A Taste of Ice by Hanna Martine Read Free Book Online

let out a short laugh as he continued to crack and separate eggs. As he reached for the whisk, she asked, all falsely casual, “So who were you looking at out there?”
    Here it came. “No one.”
    Pam made a show of standing on her toes and craning her neck to peer through the glass. “Angelina Jolie? Kate Winslet?”
    Who? With a testing spoon, he checked the seasoning in the sesame sauce that got drizzled over the salmon.
    “Ah, I see her.” Pam whistled. “She’s really pretty. Those tall boots with that skirt. Damn.”
    Pam turned toward the pastry station before he could tell her to leave.
    Boots and a skirt. He ordered himself not to look. Béarnaise was tricky and if you didn’t keep whisking it over the heat it would break…
    Cat didn’t wear her red pompom hat to dinner. In fact, she didn’t wear much of anything. She’d pushed her chair out a bit, her legs crossed diagonally toward the table. Her black skirt was short and tight, her boots high. The line of her thigh muscle made his skin as hot as the burners to his right, but he couldn’t look away. A fuzzy sweater exposed her shoulders, drawing a delicious, horizontal line of skin. Could women wear bras under sweaters like that?
    While Cat’s companion examined a bottle of wine, the sommelier standing at her elbow, Cat turned her face toward the kitchen. She found him immediately, as if she knew exactly where he’d been all along. Their gazes slammed together. She tilted her head.
    The little balloons of dining room conversations popped. The clanking sounds of the kitchen fell away. The desire tackled him and he went down without defense. His blood beganto pound, racing toward the throbbing part of him that would give everything away.
    The kitchen glass fogged over, the swirls of hallucinatory white forming the ugly, mocking face of the Burned Man.
    How perfect
, he said.
You’re used to an audience.
    Fuck
no
. This was not happening again. Not twice in one day. Not
here
, where he was supposed to be safe.
    Xavier stretched over to Jose’s station, snatched a red onion from his pile. Choking up on his chef’s knife, Xavier bent far over the onion and made precise, quick strokes into the pliant pink flesh. Opening his eyes wide, letting the fumes rise up and curl around his face, he inhaled. The sting stabbed at his eyes and sawed at his throat. He did it again. And again.
    When he lifted his head the Burned Man no longer haunted the glass. And Cat no longer looked at him.
    “You never answered my question back at the gallery.” Helen leaned heavily on the table, elbows pulling at the white cloth. They’d nearly finished the best bottle of wine Cat had ever had. Although that wasn’t saying much, considering ten dollars for a bottle at home was a splurge. This one had cost two hundred; Cat had snuck a look at the leather-bound wine list.
    “Which question was that?”
    Helen flicked her wrist in a grand gesture, a massive diamond ring twinkling on her finger. “Why do you paint water? What draws you to it?”
    Cat frowned and twirled her wineglass, leaving fingerprints on the bowl. “If I could put it into words, I’d be a writer, not a painter.”
    Helen had gotten it right, though, in what she’d observed that morning: Cat both loved and hated the source of her inspiration. Most days she really did wish she could put it into words. Might have made her life a heck of a lot easier.
    Helen made an “
ah
” sound and nodded, like Cat had just imparted to her the secrets of the universe. It was impossible not to like this woman. Cat was close to so few people. Her job—the real one, the one that actually brought in money—made her skeptical of most human beings. Not many women chatted her up while sitting at her bar, and the men who diddidn’t seem to realize that small talk and false enthusiasm were written in to her job description. There were co-workers who were friends, sure, but when her shift ended, she was in front of her