Coming Home(106)

She loved the way he rubbed the back of her neck whenever he thought she was uneasy. She loved how he smiled at her when he didn’t think she could see him.

And she loved that, despite the palpable sexual tension between them, he had been a perfect gentleman all night.

Danny pulled the car into an empty space in front of her apartment, and before he could say anything, Leah turned to him.

“Do you want to come in for a little while?”

He turned to look at her. “Um…yeah. Okay.”

“Okay,” she said before undoing her seat belt, and Danny cut the engine as she exited the car.

They walked up the path to her door in silence, and once they were inside, Leah took his coat, hanging it beside hers in the closet. She closed her eyes, taking a small, steadying breath before she righted her expression and turned to face him. He was standing by the door, his hands shoved in his pockets.

“So,” he said, rolling up on the balls of his feet.

“So.”

His eyes met hers, and the way he was looking at her made her want to pin him up against the door.

Instead, she cleared her throat and said, “I have something for you.”

“You do?”

She nodded. “Don’t get excited though. It’s not a big deal. Actually, it’s kind of silly.”

They stared at each other for a few seconds, and Leah felt her stomach flutter as a slow smile curved his lips.

“So…can I have it?” he asked through a laugh.

“It’s in the kitchen,” she replied, turning in that direction.

“Did you get me a Slap Chop?”

“What?” she laughed. “Why would you guess that?”

“I don’t know. You said it was in the kitchen and it was silly.”

“Okay, let’s get one thing straight. The Slap Chop is not silly. It’s a stroke of genius,” she said as they turned into the kitchen.

“A guy chopping a handful of almonds while telling the audience, ‘Wait until you see my nuts’ is a stroke of genius?”

She turned toward him, fighting a laugh. “You watch too much TV.”

“Said the girl who owns the Slap Chop.”

She laughed then, taking the plate off the counter before she turned and held it out to him.

“It’s no roulette table with a functioning wheel, but I tried.”

The smile on his face dropped. “You made this?”

“Mm-hm,” Leah said, placing it on the counter in front of him. “Well, not the cars, obviously.”

She looked up at him, but he was staring down at the cake in awe. It was a typical square cake, but the entire bottom half was made to look like a road with two cars driving across it. On the top half of the cake was a sign that matched the shape and typography of the sign for Danny’s shop, where the words Happy Birthday Danny were written.

“It’s all fondant. The road, the sign. So you can eat everything. I tried to make the cars out of fondant, but they looked like mutant insects, so I cheated and used toys.”

He spun the plate slowly, looking at it from all sides, and then he looked up at her. “I can’t believe you did this.”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t a big deal. It was fun.”

“And time-consuming. And incredibly thoughtful.”

She smiled up at him, and he shook his head before looking back down at the plate. “I can’t remember the last time I had a birthday cake.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I mean, once you pass ten, it kind of loses its grandeur, don’t you think?”