Burning Up Read online

  “Hello?”

  “Sophie, it’s Julie Jenkins calling,” a cultured voice said, and Sophie recognized one of the restaurant’s wealthiest patrons.

  While she’d catered private functions for Julie a few times in the past, the other woman had never called her at home before. Switching gears, Sophie endeavored to sound professional even though she was acutely aware that she was dressed like a refugee from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

  “Julie. How are you?”

  “Very well, thank you. Sophie, I’m calling to ask a favor. I need someone to act as private chef on my Blue Mountains estate for the next four weeks. An old friend of mine is recuperating from an injury. Would you be interested?”

  Sophie frowned and put down the mascara wand. “I’m sorry, but there’s no way I could take time off from Sorrentino’s at such short notice,” she explained.

  “What if I told you your client would be Lucas Grant?” Julie asked hopefully.

  Sophie’s eyebrows shot up. Lucas Grant was Brandon’s absolute favorite actor. Personally, while she admired his acting, she found his rampant bad-boy persona ridiculous. The man was in his thirties, when was he going to stop partying and grow up?

  “Tempted?” Julie asked, clearly hoping Sophie would change her mind.

  “Sorry, there really is no way I could get the time off,” Sophie repeated.

  “Pity. The money’s good, and you were the first person I thought of,” Julie said. “You know how John and I love your cooking.”

  “Thanks, Julie. And thanks for thinking of me. I only wish I could help you out,” Sophie said.

  “Not a problem. And just so you know, Sophie, no one who knows anything about food paid a bit of attention to that foolish review last month. Sorrentino’s will always be our first choice when dining out,” Julie said.

  They ended the call after another few minutes of small talk. But instead of diving back into her makeup bag, Sophie stared sightlessly at her hands, brooding once again about the restaurant review that had rocked her world last month.

  She hadn’t even known they were being reviewed. When the photographer made contact to take shots of the dining room, explaining the reviewer had already been in for his meal, she’d felt slightly cheated. She liked to put her best foot forward when she knew a foodie was expected. Still, she hadn’t been too worried. Sorrentino’s had an excellent reputation and she’d received a strong recommendation from the same magazine five years ago.

  Not so this time. She still remembered the words by heart. How could she not? They were etched into her pride.

  On our last visit five years ago, Sophie Gallagher of Sorrentino’s in Surry Hills seemed set to become one of the shining lights of the Australian restaurant world. But it seems time has stood still in Sorrentino’s kitchen. On our return, we found the menu little changed, a disappointing discovery when dining in Sydney has taken some huge and exciting leaps forward in recent years. All was done well, but the choices on offer were safe, conservative, unadventurous. One can only guess that Ms. Gallagher has settled into a premature middle age.

  Every time she thought of that last line, she wanted to spit. Smug bastard, passing judgment on her through her menu. She’d ranted and raved for days after the magazine came out, but fortunately the restaurant’s bookings had remained solid and Brandon and his parents had been more than ready to slough the whole thing off and forget it.

  Probably good advice, but the review continued to niggle at Sophie, especially when people mentioned it to her—even well-intentioned people like Julie. A dozen times over the past five years she’d experimented with new dishes for the menu, testing new ideas and combinations. But always she returned to the understanding that Sorrentino’s was a family restaurant—an elegant, neighborhood place where husbands took their wives for anniversaries and their children for birthday celebrations. The menu she’d created five years ago suited their clientele admirably, as the restaurant’s success attested. Why rock the boat?

  The sound of a key in the front door shook Sophie out of her brooding and had her shooting to her feet. She’d only mascaraed one eye, and her short, pixie-cut auburn hair was clinging damply to her skull. Ruffling it with her fingertips, she snatched at a lipstick and smoothed on some color just as the door to the bedroom swung open and Brandon entered.

  It was Sunday, and they had exactly three hours before either of them was due at the restaurant for the night. They had champagne, black satin and sexy music—everything they needed for a little horizontal play. Throwing her shoulders back, Sophie struck what she hoped was a sexy pose.

