“Thank goodness for texts and emails.” Dani sipped her drink, feeling her shoulders relax for the first time since Mikeloff burst into her kitchen. “How are the hubs and the little ones right now?”
Kelsey signaled the server. “For one brief shining moment everyone is okay.” Turning to the waitress who arrived at their table, she said, “Bring us a pound of your naked wings with hot sauce.” When the woman left, Kelsey continued, “The kids are healthy and Toby’s next business trip isn’t until the fall.”
“Awesome.” Dani knew how hard it was on Kelsey when her husband was traveling. “How’s the writing going? Are the hero and heroine cooperating?”
“Good.” Kelsey chugged half her drink, then added, “With the kids in daycare half a day, I’m actually making some progress on my opus. If the hero puts on his big-boy briefs, the couple might actually have sex in the next chapter.”
“Shouldn’t he be taking off his underwear?” Dani giggled at her friend’s imagination.
Kelsey wrote romance novels, and the last time they’d chatted, her heroine had been reluctant to sleep with the hero. Unlike the characters in her friend’s books trying to take over the story, Dani was thankful that the ingredients for her recipes never tried to take over the dish.
“Enough about me.” Kelsey topped off each of their glasses. “Tell me about Ivy’s uncle.”
“That’s what you got from everything I said when I called you?” Dani raised a brow. “You don’t want to hear about the detective that went berserk in my kitchen or that I may be arrested for murder?”
“We’ll get to that later.” Kelsey waved her hand. “First, the good stuff about this Spencer.”
“Okay.” Dani nodded. “Well, to start with, I was shocked when instead of the fifty- or sixty-year-old tubby ex-cop I was expecting, I found a gorgeous thirtysomething man sitting at my table. Spencer Drake is nothing like I’d expected.”
“Does he have a good bod?” Kelsey asked, then licked the salt from the rim of her glass.
“More like perfect.” Dani frowned, her hand smoothing over her generous hips. “Muscles that have to take hours of hard work in the gym to maintain.”
“So he’s not sitting around collecting a pension,” Kelsey teased.
“No.” Dani inhaled sharply. “And when his dark-blue eyes locked onto mine, there was a flash of heat that nearly burned off my panties.” Dani shivered. The memory of his striking good looks stole away her breath. “He’s the devil’s candy and I couldn’t stop fantasizing about eating him up.”
“Did he seem to realize how he was affecting you?” Kelsey asked.
“Maybe.” Dani shrugged. “When he took my hand to introduce himself, he held it a beat too long.”
“And?” Kelsey prompted.
“And the feeling of his fingers wrapped around mine was more erotic than all of Kipp’s kisses and caresses combined,” Dani admitted. “I was sorry I hadn’t bothered to put on makeup, fix my hair, and worn something a little more flattering than old jeans and a T-shirt. Of course that was before he started asking a lot of probing questions about my old job. Then he didn’t seem quite as attractive. You know that’s the last thing I want to relive.”
“Why was he asking about your job?” Kelsey’s green eyes widened. “Did he know about the ‘incident’? You didn’t break the confidentiality agreement, did you?”
“I would never talk about it.” Dani shook her head. “I never want to even think about it. You know that whole affair was horrific.”
Before having her kids and starting to write romances, Kelsey had been a practicing attorney. She had represented Dani during the mess at Homestead Insurance, so she was one of the few people who knew the whole story.
“Then, I repeat, why did Ivy’s uncle ask you about your previous job?”
Dani summarized Mikeloff’s accusations, then said, “Unfortunately, the girls’ memories were a little too good and they repeated verbatim the detective’s allegations and threats to Spencer.” Dani shook her head. “Mikeloff could have been referring to any one of a hundred hiring or firing decisions that I made, and the last thing I need is a guy like Spencer intent on exhuming one of the worst experiences of my life. Especially if it has no relevance to the detective’s motive for harassing me.”
“Well”—Kelsey wrinkled her nose—“that was the nastiest situation you dealt with; ergo, it should be the one you consider first regarding the issue with this Mikeloff.”
“I can’t let that particular cat out of the bag. It would claw my soul to shreds to relive that awful experience, and as you know, Homestead would sue me for everything I owned if I failed to uphold the NDA.” Dani paused as the server slid a tray of hot wings onto their table and passed out plates and napkins. Once the woman left, Dani said, “Therefore, even if Spencer has chiseled cheekbones to die for, he’s bad news because he doesn’t seem like the type who’s going to let this go.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” Kelsey reasoned. “And it isn’t every day you meet a hot guy.”
“True.” Dani picked up a wing. “But even with the long drought in my love life, let’s not forget that I’m being accused of murder.”
“Then you kicked Spencer to the curb?” Kelsey served herself from the platter in the middle of the table and began to gnaw on a wing.
“Not exactly,” Dani confessed. “Actually I made him tea and served him cupcakes.”
“Not your famous special mocha cupcakes?” Kelsey licked her fingers.
“Uh-huh.” Dani’s cheeks reddened. “And when he bit into one, he groaned in a way that isn’t normally heard outside the bedroom. I could barely breathe.”
Kelsey raised her brows until they almost disappeared into her hairline, then accused, “You do like him.”
“Maybe,” Dani sighed. “Every time I glanced at him and caught him looking at me, I could almost see the electricity zinging between us. It took all my willpower
