Chapter Nineteen

 

Upside #19: You get to keep all the change you find down the back of the sofa. Unless it’s tax season, then you can kiss that three dollars and sixty-two cents goodbye.

 

 

“How was your trip?” I cradled the glass of wine and leaned against the small island in the kitchen of Jake’s apartment.

“As well as it could have gone,” he admitted, setting the wine bottle down on the granite countertop. “My mom is still struggling with some grief, but I think it might ease for her now the house is cleared and on the market.”

“I’m glad it went well.” I smiled.

“How is everything at the hotel? I didn’t get a chance to stop by thanks to my flight delay.”

“It’s fine. Quinn seems to have Harley shadowing her a lot more, so hopefully, that works out.” I shrugged a shoulder.

Jake sipped from the glass and walked around the island to me. “Good to know.”

“You don’t really want to talk about work, do you?” I met his gaze and kept it as he came right up to me. I turned as he approached, and in what was fast becoming a signature move, he trapped me against the island, his thumbs brushing my hips.

“Not really,” he said in a low voice. “I can talk about work with you at work.”

“Oh. That makes sense.” I swallowed. It also went against the fear that work would overshadow any potential relationship.

Damn it.

“What are we cooking tonight?” His eyes glittered, and his lips pulled up into a one-sided smirk. “Gumbo? Jambalaya?”

“Woah, Gordon Ramsay. Slow down.” I put my hands flat against his chest and pushed back at him. “Maybe we should try not to burn pasta before we try something a little more complicated.”

“It’s like you don’t trust me to cook.”

“You. Burned. Pasta.” I punctuated each word with a jab of my fingertip into his chest.

“Hey, hey!” He grabbed hold of my finger. “Watch where you’re poking that thing.”

“You burned pasta, and you want me to teach you how to make classic New Orleans food? No. Boil pasta first.” I pushed his arm away and walked over to where the grocery bag from my shopping trip was. “Boil the water, and if you can do this successfully, we’ll see about something more complicated next time.”

“Hell, it’s like being seven again.”

“Did you burn pasta at seven?”

“I wasn’t allowed to make toast at seven.”

I put the pasta on the side and stared at him. “You weren’t allowed to put toast in a toaster at seven?”

“Nope. Almost set the toaster on fire once.” He tucked his hands in the pockets of his light jeans and grinned.

“How—never mind. I don’t want to know how you did that.” I shook my head and turned back to the unpacking. I pulled out the chicken, peppers, mushrooms, and garlic, followed by a jar of sauce.

That’s right. It was cooking lesson one, take two.

I hoped we’d get it quicker than movie outtakes seemed to.

“Fill a pan with water and boil it,” I told him.

“A pinch of salt,” he said, pulling out a pan from a cupboard. “Not a tsunami of it.”

Ah, we were getting somewhere.

He managed to get through salting the water and putting it to boil with overfilling the pan being his greatest mishap.

And he called me clumsy. Seriously.

At least I could boil water.

“I’ll cut the onion and pepper,” I told him. “We’re not repeating last time.”

“But last time was fun.”

I pointed a knife at him. “Behave yourself.”

He leaned against the side. “This is the worst non-date that’s a date if I have to behave myself.”

“You’re the one who started this. You wanted me to come here. I’d rather be at home with a take-out.”

He clutched his hand to his chest. “You break my heart, spitfire.”

“You talk shit, bossman.”

He grinned. “That’s kind of kinky.”

“Only if you assume I’m less feisty between the sheets.” I froze, staring at the tiled backsplash. Why the hell did I say that?

“I assumed you were feisty all around.” His grin turned wolfish, playful, but also deadly sexy.

I pulled the chicken out of the packet, dropped it on the cutting board, and sliced the knife right down the middle of it without looking.

He winced.

Now, it was my turn to grin.

I carried on with dicing the chicken while he watched the water boil. It was weird—there was an awkwardness in the air that had never been present before. It hung heavily, dripping off most of our words, and I was almost afraid to move toward him in case it was too much.

Two days. It’d been two days since he’d walked out of the office after I’d kissed him. Two days since I’d had revelations about how I looked at him, about how I felt about him.