  “Surprise!” she said, giving him her best come-hither look.

  Brandon froze. His gaze ran up and down her body. Then his shoulders slumped and he closed his eyes for a long, long beat.

  When he opened them, the look in his eyes made her stomach dip with fear.

  “Sophie, we need to talk,” he said.

  2

  TWO HOURS LATER, Sophie pulled into the darkened driveway of Julie Jenkins’s Blue Mountains estate west of Sydney. Behind her on the backseat of her rusty Volkswagen Beetle was a box containing a jumble of cookbooks, her recipe folder, her knife roll and, for some absurd reason, a can opener. She’d thrown it all together haphazardly when what Brandon had told her had sunk in.

  They were over. Finished. Fourteen years gone, just like that.

  Hot tears burned at the backs of Sophie’s eyes as she wound her way up a long driveway, and she knuckled them away and swallowed noisily.

  He hadn’t even wanted to talk. That was the thing that hurt the most. He’d presented her with a fait accompli.

  “Sophie, I can’t do this anymore,” he’d said. “I’m sick of hoping things will change. I’m sick of lying in bed night after night like an old married couple. I don’t want to get to forty and look back and wonder where my life has gone.”

  “I know we’ve been in a rut lately,” she’d said, and he’d laughed—a sharp, hard, angry laugh.

  “A rut? Jesus, Sophie, we’re in the Grand freaking Canyon.”

  “So we talk. We do something about it. What do you think this afternoon is all about?”

  Brandon had sat on the end of the bed and put his head in his hands. “Sophie, a bunch of satin is not going to patch over our problems. It’s time to face the facts—we passed our use-by date years ago.”

  That had made her legs go weak and she’d been forced to sit beside him.

  “That’s so not true,” she’d said. “We still love each other. We’re best friends. We just need to take time to rediscover each other again.”

  “We love each other, but we’re not in love, Sophie. We haven’t been for a long time.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  Then he’d sucker-punched her. “I want to sleep with other women.”

  She’d gasped. It was a slap in the face the way he’d said it so abruptly.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s true. Don’t you ever wonder what it would be like with someone else?” he’d asked, searching her face with his eyes.

  “No. No, I don’t.”

  He’d nodded then. “I suppose that’s probably true. You like things to stay the same, I know that. You like your routines, and knowing what’s going to happen next. Well, I can’t do it anymore. I feel like I’m suffocating.”

  He’d started packing a suitcase then, and she’d been frozen with shock as she tried to comprehend what was happening.

  “You’ll thank me, you’ll see. You just need a push to make you get out there and spread your wings. We’ve been hiding with each other for too long, Soph.”

  She’d been about to throw herself at his feet and beg him to talk more, to at least give them a chance to try to make things work. But the patronizing, all-knowing, parental tone of his words had made her bristle. And she’d done the first thing that had sprung to mind—picked up the phone and called Julie Jenkins.

  And now she was pulling up outside a huge, two-story house—man
sion, really—about to embark on four weeks of pandering to one of the world’s most indulged men.

  Once again tears threatened, but Sophie refused to cry. She was angry, not sad, she told herself. The things Brandon had said to her, about her…She felt as though he’d been kidnapped by pod people and replaced with an alien. How could he have been thinking and feeling that way and she never had a clue?

  For a moment she felt overwhelmed.

  She was single. It was almost incomprehensible. She’d been with Brandon since she was sixteen years old, but now, suddenly, at thirty, she was single. Alone. Adrift. All her plans, all her dreams, gone in the time it had taken Brandon to pack his suitcase.

  For a moment she gave in to the confusion and leaned forward, resting her forehead against the steering wheel. She had no idea what was going to happen tomorrow, or the day after that. She had no idea where she’d be in a month’s time, a year’s time.

  A huge gulf of fear seemed to yawn at her feet.

  You like your routines and knowing what’s going to happen next.

  Brandon’s words tickled at the edges of her mind and she sat up straight and thumped the steering wheel with her fist.

