Chapter One
There was something so irresistible about frosting.
Of all the things Leah made in her bakery, this simple whipped frosting was her absolute favorite. It wasn’t just the taste or the rush as a bite of straight sugar hit her bloodstream, although both those things were amazing wonders. What made it so utterly tempting, the Pied Piper of foods, was the glossy sheen it got when she’d beaten it long enough to fill it with air. As she slid her finger across the rubber spatula, she marveled at how light it was, how perfectly silky and shiny, like a wedding dress—an edible, sweet-tasting wedding dress. Lifting her finger toward her mouth, she closed her eyes, anticipating the moment when it touched her tongue.
“I hope you’re not going to put that utensil back in the frosting after touching it.”
Leah froze, the sweetness just short of her mouth as her eyes popped open. After the initial start, she recovered, sucking the frosting off her finger as she turned toward the intruder. The perfect moment was ruined, though. Occupied with presenting a bland, carefully unbothered face, she barely tasted the frosting.
Anthony Fitzgerald Hamilton III. As uptight and prissy as his name promised he’d be, her landlord was a thorn in her ass. Eyeing him, Leah took her time, slowly pulling her finger out of her mouth as she licked every last trace of frosting from it. As he watched, one corner of his mouth tucked in as it always did when she aggravated him. She added a hash mark on her mental scorecard. If she managed to get his eyelid to twitch, that was an extra five bonus points.
“Good morning, Mr. Hamilton.” She kept her voice as sweet as the frosting she’d just sampled, the frosting that still coated the spatula she was holding. “Going for a run?” If he was heading out for his daily 5:00 a.m. jog, she was running late. A glance at the clock reassured her that it was barely four. “You’re early today. Busy day ahead?”
His eyes flickered ever so slightly, his gaze dropping to the ground briefly, as if she’d thrown him off his judgmental course. Quickly, he recovered. “Yes.” He didn’t clarify which of her questions he was answering. “Well? You’re not putting that back in, are you?”
She smiled at him. “Of course not.” Making a big show of it, she dragged her tongue across the surface of the spatula. “I need to lick it clean first.”
His eyelid twitched.
Giving herself a mental fist-bump, Leah added five points to her total.
“You’re joking, of course.”
“Yes.” Running her finger over one of the flat sides of the utensil, she popped her frosting-laden digit into her mouth. Taking her time cleaning it off, she slowly drew her finger out. Hamilton watched the entire time. Now both of his eyelids were twitching. Leah debated whether that was ten points or twenty-five. Had she just annoyed him doubly or exponentially?
A tiny thread of guilt wove its way through her, as it always did when she talked with him. She wasn’t wired to torment someone, even a person as completely humorless and aggravating as Alexander Fitzgerald Hamilton the Third. Guilt punched holes in the enjoyment she was taking in torturing him, and she caved like an over-proofed loaf of bread. Using the spatula, she waved at the long butcher-block table, where an army of naked cream-filled cupcakes were lined up, waiting to be iced. “I made your favorite.”
His gaze flashed to the unfinished sweets and then back to her, and she saw a spark of red-hot desire that made her own body flare with heat in response. Cool it, she warned herself. Even though he was hugely attractive in an uptight sort of way, and more fit than a man with his sweet tooth had any right to be, Leah needed to nip her lustful impulses toward her landlord in the bud, especially because he wasn’t perving on her. That hunger in his gaze was all for the cupcakes.
She tossed the spatula into the bin of dirty dishes and washed her hands thoroughly, using the time to breathe and remind herself that crushing on her landlord would be a stupid, stupid thing to do. Grabbing a paper towel, she dried her hands and allowed herself to look at Hamilton. She immediately knew it had been a mistake. The raw want was still there, but he’d pulled it back, covered it with an expression that was almost tentative, like a shy kid who was dying to ask for a treat but was too timid to ask.
Once Hamilton saw that she was looking at him, his face regained its austere lines, but it was too late. Leah had been well and truly turned into mush. “Let me ice one for you.”
“I shouldn’t eat sugar before I run.”
