The Way You Look Tonight (The Sullivans #9)(11)

Rafe immediately shook his head. "I’m happy to try out your new recipes, but I won’t wear a blindfold."

"Oh," she said as she carefully put the towel back into the drawer. "Okay."

How could he explain to her that he didn’t trust anyone enough anymore to willingly let them take away one of his senses? Figuring it was best to change the subject at this point, he said, "Last I knew, you were an eight-year-old who swam like a fish." Somehow he needed to remember to look at her as that little girl, rather than the gorgeous woman she’d become.

"And you were a fourteen-year-old boy who got into more trouble than anyone else." He was glad to see her smile come back so quickly. "I’ll bet you still do."

Her question should have been light, but the idea of getting into trouble with her had his body heating back up in all the places he’d been trying to force to cool down.

Focus. That’s what being this close to Brooke was going to be about. Holding focus on anything except how pretty she was, how soft her skin looked, how sweet her mouth would taste, how surprisingly sensual it was watching her manipulate the pasta with her bare hands...

What the hell had they been talking about? Oh yeah, what they’d been up to during the past eighteen years. Rather than answering her question about trouble, while ignoring the slight burn from the scar across his ribs that proved he hadn’t yet learned how to walk away from it, he asked, "Where do you sell your chocolates? Do you have a store in town?"

She shook her head. "I supply boxes to local grocery and gift stores. But," she added with a smile that held obvious pride and excitement, "I just took on a new partner who will be opening a retail store in Seattle."

Rafe knew better than to stick his nose into someone else’s personal life or business affairs unless they’d hired him to do just that—no one wanted advice they hadn’t asked for—but Brooke was a friend. And he couldn’t stand the thought of her being taken advantage of.

"Congratulations. What kind of things is your partner taking care of?"

"All the financial stuff," she said, as if it were no big deal that she’d turned her money over to someone else’s care. "Distribution channels. Packaging. Running the retail store."

"You trust her that much?"

"Him," she clarified, before adding, "And yes, he was a colleague of my father’s at Harvard, and has a great reputation in the food retail world. Why wouldn’t I trust him?"

Rafe could think of a hundred possible reasons, but before he could start laying them out one by one, she began to slide the spaghetti strands into a pot of water she’d put on to boil and asked, "Now that you’ve heard my long and winding story, tell me all about yours."

"I run a private investigation agency."

"I should have guessed that," she said with a wide smile. "Talk about the perfect job for you."

"What makes you think it’s perfect for me?"

She gave him a strange look, as though she couldn’t believe he was asking her that. "Whenever we played hide-and-seek, you always won, because you were able to put together clues no one else could."

"That’s just a kids game, Brooke. And you were always giggling and giving yourself away."

Her laughter—all grown up now and layered with sensuality he couldn’t manage to miss—washed over him. "You haven’t forgotten your nickname, have you?"

"No, but I was hoping you had."

"Not a chance, Tracker."

He groaned. "Remind me to strangle Mia the next time I see her for ever coming up with that."

"I’m sure no one outside of your family and mine knew it," she assured him, "although no one has ever forgotten the way you found that scared little boy in the mountains."

His parents had just told them they were losing the lake house. Rafe had escaped to the mountains to try to run off the painful thought of losing the one place that truly felt like home to him. He’d found the local search and rescue crew trying to locate a missing boy whose family was on vacation at the lake. As far as they knew, the kid had been chasing after his dog when he left their rental house. The dog came back home, but the boy didn’t. The crew had been afraid that the skinny five-year-old wouldn’t make it through the night in his T-shirt and shorts. Young enough to run, and to keep running after as many dead ends as he needed to, Rafe had used his tracking skills to locate the little boy. Forty-five minutes later, he’d found the kid shivering with dried tear tracks on his cheeks.

"Being a P.I. in Seattle seems like the grown-up version of what you always used to do."

Rafe had spent his life watching people ignore every clue around them. But Brooke, it seemed, didn’t miss a single one. Which also meant it was unlikely that she’d missed his clear attraction to her.

"Although I do have one question for you." He braced himself for her to say all the usual things people did, such as asking him for exciting stories that he hadn’t felt like telling for a long time. "Can you teach me to pick a lock, too?"

Feeling like it would be corrupting her to teach her something like that, he said, "You don’t need to know how to do that, Brooke."

Strangely, she looked a little disappointed by his answer, but instead of pushing him on it, she asked, "How long do you think you’ll be able to be away from your office?"