Breakfast in Bed

chapter 3


RICH STROLLED OUT OF THE BEDROOM IN RECORD TIME probably just to piss Becca off some more. He was really good at that. He wore another pair of perfectly faded Levis, which he filled out way too well for her taste, and a long-sleeved, cobalt blue T-shirt that brought out the blue in his eyes and showed off that incredible chest she'd spent the night using as a pillow. Damn, she'd almost talked herself into forgetting about that.
Rich followed her to the kitchen and leaned against the breakfast bar, staring at her as if he could see beneath her clothes. It was unnerving, and she reminded herself of all the reasons she didn't like him.
"I know you don't like me much."
Becca took a cup from the cabinet. Ah, and he was a mind reader too.
"I don't know why, but it doesn't matter."
"It doesn't?" Wow, he was good. Not in that way, she reminded herself. And no, she wasn't even that curious. She poured the coffee.
He shook his head. "It might be a good thing."
She looked up from the cup she was filling. "How can my not liking you be a good thing?"
"I need help, and I know it might come as a shock, but most women find me attractive. That would just complicate matters."
"Color me surprised. Since you know I don't like you, I suppose I can give up pretending that I do."
He nodded and smiled a sinfully sexy smile that made her hormones do the cha-cha. She stepped out of the kitchen, picked up the sheets, blanket, and pillow she'd left for him in the living room, and returned them to the closet. Anything to get away from him. The man was a threat to her equilibrium. Unfortunately, he followed. "Okay, so since I don't have to be nice, and you're weirdly happy about that, why don't you just leave?"
"I have a proposition for you."
"No."
"No?"
"That's my answer to your proposition."
"Don't you even want to know what it is?"
"Not especially, but I will listen if you promise it will get you out my door sooner."
He smiled again, and she rolled her eyes. She just wanted to be alone already. When it came down to it, she wasn't much of a social person. She spent most of her time alone in her studio, and she was happy to do it. She didn't need a man or company to keep her happy.
"Gina dumped me. She said I wasn't relationship material because I don't cook, clean, and do my own laundry. How hard can it be? I just need a trainer."
"A trainer?"
"Yeah, like a domestic coach. Someone to show me the ropes. So I learn whatever I have to learn to make Gina think I'm not such a bad bet." He might as well have asked her to streak through Times Square during rush hour. His chances would have been better. He stood and walked toward her, forcing her to look up to him, which ticked her off all the more.
"Why?"
"My dean suggested that I should settle down."
"And why is that my problem?"
"It's not. See, the thing is, I thought we could, you know, help each other. You need me. I need you. This is my place, and there aren't many furnished apartments that take man-eating, three-legged attack cats."
"I'm not that desperate, and the jury is still out on whose place this is. But setting that aside for the moment, why should it matter who you're with or not with? Isn't the whole idea of a man having to settle down to be good at his job archaic? And I'm sorry to have to tell you Rich, but you have as much a chance of becoming Mr. Perfect as Tripod has of growing his leg back."
Rich really didn't want to get into his inauspicious departure from Dartmouth . He'd left there with his professional integrity barely intact. When he was offered a position at Columbia , Rich thought things were looking up until yesterday's meeting with Craig and then Gina.
There were times when Gina reminded him of plastic explosives, easy to mold but dangerous as hell if you lit her fuse. Unfortunately for Rich, all it took to light her fuse was to surprise her by moving nearby, thereby removing the long distance portion of their relationship, and, without knowing why, the ecstatically happy part of it too. He looked over at Becca, and she didn't look like she'd cave any time soon.
"Things happen. Relationships break up. It's not unheard of. What's the big deal?"
"Becca, please. You don't understand."
Becca sprawled on the couch, getting good and comfortable, and her damn cat jumped up on her lap turning around a few times before curling up and covering his eyes with his front paw as if to shield them from the light. Becca was going to make him beg. He could feel it. Shit. The woman was impossible. If she'd asked him to help her out of a bind, he'd have done it for free, but no. Not Becca. This was going to cost him big time.