Apparently, two days was long enough to create a divide between two people who were stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I didn’t really know what to say to him. I didn’t know how to act around him.

What was this?

Why wasn’t I able to categorize it?

Was I not strong enough to make the choice?

Did I need him to help? Did that make me weak? Or was this something we needed to name together?

There was only so long the non-date-date could stick around. Sooner or later, we’d cross the line of messing around and something would become serious.

What if we already had?

What if this was beyond a laugh? Beyond a game, beyond something we could come back from?

I took a deep breath and dumped all the chicken into the big pot he’d placed on the stove top. He moved out of the way so I could clean the board and the knife and my hands, and I didn’t make eye contact on my way to the sink or on my way back to the side where the mushrooms were waiting for me.

This was decidedly less sexy than before.

There was none of him touching me. None of the cutting with his hand over mine. None of his breath fluttering my hair.

He was on the other side of the kitchen.

I wished he wasn’t.

I wanted him to be over here with me. “Could you put some oil in this pan and start the chicken?”

“Sure.” He paused. “I don’t know where the oil is.”

I paused and pinched my nose. “You don’t have oil, do you?”

“Uhh…”

I stepped back and glanced at the sides. Nope. No oil. Not even in the cupboard above me. “Butter?”

“I have butter.” He opened the fridge and handed me some. “You’re going to cook chicken in butter?”

Using the knife, I sliced some butter out of the tub and dropped it right into my pan. “You need to add the pasta. And stir it, Jacob.”

“Yes, Melanie.”

“Don’t call me Melanie.”

“Don’t call me Jacob.”

“Stop arguing with me!”

“Only if you stop arguing with me.”

There went the awkwardness.

“You’re such a child.” I chopped the top off the pepper and pushed it to the side ready to cut it in two and dice it. “I know you’re doing this just to annoy me.”

“No, if I wanted to annoy you, I’d be helping you chop that pepper.” He laughed, stirring the pasta.

I slid my gaze toward him. “Look at you, behaving yourself,” I drawled. “You’re full of shit, Jacob Creed.”

“You want me to help you do the pepper?”

I sliced out the middle then cut it into two. “I’m good, thank you.”

“I thought you were teaching me how to cook.”

“I’m teaching you how to boil pasta. After the last attempt, be thankful I’m doing that damn much.”

He laughed, stirring it again. “I get it. I get it. Cook the pasta and we can discuss more.”

“Exactly.”

“What exactly are we discussing when the pasta is done?”

“Next week’s roster,” I shot back, cutting the pepper into chunks before throwing it into the pan. I stirred it. “How does that sound?”

“Like the worst date ever.”

“This isn’t a date.”

“Says you.”

“Yes, says me. It’s not a date.”

He put the wooden spoon on top of the pan and walked over to me.

“Nuh-uh.” I swapped my knife for the spoon. “I’m not burning this again because you can’t follow the rules.”

“Weren’t you the one who kissed me last time?”

“I didn’t know we were keeping score. If so, you’re losing.” I shoved him to the side so I could cook the chicken properly.

“How am I losing?”

“Because of all the times we’ve kissed, you’ve kissed me more than I have you.”

“I think you’ll find we’re even, spitfire.”

“We sure aren’t.”

He threw the wooden spoon onto the side and stared at me so intently I had no choice but to meet his gaze. “The first time we kissed was an accident. The first time was all me. The second time was all you. That makes us even.”

I sniffed. “You moved in for the kiss the first time.”

“I went to kiss your cheek. How did I know you’d run away at the same time?”

“I was under the impression the night was over. That wasn’t running away. That was going home—especially since your cab had shown up.”

“Accident. It was an accident. That means we’re even.”

I didn’t like being even.

Instead of responding, I huffed, ignoring his response in favor of making sure the chicken cooked right through. If I were a fuse, he was a match, waiting to set me on fire. And I wasn’t going to give in to the burn that was his argument.

I had better things to do.

Like not burn the fucking chicken.

I gave all my attention to that pan, occasionally looking up to the pasta one where Jake was actually remembering to stir it. I didn’t know whether or not it was because we weren’t distracting each other or because I was still feeling so damn awkward, but I didn’t care.

Stir. Stir. Stir.