  Why did she feel so defensive about what he’d said? What was wrong with liking routines? With enjoying the known, the secure?

  “Nothing,” she said out loud.

  Brandon was the one who’d given up on them. He was the one with doubts, urges, unfulfilled desires. This was not about her.

  Her jaw set, Sophie swung the door open. Tomorrow morning, Lucas Grant was arriving for a four-week recuperation spell after injuring himself on set, according to Julia Jenkins. Sophie had tonight to look over the strict diet she’d been sent and familiarize herself with the kitchen.

  Both tasks that she could handle with one hand tied behind her back, despite what Brandon had said about her.

  “Bastard,” she said under her breath. It felt better to be angry. If she wasn’t angry, she had the feeling she was going to be very, very sad. And she wasn’t ready to deal with that yet.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Lucas threw down his bag and looked around. He’d known the Jenkinses for a long time—ever since John had taught him drama at NIDA, in fact—but he’d never realized quite how loaded they were until now. The Blue Mountains “house” that Julie had offered him for his recovery was, in fact, a sprawling estate, complete with heated in-ground pool, caretaker’s lodge and a spectacular seven-bedroom main house with high, arched ceilings, imported stone floors and every modern convenience. If he didn’t already own three houses of his own—L.A., New York, Sydney—he’d almost be envious.

  He guessed if he had to be stuck on crutches, there were worse places to be, and not many better.

  Frowning, he glanced down at the bulge his newly acquired knee brace made beneath his jeans. He’d torn his ankle ligaments, as well as the medial ligament in his knee. The whole of his foot was bruised and slightly swollen, although it was hard to tell since most of it was hidden by removable neoprene braces, designed to hold his ankle and knee in the correct position while his tendons healed. The doctor had told him it was a miracle that he hadn’t broken anything, considering what had happened.

  It had been two days since the accident, and his leg still hurt like hell. Fortunately, they’d given him some serious Tyrannosaurus-Rex-strength painkillers—as well as strict instructions to take it easy for at least four weeks. Which was why Derek had insisted he take Julie up on the offer of her mountain hideaway. Lucas had a film scheduled to begin shooting next week, and the whole production had been delayed to allow him time to recover. The studio had insurance to cover this sort of situation, but Lucas wasn’t exactly the golden-haired boy right now.

  He shrugged the thought off as he dropped his crutches beside the bed and flopped backward onto the king-size mattress. Four weeks wasn’t going to kill anyone—him or the studio. Yeah, he’d stuffed up a little. But it wasn’t as though he’d meant to slip and collide with the balcony railing. If it hadn’t been for that biography…

  Crossing his arms behind his head, Lucas stared at the ceiling. It was bloody quiet up here in the mountains. No hum of traffic, no people moving around, no chatter of voices in distant rooms. The only sound he could hear was the faint chirrup of birds in the gum trees outside.

  Peaceful. Huh.

  After about five minutes of peaceful, he started to get a little twitchy. He wasn’t used to having time on his hands. Usually he spent at least two hours a day training—weights, running, yoga for flexibility. If he wasn’t actually shooting a film, he usually had costume fittings, makeup tests, meetings with studios, meetings with Derek or meetings with anyone else who wanted a piece of him, not to mention all the promotional commitments for new releases such as interviews and photo shoots. At night, there were premieres, openings and parties to attend…. His cup runneth over, as it were. Just the way he liked it.

  Except for the next four weeks. Frowning, Lucas had a sudden vision of how the next month was going to pan out—lots of birds tweeting and him lying around like this wishing he was elsewhere. In his mind, time slowed to a turtle’s crawl, days stretched into weeks, weeks into months, months into—

  Shit. Maybe coming up here alone was a bad idea. In the hospital, doped to the eyeballs and copping flack from the studio and Derek, a little peace and quiet had seemed extremely desirable.

  But not this much peace and quiet.

  Sliding his cell phone from his pocket, Lucas scrolled through his address book and punched speed dial. The phone rang once before a familiar voice picked up.

