by Elise Faber
I wished I’d moved already.
I hated that there was a line of sight from the gate to the front of the house, had hated it since the moment I’d bought this place.
This wasn’t the first time that I’d had paparazzi outside.
It was just the first time they’d stayed after getting a couple of shots.
“Tal?”
I glanced up, realized I’d stopped in the middle of the hall.
Tammy had swapped my sweats for a pair of black leggings, but I was unreasonably thrilled that she’d decided to keep wearing my T-shirt.
“What’s up, Hazel Eyes?”
Her mouth twitched. “I’m hungry. Is it okay if I make us something to eat?”
Us. Not herself.
My heart thudded, and if it weren’t such a cliché response, I’d say that my stomach was filled with butterflies. How else to describe that fluttering, swirling feeling?
Fingers on my jaw. “You okay?”
I covered her hand. “Anything in this house—including me—is at your disposal. You don’t have to ask before you use something or raid the pantry for snacks.”
“You say that now,” she murmured. “But this is before I start raiding your underwear drawer.”
My head jerked. “Um, why would you raid my underwear drawer?”
A shrug, her hand sliding away. “Because boxer briefs are the most comfortable things to sleep in ever.”
I lifted a brow, even though she couldn’t see it, as she’d already turned for the kitchen. “How do you know I wear boxer briefs?”
She paused, glanced back at me over her shoulder. “Don’t you?”
That was beside the point.
A smile. “I’m right.” She spun back and disappeared inside the kitchen. I followed her, saw that she’d gone straight for the fridge. My eyes flicked to the window beyond the sink—it was the only one that faced the front of the property—made sure the blinds I’d closed the night before were still shut.
The French doors facing toward the patio were open, and since the sun had begun to set, the early evening sky was darkening, swathes of deep purple and rust and cobalt drifting across the horizon.
Beautiful.
But it still didn’t hold a candle to the woman who’d just pulled out a stack of food from the fridge and was organizing it just so on the counter.
“How many people are you feeding over there?”
“One,” she said, grinning mischievously over at me.
“What happened to us?”
“Two,” she amended. “If the other part of our duo can rustle up a couple of beers?”
I moved around the island, standing very close to her back, inhaling until the floral spice of her filled my nose, settled like a second membrane around my cells. “And what if I can’t?”
A smile over her shoulder. “I’m open to bribes.”
“How very mercenary of you.”
“You know what they say about the police,” she quipped, finishing lining up the ingredients and bending to open the drawer beneath the cooktop. Since I didn’t back up, I had the great benefit of feeling her ass brush against me.
No, not me.
Against my cock, which instantly hardened. Once had definitely not been enough.
Her eyes met mine over her shoulder.
Short of seeing her naked, it might have been the sexiest thing I’d ever seen, those hazel eyes hooded, the pupils dilated. “You have chef fantasies?”
“I have you fantasies.” My hands dropped to her hips. “And I don’t know what they say about other officers, but I’m just kidding. You’re the furthest thing from mercenary there is.”
A flicker across her eyes, and she straightened.
“What?”
“Do you like chicken?” she asked, setting the pan on the burner. Then she laughed. “Of course, you like it. It was in your fridge.” She side-stepped, causing my hands to drop, as she began opening and closing cabinets. “Where do you keep cutting boards in this joint?”
“Tammy.”
“Ah,” she said, opening one more and then pulling out a plastic surface to cut on. “There they are. This is just what I needed.” Another smile over her shoulder, though this one was so fake that it almost hurt to look at. “You ready for my world-famous, or well, my inside-my-own-house famous chicken parmesan? It’s delicious.”
I stepped closer, dropped one hand on either side of her, trapping her between my body and the counter. “I’m sure it is,” I murmured. “But I’m more worried about what put that look on your face.”
Her spine was perfectly straight, a rigid line that gave steel poles a run for their money. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She set down the cutting board. “I hope you’re hungry,” she blathered, words a mile a minute, “because maybe I’ll make cookies after this. It’s been ages, and I took another pain pill and look!” Tammy lifted her arm over her head. “I can do this. Isn’t that amazing?”
“Amazing,” I agreed, snagging her wrist and drawing her arm back down, lest she accidentally hurt herself in her avoidance. “Tam—”
She crumpled, that spine curving, a pole bent over after a collision with a car, that strong material damaged and warped, and I knew that I couldn’t push this. If she wanted to be cheerful and cook and pretend nothing had just flitted across her face, I’d let her—
Fuck, that sounded egotistical.
But my point was I didn’t have any hold over her, she wasn’t beholden to my whims, didn’t owe me an explanation.
In truth, I had all the owing locked down firmly in my corner
“I love chicken parmesan,” I said, stroking my fingers down the back of her neck. “What can I do to help?”
That spine straightening, her body slowly shifting around to face me, and this time, the flash I could decipher in her eyes wasn’t old pain, wasn’t something dark and barbed. Instead, it was . . . gentle.
