The Way You Look Tonight (The Sullivans #9)(10)

As she walked into the kitchen and took out a battered recipe book that he vaguely remembered belonging to her grandmother, he offered, "What can I help with?"

She waved him over to the bar stool on the other side of her kitchen island. "Finishing your beer."

Rafe couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so comfortable and so on edge with a woman at the same time. Of course, the edge was only there because he was a pig who couldn’t turn off his libido for three seconds around an old friend.

He took a seat at the kitchen counter and finally noticed the big stainless-steel bowls drying by the sink. "What are those for?"

"Chocolate." She smiled at him, a beautiful smile that did nearly as many strange things to his insides as her curves did. "I make truffles for a living."

"You and your grandmother were always making chocolate," he remembered, hating the way the light in her eyes dulled when he brought up her grandparents.

"It was her favorite hobby. Mine, too," she said with a small smile as she clearly worked to push away her grief. She ran her fingertips over the homemade wood cover on the old recipe book. "My grandfather made this for my grandmother by hand and even etched in their initials in this heart on the front. I’ve been meaning to take it somewhere to see if I can get this crack fixed, but I haven’t wanted to actually let it out of my sight for long enough to let anyone touch it." She opened the book and showed him a truffle recipe in her grandmother’s handwriting. "After my grandparents passed away, I decided to move here and turn her dream into a reality for both of us. Every day as I’m making my truffles, I think about the daily ritual we had of eating one perfect piece of homemade chocolate." Her eyes grew even softer. "That initial taste of it on my tongue. That slow melt that felt like it was awakening my entire body. The decadent, sumptuous taste that lingered."

Just hearing Brooke talk about eating chocolate was the most sensual experience of his life. And as she turned to pull eggs out of the fridge and flour from a nearby cupboard to make the pasta she’d promised him a short while earlier, Rafe had to work like crazy to get his body and brain to obey his order to back the hell off of wanting her.

"What—" He had to clear the lust from his throat. "What were you doing before and where?"

"Human resources in Boston."

He thought about that for a second and decided that, while human resources should have fit with Brooke’s naturally cheerful personality, he couldn’t see her in an office building wearing a tailored suit. Her laughter would have been stifled by four walls and forced air.

"You can only imagine how thrilled my parents were when I decided to chuck in my climb up the corporate ladder for truffles. Evidently they didn’t send me to an expensive college to make candy for a living," she said with a laugh before leaning forward as if she had a secret to share. "They don’t even like chocolate. Can you believe it?"

All he had to do was lean in a couple of inches, and he could have kissed her. Just pressed his lips to hers to see if she tasted as good as she looked.

"That’s crazy," he said, but he wasn’t talking about her parents not eating carbs. No, he was reminding himself that kissing the incredibly sweet girl next door was nuts.

"You like it, don’t you?" Her voice now held a husky tone that reverberated right to his groin.

Idiot that he was, he couldn’t make himself look away from her big green eyes. "Like what?"

As her full lips parted again, he nearly lost hold of his control when she said, "Chocolate."

Knowing he’d give away his lust if he spoke again, he nodded instead.

Unfortunately, when she smiled at him, it did just what the huskiness in her voice had. "Good. Then maybe you can be my taste tester this summer for the new recipes I’m working on."

Rafe could easily picture Brooke holding out a chocolate-covered fingertip for him to taste. Of course, in his vision she also happened to be completely naked. His mouth watered, his groin hardened further, and he had to pick up his beer and down it in one long gulp before he could answer her.

"I don’t know anything about chocolate."

"Actually, it’s better if you don’t. There’s nothing worse than an overeducated palate trying to dissect everything. I don’t care about prestige or awards. All I care about is bringing people pleasure."

Just the word pleasure from her gorgeous mouth had him as turned on as he could ever remember being. Again it struck him that any other woman would have been doing this to arouse him on purpose. But Brooke was simply beginning to roll her pasta dough through the pasta machine, looking bright and pretty in her grandparents’ kitchen.

What the hell was wrong with him, thinking there had been anything she’d said or done so far tonight that was meant to turn him on? All this time he’d thought he was better than those rich ass**les he investigated who thought with their dicks and screwed anything they could get their hands on. But he couldn’t even be friends with a pretty girl without mentally stripping her naked.

"In fact," she said, "the best way to do a taste test is blindfolded." Giving him a playful glance, she reached into a kitchen drawer and held up a clean kitchen towel. "This would probably work if you’re game to try a few of my new chocolate recipes later tonight."