Chapter Sixteen
“Where are you going?”
Melora screeched, clamped a hand over her mouth and dropped her sneakers, all while spinning around from the hotel-room door.
“Holy Christmas! Don’t go terrifying a person like that.”
Nikko’s gaze raked down her body, an eyebrow inching upward at the oversized T-shirt and skintight leggings covering her thin form. Her spiky black hair was pulled off her makeup-free face by a thick white headband. She looked all of ten years old, standing and snarling at him, shoeless and clad in white ankle socks, her hands fisted on her tiny hips.
He wanted to laugh out loud at the absolute scowl of indignation blasting across her mouth. Wanting to and doing so were two different things, though, so he shot his own fists to his hips, lowered his chin, and glared right back at her.
“I asked, where are you going, Melora? It’s not even six a.m.”
“Well, back at’cha, Dad. You’re not exactly dressed for, you know, sleeping. Where are you going?”
Nikko dug deep for calm. Starting off the day with an argument wasn’t what he wanted to do. Melora might look like a child standing right in front of him, and she certainly was behaving like one, but he’d made a promise to himself to start treating her more like a burgeoning adult and not always as if she was two years old.
Even if she acted like it.
He took a quick breath and said, “I was heading down to the gym to see if I could snag a treadmill for an hour or so before the day gets crazy.”
His daughter’s large eyes widened, the effect making her resemble an anime drawing.
“No lie?”
He frowned. “Why would I make something like that up, Melly? Stacy suggested it might help with the cramping in my leg if I moved more during the day. I figured,” he shrugged, “since the hotel has a gym, I’d take advantage of it.”
Tears lightened the corners of her eyes.
“Daddy.”
She ran to him, threw her arms around his chest, stretched up on her toes, and squeezed tight.
At a total loss as how to interpret this sudden mood shift, he simply wrapped his arms around her thin frame and hugged her back.
Melora’s loud sniff tore right through his heart.
“Why are you crying?”
“I’m not,” she declared, indignation in the muffled words. A second sniff proved her a liar.
When she pulled back, she did a quick, nonchalant swipe at her cheeks and said, “I think this room is, like, toxic or something. Filled with mold. Maybe I’m asthmatic.”
He might not have been the smartest man in a room, but he was savvy enough not to challenge her.
“Anyway.” She stood tall and shook her head a few times, her gaze coming to rest on him. “I was heading down to the gym too, before you, like, gave me a heart attack.”
A warning bell dinged in his head. A memory of the therapist telling him to watch for any signs Melora would try to overexercise in order to keep her weight down filled his head.
“Oh?” he said as nonchalantly as she had. “What were you planning on doing at this hour?”
The question mustn’t have sounded as casual as he’d intended, because Melora narrowed her eyes and re-fisted her hands on her waist.
“That tone is so accusatory it practically reeks with condescension.”
With a shake of his head, Nikko told her, “It’s good to see those astronomical fees I pay for your schooling have paid off in your SAT-worthy vocabulary. Answer the question, Melora.”
Her petulant pout and eye roll were old acquaintances, so he ignored them.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, dropping her shoulders and shaking her head. “I remember what the therapist said too, but it’s not like that.”
“What’s not like what?”
She huffed a huge, theatrical breath and dropped her chin. “I’m meeting Stacy in the gym for a yoga lesson.”
Whatever he’d expected her to say, it hadn’t been this.
“Since when do you do yoga?”
While she rolled her eyes again, she said, “Since I met Stacy. She’s like this uber-yogi and she’s been teaching me in the mornings before you all start filming.”
“You’ve been meeting her every morning at the ranch and you never told me?”
“Like, why would I?” She lifted her hands, open-palmed, at him. “You’ve made it crystal since day one, moment one, you loathe her. I figured if you knew I was, like, hanging out with her you’d pop an artery.”
“I don’t loathe Stacy, Melora.” As far from loathe as he could get, actually, but he wasn’t sharing that fact with her.
“You certainly don’t like her.”
“That’s not true.”
She stared at him, suspicion and skepticism dancing on her raised brows and pursed lips. “You didn’t. When did that, like, change?”
Nikko swiped at his temples and sat on the couch. While he slipped into his sneakers, he said, “I never didn’t like her. It was more the fact of her I didn’t want around. Executive producers can be pains in the a—um, butt. She’s not, though. She’s actually very good at her job.”