"I've got all day. Enlighten me."
"No." He didn't want to enlighten her. All he wanted to do was strangle her. No other woman he'd ever met could take him from calm to homicidal with one look, nor had he met a woman who could get him hot by doing exactly that. He wondered what the hell he'd done to deserve this kind of torture. Okay, there were plenty of things, but had he known what the payback would be, he never would have done them, that was for damn sure.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. One of his exes, a yoga instructor who had incredible flexibility (which led to equally incredible sex) once told him that breathing deeply relieved stress. Unfortunately, it wasn't helping now. All it did was make him wonder what kind of perfume Becca wore and why he found himself standing close enough to get a whiff. She was a damn witch.
The woman wore a Mona Lisa smile, that one that says I know a hell of a lot more than you ever will, and I can't wait to use it to torture you. "Fine. Leave. It's no skin off my nose."
Rich sat and leaned over her so that they were nose-to-nose. "You help me out with the whole domestic issue, and I'll let you stay."
She sputtered. "You'll let me stay? You'll let me stay?"
Rich tried not to smile; she was really cute when she was steamed. Her pale skin turned pink, okay, red, and the white blonde hair just made it seem redder, then her eyes darkened to a scary shade of green, almost like the color of the sky before a tornado. Maybe Little Miss Larsen wasn't such a cool customer after all. Maybe she was just waiting for someone to light her fuse. Lucky for him that was one of his strong suits. "I told you, blood is thicker than water."
Becca became one with the couch in order to get her face as far from his face as possible without running away. God she was fun to f*ck with, figuratively, although he wouldn't mind finding out if she'd be fun literally since he was newly single. Damn, he really needed to stop thinking that way, for his own sanity if for nothing else.
"If you remember correctly, I'm Mike's sister. So I trump your whole blood is thicker than water theory. Mike's not going to be too happy to see me thrown out on the street."
Rich smiled and licked his lips just to get a rise out of her. She was easy. Okay, maybe not easy in the way he suddenly wished she was. What he meant was it was easy to piss in her paddling pool. "I'm sure Mike and Annabelle would love it if you and Killer moved in with them. Just imagine the two of you living in the love nest with Mr. & Mrs. Incessantly Happy. I give you an hour tops before you're fighting Annabelle and her morning-noon-and-night sickness to pray to the porcelain god."
Ah, he was finally getting to her. And that was a good thing because he really needed a coach. He just wished he could look at her the way he looked at Coach Como in high school. Even the way he looked at the girls' coach, Mrs. Southern, with the harelip and the speech impediment. Unfortunately, since he felt Becca beneath him, imagined her naked, and worse, knew what she looked like wearing nothing but his lucky shirt, it would be impossible to see her as anything but a goddamn sexual fantasy.
"I get the bedroom."
Rich's mind was still stuck on the sexual fantasy thing, and the mention of any word with bed in it spelled trouble. Big trouble. He backed away and sat, pulling a pillow over his lap to hide any embarrassing evidence from her and the cat.
His silence must have unnerved her. "Well?"
He shook his head. "I thought I'd let you use the guest room unless you'd rather share the bed."
"Over my dead body."
"Well, that's a shame, but not unexpected. I'm sure you'll be comfortable in the guest room."
"Ha!"
"The way I see it, you have three choices. You can stay on the futon in the guest room, you can stay with Mike and Annabelle, or if you ask nicely, we can share the bed. We will have to discuss your borrowing my clothes though."

It was time to face facts. Becca had no choice but to cave to Rich. All her belongings were in storage for three months until her new apartment in the brownstone she bought with her brother and sister-in-law was remodeled. She didn't have the time or energy to find another place that would accept her and her disabled cat while she was supposed to be supervising the construction on her apartment and studio and trying to get her work into galleries.
Rich might be cocky and arrogant, but she wasn't sure how much of that was bravado. He was a guy, and guys hated getting dumped. Plus, he wanted to win this Gina woman back badly enough to try to change, so he couldn't be as arrogant as he seemed. Could he?
