The Devil's Daughter (Hidden Sins #1)(47)
The mantel held a handful of pictures, but Zach was already moving into the kitchen, so she held off on her curiosity and followed him. The kitchen . . . this was the room that felt the most like Zach. If she didn’t miss her guess, the cabinets were all custom-made, and the gas stovetop and double oven were definitely high-end. She watched him pull out well-loved pots and pans. “You love to cook.”
“I love to cook.” He went to the fridge and pulled out a pair of beers. “Want one? If you’re more into wine, I think I have a bottle or two stashed for when my sister visits.”
“Beer is fine.” But only one. She was having issues around Zach while in complete control of her facilities, so she didn’t like her odds if she drank too much. No, she needed her wits about her in order to not make an ass of herself. She accepted the bottle and sank onto the bar stool he pointed to at the island. It gave her a full view of the kitchen.
A full view of Zach.
Like every other time she’d been around him, he seemed perfectly at home with his surroundings. The only difference was that some part of him seemed more . . . relaxed . . . in his house. She studied his body language, trying to figure out what gave her that impression, and finally decided there were fewer tension lines bracketing his mouth. But that gave her entirely too much time to look at his mouth and remember how good it had felt on hers.
In an effort to keep herself on track—a losing battle if there ever was one—she said, “Do you have much family in town?” She seemed to remember a father who’d been the sheriff before him, and a sibling or two, but a lot could change in a decade.
“My dad and mom moved a bit farther out into the mountains—for the fishing, he says—and my brother took off for California a few years back to do some sort of independent contracting with computers. He makes it back for holidays, which is about as much as you can ask of Joe. My sister settled here, though. She’s married and has three kids.” He paused in the middle of tossing butter into a skillet. “Three kids and one on the way. Christ, the woman keeps breeding.” For all the exasperation in the words, he had a smile on his face. The man obviously loved his family.
What would that be like?
Eden shut down the thought as fast as she could, but it didn’t stop the stab of pain from hitting her in the chest. The longing. Family life hadn’t been for her growing up, and she didn’t think it’d be for her moving forward, either. She traveled three weeks out of four, and that wasn’t even taking into account that Bureau divorce rates—that any law-enforcement divorce rates—were through the roof. It wasn’t fair to chain herself to someone when she couldn’t put the time and effort into actually making a relationship work. For fuck’s sake, she didn’t even know how to make a relationship work. She’d failed at every one she’d attempted.
It’s not like she’d had a role model when it came to that sort of thing. Though Martha seemed capable of holding down whatever passed for a relationship with Abram, she hadn’t stuck it out with whomever Eden’s father was. And, call her crazy, but she had no interest in emulating what her mother and Abram had going on.
She tightened her grip on her beer, forcing herself back to the present. “That sounds nice.”
“It is. And frustrating and infuriating and mostly great.” He shrugged, piling up enough food on the kitchen island to feed a small army. “How do you feel about stir-fry?”
“Works for me.” She wasn’t sure she could eat anything at all, but she didn’t think he’d appreciate her saying as much.
He started working some sort of voodoo at the stove. Eden wasn’t exactly a whiz in the kitchen, and when she was on a case, her meals were usually found in a drive-through or a room-service menu. She hadn’t had a home-cooked meal in . . . She took a quick drink of her beer. God, she wasn’t even sure when the last time was. Ramen in her tiny apartment in Quantico didn’t count. Not really.
Zach passed over a plate of cheese and crackers that she hadn’t noticed him putting together. “Dinner’s going to be a bit, and you didn’t have lunch.”
He really was a mother hen. It was . . . kind of nice.
Eden paired a cracker with a slice of cheese and nearly moaned. She’d expected Ritz and cheddar, and this was most definitely not. “Oh, my God.”
Zach’s grin had her fighting back a moan of a different sort. “Glad you like it.” He turned back to the stove, leaving her staring at his wide shoulders that tapered down to a waist his jeans seemed designed to show off. She’d never been an ass woman, but for him, she might be willing to make an exception. He was like some golden god who’d wandered into this strangely domestic scene, and she didn’t know how to reconcile the two conflicting impressions.
That’s not why I’m here . . . except it kind of is. The problem was that she didn’t know much about him beyond the superficial. He might be the golden boy of Clear Springs, but it was the shadows in his eyes that intrigued her—the shadows that were akin to her own. “Why did you join the Marines?”
“Because I was young and stupid, and it seemed a glorious thing to be part of.” He glanced at her over his shoulder, eyeing the plate until she took another bite. “Don’t get me wrong—I loved being part of the Marines. It’s not something you ever really leave behind, you know?”