Melora, looking like a stork as she stood on one skinny leg to slip her feet into her own sneakers, cocked her head at him and said, “Then why is she still, like, in terror of you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Every time she’s with you,” she slipped her foot in her other shoe, “she looks like she’s gonna do a Usain Bolt and make like the wind. You ask me, I think she’s scared of you. And I don’t blame her. You can be, like, so gruesomely intimidating at times.”
He stared across the room at her, dumbfounded. Fear was the one emotion he’d remembered seeing in vivid detail after the airport incident.
A fat swell of self-disgust grew inside him at the memory that he’d been so harsh and critical when she’d been nothing but professional and just plain nice.
“If you don’t, like, loathe her,” Melora said as they walked to the elevator bank, “you should try being nicer. She really is fab. And super-smart about stuff.”
As they got into the elevator, she added, “And everyone else likes her, so...” She shrugged as he hit the button for the gym level.
Nikko nodded, deciding it was the best way to answer her. He couldn’t quite admit to his daughter, much less himself, that he was coming to more than just like Stacy Peters.
Way more.
The minute they walked into the gym, he found her. She stood off to one side, talking with Riley MacNeill and Clay Burbank. He noticed a few of the other chefs clad in workout gear, including the two female contestants, standing around waiting.
Melora said “See ya,” and made her way over to the group. A broad, easy smile lit Stacy’s face when she spotted his daughter. Melora tossed a hand over her shoulder and pointed to him while the two spoke. The moment Stacy’s gaze connected with his, Nikko felt an unseen weight lift inside him.
His daughter’s accusations blew back. Stacy didn’t look terrified. In fact, judging from the easy smile she gave him and the tiny head nod of connection, she looked…pleased.
He acknowledged her smile with a quick head bob and then climbed onto an empty treadmill. From his position he had a clear and unobstructed view of Stacy and what appeared to be a yoga class. MacNeill, Burbank, and the others formed a few lines on mats, with Melora included, all facing Stacy, who appeared to be their leader.
While he started off at a slow pace just to loosen and warm up his stiff leg muscles, he kept close watch on his executive producer. Once again, while everyone around her was clad in muscle shirts or armless T-shirts, Stacy wore a full-sleeved bright-blue Henley and black yoga pants that skirted her bare ankles. He’d never seen her in anything but long-sleeved tops, even with the hot temperatures at the ranch. Either she was one of those people who were chronically cold, or she didn’t like to bare her arms. Since he’d seen her flushed and sweating a few times on set, he assumed it was the latter.
Why?
Her frame was thin, her shoulders and hips slight, even though she was about five-seven or -eight. The way her well-fitting clothing currently caressed her skin, showing off the long, clean line of her body had his lower back twitching again. When she bent from her waist, knees locked and straight, and placed her palms flat on the mat in front of her, the twitch turned to a tingle.
As she raised her arms together high over her head, a small slip of perfect, fresh, cream-colored skin peeked out at him from where her shirt lifted at her waist, and the tingle turned to a quiver of prickly lust so fast and so unexpected, he almost missed a step on the foot pad rolling beneath him.
He reached out and grabbed the supporting bars on either side of the treadmill and took a deep, full breath.
Who in their right mind got turned on by an inch of skin?
For the next forty minutes, while he put his legs through a slight uphill climb, Nikko came to learn a few things about his executive producer.
And himself.
He already knew she was kind, having witnessed it firsthand with her treatment of his daughter and during the night she’d helped ease his leg pain.
That she was someone who remained calm and in control he’d realized early on, evidenced in all her dealings with him when he’d been at his worst, mood-wise.
He’d guessed she was a good leader from the way the crew all took their problems to her.
But what he hadn’t known was how playful she could be or how irked he could become when other men, namely Clay Burbank, blatantly flirted with her.
It was obvious Burbank wasn’t a yoga practitioner. Every movement, every pose he tried to adopt, he needed help achieving and every time it had been from Stacy he’d sought assistance.
The sight of her long, thin, deft fingers pressing against the chef’s hips as she helped him adopt a pose sent a shiver of unexpected jealousy down his spine. He knew, intimately, what those fingers felt like against his own body.
When she’d gone on her knees behind Burbank and pressed into his back to help him stretch, that shiver turned to a full-body shake filled with possessiveness.
Burbank must have said something to annoy her, because before she stood back up, she swatted the chef on the shoulder and wagged a finger at him, setting the rest of the class to break out in laughter.
As his heart began to beat faster from the uphill climb, it warred with the deep breaths he took to try and calm his emotions. He had no right to feel possessive of Stacy, or jealous.
But he was, on both counts, and it not only irritated him, it made him nervous as hell. He hadn’t felt so emotionally torn over a woman in…well, a long, long time. Not since he’d discovered Flannery’s infidelity.
