by Katie Allen
At the mention of cookies, he shifted the box in his grip.
“Don’t worry.” She reached out to pat his biceps. It was big and solid and flexed under her touch, and it took considerable willpower not to leave her hand there. Somehow, she managed to drop her hand before a friendly pat turned into inappropriate fondling. “Exercise counts if you’re just holding the cookies. It’s only voided if you’re eating the cookies.”
“I’m considering eating the cookies,” he said. “If I ate them immediately after climbing these stairs, would that retroactively cancel the exercise?” His tone was so serious that it took her a moment to figure out that he was playing along. A giddy thrill ran through her, but she immediately clamped down on it, extinguishing any Hamilton-related excitement. The last time she’d gotten all mushy about him, he’d disappeared for days. She needed to learn from experience.
She couldn’t not play along, though—not when he was being all cute and silly in his uptight way. As she led the way to her apartment door, she pretended to consider his question. “As long as the cookie-eating and exercise are not concurrent, then the exercise is not voided.” She dropped her put-on stuffy manner. “Besides, you exercise so much, your body is probably crying out for more calories at all times.”
After unlocking the door, she pushed it open and then held it for Hamilton. He stepped inside and looked around. She briefly wondered what he thought of the place. It was furnished in an eclectic Ikea/thrift store/grandma’s-attic kind of way, but it was clean and cozy and colorful. For Leah, it was home.
“I don’t exercise that much,” he protested mildly, stepping farther into the living room. “I run six days a week and lift weights five times a week, alternating which muscles I focus on. It’s a reasonable exercise schedule.”
“Nope. That’s not reasonable at all.” Dropping her purse on a table by the door, she headed for her bedroom. “Normal people lift weights five times a year, that first week of January after getting a gym membership that they don’t use for the other fifty-one weeks.” When she glanced over her shoulder at him, he looked as if he wasn’t sure whether to smile at that or not. “Excuse me for a couple of minutes. I’m dying to change.”
His gaze flicked over her hoodie, tunic top and leggings. “Why? That looks comfortable.”
“It is, although it’s covered in flour everywhere the apron didn’t cover, and there’s been something sticky on my right sleeve for the past five hours or so, and I smell of every single thing I’ve baked since three this morning, which is not a good combination.”
He frowned. “I think you smell good.” Then he blushed. He actually blushed. It amazed Leah so much that she stopped dead right in front of her bedroom door.
There was an uncomfortable silence as Hamilton avoided her gaze and his face returned to its usual color. Finally, Leah had to break it. She couldn’t stand the awkwardness anymore, and she was still a bit dazed at seeing Mr. Hamilton turn red. “Um...thank you? I think? Right. So, make yourself at home, and I’ll be right out.”
She hurried into her room, swinging the door closed behind her. He thought she smelled good? She quickly put a kibosh on the excitement rising inside her. The man was addicted to sugar and pastry products. Of course he thought she smelled good. He’d probably eat her if she’d let him.
At that final thought, Leah’s face got so hot that she was pretty sure she was blushing harder than Hamilton just had. Putting all thoughts of her sexy landlord eating her out of her mind, she hurried to change. She wanted to go into full-on flip-out mode about what she was going to wear, but she didn’t let it happen. Instead, she forced herself to grab the first clean set of yoga pants, T-shirt and hoodie she could find. After dragging them on, she didn’t allow herself to look in a mirror. Instead, she took a deep breath, fanned her face with both hands and then opened her bedroom door.
Hamilton was right there in front of her, framed by the doorway. She took a step back. “Sorry. Did you need something?”
“No.”
“Then why were you... Never mind.” It didn’t matter why he was standing right by her bedroom door. If he’d been Jude—not that she ever would’ve invited Jude into her apartment—then she would’ve been bothered. Hamilton, though... Hamilton felt safe. “Are you hungry?”
“Yes.”
“Me, too.” She slipped past him and headed for the kitchen. “Do you like chicken?”
“Yes.” He followed her to just inside the doorway. “You don’t need to cook for me, though.”
“I don’t mind.” Peering inside at the contents of the fridge, she smiled with satisfaction. For once, she actually had ingredients that fit together. There were too many nights when she and Annabelle were forced to improvise to avoid a last-minute trip to the store. The results of those experimental dinners were mixed. “How do you feel about fajitas?”
“I have nothing against them. They usually taste good.”
“Fajitas it is!” She pulled out the chicken breasts and raided the veggie drawer, finding onions and a host of different peppers. After washing the vegetables, she put them on a cutting board in front of Hamilton. Holding a knife toward him, handle-first, she said, “Slice, please.”
Just like at the bakery, he took orders well. As she started prepping the marinade, he removed the stems and seeds with the exact precision he did everything. Leah wondered if that trait carried over into bed. The thought distracted her so much that she almost cut off her finger. After that near-mishap, she focused on squeezing lime juice.
“Do you like cooking?” he asked once the perfectly sliced veggies were sizzling in the pan and the strips of chicken were soaking in marinade.
“I don’t mind it,” she said after considering the question for a moment. “Not like my grandma did. It’s relaxing, in a way. After being so precise all day at the bakery, I can get a little sloppy.”