Ignoring the protest, since Hamilton quite obviously didn’t mean it, as he was still staring at the cupcakes with longing, Leah grabbed a clean small metal spatula. “Why not? You’ll burn it off in the first five minutes.” She slathered frosting on top of two of the cupcakes, glanced at Hamilton, and then iced one more. The man ran for two hours every morning, and his fine—and huge—arms and chest meant that he visited the gym a lot, too. He could handle three small cupcakes. “These won’t be as pretty as if I’d used a piping bag, but this is faster.” She swirled the spatula around the top of the third cupcake, noting with satisfaction that the frosting was almost as tall as the cupcake beneath it. “Here you go.”
When Hamilton didn’t move, she picked up the cupcakes—two in one hand and one in the other—and carried them over to him. She held them out as he eyed them with that same mix of bone-deep hunger and wavering self-control he always wore in her bakery, whether in the front during the day or in the kitchen in the pre-dawn hours. Leah wasn’t sure why, but Hamilton had gotten into the habit of stopping by before his morning run. His loft was right above her bakery, and her theory was that he couldn’t resist the smells of the cookies and cakes and croissants. She always fed him when he stopped by, so she was perpetuating the problem. He was her own very rich, very hot, very uptight stray dog.
Finally, his hand reached toward the cupcakes, slowly, as if he was still fighting with himself. Once he took one, though, it was gone in two bites, a look of absolute bliss spreading over his face. As soon as the first one was eaten, he was reaching for the other two. Any hesitancy had disappeared—as did the final cupcakes. As always when she watched Hamilton eat the food she’d made, Leah felt both gratified and startled at the speed at which he consumed her baked goods. He was normally so restrained that, when he finally gave in, it felt as if he lost all control. It always made Leah uncomfortably warm and a little melty inside.
“Thank you.” His words were stilted, his whole body held as stiffly as a G.I. Joe doll. The only thing that revealed his recent slip was a smudge of frosting on his lower lip.
Before she could reconsider, Leah reached out and cupped his chin. He froze as her thumb swept over that bit of frosting. His skin against her palm was hot and rough with stubble, but his lip was silky soft under her thumb. Without thinking, she released him and popped her thumb into her mouth, licking off the stolen taste of frosting before she realized what she’d just done.
She went still, her misbehaving thumb still in her mouth as her gaze jumped to meet his. They stared at each other for a long moment before Leah lowered her hand and broke the silence. “Sorry about that. It was just... I don’t know. Instinct?” She felt heat make its way up her neck and into her face, and she knew she must be as red as a cherry. Why had she thought it was a good idea to wipe frosting off of his mouth? Not only that, but then she’d licked it off, as if she was in some sort of cheesy porno. It was obvious that Hamilton thought that she was classless and overly friendly, and that was before she’d just fondled his mouth. She braced herself for his reaction, trying to stay calm by remembering that she still had ten months on the bakery’s rental contract.
There was no lecture, though. In fact, there was...nothing. Without responding to her babbled apology, Hamilton turned away, shoving through the back door into their shared stairwell. As Leah stood there in complete and silent humiliation, she heard the outside door thud as it closed. She was tempted to lock the kitchen door so that he couldn’t wander in after his run, with his muscles all tight and defined from exercise and clothes clingy from sweat. She didn’t lock it, though, telling herself that keeping it open made it easier for Quentin, the high-school student who worked a few hours before school, to get in. Ignoring the fact that Q had a perfectly good key that worked in both the front and back door locks, Leah turned back to her frosting.
Shaking off the adrenaline remaining after her Hamilton encounter, Leah grabbed a piping bag and an open-star tip—as well as an unlicked rubber spatula—and got back to work, pretending that a good and lusty portion of her brain wasn’t still with Hamilton as he started his run.
“Hi, Leah.” Q’s greeting made her jump a mile into the air.
“Q!” Her non-germ-infected spatula clattered against the side of the frosting bowl as she dropped the utensil. Wrapping her arms around his broad form, Leah gave him a huge hug. “How was DC? Did you have an amazing spring break? Are you happy you went, or do you wish you’d stuck around here and helped me with the enormous order for four hundred light-blue-frosting-filled, baby-sex-revealing cupcakes?”
With a final hard squeeze, she took a step back so she could look up at his face. As always, his smile was slow and wide and utterly infectious. “It was...interesting.” He moved to grab a clean apron from the stack in the dry pantry.
“Interesting good or interesting bad?”
Since Q’s hair was shorn very closely to his scalp, he skipped the hairnets and went straight to the hand-wash sink. “Interesting good, mostly.”