She brushed her fingers over my jaw, and every single time she did that, every time she initiated contact, my heart skipped a beat. Her lips parted, a breath sliding out, coating my skin, and then she murmured, “Those beers would be really nice.”
“How about a soda since you’re on drugs?”
She made a face, but then she smiled at me, warmth shining out of her eyes like the sun bright overhead on a summer’s night.
Heart thumping against my ribs—the woman was full of powerful magic—I stepped back, went to the fridge hidden in the island, the one where all my wine and beer was stored, pulled out two cans of soda, and popped the tops. I plunked one next to her then hoisted myself up on the counter, watching as Tammy scavenged through my cabinets, muttering to herself the whole time.
With lithe curves and about six inches shorter than me, she was temptation personified, and I found myself watching her lips move as she spoke quietly to herself, the line of her throat exposed and calling for my kiss. I’d checked on her stitches earlier, and they were carefully wrapped in another bandage, but I believed her about the wound not hurting, or at least not very much. Even without the pain pills, she was a tough chick, not complaining at all during the day as we’d planned things out with Maggie, but as the hours had passed, I’d seen the signs, was glad that Mags had, too.
Our friend had pleaded traffic and needing to get home to her fiancé, but I hadn’t missed the fact that she’d located Tammy’s prescription and placed the bottle on the table before she’d left.
Luckily, the gesture had worked.
Tammy had taken the pills, and now I didn’t have to worry about shoving one down her throat. That pleasant image—not—aside, I was glad she wasn’t hurting and was going to leave it at that.
“Tammy?” I asked, swinging my feet back and forth.
“What’s up?” she said, sprinkling herbs onto the chicken.
“Where you’d learn to cook?”
Her eyes came to mine. “How do you mean?” she asked, slicing into some tomatoes and then dropping them into a pot o
f boiling water.
“I mean,” I said, reaching for a piece of carrot as she moved onto a fresh cutting board, prepping ingredients for a salad. “How did you learn to cook? My skills come from culinary boot camp before a movie.” I smiled when she glanced up at me, surprise on her face. “I’m guessing yours didn’t come via the same.”
“Not so much,” she said, chopping a cucumber. “Mine came via necessity.”
I lifted my brows.
She glanced down at the board, was quiet for so long that I expected her to not answer. Then, surprisingly, she did. “My dad raised my brother and me for most of our lives.” Her face did that thing, the twisting, barbs hidden beneath the surface thing. I’d seen it twice now, and I already decided that it was the most awful thing I’d ever seen.
“So, it was a matter of survival then?”
Her lips twitched. “In a manner of speaking,” she said. “What did you eat before you went to chef school?”
“Ramen noodles,” I said, telling her the truth.
“And?” she asked, waving a hand.
“And ramen noodles.”
“That’s it?”
I shrugged. “I was a starving actor. They were cheap and came in bulk. It was the perfect food.”
“Except for your arteries,” she said. “The salt in them alone will kill you. How did you keep your body”—a wave of that knife, down and up in the direction of my torso—“in that kind of shape?”
I waggled my brows. “What kind of shape are you referring to?”
She snorted, went back to chopping the cucumber. “You know exactly the shape.”
“You should also know that this is my job,” I said. “I hate exercising, but only do it for one, roles, and for two, so I don’t get so giant and out of shape that I bite it prematurely.”
“All of this”—another wave of the knife—“is normal?”
“I told you, I have a movie role coming up,” I said, giving in to the urge to run my fingers through her hair. It was like silk, even though she’d done absolutely nothing to it except to allow it to hang over her shoulders and air dry.
“So swordplay is responsible for all that . . . yumminess?” Heat in her eyes.
I smiled at being referred to as yumminess. “No,” I said. “This—” I couldn’t resist lifting my shirt, just a little bit. Because while I might hate exercising, I didn’t hate the way Tammy looked at the product of said exercise.
She made a garbled noise, dropped her gaze to the cutting board. “This what?”
I shifted a little closer. “This is leftover from my last project . . .” I named the superhero film that I’d just wrapped, pleasure sliding through me when her eyes widened.
“Are you really going to be in that?” she breathed.
More pleasure at her being so excited. Maybe I could get her a set visit if we had to do any reshoots. I’d bet she’d get a kick out of meeting my female co-star, who was headlining the film. Bri was seriously awesome.
“I am.”
“Wow.” Her knife continued clicking on the cutting board. “Color me suitably impressed.”
“Yeah?”
The edge of her smile was just barely visible, a tiny upside-down rainbow creasing her cheek. “Yeah.”
Quiet descended, and I watched her chop and cut and prep like a pro. Sure, there weren’t any flourishes or fancy flips of the pan, but there was a quiet efficiency about her movements that I admired. Graceful and clean, without anything extra added in.
Which was more than could be said of my own chef skills.
I was all flourish, all flash.
“Ramen noodles,” she said again, that tipsy-topsy rainbow making another appearance as she shook her head.
“Truthfully, they’re a godsend.” I chuckled. “Plus, when your water gets turned off, you can even eat them dry.”
