Bringing Home the Bad Boy (Second Chance #1)(29)
A whispered “Evan” was all she managed. The hand around her arm tugged her closer. His eyes were unmistakably glued to her mouth.
“Hey! There you guys are—oh, sorry, am I… interrupting?”
He didn’t move, but she jerked at the sound of Gloria’s voice. Glo stood in the doorway, looking at the male hand most definitely wrapped around Charlie’s arm, her red lips poised in curiosity.
Charlie patted the hand and untangled herself from his grip. “Arguing over the pig drawings.” She added an exaggerated eye roll. “You know artists,” she said, hoping Gloria did know artists because it was a throwaway statement she had no follow-up for. She stepped past Evan, this time because he let her, and said, “I think he should have hair, Evan is strictly no hair. You can settle it for us. Wine?”
There. Talking ninety miles a minute ought to get her out of this pickle.
“Uh… sure, thanks.” Gloria approached the drawings while Evan faced her, doing a dead-on impression of the statue in the city square. “Still struggling with Swine Flew, I see,” Glo said. “Can I help?”
Charlie left them and hustled through the hallway and toward the kitchen, so relieved to be out of the studio’s oppressive air she literally sucked in a huge breath the moment she entered the living room.
“They fighting already?” Asher Knight asked as she stumbled to a stop at the kitchen island. This was as close to a real rock star as she’d ever been. She hadn’t met Asher yet and now that she was seeing the singer of the swoony ballad “Unchained” in the flesh leaning on Evan’s breakfast bar, she’d admit to being a touch starstruck.
“Fighting? No, um… no, I don’t think so.”
He leaned his arms on the bar, his lips curving, the stubble prevalent on his chin and cheeks. His hair was a mess, but the style was purposeful, caused by hair products unlike Evan’s, whose style was less of a “style” and more a result of nervous fingers and lack of knowledge about hair products.
It was a good look for Knight, though. In a designer black tee with pale gray angel’s wings on the front, several braided hemp bracelets tracking up one of his wrists, and the array of chunky silver rings decorating his fingers, the man standing before her was not merely a sexy rock god. He was King of the Sexy Rock Gods.
“Do they fight often?” She crossed to the counter and peeked inside a few reusable grocery sacks.
He blew out a breath. “Like they’re f*ckin’ married.” Then was quick to add, “ ’Scuse my French.”
“That’s not French,” Lyon pointed out from his perch on the couch.
“Hey, don’t say anything I say. Ever. Okay, bud?”
“Why not?”
“Because your dad will throttle me.”
Lyon grinned like he might not mind seeing that.
Charlie grabbed the grocery sacks and pulled out foam, plastic-wrapped packages of ground turkey, beef, and bottles and jars of various burger fixings, then began arranging them on the counter.
Ash moved to her side. “What can I do?”
She searched a drawer, then another before finding a knife and a cutting board. “What’s your specialty?”
He leaned a hand on the counter and hovered over her, a devilish smile on his devilish face. “My specialty… lies outside of the kitchen.”
She took in his hooded dark eyes, the practiced smile affixed to his face, and the lack of space between them, and laughed. Honest to God, threw her head back and laughed.
He straightened away from her—literally taken aback. “Somethin’ funny?”
“You.” She shook her head as she rinsed a tomato under the tap. “Coming onto me.”
“Was not,” he lied with a smile.
“Were so.” She smiled back.
“So you do recognize when it happens.” Evan’s voice cut in as he entered the kitchen. Gloria trailed behind him, her sharp blue eyes snapping from Asher to Charlie and back again.
Charlie occupied herself by angling the knife and slicing the tomato into thick slices. “I hope you don’t mind I started without you,” she said to Gloria, suddenly worried she’d stepped on the other woman’s toes.
“It’s fine.” But Gloria didn’t sound sincere. Her gaze fettered to Ash again as she casually positioned herself between him and Charlie. “I’ll make the patties. Evan, you have any seasonings in this house?”
“Salt and pepper,” he answered.
“Chili powder?” she asked. “Cumin? Granulated onion? Thyme? Any of these things sounding familiar?”
“Off my back, lady.” He moved to a cabinet.
Asher gestured to them while they were preoccupied and mouthed the word “married” to Charlie.
Which she didn’t like at all. Because if Glo and Evan acted like this in front of everyone, maybe there was more going on between them than she’d originally thought.
Subconsciously, or maybe very consciously, she moved to the cabinet and helped Evan locate the spices Gloria requested, as well as a few of her own choosing.
*
Dinner was informal. Evan ran the grill while Ash mostly tried to tell him how to run the grill. Charlie and Gloria had divided the work on the burgers—turkey was Charlie territory and Glo was on beef. And while he wasn’t a fan of turkey, and because the girls had formed some kind of competition with their seasoning skills, Evan ended up eating one of each. The poultry patty wasn’t half-bad.