“Uh-oh.” Leah returned to shoveling frosting into the piping bag, concentrating just hard enough on what she was doing to not make a mess. Most of her attention was focused on Q. “There’s a story there. Possibly several.”
His slow, wide smile came again. Q didn’t answer, but he didn’t deny it. Instead, he glanced down at the army of filled cupcakes. “Mr. Hamilton’s favorite again?”
“I can’t help it.” She flipped a hand at him, shooing him away from the table and her too-obvious attempt at pleasing a certain prissy landlord. “It’s my nature. If someone isn’t happy, I feed them until they’re either happy or avoid me. Sir Hamilton does neither, so I am compelled to continue trying.” She didn’t add that his unbridled hunger for sweet things rang an inner bell she hadn’t even realized she had. It made her want to crawl inside him, but that was out of the question. All she could do was make him cupcakes.
“I know.” Q wasn’t lying. He did know. After all, she’d done the same thing to Q when he’d first started stopping by the bakery after football practice. Leah had a huge weakness for people who truly appreciated food, especially her food. Eventually she’d hired him, her one and only employee, and she had never, ever regretted it. Q picked up things quickly, had a borderline OCD approach to cleanliness, and was the only one who could wrangle the cappuccino machine into submission when it was feeling ornery. Also, Q had a fan club of besotted teenage girls that accounted for about half of the bakery’s sales between three and six on weekdays—and all day on Saturdays.
“Ignore my neuroses and tell me about DC.” Leah used her most stern voice.
Judging by the smile slowly stretching until it covered half of his face, Q wasn’t cowed by her tone. He did let the Mr. Hamilton thing drop and launched into an accounting of his week-long trip as he started washing dishes.
Leah welcomed the distraction and the change of subject. If Q hadn’t arrived, Hamilton’s visit would’ve replayed in her head over and over as she picked apart both of their reactions. It wasn’t healthy, this odd relationship she had with her landlord, but she couldn’t stop intentionally annoying him, feeling guilty, and then trying to make up for it by feeding him. He, apparently, couldn’t stop coming into her shop, being aggravated, and then eating what she gave him.
With a huge effort, Leah shoved Hamilton out of her brain and concentrated on what Q was saying. There’d be plenty of time to obsess about her landlord later.
* * *
Leah hated the hour between two and three. The lunch crowd had come, loaded up on sugar and carbs, and returned to their various workplaces, most likely to fall into a food coma. Q was still in school, so it was just Leah and her least favorite customer—Jude.
“Leah. Leah! Leah!”
The front of the bakery was tiny, with barely enough room for four café tables and the display cases. There wasn’t anywhere to hide. Her shoulders dropped with defeat as she looked up from the to-go boxes she was pretending to organize. “Sorry, Jude. I was deep in thought.” About how much I wish you would go away. “What can I get for you?”
“Why don’t you come out here and sit with me?”
“Thank you, but I can’t.” Leah forced politeness into her smile. “The high-school crowd will be here soon, so I need to finish up back here before they descend on the place.” She gestured vaguely at the space behind her counter.
“You need to take breaks, too.” Jude pushed the chair across from him with his foot so it slid away from the table. “Take a load off. Just five minutes.”
Her smile felt stiff at the corners. “I really can’t. Thank you for the offer.” She started sorting through the unfolded bakery boxes again. Q was going to give her his patented disappointed look when he saw what a mess she was making of his neatly organized stack of boxes.
Her attempt at avoidance was all for naught, because Jude stood up and came over to the other side of the counter. “I got a promotion at work.”
“Congratulations,” she said as enthusiastically as possible. “That’s great.” The usual guilt was starting to seep in. It wasn’t that Jude was intentionally rude or obnoxious, but Leah still found him unbearable. When she looked at him objectively, he was attractive enough, in a he-seemed-like-a-nice-guy, I-never-would’ve-guessed-he-was-a-serial-killer kind of way. His hair was light brown, and he carefully cultivated a few days’ worth of stubble. He was tall and fairly trim, with muscular arms he liked to show off with too-tight polo shirts. As much as she didn’t want to think about her completely ripped landlord, Hamilton had become the model she unwillingly compared all men against. Whenever the two men were in the bakery together, Jude faded into the background, losing the little bit of distinction he’d had in comparison to the striking Hamilton. Leah caught herself in mid-landlord-thought and quickly dragged her attention back to the present. It’s like my brain is a dog and Hamilton thoughts are a meaty bone, she thought, annoyed at herself for falling into the trap once again.