A shudder. “That sounds horrible.”
“I’ll turn you on to my delicacy when it’s my turn to cook dinner.”
“That’s not happening.”
“Me cooking dinner? Or you trying dry ramen?”
“Both,” she said, drizzling some oil into the pan. I focused back on the space in front of her, amazed that she’d somehow filled a bowl with a salad and also coated two chicken breasts with eggs and breadcrumbs. She put them into the pan, where they started sizzling, then went to the sink and washed her hands.
Then she leaned back against the countertop opposite me, and we listened to the food cooking while staring at each other.
Probably it should have been boring.
Instead, it was the most interesting silence of my life.
The way the light played over her skin, the lights above gilding it. How it passed through her eyes, showcasing all the changing browns and golds and greens in her irises, each glimpse a new and more beautiful combination. She had freckles on her nose, and her top lip was slightly larger than the bottom.
“Tell me about your favorite movie,” she said, pushing off the counter and moving back to the pan to flip the chicken.
“You sure you want to hear me blabber on about work?”
“It’s got to be more interesting than my job.”
“I highly doubt that,” I admitted. “It’s just a lot of me reading lines and then posing in front of the camera with varying degrees of makeup on.”
“Except you get to travel all over the world and pretend to be a different person.”
“That is one bonus,” I agreed. “Though the travel isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, for example, I just spent the last three months in the desert, scorching during the day, freezing my ass off at night. Filming is always fun because it’s the cap on all the hard prep work. But it’s just like any job. There are good and bad things.”
“I could see that.”
“What’s something bad about yours?”
“Besides the whole saving someone and then having paparazzi trying to find out my every movement part?”
I smiled as she got to work on peeling the tomatoes, on whipping together a sauce, which she ladled over the chicken. “Yes, that.”
Her laughter filled the room as she topped everything with cheese then stuck the pan in the oven.
“Is this about the Milk Caper?”
“You remember that?” she asked, closing the door and spinning to face me.
I remembered everything about her, but I couldn’t say that. Instead, I just shifted closer and rested my hand on her hip. “You never did tell me,” I said. “It’s like I’ve been on a cliff-hanger for a full day. That’s pure torture.”
“Clearly, you never read any good books,” she said, picking up the bowl of salad and carrying it to the square table that was located in one corner of the kitchen.
I reached into the cabinet behind me, pulled out a couple of plates, collected two more sodas from the fridge, silverware from the drawers, and napkins from the container on the island. Together we set the table, and it was natural, as though it were something we’d done a hundred, a thousand times before.
“What do you mean?” I asked when she didn’t elaborate on her statement.
“Good books often end on cliffies. Cliff-hangers,” she added when I looked at her, the confusion I felt in my head probably obvious on my face. “Since you think they’re torture, then clearly you have no appreciation for the great, gloriousness of an excellent cliff-hanger in the world of literary fiction.”
I captured a lock of her hair between thumb and forefinger. “What’s your favorite book?”
Her brows lifted, suspicion in her tone. “Why do you ask?”
“Because, apparently I need to expand my horizons.”
“And you’ll do that by reading my suggestions?”
“Sure, why not?”
More flickers across her face, more barbed memories and pain in those eyes. Then she turned away, the strand of her hair slipping from my fingers, and headed to the oven, peek
ing inside.
Her voice was quiet as she retrieved a spatula and brought the pan to the table, serving up the breasts, “I really like . . .”
And then she told me about her favorite books, which I jotted down in the notes section of my phone, making mental reminders to buy out Amazon of her suggestions and to get reading.
Her cheeks flushed pink after she’d spoken for several minutes on end, her eyes going to my plate. “Oh God, I’ve been blabbering on, and you haven’t even eaten. Go on,” she said, nudging my food closer. “Eat while it’s hot, baby. I can’t have my world-famous chicken parmesan going to waste.”
Baby.
More heart thumping.
But I didn’t comment on the endearment, just picked up my fork and knife and began chowing down.
It was delicious.
But I didn’t get much chance to eat—or at least not while it was hot—because then she asked me more about my work, and I asked her more about hers. I found out about the adorable little Milk Caper. She found out about my favorite film to date—a small indie one where my character had barely had two lines.
And . . . we just talked.
For hours, eating occasional bits of lukewarm chicken, finishing off the salad, before I got up and retrieved a pint of ice cream from the freezer, sitting next to her at the table instead of across like we’d been positioned over dinner.
“You only grabbed one spoon,” she murmured.
I waggled my brows. “I know.”
So, over bites of ice cream with a shared spoon, our legs tangling, our bodies leaning closer and closer, we talked about everything and nothing—TV and books, movies we both loved, places to travel that were on our bucket lists. It was one of those conversations that a person never wanted to end.
But then she began yawning, her eyes drooping closed.
I pushed away the empty ice cream container then stood, scooping her into my arms.
“Tal,” she murmured.
“What’s up, sweetheart?”
“The dishes. I should—” Her head flopped onto my shoulder, another yawn wracking her frame.