Focus on the chicken. On unscrewing the jar. On pouring in the sauce. Focus, focus, focus. Focus on the goddamn chicken.

Not on the hot guy next to me, stirring pasta like he’s stirring a gossip pot. Anything to keep it from sticking.

That was all I could pay attention to. I stirred on autopilot, but my eyes were trained on him. On his arm. On the way his muscles flexed, on the way the veins in his forearm moved with each twist of his wrist.

I couldn’t stop staring. I was obsessed. It was mesmerizing; the way shadows moved across his skin as his wrists bent and his fingers clenched the spoon.

I was in trouble if I was getting turned on by a man stirring pasta.

Big, big trouble.

“Stare a little more, spitfire. You might burn a hole in my arm.” Jake glanced over at me with a smirk. “You’re as obvious as a case of crabs.”

I stopped, mid-stir. “How do you know how obvious crabs is?”

“I watch television. Also, Sam’s a whore,” he answered without batting an eyelid.

“Is that a direct quote I can take to my friend who thinks his cock is pretty?”

Jake wrinkled his face up. “As the proud owner of a cock, I’m certain they’re not pretty.”

“Maybe yours drew the ugly straw. How many cocks have you seen?”

“Communal showers in high school and college after football games. Do you need more information?”

“That was already too much, thanks.” I turned off the stove. “We’re done here. Can you drain that?”

Jake looked in the pan. “You mean I cooked pasta without burning it?”

“We’ll see when you drain it.” I pushed my pan off the heated ring and watched as he poured pasta out of the pan and into the drainer. None was stuck to the bottom. That was quite the feat, considering I was sure I still had some of his stuck to mine…

“Make sure all the water is out of it,” I told him. “Then you can tip it into my pan.”

He looked momentarily confused, but he shook the shit out of that pasta until no water was coming out. Seconds later, he put the pasta into my pa, and I slid it back onto the ring to heat it all through.

“Cheese?” I asked.

He dumped the drainer in the sink. “There’s an awful lot of you doing the cooking here tonight.”

I glanced over my shoulder. “At least you didn’t burn the pasta this time.”

He snatched the block of cheese from the fridge and slammed the door shut. “You know something? My mother would love you, you little smartass.”

“People do tend to fall in love with me,” I said snarkily. “It’s either my ability to blush at eye contact or break something within ten feet of me.”

“No kidding,” he muttered. “I’m amazed you’ve been in this kitchen long enough without breaking something.”

“I’d be happy to make your leg the first thing.”

“Do you want me to grate this cheese or slice it?”

That’s what I thought, too.

 

***

 

Jake moaned as he leaned back into the sofa. “You’re a pretty good cook, you know that?”

“Aw, don’t give me all the credit. You rocked that pasta.”

“You literally just showed me a Facebook video about a kid who make a full-blown carbonara from scratch, including the pasta and the sauce.” He rolled his head to the side and stared at me.

“Okay, but in his defense, he was Italian.”

“That’s a defense?”

“It’s basically a crime to use a jar of sauce in Italy.”

“Why did you just use one?”

I blinked at him. “I’m not Italian, and you were an idiot about pasta until an hour ago.”

He opened his mouth, paused, and reconsidered his argument. “Point well made.”

“At least you didn’t burn the pasta this time.”

He raised his wine glass in salute of that acknowledgment. “To progress!”

I giggle-snorted my wine, and it went up my nose, burning somewhere between my brain and my eyes. I reached to put the glass on the table.

My eyes were shut, and I had no idea how far away the table was from my hand. No, instead of looking like a regular human being, I flapped one hand in front of my face.

And spectacularly failed at putting the glass on the table with the other hand.

There was a dull thud as the glass hit the ground.

I froze, the bones in my skull still feeling like they were burning. Dear God, when would it stop? Why wouldn’t it stop? One wine-snort didn’t deserve this much torture.

“I broke it, didn’t I?” I said thickly, pinching my nose.

“Surprisingly,” Jake said brightly. “No. But, I’m really glad that’s white wine and not red wine.”

“Oh no. It went on the rug, didn’t it?”

“On the rug, up your nose…It’s all relative with you at this point, spitfire.”

This man had a horrible habit of being right. I was really beginning to get tired of it.