The program slowed, the treadmill automatically lowering down from the hill-climb pace.
It appeared Stacy was almost finished with the class as well. The group lay supine on their mats, eyes closed, as she walked among them, speaking.
From the little he knew about yoga—and it was little—she was guiding them through a breathing cycle to end the session.
Her face was peaceful and calm, a tiny smile pulling at the corners of her lips when she spied Riley winking one eye open at her. Nikko could read her lips when she told the boy to close his eyes, breath, and relax.
If life were only so simple.
The walking pace slowed, then stopped. Nikko swiped at his sweating face and neck with the gym-provided towel and took a large chug of the individual bottled water provided on each treadmill. The group rose and bowed to Stacy.
Her giggle floated on the air and sucker punched him straight in the abdomen. She laughed at something Riley said to her and Melora and crinkled her nose in the most enchanting way. When she found his gaze centered on her from across the room, Stacy dropped her chin and bit a corner of her bottom lip as she regarded him from under her lashes. It was a damned good thing the walking program had ended, because he’d have missed a lot more than one step if he’d still been moving.
Melora turned, called his name and asked if he was done.
When he nodded, she said something to Stacy and Riley and then jogged over to him.
“How’s your leg?” she asked, grabbing the bottle from his hand and taking a long, deep swig.
“It’s fine. Walking definitely helps. I didn’t realize you were actually taking a class with Stacy. I thought it was just the two of you.”
“It was,” she told him, handing him back the bottle. “The others came down planning to just, like, work out, but when they saw Stacy and asked her what she was doing here, they, like, decided to join in.”
“I was watching. You did pretty good, kid. Better than the others.”
An eyebrow-grazing eye roll was accompanied by a huge grin. “I know. It was cool knowing so much more than the rest of them. Burbank, btw, is a huge tool. He was, like, blatantly hitting on Stacy. So lame.”
The muscles in Nikko’s stomach gnarled into knots. “What did he say to her that was so lame?” he asked, trying to keep the irritation from spilling into his voice.
They started walking to the elevator.
“Just really dumb comments about private yoga lessons, and if, like, doing yoga would make him more limber in certain departments.” She snorted as they got in the elevator. “He said that really skanky and suggestive-like. Stacy hit him.” She snorted again.
Nikko wanted to do more than hit the chef. The urge to hurt him flashed fast and furious across his mind.
He blinked, surprised at the sudden possessiveness rearing its head again.
What to do about it was the question of the day.
* * * *
Stacy rubbed the back of her neck and sighed.
The day had started out perfectly with the early-morning yoga class—a class she’d been surprised to be asked to lead—but had deteriorated as quick as rapid gunfire right before filming was due to start.
As usual, Jade Quartermaine had been late to arrive on set, no excuse given. The red lines train-tracking the whites of her eyes and the sandy rasp in her voice told Stacy the woman had had a late night, obviously spent with a bottle of alcohol. The huge hickey on the side of her neck told everyone she hadn’t been drinking alone.
When all the chefs were in place in the restaurant kitchen waiting for their first challenge to be issued, the film crew set to begin, it became apparent Jade was even more unprepared than usual.
While her words weren’t slurred, they were garbled when she spoke and it was obvious she hadn’t gone over her lines before coming to set. Nikko was forced to stop filming several times due to the woman’s inability to get even one line of script correct.
“Christ. Jade, what the hell is the matter with you?” He stormed from off set where the production crew was situated and right up into her face. Stacy had to give the woman credit for not shrinking back from the accusatory and threatening scowl facing her.
With her own frown pulling at her crimson-colored mouth, Jade shot out a French-manicured, pointed fingernail and poked it squarely in his chest.
“Back off, Nikko. I’m not in the mood for one of your testosterone-fueled temper tantrums.”
The noise level in the kitchen dropped to a silent hum. From next to her, Stacy heard Todd mumble, “That she can say, but not the easy words written in the script?”
“I wouldn’t lose my temper if you did your job,” Nikko roared.
Stacy flinched.
Jade wasn’t a woman to be yelled at and not respond in kind. “Whoever wrote this drivel has no concept of the spoken word,” she screeched. “These lines are ridiculous.”
“It’s you who are ridiculous,” Nikko tossed back.
Within a heartbeat, the argument escalated to three times the volume, with both star and director screaming at the same time.
“Somebody needs to stop this before we get bloodshed,” Clay Burbank said, loud enough to be heard above the din.
