fish was done.

So he clapped his hands. “All right, time to haul out the ingredients. Minions!”

Vic mock-saluted as Vanessa smothered a laugh, her long blonde curls bouncing. ?

??Today we get to be the minions.”

“Woman and man your stations,” Joey said.

And caught Doris looking away with a grin.

SEVEN

DORIS

Until today, Doris had never thought about how attractive a man could look while cooking.

She had already been distracted by Joey’s hands. They were so neat, so well-made. He cooked with an economy of movement, every gesture sure. Practiced. Cooking was nothing new to him—not a guise he put on to impress people.

She had been around cooks long enough to know when someone not only knew what they were doing, but enjoyed it. His niece and nephew were clearly less experienced, but they made up for their lack of expertise with the enthusiasm Doris saw in her best students. Though she loved to cook, it was nice to sit back and watch someone else’s expertise, especially as it was clear they were having fun.

As Joey began transferring steaming food into waiting dishes, which his three students carried to the round table, she let her mind drift back to how attractive Joey was even while cooking. ‘Attractive’ leading its way to the S word:

Sexy.

She knew very well what scared her about Joey Hu. That at age sixty-two, after forcing herself to come to terms with her total lack of luck with men, she had met a man who put butterflies in her stomach as if she were some giddy sixteen-year-old. Except at sixteen she hadn’t even felt this way!

And yet, here she was, watching this man whose age was impossible to guess—anywhere from sixty to vigorous seventies—with a lock of silver-streaked blond hair curling across his brow, encouraging the young people with jokes and easy comments as they worked together.

It was . . . sexy. There was no other word for this warm feeling somewhere behind her bellybutton, but lower. It made her feel warm all over. It wasn’t the enervating heat of a humid summer day. It was more like the shimmering glow of a room lit only by candles, and it drew her toward him, rather than pushing her into wanting to seek shadows and cooler air.

“Everything is ready,” Joey said. “Come!”

As Doris got up and shook out her practical denim skirt, she realized she did not want to know what Joey’s clay-feet traits were. Somehow, she knew, the discovery was going to hurt.

As the lunch progressed, every smile Joey turned her way warmed her more. Far worse, every compliment he gave to his niece and nephew, his kindly conversation with Bird about knitting, his quiet concern toward the reserved Xi Yong, and above all every line of his body—his quick, unconscious grace—added light to the heat.

At the end of the meal, Joey turned Doris’s way. “Well, is this recipe worth collecting for your book? I think I demonstrated that it can be prepared for any number of people. Chinese cuisine is very adaptable that way.”

There was no possible answer other than, “Yes.”

He smiled as if she had given him a precious gift, then said, “I wrote everything up last night. In case. Would you like the printout?”

He opened his hand toward the door to the house. She hesitated, reluctant to go inside. Not that she was afraid he’d attack her, or something ridiculous like that. She was honest enough with herself to recognize that she didn’t want to like his house, his personal space. She didn’t want to find it as compelling as his smile, his unruly blond hair with the silver glints, his slender, quick-moving body, his warm brown gaze that seemed to glow like molten gold whenever their eyes met.

But it would be rude to say, “Why don’t you mail it to me.”