“I should’ve mentioned it when I bought my croissant.” Jude leaned on the top of the display case, his palms pressed against the glass, and Leah swallowed a smirk. That was going to take the heat off of her, since Q would notice the smudgy case before he noticed the shuffled boxes. “Then you could’ve given it to me free as a congratulations-on-my-promotion present.”
Without looking at him, Leah made a noncommittal sound that came out as a grunt. If it had been anyone but Jude, she would’ve been embarrassed. Since it was Jude, she wanted to be as unattractive as possible. It wasn’t like she was a bakery owner by day and a high-fashion model by night. She was too short and ate a few too many cookies for that. The most common compliments she heard were “cute” and “adorable” and the occasional “huggable.” She’d gotten her permanently tan skin and her dark hair from her Samoan dad, and her deep dimples and not-quite-blue-but-not-quite-gray-or-green-either eyes from her mom. They’d both died in a car accident when Leah had just turned four, so she’d been raised by her grandma, who’d passed away four years ago, right after Leah had graduated from college.
“The best part is that I can keep working from home. No cubicle for me.” Jude jerked her back to reality again, which was unfortunate, since reality meant hanging out with his possible-serial-killer self in an otherwise empty bakery.
“That’s great.” Leah snuck a glance at her watch. There were still ten minutes to go before Q and his teen entourage were due. Jude never stuck around after Q arrived at the bakery. She gave mental thanks that it was a Friday. She worked alone on Mondays and Tuesdays, which meant that Jude hung out even longer, until the place started getting busy with the after-work crowd. In the fall, it was even worse, because Q had football practice after school and only worked at the bakery a few early mornings and on Saturdays.
The bell over the door jangled, and Leah looked up in happy surprise, expecting to see an early Q. Instead, Mr. Hamilton stood there, frowning at her. Despite her landlord’s sour expression, Leah still gave him a huge, relieved grin. Anyone, even the aggravating and thought-monopolizing Anthony Fitzgerald Hamilton III, was better than hanging out with her stalker of three months. Jude was at the bakery every weekday like clockwork—annoying, talkative, oblivious-to-brush-offs clockwork.
“Mr. Hamilton!” Her cheeks ached a little from the extreme wideness of her smile. Part of her happiness might have been because he was wearing a suit, and Hamilton looked very, very nice in a suit. “What can I get for you?”
He looked briefly taken aback by her warm greeting, but then his expression returned to his normal bland-robot setting as he approached the counter. He eyed Jude, who took a reluctant step away as Hamilton neared. It was all rather fascinating, and Leah watched with the delighted interest she’d dedicate to a wildlife documentary. The burlier, more alpha male badger forces the smaller, less dominant badger to retreat from the source of food, a hushed announcer voice in her head narrated, and she bit the inside of her lower lip to stop herself from laughing.
Hamilton’s gaze left a retreating Jude to rake across the contents of the display case. His unreadable expression cracked to reveal a slight scowl. “You’re out already?”
“Of course not.” Going up on her tiptoes, Leah lifted a bakery box filled with cupcakes off the top of the speed rack next to her. “I figured you’d be in sooner or later.” Normally, he’d stop in closer to closing time, but she was very happy he’d switched up his routine today and saved her from ten more agonizing minutes with Jude.
Hamilton smiled, just the smallest upward twist of his lips, and Leah couldn’t stop staring at him. That tiny movement had changed his whole face, turning him from rigid animatron to something really pretty. If he actually out-and-out grinned, she was certain that he would become the most beautiful thing in the world. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” Leah was still a little dazed from that itty-bitty smile, so she did something she normally would never do with Hamilton. She actually flirted a little. “I would never make you go without your favorite cupcakes.”
There was another barely visible change of expression that Leah struggled to read. It might’ve been startled with a hint of panic if Hamilton ever did anything as low-brow as startle or panic.
“Do you save a croissant for me every day?” Jude’s question was an unwelcome intrusion into her analysis of Hamilton’s fascinating micro-expressions, and it took Leah a moment to tear her gaze from her landlord so she could look at Jude.