That, or he knew me far too well for my liking.

In fact, to make it fair, I was getting damn tired of both.

“Oh God,” I muttered, finally letting go of my nose. The burn was subsiding to an uncomfortable sting, and I was able to concentrate on what was going on.

I don’t know what he was saying about being glad the wine was white. There hadn’t been that damn much left anyway.

Anyone who spilled a wine glass with more than a mouthful in had to be sentenced to treason, surely.

Jake set a towel on the rug to wipe up the worst of the wine, then scrubbed it with a wet cloth. I sat on the sofa, legs crossed, grimacing as I watched his arm muscles flex back and forth.

Grimacing because it was oddly hot.

I rolled my shoulders and picked up the empty glass from the rug. It really was just a splash, and thank God for that. Any more and I’d have to hate myself.

“Now,” he said. “Do I get you another, or has Queen Clumsy had enough?”

“Look.” I pointed my empty glass at him. “There’s something to be said for the pain of snorting wine up your nose.”

“Better wine than cocaine.”

I stopped, mouth open ready to respond. His response was so quick and sharp and, holy shit, I’d only gone and met my fucking match.

“I don’t know how to reply to that at all,” I said.

“I was looking on the bright side.” Jake picked the bottle of wine from the door of the fridge and brought it over. He poured enough wine into my glass to fill it halfway then set the bottle on the table. “If I give you this, do you promise not to drop it?”

“No.”

He laughed and passed me it. “Of course, you can’t.”

I took a sip and put it on the table—actually getting it on there this time.

“So, when will you teach me to cook properly?”

I stared at him. “How many times do I have to tell you that you just boiled pasta? When you can do that without supervision, we can try something harder.”

“Then it’s a weekly thing.”

“Wait, what?”

Jake grinned. “You teaching me how to cook.”

“You know there’s a cooking channel, right? Or, like, YouTube. Or Google. There are lots of places you can learn to cook.” I paused. “You only want me to teach you how to cook so you can touch my ass.”

“Well, technically, I can touch your ass whenever.”

“No, you can’t.” I met his eyes. “I mean, you can, but you can’t.”

“You make no sense.”

“You’re the one who claims you can touch my ass whenever you want.”

Another grin stretched across his face. “That’s because I can. I’ll prove it if you want me to.”

“I don’t want you to prove anything.”

“Then, stop fighting with me about it.”

“If I stop, that means you’re right.”

“I am right.”

I glared at him. “You’re not right.”

“You don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore, do you?” His eyes sparkled.

“No, but I know you’re wrong about whatever it is.”

Jake slid across the sofa so he was right next to me.

“What are you doing?” I pushed myself against the arm of the sofa.

“Proving you wrong, and me right.” He grabbed hold of me, pulling me closer to him. My heart beat a little faster as he wrapped one arm right around me. His hand slid down my back to my hip, rounding over my ass. “See? I’m right.”

Ah, shit. We were talking about him being able to touch my ass.

And here he was, touching my ass.

I swallowed. His fingers dug into my ass cheek, and he pulled me tighter against him. My hand rested against his solid stomach, and I could feel the dips of lightly toned abs beneath my fingers.

I flicked my tongue out over my lower lip as my gaze raised to meet his. Desire stared back at me, and I shuddered out a breath as he pulled me over on top of him.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

“Kissing you.” He cupped the back of my neck, and before I could respond, pulled my face down to his.

Our lips met. My heart instantly thudded against my ribs, and I slipped my hands up to cup his neck. My knees were nestled on the sofa either side of his body, and he held me tight against him.

His cock hardened in seconds. It pushed against my clit, sending a burst of desire through me. Inadvertently, I thrust my hips, pressing myself against him.

Jake deepened the kiss. He fisted my hair, tugging lightly, his tongue flicking against mine, almost as if he was asking for more. A tiny whimper escaped my lips, and I grabbed the neck of his shirt.

I wanted to pull it off. I wanted to tug it up over his head and run my hands across his skin, touching each one of the muscles on his stomach. I wanted to sweep my hands across his broad shoulders and down his toned arms.

And I wanted more.

I didn’t just want his shirt off.

I wanted it all off.

And damn it, I was going to take it all off.