She cautioned herself not to think too highly of him. After all, he wasn't much of a gentleman. If he were the least bit gentlemanly, he'd give her the bed, not just offer her half. What a jerk.
She kicked herself for putting a stop to Tripod's planned attack on Rich's dick. It would have served him right if she'd let Tripod have his way with Rich. It would have almost made up for the anger and frustration he'd caused her. The man really had a way of getting under her skin, and he knew it.
Rich had his head buried in the refrigerator and his really nice ass facing her. "You made lasagna?"
"No, your Aunt Rose brought it by for us yesterday."
"Us? As in you and me?" He pulled out the tray and set it on the counter beside the gravy and cheese. "My favorite breakfast. Leftover lasagna."
"Yes. Your Aunt Rose has this weird idea that there's something more between the two of us than animosity."
Rich groaned. "What exactly did she say?"
"I don't remember."
"What do you mean, you 'don't remember?'" His hands flew up and down in front of him, as if he was tossing an invisible pizza. "Think! What exactly did she say?"
"Geez, overreact much? What does it matter?"
"It matters a whole hell of a lot. Aunt Rose knows things. She says shit, and the next thing you know, it comes true."
"Are you telling me she's clairvoyant?"
"Hell, yeah! She's been getting me in trouble with my parents since I was in diapers."
Becca crossed her arms and rolled her eyes for good measure. "It doesn't take a psychic to figure out a guy like you. Anyone with an IQ over fifty would have no problem doing that."
"Yeah, well explain how Aunt Rose knew Annabelle was pregnant at her engagement party."
The hair on Becca's neck stood up. "A good guess?"
"Okay, how about this. The one time I got picked up by the cops, she called my parents and told them to meet me at the police station before I was even arrested. They were there waiting for me."
Becca suddenly didn't feel so good. She pulled a chair out and sat down hard.
"Oh God." Rich crossed himself, picked up the cross he wore around his neck and kissed it, and then ran his hands through his hair before kneeling in front of her. "You have to tell me."
"No. There is no way. I'm not going to put any ideas into that fertile mind of yours. Besides, it's not as if you can ask her to take it back." Though if she could, Becca definitely would.
"Maybe we could do something."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Maybe we could go to a priest and get some kind of protection."
"You actually believe a priest could ward off a curse?"
"It was a curse?"
"To me it would be. To you, it would be the best thing that ever happened to you."
Rich took her hand, and Becca felt all the blood that left her head a few seconds before rushing through her ears. Her heart beat so loudly it sounded like a stampede of elephants was running though her, and she tingled all over. The last thing she ever wanted to do was tingle with Rich Ronaldi.
"What did she say?"
"She said you are spoiled and that you need to grow up."
"And?"
"And she said there was something wrong with my cat."
"What else?"
"Nothing."
"Don't lie. Nothing you just said would give you reason to almost pass out."
"She said that I'm good for you and that you don't like skinny women."
Rich smiled as if he didn't have a care in the world, which she guessed he didn't. She, on the other hand, wanted to die.
"I don't usually like skinny women, but you're growing on me. You looked pretty good wearing my shirt."
Becca tried to pull her hand out of his to hit him. Unfortunately, he might have been a little psychic himself, because he knew not to let her go.
"Well, if that's all she said, it wasn't as bad as I imagined."
"What did you imagine?"
"I don't know. If she didn't even ask if you were Catholic, I guess I don't have to worry." He gave her hand a squeeze and went to heat up his food. Becca thought she'd never eat again.

Rich kept one eye on Becca as he microwaved his lasagna. The color had yet to return to her face. He had a feeling she wasn't telling him the whole story when it came to Aunt Rose. Since there was little he could do to change the fact that Aunt Rose told Becca whatever it was she saw and scared the life out of his new roommate, he might as well enjoy the results. Anything that left Becca speechless, thereby silencing her sharp tongue, could only be good news for him.