“Oh, it’s usually not an issue,” she said absently, fighting the urge to glance at Hamilton again. Was he staring at the cupcake box with that intensely hungry look that always made tingles radiate from her core? Was he tempted to rip open the lid and dive in, consuming the cream-filled desserts with that almost agonized expression of pure pleasure he’d worn that morning? She cleared her throat, dragging her brain away from that line of thinking before she overheated. “I usually don’t run out of croissants. Filled cupcakes, on the other hand, tend to disappear as soon as I can get them in the case. People go nuts over them.”
“They are quite good.” Hamilton’s voice was even and bland, with all hint of emotions buttoned up tightly. It was maddening. Leah wanted to poke at him until his robot-like veneer melted away and his raw insides were exposed.
She blinked at the graphic mental image. “Yes.” She couldn’t remember what she was agreeing with, but she just considered herself lucky that she could still speak, given the torrent of lustful, needy thoughts rushing through her at the moment. “Did you want some coffee with those cupcakes, or are you going to take them to go?”
Even though she asked, she knew what the answer would be. He’d take them to go. He always did.
Today, though, his gaze shifted to Jude for a brief moment before returning to Leah. “Yes.”
“Yes?” Surprised, she could only parrot the word back at him. “Yes to coffee?”
That tiny, not-quite-a-smile was back, just for a moment, and her knees went soft. “Yes to coffee. Please.”
“Of course.” Hurrying to fill up a cup, Leah tried to hold back a grin. She was much too pleased that he was sticking around, even considering that the other option would be for him to leave her alone with Jude again. Without asking, she pulled a small pitcher of half-and-half out of the mini-fridge beneath the cappuccino machine and pushed it and the sugar bowl toward Hamilton. The look that crossed his face was identical to the one he always wore for just a fraction of a second before he gave in to whatever sweet treat she was offering. She had a feeling that, if she hadn’t tempted him, he would’ve drunk his coffee black, suffering through each bitter mouthful like it was his penance, his caffeinated hair shirt, his well-deserved punishment for the box of cupcakes he was about to inhale.
When he reached for the cream and sugar, Leah felt a warm rush of satisfaction. It was such a tiny thing, but she loved being partners with the devil on his shoulder, to give him the little bit of pleasure from sweet, creamy coffee. His shoulder angel was much too harsh, in her opinion.
“I should go.” Jude’s voice brought Leah’s attention back to him. She’d forgotten that anyone else was in the bakery besides her, Hamilton, and the angel and devil on his shoulders. “My workload is much heavier now that I’ve gotten that promotion.”
“Congratulations again.” Leah smiled at Jude, wider than she usually did, wider than she knew she should, but she was still caught up in the exhilaration of corrupting her uptight landlord with sugar. “Have a good day.”
Jude paused, his gaze fixed on her for a beat too long. Just as Leah’s smile started to slip, Jude glanced down, breaking the strange tension. “Thanks. See you tomorrow.”
“Bye!” Even the reminder that Jude would come back the next day, as he always did, didn’t deflate her buoyant mood. Saturdays were always busy, plus Q worked the front. Jude wouldn’t stay long, and he’d keep to himself while he was there, so he’d be much more bearable.
With a small lift of his chin, Jude left the bakery, leaving the jangle of the doorbell in his wake.
“Who was that?”
Leah turned back to Hamilton and took the cash he was holding out. “That’s Jude, unfortunately.” She tapped at the register screen, only charging him for six cupcakes, instead of the dozen that were nestled in the box, and throwing in the coffee for free. It was only good business to keep her landlord sweet, plus feeding him was almost a hobby for her.
“Jude Unfortunately?” he said, making her laugh as she handed back his considerable change. He immediately dropped everything into her tip jar, and she forgave him for the last ten annoying things that he’d done.
“Just Jude. The ‘unfortunately’ part was my addition. He’s annoying.”
“What’s his last name?”
“No idea. If he told me, I don’t remember.”
“Does he pay with a credit card?”
“Yes.” The conversation was odd, for sure, but Leah was pretty sure she knew where Hamilton was going with it. Everyone got weird vibes from Jude. Q couldn’t stand him, and Q was the most accepting, kind person she’d ever known.
“Hmm.” Hamilton watched through the glass front of the bakery as Jude made his slow way to his Jeep. “Is he here a lot?”
“Daily.” Leah leaned against her side of the counter, taking the opportunity to study Hamilton while his attention was elsewhere. His suit covered more than his running gear, but the lines of his body were still visible—and what delicious lines they were. The man was broad. Even with several feet and a counter between them, Leah felt dwarfed in a surprisingly enjoyable way. “Usually he stays until Q gets here, so you spared me ten extra minutes of his company. Thank you.”