When no one else moved, Stacy did. Into the fire she strode, wedging herself between them. At her back she could feel the heat of Jade’s breath on her neck as she continued to yell; from her front, the natural heat of Nikko’s body bearing down on her.
“Both of you, please stop,” she said loud enough to be heard, but not shouting. “Please.”
Maybe it was because they were both stunned someone had intervened, or that Stacy’s presence between them acted as an obstacle; or perhaps they’d both come to their senses at the same moment, but for whatever reason, the commotion came to an abrupt halt. All eyes were trained on Stacy, breaths held, as she looked from Nikko to Jade and then back to the director.
“Thank you,” she told him.
Something in his eyes changed as he stared down at her. She swore the hard, angry glare he’d thrown at Jade just seconds before, shifted now to a gentler, calmer one. His furrowed brow smoothed, his mouth softened from a tight, hard line, and his shoulders pulled down from their hunched position around his ears.
It was captivating to watch him gain control of himself. On any given day, Nikko Stamp was a force of nature. Volatile and unpredictable, like a threatening storm. And right now, with the echo of his anger floating around them as he valiantly warred to get his emotions under control, he was the most fascinating man she’d ever encountered.
Realizing she could have stood all day, just gazing up at him, hit her hard. He made her forget the reason she was standing there, lodged between himself and his obnoxious program host.
Stacy blinked, swallowed, and turned to face Jade.
“Why don’t we go run through your lines a few times? Maybe”—she held her hand up, anticipating what the disgruntled star was about to say—“we can rework the text so the words flow more naturally.”
Jade’s mouth snapped shut. With a withering, narrow-eyed glare at Nikko, she nodded. “At least someone involved with this production understands what I’ve been saying.”
She turned and strode from the set, a red-faced Carrie, who’d been standing on the sidelines nervously twisting her fingers together, following.
“There’s nothing wrong with that intro,” Nikko said when Stacy turned her attention back to him.
With a subtle nod, she moved a step closer and said, “I know. I just wanted to get her off set. Maybe get her a cup of coffee. She seems, well…not at her best right now.”
Nikko snorted, sounding so much like his daughter Stacy bit down on her bottom lip to keep from laughing out loud.
“What she seems is either badly hungover or still soused.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and shook his head in disgust.
Stacy didn’t feel the need to respond.
“Okay.” He blew out a breath. “Go and try to calm her down. Sober her up if she needs it. Whatever it takes. We can film around her for now.”
With another nod, Stacy moved away from him.
“Okay, everyone,” she heard him address the chefs and crew. “Show’s over. Let’s get this challenge underway. Dan? You good to go with your lines?”
She didn’t hear his response, but knew what it was. At least one of the cohosts acted like a professional.
Outside an office abutting the kitchen that had been designated as the show makeup room, Stacy heard Jade’s voice clear as a ringing bell, complaining about what had just happened.
Steeling herself, Stacy walked into the proverbial fire.
A half-hour later, with two cups of caffeinated coffee forced on her, a quick makeup refresh to hide the hickey, and her intro reworded ever so slightly, Jade was ready.
When she marched back to the kitchen, the challenge was already underway.
“Nikko says we can film your part when they’re done and he’ll edit it in,” Dan told Jade when she came to stand next to him off set.
The diva pursed her lips and said nothing.
Stacy squeezed Carrie’s shoulder, the producer’s fingers still nervously tapping a rhythm against one another, and went to take her place behind Nikko.
The noise in the kitchen was cacophonic and it resounded in the area cordoned off for the direction team.
Stacy slid back into her chair, took a deep breath and, along with everyone else, turned her attention to the monitors.
Nikko tilted his chair back, slid his headset off one ear, and over his shoulder asked, “She good to go now?”
Stacy nodded. “She knows you’re going to film her intro after the challenge tasting.”
“How much did she change it?”
“Just a word or two. I think she’ll be fine.”
He called time two minutes later. While Dan and a now camera-ready, professional-acting Jade went through the tasting, Stacy snuck surreptitious glances at Nikko.
Had she noticed before how long and dexterous his fingers were, watching them snap in time to his commands to give the crew an editing beat? His timing was perfection in itself, and Stacy made a wish when she had her own show she could be as precise and on target as Nikko always was.
Noticing his fingers led her to remembering how they’d felt gliding along her face and then her body when he’d kissed her. His warm, gentle touch had sent her insides bouncing and her toes tingling.
Had a man’s touch ever made her come so undone so swiftly before?
No, it hadn’t. And the notion she wanted to feel his hands on her again was so uncanny, she shook her head a few times to clear it of the thought.