He took the plate out of the microwave and sat opposite Becca at the table. He cut a piece of lasagna and, blowing on it lightly, took his first bite.
One thing he could say about his aunt was the woman could cook. She made lasagna that rivaled his mother's. He groaned in appreciation. It was unusual to have a meal this good without first having to be tortured by his family. Rich didn't feel the least bit guilty that Becca took the heat for the food he was consuming. The fact that she still hadn't regained her composure was a little worrying. She seemed to be the type to bounce back fast. Not today. Maybe the double whammy she received with Aunt Rose last night and waking with him this morning was more than even Becca could handle.
With his stomach full and his hangover almost gone, Rich felt pretty good. Having a blonde beauty sitting across from him didn't hurt either, especially since all it took was a blink of his eye to picture her naked. Yeah, compared to yesterday, things were looking up. He had his coach, he had a plan, and he even had an intriguing woman living with him. Okay, it was platonic, but just because he couldn't touch didn't mean he couldn't look. Did it? He was a guy, after all. If he had anything to say about it, when they lowered him into the ground, he'd be checking to see if he could see up any woman's skirt. He slid the last noodle around his plate soaking up the rest of the gravy, brought it to his mouth, and sucked it up with a slurp. "Hungry?"
Becca stared as he licked the last of the gravy off his lips. Her darkened eyes widened. She shook her head as her color rose.
Rich wiped his mouth with a napkin and hid a smile. She might not be hungry for food, but she was hungry for something. Hmm. "So where do you want to start?"
Becca blinked. "Start what?"
"My training."
"You weren't serious about that, were you?"
"As serious as Pearl Harbor ."
He waited for Becca to come to the realization that he wasn't pulling her leg.
"You're really going to learn how to be, what would you call it, a domesticated man?"
Rich shook his head. "My brother-in-laws call themselves Domestic Gods. 'Domesticated man' sounds wimpy. We're not wimpy. We're Domestic Gods."
Becca laughed, not a polite little giggle. She let out a bark of laughter that turned into a sexy belly laugh and ended in almost a snort. Not as sexy, but really cute, especially since she seemed embarrassed by it.
"I'm a fast learner."
Becca threw the tail of the sweater-thing over her shoulder covering the hint of cleavage she'd displayed earlier. "Did it ever occur to you that most people pick this stuff up by osmosis? You observe people cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and imitate them? If you were such a fast learner, you wouldn't be begging for training from me."
"I never beg."
Rich was disappointed when her retort was interrupted by a knock on the door. Becca raised an eyebrow, stood giving him one of her annoying half smiles, and went to answer the door. " Wayne . Henry. How are you two?"
Ah, the upstairs neighbors.
Wayne balanced a tray of cookies in one hand and pulled Becca into a hug. "We just stopped by to bring something sweet to the sweet and to welcome you."
"Thanks, guys."
Wayne looked over her shoulder at Rich. "Are we interrupting something?"
Becca returned his hug. "No, not at all."
Liar.
Wayne tsked. "Such a shame."
"Believe me, it's not." Becca pushed Wayne away, rolled her eyes, and reached for Henry. "I was wondering when I'd see you." She motioned toward Rich. "Do you know Rosalie and Annabelle's brother, Rich?"
Henry, the taller of the two, gave Rich a nod. Wayne walked across the living room toward Rich, giving him a very thorough once-over while he set the cookies on the breakfast bar. "Just in passing a few times at the girls' weddings. Hi."
Rich stood and shook Wayne 's hand. "Hello. It's nice to see you both again. I've been meaning to go up and reintroduce myself. I like to know my neighbors." Rich picked up a chocolate chip cookie and took a bite. "Mmm, good. Thanks for these."
Wayne looked perplexed.
Henry's gaze traveled from Rich to Becca and back again. "Your neighbors? I thought Becca moved in."
Becca groaned. "There's been a mix-up. Rich rented the place from Rosalie, and I rented it from Annabelle, so unfortunately, for the next three months, Rich and I are going to be roommates."
