Star Daughter(11)

Dev nabbed a cookie anyway. “Figures you’d be a dark knight.”

Sheetal brandished the knife at him, then put the rack back down and reached for a cookie herself.

Her teeth crunched into what should have been gooey and warm chocolate-chip bliss, and she tried not to wince. He’d left the baking sheet in the oven too long. But who cared? He’d baked her cookies!

“Not bad, right?” Dev took a bite of his. “Huh, I thought they’d be softer.”

“Not bad at all,” Sheetal agreed, and she wasn’t even lying.

They pushed their stools together until their sides were touching. Dev broke a cookie in two, ate one half, and fed her the other.

He didn’t even wait for her to finish chewing to lean in for a kiss. Just a brush of lips before he sat back on his stool and grinned. A dimple appeared near the corner of his mouth. “Oh, right; each cookie costs one kiss. By my calculations, you’ve already had one and a half.”

“I do like to pay my debts,” Sheetal said, and leaned in for her own kiss. “There. Now you owe me half a cookie.”

“Actually, accounting for inflation, you just earned one-fourth of a cookie.” Dev grinned evilly, but when she protested, he gave her the other half.

While she ate, Dev produced a DVD still in its shrink wrap: Furious Fungus 5: Shiitake Strikes Back. The cover looked like someone had colorized angry mushroom clip art and then run the results through a terrible photo filter. “Hey, so we could either watch this thing I found on clearance, or . . .”

Sheetal stared for a minute, trying to figure out why anyone would pay even the ninety-nine cents listed on the price sticker. “I’m guessing you really want me to pick option B?”

Dev glanced at her, face serious, then at his feet. “Or, you know, we could go up to my room.”

His room. Her heart started pounding, and her skin prickled with nerves. Even the silver flame at her core kindled.

“That’s where I write them,” he hurried to add. “My songs, I mean.”

“Okay.” Just saying the word set off the butterfly ballet in Sheetal’s stomach. She surreptitiously wiped her palms on her skirt. “If it means not watching whatever that was.”

“Good.” He smirked. “I didn’t actually want to watch it, either.”

Leaving her bag on the kitchen table, Sheetal followed him up the gleaming hardwood stairs. All she could think about was how close he was and what might happen next.

At the door to his room, his easy stride faltered. “Guess I should have cleaned up a bit. It’s normally not this bad.”

He wasn’t kidding. Books, crumpled pieces of paper, and graphic novels lay all over the beige carpet. Clothes were heaped in front of the closet, half hiding a Batman poster. He hadn’t made his bed, but at least the sheets looked clean.

Dev quickly started dumping things in the closet. When Sheetal bent down to help, she saw one of the balled-up pages was covered with scratched-out words. A draft of the new song?

“I wasn’t kidding,” he said, watching her with his dark, beautiful eyes. “This is pretty much all I’ve been doing, writing songs. You just make me want to write so many.”

Sheetal turned into one big cheesy grin on the inside, but she tried to sound skeptical. “That’s a bit much even for you.”

Dev shrugged. “It’s the truth.” He chucked a bunch of laundry into a hamper and slammed the closet door. “There.”

Sheetal’s pulse stuttered. Here they were in his room, with the blinds drawn, and he was lighting a candle. Should she sit on the bed? Or stay on the floor and pretend she wasn’t sneaking peeks at the song?

Struggling not to feel completely awkward, she looked around for something to do and noticed the pictures on the orange walls. Whew!

She let go of the rejected draft and walked over to the nearest wall. The photos told a story: Dev with his family; Dev with his friends; Dev with a curly-haired older boy. She stopped at a shot of Dev trapped in the older boy’s headlock, both of them wearing green soccer jerseys and huge grins. “Who’s this?”

Dev ran a hand through his hair and frowned slightly. “My cousin Jeet.” He flopped onto the bed, propping himself up against the pillows, and motioned for Sheetal to join him.

A quiver ran through her. Never mind the pictures. She had her answer about where to sit.

Her belly heating, she climbed up beside Dev, half thrilled, half terrified. Suddenly his arms were around her, his face so near hers she could feel his eyelashes when he blinked.

“Caught you, pretty girl,” he teased. “Now what?”

She met his gaze head-on. “Maybe I wanted to get caught,” she said coyly. Part of her couldn’t believe she’d just said that. But right now, here with him in his bed, she felt dangerous. Unbound.

For once, Dev seemed at a loss for words. “Oh, yeah?” he asked at last, his voice lower. His eyes, velvet-dark and hungry in the candlelight, searched her face until everything beyond them faded. She really could fall into them now, she thought, giddy, an electric flood of energy setting her every nerve sparking.

She shivered.

“You look cold,” Dev said, pulling a blanket over them. “Better?”

Sheetal refrained from pointing out that it was eighty-four degrees in June. Instead, she leaned into his chest.