Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(103)

“Are you hungry? You must have gotten up at the crack of dawn.”

“I’m starving,” she admitted.

He helped her extricate herself and stand, then stood, too. “Food first? Shower first?”

“Oh, God,” she said. “That’s a tough call. Food.”

Watching him get dressed—watching how he hopped on one foot to insert himself in his jeans, how he disappeared into his shirt, that flat expanse of abs still peeking at her, and then reappeared, hair ruffled, already smiling for her—made her want to start the process again, to peel him out of his things and go another round. She reached into her satchel for a new pair of panties—turquoise lace bikinis—then dressed herself, as he watched with narrowed eyes. She half-expected him to intervene, but he didn’t, just watched like someone too polite to dive in to Thanksgiving dinner before grace was said.

He led her down a narrow hallway into the kitchen. There was the dishwasher, with a neon-orange Do Not Use Me Post-it note, and the range, which looked as if it had cooked when Jimmy Carter was president. The ceiling was high, sunlight rushed in through enormous windows, and his things were scattered over the counters and on the kitchen table.

His things. She had never realized how much intimacy there was in being able to see the mundane details of a person’s life, not until she had been introduced to Miles in this slow, backward way. She’d had sex with him before she’d gotten to see that his refrigerator was papered with New Yorker cartoons and photographs, before she’d had a chance to note that his dishes looked like hand-thrown pottery, before she’d glimpsed the T-shirt tossed over the chair or the stacks of unopened mail or the yellow do-it-yourself home-repair book.

He got out a loaf of thick-sliced multigrain bread, jars of mayo and mustard, a clamshell of fussy greens, waxed-paper deli packages of ham and provolone. He began assembling two sandwiches on those slightly warped, irregular plates, blue glaze over a stony-looking first coat.

“Did someone make those for you?”

He lifted the tape on the lunch meat and spread the packages open. “My ex-fiancée was a potter.”

An ex-fiancée. The history behind the sad eyes? “The plates are beautiful.”

He didn’t volunteer more and she didn’t push it. “Do you want me to make my own sandwich?”

“Just as easy to make two as one. Unless you want to make it so you can decide how much of what you want?”

“Nah.”

She watched the flex and shift of the muscles and tendons in his forearms as he made the sandwiches, the dark hair straight and feathery but definitively masculine. He worked slowly, carefully, spreading mayo and mustard to the edges of the bread, distributing the lettuce evenly. The same guy who would cook dinner alone in the kitchen, who would run his dishwasher every night.

Hard to reconcile him with the guy who’d abandoned himself so completely to burying his face between her legs earlier. She loved that contradiction.

They ate sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. He took big, manly bites and chewed with his mouth closed. He got points for both of those features.

He swallowed and stared at her for a moment, and she knew something was about to happen even before he asked, “How long can you stay?”

As long as you want me to.

She was worried about this, this lack of caution on the part of her subconscious. It concerned her that it might say something against her better judgment. She’d open her mouth and words like that would fall out. Or she’d beg him for something. Like me as much as I like you.

That would be embarrassing. And, on a deeper level, she worried that the lack of caution, her willingness to do one crazy thing after another, would eventually hurt. A lot.

You’re so trusting.

Henry had meant that her trust in him had been misplaced, but probably she was also too trusting in general that things would work out okay. Look at her willingness to hop on that plane and put herself in a position to get smacked down. Miles could have opened the door, taken one look at her, and called in a restraining order.

Restraining order, heh, Beavis and Butt-Head supplied, and she swallowed a giggle. “My return flight is Sunday afternoon, but I don’t have to stay here. One of my college roommates is here, and I told her I might crash with her, if …”

If you’d done what any sane person would have done and assumed I was a crazed stalker.

“You don’t have to do that. You can hang with me.”

That was good—Christmas-morning good—and like a kid on Christmas morning she was greedy for more. She wanted it wrapped up and tied with a bow. She wanted him to ask.

As if he’d heard her thoughts, he added, “I want you here. As long as you can stay.”

It was almost too much, the warmth and thrill, and she had to look away from him so he wouldn’t see everything in her eyes. Declarations and confessions, hasty and too trusting.

“Okay.”

He took a bite of sandwich. Chewed. Set the sandwich down. Gazed at her for a long moment, until her face got hot and the heat sank into her breasts and belly. “It’s weird that you’re here,” he said.

“Is it too weird?”

He looked at his sandwich, the corners of the kitchen, the stacks of mail, as if the answer were out there somewhere, just out of reach. “No. It’s too normal.”