Tripod jumped up on the couch and meowed—if you can call it that. It sounded more like a siren or maybe like a baby's wail.
Wayne turned to Rich. "You have a cat?"
Rich took a step back. "Don't look at me. Killer is Becca's."
Wayne turned back to Becca. "Killer?"
Becca reached over and scratched Tripod's neck. "His name is Tripod, and he doesn't like Rich. Who could blame him?"
Wayne and Henry looked from Becca to him like spectators at a tennis match. Rich couldn't help but laugh. "Other than me?" He took a tentative step toward the couch and turned to Wayne and Henry. "That thing attacked me. It's possessed." Of course, the spawn of Satan rubbed up against Becca and then jumped to the floor doing his three-legged hop over to Wayne and wove his way between his and Henry's legs. Tripod even let them pet him. "I turn the shower on him one time, and I have an enemy for life."
Becca picked the beast up and rubbed her cheek against his head. He was purring like a motorboat. "Rich, really. Pouting is so unattractive." The damn cat even meowed to agree.
"I don't pout." Everyone stared at him.
Wayne backed away and nudged Henry. "Well, we can see you two are busy sparring. We won't keep you. Enjoy the cookies. You can return the plate anytime." He shot a pointed look at Becca.
Henry nodded. "Rich, nice to see you again." He gave Becca a kiss on the cheek. "We'll see you soon. Have fun settling in."
Becca grabbed Henry's arm. "You don't have to leave."
Wayne and Henry exchanged looks, the two smiled to each other, and Wayne answered for Henry. "Yes, we do. Sorry doll, you're on your own. Have fun."
Rich put his arm around Becca, earning a hiss from the possessed one who leapt from Becca's arms, and a smile from Wayne . "See ya. Thanks for stopping by." He waited for them to close the door and pulled her a little tighter to his side. He really liked the way she felt. He found out that what he thought were plain old ordinary sweats—which he had to admit looked better on her than on any other woman he'd ever seen—were made of fabric so soft it made him want to touch her, as if just looking at her didn't do the trick. "Where were we?"
"I'm not sure."
She turned her head so they were nose-to-nose. Her breath fanned his face, her eyes sparkled, and her face flushed.
Becca stepped back and missed Rich's warmth. She'd never felt delicate until just now. Rich was big, hot, hard, and she seemed to fit right in the crook of his arm. Actually, she seemed to fit pretty well on top of him and underneath him too. What the hell was she thinking? Okay, she knew what she was thinking, but she had absolutely no right to think it. He was semi attached, and she was horny.
She touched her forehead. "Oh, I remember. You were asking about where we should start to turn you into Gina's Mr. Perfect." She smiled as he shook himself out of his stupor. Okay, so she was physically attracted to him. She was attracted to plenty of other men. It just seemed like more with Rich because she'd woken up naked with him. So she hadn't been able to quite get past that, but she would. Just as soon as she could get a little privacy and fresh batteries.
"Right. Where do you want to start?"
Becca pulled her sweater-shawl around her to make up for the loss of body heat and to cover any evidence of her arousal. No need to give him any reason to stare at her almost nonexistent chest. "How about with some ground rules. After all, we'll be living here. Together. Platonically."
Rich cleared his throat. "Right."
"Since you're so interested in becoming a Domestic God, you are responsible for all the cooking and cleaning."
"All of it? You have to be kidding."
"Come on now. I have to supervise and teach. You have to practice, practice, practice."
Rich sat on the couch and groaned. "Fine."
"And just because we're sharing the apartment temporarily doesn't mean we're sharing anything else. This is a purely platonic partnership."
"Right. So, you're going to be my coach? You're going to help me get Gina back?" He stood, turned to her, and grinned so wide she needed shades.
"Yes."
"Great!" He grabbed her, swung her around as if she weighed no more than a feather, and set her back down. "We better get started. We only have two weeks."
"What?" Oh God, what had she gotten herself into?