  “David, mate, how are you?” he asked.

  “Lucas. You’re still alive, are you? Heard you got drunk and fell off a balcony or something,” David Gracie said, laughing down the line.

  Lucas and David had trained together at NIDA, and after a slow start David was now knocking back offers to appear in multimillion-dollar films, his star firmly on the rise.

  “A slight exaggeration. Just got a dodgy knee for a few weeks,” Lucas explained lightly. The joys of being famous—everyone knew his business about two seconds after he did. “I’ve got a few weeks off, anyway, and I was wondering whether you wanted to grab a few warm bodies and come hang in the Blue Mountains?”

  “Mate, I’d love to, but I’m about to head out to L.A. Maybe another time, yeah?”

  “Sure, man. Absolutely.”

  Ending the call, Lucas scanned his address book for another likely suspect.

  “Hey, Mikey, how you doin’?” he asked as another acting buddy picked up.

  But Mikey was in the middle of a theatrical season at the Opera House playing King Lear. In fact, it seemed all his old friends were tied up with something over the next few weeks. Some of them had day jobs now, having given up acting for something more reliable. Others had families, God forbid. No one was free to come play in the mountains. His thoughts flew to L.A., where there was always someone kicking around, ready to party. But there was no way any of his drinking buddies were about to jump on a plane and travel halfway around the world to stop him expiring from boredom.

  “Damn.” Giving up for the moment, Lucas tossed his phone to one side and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The painkillers were starting to wear off, and his ankle and knee were throbbing like bastards.

  The real issue, however, was his isolation. How the hell was he going to stay sane for four whole weeks of nothing?

  Vaguely it occurred to him that there was something faintly pathetic about being so reliant on other people and stimuli to help him get by. What kind of man couldn’t stand a few hours of his own company, let alone a few weeks? Maybe he ought to tough it out up here to prove to himself that he could. Some early nights, a bit of clean living. Maybe it would even do him good.

  Tension crawled up his back and into his shoulders at the very thought.

  “Stuff it.”

  Grabbing his phone again, he rang Derek, rolling his eyes when it went through to voice mail. T
ypical, the one time he actually wanted to talk to the guy.

  “Listen. This stupid mountain idyll thing was a big mistake,” he told Derek’s voice mail. “Call me back and we’ll make other plans.”

  Ending the call, he reached for the side pocket on his suitcase and found the painkillers he’d been prescribed. Tossing back a couple, he gritted his teeth until the world began to blur at the edges a little.

  “That’s more like it,” he muttered to himself.

  Levering himself up on his elbows, he glanced out the window and spotted his first pleasant surprise of the day—out on the balcony stood a big, kick-ass telescope.

  “All right.”

  Grabbing his crutches, he lumbered to the French doors that opened onto the balcony and stepped outside. He was greeted with a gust of hot, eucalyptus-tinged air, the warmth actually welcome after the air-conditioned house.

  He’d always had a thing for telescopes, and he’d been meaning to buy one of his own for years. Somehow, though, he never seemed to spend enough time in any of his three homes to get around to investing in one.

  The lens and eyepiece were protected by rubber caps, and he tugged them loose and lowered his head to the eyepiece. The telescope was trained down and to the right of the pool, and at first he saw nothing but blurry shapes and indistinct light and shadow.

  It took him a moment to locate the right dials, but soon Lucas was twisting knobs experimentally—until the image in front of his eyes shifted abruptly into sharp focus.

  “Holy hell!” he said, his head jerking back from the telescope in surprise.

  He stared blankly at the sky for a short beat, then grinned widely and lowered his head to the telescope again to make sure that his eyes had not been deceiving him.

  Framed perfectly between the not-completely-lowered edge of a Venetian blind and the windowsill of the caretaker’s lodge were the prettiest, plumpest, most delicious-looking breasts he’d seen in a long time. Full, creamy-white, with soft pink nipples that seemed to be sitting up and begging for his attention, they looked silky-smooth and very, very edible.