His head swiveled around, and his narrowed gaze locked on hers. Leah was caught. Unlike her own indeterminately colored eyes, his were blue, the type of blue that could be called steely or icy or all sorts of other descriptors, but there was no question about the blueness. “He only stays when you’re here alone?”
She had to shake off her distraction. It was difficult to follow the train of conversation when her landlord kept sidetracking her thoughts with his hotness. “Not necessarily. He’ll stick around if other customers come in, or on Saturdays, when Q’s working the counter, but he only tries to have a conversation with me when no one else is here.”
Hamilton made a sound in his throat. “I don’t like him.”
“Join the club.” Leah gave a half-laugh that had more than too much snort in it. Although she cleared her throat immediately after, she was pretty sure the pig-like noise had been obvious and undisguised. “I don’t think anyone likes him. I pity the people he works with, even though he said he works from home most of the time.”
“What company?”
Leah racked her brain, but she couldn’t remember where he worked—or even what industry he worked in. “No clue. He talks, but I usually don’t pay attention. I’m too busy mentally begging him to go away.”
Instead of smiling at her joke, as she’d hoped, Hamilton frowned even more deeply. “I’ll look into it.”
“Look into what?”
“Him.”
“Jude?” She was a little confused. “Why? I have a feeling he’s boring. In fact, I know he’s boring.”
“I don’t care if he’s boring.” Placing the box of cupcakes on the counter, he flipped open the lid. Leah watched, enraptured, as his face took on that tortured, hungry look before he blanked his expression and met her eyes again. “I care if he’s a problem.”
“A problem?” Sure, Jude was an annoyance, but she wouldn’t consider him a major problem. He was like a pesky fly who would not die, no matter how long she chased him around the bakery with a swatter. “What kind of a problem?”
Hamilton never got to answer, because Q breezed in. “Ah. Mr. Hamilton’s here.” The way he said it was strange, as if he was answering a question only he had heard. When Leah cocked her head at him, he gave her a smile as he rounded the counter. “Your stalker was driving away when I pulled up. I couldn’t figure out why he’d left before I’d had a chance to give him my best I’ll-beat-your-ass stare.” Q pushed through the door to the kitchen, leaving silence in his wake.
“Stalker?”
Leah sighed, feeling strangely guilty, as if she’d misled Hamilton in some way. “Not really. He stalks my croissants more than he stalks me.” When his expression grew stormy—stormier—she flapped her hands at him, waving him toward one of the café tables. “Go. Sit. Drink your coffee and eat your cupcakes. Jude’s gone. You can take a break from thinking about how you’re going to break his kneecaps.” He gave her a too-bland look, and Leah narrowed her eyes at him. “You weren’t really going to break his kneecaps, were you?”
There was a pause that went on a beat too long. “No.”
“Good. Because doing damage to Jude would be an overreaction on your part. He isn’t going through my panty drawer at night while I’m sleeping. He’s buying a daily croissant and making really dull conversation. In fact, I think that you injuring my customers might be a violation of our lease contract.”
“It’s not.” He said it with such immediate assurance that Leah’s breath caught even as she laughed, which made her choke a little.
“We might need to add an addendum, then.”
The corners of his mouth quirked up, and Leah could actually feel her ovaries squee-ing. “I’d prefer to keep that option available, if necessary.”
Leah snorted. Again. For the second time in one conversation. She made a mental pledge to dramatically improve her game. There had to be exercises for that, or maybe a how-to YouTube video. “Of course you do. I didn’t realize you were such a mobster.”
“Not the mob.” He paused and took a step toward the corner table. She thought the conversation was over, but then he stopped and looked at her. “Army. I take care of my people.” Without waiting for her response, Hamilton took the seat in the corner, his back against the wall. Pulling out one of the cupcakes, he gave it that longing stare, the one that made her feel dirty and guilty and voyeuristic and giddy, all at the same time, right before he lifted it to his mouth and took a bite.
Flushed, she turned away, resisting the urge to fan her face with her hand. His people. She was one of his people. What did that mean? Did she even want to be one of his people?
By the way her stomach was turning somersaults—dizzying, exhilarating rolls—the answer was unmistakably yes.