The Chocolate Seduction. Carrie Alexander

saying you have a free day with almost nothing to do?” Kit eyed Sabrina.

      She’d turned her face away, but he could see her very flirtatious, very female smile. “I wonder what I should do with myself. Any suggestions?”

      “You’re forgetting the cleaning,” Mackenzie said, raising her voice above the traffic.

      “That should take an hour.” Sabrina glanced at Kit. “Not only is my new place a scuzzy rat hole, it’s an extremely small scuzzy rat hole.”

      “Welcome to the Manhattan working class.” He touched his fingertips to her leg, feeling the heat of her skin through the thin cotton pants. The scratchy seat of the cab thrummed beneath him. “What should we do with the rest of the day?”

      “We?”

      “I’m not working until the dinner shift.”

      “Umm.” Sabrina jiggled her leg and he lifted his fingers away for an instant before dropping his palm over her thigh, soothing the pent-up energy that ran through her like an electric current. He heard as her breath caught short, then released in a luxurious sigh. “Umm. I suppose we’ll have to think of a way to entertain ourselves.”

      At her low velvety purr, Kit’s libido leaped right past thoughts of homey comforts and women who’d make good wives and mothers. Parker had been right—this was the best moving job ever.

      “Stop!” Mackenzie suddenly commanded from the front seat. “Stop. Right here, in front of the candy store.”

      The car screeched across a lane of traffic and pulled halfway into an illegal parking spot by a fire hydrant. “Mizzy, I can’t stay here—” the driver beseeched as his passenger jumped from the cab.

      Kit gaped at what had caught Mackenzie’s attention. The display window of the narrow storefront was piled high with gold boxes and trays of chocolates in all sizes and shapes. Sabrina leaned past the futon, took one look and muttered a dire warning under her breath.

      Mackenzie slammed the car door as she got out. “I’ll only be a minute. I need to buy my sister a housewarming gift.” Suddenly her face loomed in the open back window, serious with a disapproval Kit didn’t understand. “A nice big box of fudge.”

      “NO, THIS ISN’T the closet,” Sabrina said, triumphantly throwing open the door of her third-floor flat after a delay that had entailed a journey into a dark, dank basement to hunt down the super and receive her new keys. “It’s the apartment.”

      The wall opposite was so close it bore scrape marks from the front door. Kit edged in backward, dragging the futon. He expected to see a room opening off the narrow hall, so it took him a few seconds to understand that the hall was the room. It widened by several feet on the right—that was the living room—and culminated in a tiny stove and a sink built into the wall on the left, which was the kitchen. The scarred doors midway in between might open onto a vast ballroom with skylights and a light-filled conservatory, but he was betting on a closet and airplane-sized bathroom. Although the ceiling over the living area was high, it slanted sharply, giving the space an odd lopsided feel.

      There was only one place to put the futon. He dropped it beneath a double-hung window covered with filth so thick it served as soundproofing as well as an effective sunblock. A layer of black soot lined the sill. It was only May, but already the apartment was airless and stifling.

      Mackenzie hauled in the cleaning supplies. She carried the enormous box of fudge to the kitchen, took one look at the stained sink and said, “Sabrina, are you sure about this? I’ll loan you the money for first and last if you want to get a bigger place….”

      “Nonsense. If I’m going to be responsible and live within my means, this was the best I could find in a safe neighborhood. You can think of the place as an atelier, if that helps. I’ll give the walls a coat of paint and it will be fine for a year.” She glanced at Kit. “Or at least a few months.”

      Stepping on the futon, Sabrina flicked the latch and tugged on the window. It didn’t budge. Kit shoved hard on the upper sill and it opened with a screech of the ancient wood and a shower of paint chips. The view was of electric lines looped to the backside of an old button factory on West End Avenue. An enormous water tower loomed beyond the neighboring brick ledge, which threw a shadow into the apartment.

      Sabrina wilted. “I’ll paint it sunshine yellow.”

      “If you want to live in an egg yolk. Personally, I’d paint everything a bright, clean white. And put up a lot of mirrors.” Mackenzie approached the taps with caution. The pipes clanked when she turned on the water, then spurted out a stream of rusty water.

      Kit lugged in the suitcase and the backpack. Sabrina hung her garment bag in the closet and put her shoe boxes on the open shelves above a built-in dresser. “There you go. I’m all moved in.” She dusted off her hands. “Yet another benefit of traveling light.”

      “How do you live without accumulating stuff?” Mackenzie asked over the sound of rushing water filling her bucket. “Don’t you read? Listen to music? Cook?” She dumped in half a bottle of Mr. Clean. The stagnant air grew sharp with ammonia.

      “I give books away when I’m finished with them. I go to clubs for music. Pots and pans I leave behind for the next tenant.”

      Kit leaned across Mackenzie to open the kitchen cupboards. “You’re going to need new ones now. These are empty.” Except for the roaches, scuttling toward the cracks and crevices.

      Sabrina had regained her optimism. “Good—a reason to go to the flea market.”

      Kit thought of the displays of stainless steel cookware in Williams-Sonoma. Glasses, china, silver…He could outfit her kitchen faster than a bridezilla with a scanner in one hand and a registry in the other. But Sabrina would probably hate that.

      Could he have a fling with a woman who didn’t know the joys of copper-bottomed sauté pans?

      One look at her bending over to unzip the suitcase answered that question. Hell, yes.

      In the other direction, Mackenzie was down on hands and knees scrubbing out the undercounter refrigerator. Her rear end was better than Sabrina’s, from an objective viewpoint. He gazed thoughtfully, but aside from a pleasant moment of appreciation for the female form, Mackenzie’s backside did little for him.

      “What are you looking at, Kit?” Sabrina stood watching him, a small tarnished bronze horse statue in her hands.

      “I was wondering where to put a dining table.”

      “I don’t need one. I’ll eat cross-legged on the futon.”

      “Too many crumbs. You’ll get roaches.”

      “She already has roaches,” Mackenzie said under her breath.

      “That’s not civilized,” Kit insisted. He’d hated the stuffy sit-down dinners at his guardian’s house, but then a few years later when his last-chance foster mother—a Frenchwoman known to all as Ma’am—had laid down the law that her kids must be home for dinner every evening, he’d come to look forward to the tradition. Even though on arrival he’d rudely sworn he’d break every rule she set. A proper dinner and the conversation and connection it established between the “family” had ended up being a rule that held deep significance for him.

      “You definitely need a table,” he said.

      “I might be able to wedge a bistro table in here. Or I could put it on the fire escape.”

      “And when it rains?”

      “I’ll eat at Decadence.”

      “We can fit one in the hall, here, if the table’s narrow enough. Very, very narrow—a console.” He measured the space with hand spans. “The chairs would have to tuck under or there’d be no room to walk by.”

      Sabrina shrugged. “Good thing I’m skinny.”

      The comment drew his eyes