Christina Skye - Code Name - Bikini

He wanted her to stay.

She was mouthy and stubborn, but he liked her energy. He also liked her sense of loyalty to her kitchen team. Trace knew all about the importance of team loyalty.

But five hours to make one cake?

He felt a dull ache at his shoulder and grimaced. He was regretting his wrestling match with the big mixer, but he hadn’t done any real damage. Any pain had been more than offset by her smile of thanks and gentle kiss.

Great mouth, too.

Then he shrugged off the memory. She wasn’t his type. He’d always favored leggy blondes or sultry brunettes, women who liked to feel a man’s body fast and hard, without much discussion.

He rubbed his neck and wondered why the other women he could remember suddenly seemed pale and uninteresting.

He glanced at his watch.

Vintage champagne, he thought wryly. But first he was going to chew someone’s butt for closing the loading door without maintaining direct visual contact with the area. There was probably an override switch somewhere, but it was nowhere in sight, and someone could have been killed beneath the heavy door. The hotel was damned lucky that their only casualties were a forklift truck and a Hobart mixer.

After he retrieved his uniform jacket from the kitchen, he’d report that problem to security.

“LOOKING FOR SOMEONE?” Wolfe stole through the crowd, his smile forced.

“Just an escape route. I found the missing champagne. The senator’s wife seemed very happy.” Trace set his untouched glass of punch on a nearby table. “Is it just me or do these things keep getting worse?”

“Yes,” Wolfe said cryptically. “Don’t look now but the senator is gesturing. We should go make nice-nice.”

Trace uttered a sound of pain and eyed the open bar wistfully. “I didn’t sign up to play nice. I signed up for det cords and delayed rocket rounds.”

“Welcome to the New Navy,” Wolfe muttered.

TEN MINUTES LATER Trace stood at the back of the crowded room finishing a shrimp canapé that tasted like cardboard. To his left a journalist was trying to draw Wolfe into an argument about the necessity of collateral damage during wartime operations. Not that he’d succeed.

Finally Wolfe broke away, looking harassed as a woman slid a business card with her phone number into his pocket. “If I’m not brain dead, I will be in another five minutes.” Wolfe glanced at his watch, then examined the thinning crowd. “We’re done here. Let’s roll.”

“Hallelujah.” Trace headed to the door without a backward glance. He and Wolfe said polite goodbyes to the senator and his wife, then breathed a sigh of relief when they reached the elevators.

Trace consulted his memory of the hotel floor plan and hit the elevator button down.

“Fourth floor?” Wolfe raised an eyebrow as Trace pulled a bright pink sweater out of a brown paper bag. “I don’t think pink is your best color, O’Halloran.”

“I have to drop this off at a lecture downstairs. I won’t be long.”

The elevator doors opened at four.

“There’s a story here somewhere.” Wolfe stared at Trace, then shrugged. “None of my business, though. Downstairs. Five minutes. There’s a beer back at our hotel with my name on it.”

“Roger that.”

ALMOST DONE, Gina thought.

The crème brûlée demonstration had received wild applause, with her cake decorating tutorial a close second. She was pretty sure she had flecks of buttercream frosting in her hair, but she was too tired to care. All she wanted was to get back to the ship, kick off her shoes and unwind.

Then she saw the white uniform at the back of the room and all thoughts of relaxing vanished. He’d actually tracked her down. She’d expected him to be distracted and forget all about her.

She tried to focus on the food critic in the front row. The man tugged at his small goatee, launching into his third convoluted question.

Meanwhile, Trace was handing her sweater to Reggie. The two spoke quietly and Reggie nodded.

Please get his phone number, Gina prayed.

She cleared her throat. “I think this will be our last question.” She smiled but made a point of glancing at her watch.

“Ms. Ryan, the New York Times recently quoted a food writer who said that imported chocolate is the new sex. Any comment?”

Gina waited a beat and smiled. “Was something wrong with the old sex?”

When the laughter stopped, she cut to a brief review of quality, artisanal imported chocolates, outlining her personal favorites. Then she wrapped up the session.

When she glanced at the back of the room, Trace was staring at her, smiling.

He raised his hand.

“Yes? The man in the uniform,” Gina said a little breathlessly.

“Don’t get me wrong, ma’am. I like good chocolate as much as the next guy. But the way I see it, sex is always going to have it over chocolate.”

Laughter broke in another wave.

He gave her a calm two-finger salute that sent the dark flutter nose-diving through her chest. Before Gina could answer, a man with a camera cut in front of her and she was caught in a TV interview.

When she looked up, Trace was gone.

One day later

THE SHIP’S LOWER DECKS were packed. While passengers lined up for entrance upstairs, uniformed workers raced past the lower loading areas with cans, food boxes and equipment.

Gina leaned against a rail, watching huge drums of cooking oil being rolled toward the ship’s stores. The head of beverage services stood in the middle of the chaos, looking perfectly made up and very smug. Gina wasn’t up with all the fashion trends, but she suspected that Blaine Richardson’s cropped red sweater was a Prada original. How you could afford designer clothes on a head of beverage service’s salary was a mystery to Gina. Then again most things about Blaine were a mystery to Gina.

As a seabird circled overhead, she rubbed her neck, smoothing knots of tension. All she wanted to do was sit down and close her eyes for a few minutes before the dinner madness began, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen.

Blaine was gesturing to her from the deck, and talking to Blaine was never a good thing.

Gina crossed the deck warily. “You wanted something?”

“No, but you will.”

The mysterious act again. “I don’t see any problems, Blaine. I logged all my stores in the ship’s computer three days ago. I’m good to go.”

Blaine studied a crimson nail and yawned. “Really?”

Whenever Blaine struck a casual pose like this, disaster always waited right around the corner.

“There’s no problem for me. But you’ve definitely got one. You should have been here earlier when the men began to load. There were space issues inside one of the refrigerated units. You remember when the thermostat started acting up, don’t you?” Her voice was sweet.

About as sweet as poisoned fruit, Gina thought. “That thermostat was supposed to be replaced here in California.”

“Afraid they couldn’t find the right parts.” Blaine studied another crimson nail. “That means no repair and no guarantees on anything stored in that unit.” She yawned dramatically. “Lucky for me that I’m an early riser. I made sure that all my stores were put in the functioning units. Since you weren’t here…”

The workers had diverted her food to a malfunctioning unit?

Gina stiffened, hit by a wave of anger. The day before she had been busy doing a favor for the cruise line bigwigs. Earlier in the morning she had had to catch up with her work on board. Meanwhile, the Wicked Witch of the West had been here sabotaging her pastry stores. Any pastry chef knew that chocolate was very temperature-sensitive, with an ideal storage temperature between fifteen and eighteen degrees centigrade. Fluctuations in temperature could result in melting and subsequent recrystalization of the cocoa butter fat. The surface powder or “bloom” was death to good pastry, requiring a new round of tempering.