No Weddings (No Weddings #1)(26)
“Yeah.” It was more than okay. This was the most body contact we’d had, and although the rational part of my mind worked out that there was no other way she could’ve ridden on the back of my bike, I hadn’t actually prepared for having her wrapped around me.
I decided right then and there, I wanted her on my bike. A lot.
Like a champ, Hannah remained calm during the short ride to my place, holding on tight, but not clamping on for dear life at every turn. I looked at my street with fresh eyes, seeing what she would see as we approached. It wasn’t great wealth by any stretch of the imagination, but it was an established neighborhood close enough to Loading Zone and school to make it a worthwhile investment. The house wasn’t huge, but it was comfortable. Although I could afford to live there alone, I chose not to, taking on a friend whom I trusted enough to live with as a roommate.
Wordlessly, she followed me up the walk to the front door. The silence between us was comfortable, maybe because I’d been lost in my own thoughts or possibly because I felt connected to her in a loose friendship way I found hard to define. It definitely wasn’t due to my not caring about what she thought of the place. I was honest enough with myself to admit that I cared about her opinion of me, and where I lived was, in many ways, a reflection of me.
I dropped the keys in the entry table bowl. “Feel free to poke around. Be nosy, open drawers and cabinets as if it was your place. Rest assured, I intend to at yours.”
That earned me a shove and an easy laugh. I chuckled.
“Mase? Ya’ home?” With the garage closed and the house quiet, I wasn’t sure.
“Yeah.” A grunt from his bedroom.
“Well put some pants on, dude. We got company.”
As we made our way down the hall, Mase popped his head out sideways, then grinned. The sandy blond mop on his head was its usual shaggy mess.
Hannah stopped short of Mase’s bedroom. He was shirtless.
He eased the rest of the way into the hall in low-slung tattered jeans and bare feet. “Don’t worry, I got pants.”
Hannah grinned. “Awesome.”
“Mase, Hannah. Hannah, Mase.”
They shook hands, but I pressed mine to her lower back and glared at Mase. He dropped her hand and backed up, holding spread palms up in innocence.
“That’s obviously Mase’s room.” I nodded into the hurricane-devastation zone as we passed. At the end of the hall, I opened a closed door. “This is mine.”
She stood in the doorway, scanning the room but not going inside. In between classes earlier, I’d done a five-minute whirlwind clean job, which consisted of shoving things in drawers and under the bed, to be sorted out at a later time.
When she turned back around, I kept it casual, returning down the hall. Mase had vanished behind his closed door. I continued the two-minute tour, pointing as she followed. “Living room, kitchen, breakfast nook, back porch. Out there is a bricked patio and barbecue. Around that corner are the stairs down to a finished basement with laundry and game tables.” I turned to face her. “Want to see the basement?”
Hannah stood in the kitchen I’d renovated, spinning in a circle to take in the culinary terrain. When her gaze landed back on me, she shook her head. “No, I’m good.”
“Seriously? You don’t want to see my basement? The very best part’s down there…”
Her eyes sparkled, then her gaze drifted down, lingering below my beltline. “No, I don’t want to see your basement. Maybe later...”
I blinked. “Shit. Are we talking about square footage in my house or my pants?”
“You tell me.” She held a dead-serious expression for a few heavy heartbeats, then her hand flew to her mouth and she burst into laughter.
I snorted, shaking my head. “Woman, you intrigue me more and more.”
Through the entire house tour, Hannah showed no interest in exploring the place further, but in the kitchen, she investigated every drawer and cabinet before standing in front of the stainless steel refrigerator, studying its contents. A quick nod was the only indication I got that she was satisfied.
Pulling half of the new items from the refrigerator onto the butcher-block island, she reopened cabinets and drawers, grabbing a skillet, a saucepan, and various bowls and utensils. Not wanting to get in the way, I stayed off to the side, leaning against the counter, watching.
She finally relinquished her tiny purse to the end of the counter after pulling a hair clip out from inside. With a quick twist, she spun those sexy, unruly locks into submission, clipping them to the back of her head. I stared at her, fascinated.
She glanced at me. “You helping?”
“Absolutely.” I pushed off and stood beside her. “What do you need?”
She grabbed a metal colander and pointed at the leafy greens and root vegetables. “All of this washed and rinsed, then chopped into large pieces.”
I nodded.
As I went about my assigned task at the smaller sink in the island, she rinsed the chicken breasts in the larger sink, skinned them, and then cut them into strips with efficient slices of our razor-sharp butcher’s knife. She dumped the pieces into a bowl of raw scrambled eggs, tossed them onto a platter of flour, rolling them to dust all the surfaces, then laid them in the sizzling oil inside a pan on the stove. She placed a splatter screen over the top of it. Once she cleaned her preparation surfaces and the knife, she joined me, grabbing a turnip, a parsnip, and a bunch of carrots in unusual colors: white, purple, and orange.