After Jade’s intro was done—letter-perfect—they’d issued the challenge to rework one of the restaurant’s signature dishes into something of their own conception. The chefs had been given twenty-four hours to devise their recipes. Stacy, Nikko, and the film crew then followed them to a local market to purchase ingredients they’d need that weren’t supplied in Jimmy Rodgers’s kitchen.
When the entire crew and cast had gotten back to the hotel, the chefs were left to their own devices for the evening. Several decided to take advantage of the free time and pair up to sightsee. Others spent the time lounging at the pool. Since they weren’t allowed any contact with family or friends, several of them had formed friendly alliances, Riley MacNeill and Clay Burbank among them.
With none of the privacy constrictions placed on her, Stacy took the time to call and chat with Kandy.
“You didn’t use the code word when I answered,” her cousin said, making Stacy smile, “so that lets me know this isn’t a distress call. You doing okay out there in God’s country?”
“Yeah. Things are…good. Interesting, but good.”
“Interesting, huh? What’s that mean?”
Not having had a sister growing up, Stacy had looked toward her older girl cousins for guidance on questions or concerns she didn’t want to address with her mother. Kandy, the oldest cousin and five years Stacy’s senior, had typically been the one she turned to. Kandy was a sympathetic listener and a thoughtful advisor, two traits Stacy had come to treasure.
“It means I’ve changed my opinion about certain things since I’ve arrived.”
“Things?” Kandy asked. “Or people? One person in particular, maybe?”
Stacy sighed, then chuckled. “How do you do that?”
“What?”
“Know exactly what I’m going to say, before I even say it? It’s creepy sometimes.”
Kandy’s own deep chuckle tickled through the phone. “Grandpa said it was because I knew how to read a room, just like he did. Grandma disagreed and said it was because I was just naturally nosy.”
“Either way, it’s uncanny. But you’re right. I have changed my mind about Dominick Stamp.”
“For better or worse?”
“Definitely better. He’s everything I’d heard he was: arrogant, rude, a perfectionist to his core.”
“I hear a big but in there.”
“But,” Stacy stretched out in her comfortable hotel chair, “he’s so much more.” She told her about Melora, about the teen’s struggles, and how Nikko was devoting himself to her recovery.
“He’s a wonderful father and anyone can see how much he loves her,” Stacy said. “He’s got the filming schedule blocked so he can cook and spend time with her every day no matter what happens to wreck the schedule on set.”
“How’s he doing physically? I heard the accident really screwed up one of his legs.”
Stacy told her of Nikko’s struggles and how he’d allowed her to help him.
“And speaking of that, can you overnight something to me?”
“Sure. What?”
“I want to give him some of my medicated cream and there are no drugstores near the ranch I can have it shipped to or ordered from. I’m sure the menthol in it will help him with the cramping and the pain. There’s a bunch of it in my apartment in the bathroom. I ordered a new batch of it about a month ago.”
The silence that met her had her checking the cell screen to see if the call had been dropped.
“Kan?”
“I’m still here. You just caught me off guard. You never, ever, talk about…what happened. And none of us like to push.”
“No, you don’t. And I love you for that.” Stacy bit down on a corner of her lip.
“So you still have pain?” Kandy asked, her voice filled with concern. “Enough to need to medicate it?”
With a sigh, Stacy said, “Sometimes. If I don’t work out for a few days my arm tends to get stiff. When it does, the pain worms its way in, and I need the cream to help relax the muscles and tendons. It penetrates deep. That’s why I think giving it to Nikko would help him.”
Kandy waited a beat. “So it’s Nikko, now, not Dominick?”
Even though her cousin couldn’t see her face, Stacy blushed to the roots of her hair.
“Everyone calls him that,” she said, trying for nonchalant and hoping she succeeded. She should have known better. Look who she was talking to, after all? Kandy Laine could have been a top-notch criminal interrogator, she was that skillful at worming things out of people. Things they never wanted to divulge.
“Maybe,” Kandy said. “But I hear something in your voice that I don’t hear when most people talk about him.”
“What?” She was terrified to hear the answer.
“Why don’t you tell me?” her cousin asked. “Because I think you know what it is I’m hearing.”
She’d called Kandy’s intuition uncanny. It was too tame a word.
Maybe if she told her cousin what she was feeling, the mixed-up jumble of emotions she was tethered with every time she and Nikko were alone together, maybe it would help her clarify and understand what was going on inside her head.
Or maybe it would just confuse her more.
Either way, Stacy did what she’d done for most of her life. Settling into the chair, she crossed her ankles together and told her cousin everything.