He looked up, the knife he’d been washing still in one hand and the sudsy scrubber in the other. His expression was hard to read—perhaps curious and appalled? Each time that Leah thought she was getting to know him a little, he threw a new reaction her direction, and she found herself watching him like he was a type of new species that she’d just discovered and she wasn’t sure if he wanted to lick her face or bite off her hand.
“What is it?” she finally asked after having no luck translating his face language.
“Do you like being...sloppy?” He put an odd emphasis on sloppy.
“Sometimes.” Giving up on trying to read him, she just answered the question honestly. “At the bakery, there’s usually no room for sloppiness. Everything has to be done exactly as it should: recipes, baking, decorating cakes or cookies—you’ve seen what happens when decorating goes wrong.”
Hamilton winced. It was tiny, but it was definitely a wince. “Yes. Those cookies were horrendous.”
“Exactly. Even cleaning has to be done right, or I could give a whole bunch of people food poisoning, and I don’t want to do that. Okay, maybe I wouldn’t cry if Jude had a very mild case, but I wouldn’t want anyone else to get it.” She dumped the steaming veggies into a bowl and reached for the marinating chicken. “After having to be perfect all day, it’s nice to be sloppy.”
He was quiet for a few moments. “I don’t know if I could enjoy being sloppy. It makes me...uneasy.”
Looking up from the chicken, she narrowed her eyes at Hamilton as her mouth curved up at the corners. Even though she couldn’t see herself, Leah knew that it was a wicked smile, just by how alarmed he looked. “That sounds like a challenge.”
“No. It’s not a challenge.” He spoke quickly. “I misspoke. I have had sloppy experiences, and I do know that I could never enjoy them. I think we should change the subject now, before you come up with some ill-advised plan involving sloppiness.”
“When have you been sloppy?” she asked, skeptical but also absolutely curious. The i
dea of a messy Hamilton was appealing—hugely appealing. Almost uncomfortable amounts of appealing. She wasn’t sure why, but part of her really wanted to get him dirty.
“In Afghanistan.”
Leah could hear the chicken sizzling, but she kept her gaze on Hamilton. “Why was it sloppy?”
“At the outpost, conditions weren’t the best for staying clean.”
“Your vague generalities are just making me more curious.” She moved the chicken around so it didn’t burn, but most of her attention was still fixed on Hamilton.
He shifted, his body language obviously uncomfortable, although his expression was carefully neutral. “Sometimes we had hot water, but mostly we did not. All of our clothes had to be hand-washed. Daily showers weren’t available. Often, weekly showers were a luxury. Things got...” He paused, as if searching for the right word.
“Sloppy?” She cringed, trying to picture it—actually, trying to picture Hamilton in the middle of it. The military aspect, she could see. It was stamped all over him—in his posture, his protectiveness, his bossiness. The stinky part, though...the poor guy must have been miserable. “How did you stand it?”
“It was what it was.” He looked to the side, his gaze far away. “Being dirty was the least of our worries, especially after...” Catching himself before he finished the sentence, he focused on her again. “It’s amazing what a person can handle if they have to.”
Leah made an assenting sound as she studied him. Her curiosity was running rampant. She wanted to hear more about his time in Afghanistan, about his experiences and friends and what had made him go sad and silent. Despite her burning desire for more information, she didn’t let any of her multitude of questions escape. It felt too invasive to ask. If he wanted to share, then she would listen avidly, but she didn’t want to drag it out of him.
“Fajitas are ready.”
As they moved everything to the small kitchen table, Leah looked at the perfectly sliced veggies that were no less symmetrical after being cooked. She noticed how Hamilton neatly draped the paper towel she’d offered him instead of a napkin—since she was out—over his lap, and how he precisely filled his first tortilla in a way that Leah knew wouldn’t end up falling out on his plate or down his front.
It didn’t bother her. In fact, she was starting to enjoy the care he took with everything. When she pictured a younger Hamilton, going weeks without a shower in a place far from home, she figured he earned every anal-retentive habit he had.
He looked up, catching her staring, and his eyebrows quirked up. In response, she smiled at him. “I’m glad you stayed, Ham. It’s nice. Having you here, I mean.”
Silently, he studied her for a long moment. She had a feeling he was checking her sincerity, which was understandable, since she gave him a hard time quite a lot. Meeting his gaze, she held it until his head dipped slightly in acknowledgment. “I’m glad I stayed, as well.”
That made her too happy. She gave herself a stern mental lecture, but the giddy whee! in her head drowned it out. Her crush on Hamilton was getting out of control. Worried that her feelings were written on her face for him to read, she ducked her head and took a bite of her fajita. As usual, she’d overestimated what a single tortilla could hold, and most of the contents spilled onto her plate.
She glanced up. Of course he was watching her. Pointing her almost empty rolled tortilla at him, she tried to give him a stern glare. Unfortunately, her insides were still fizzy with the knowledge that he wanted to be here with her, so she couldn’t quite pull off a quelling look. “Not a word, mister.”
His lips folded in as he raised his eyebrows in such an adorable “I would never” expression that she laughed, dropping the tortilla back on her plate.
“This happens to me. Every time.” She picked up her fork, resigned to having fajita salad.
“If you—”
“Are you about to give me instructions on eating?” she asked, interrupting him. “Because if you are, I need to warn you that it will not go well for you.”
He opened his mouth, closed it again, and then took a bite of fajita. They ate in silence for a few minutes, and Leah could tell it was killing him not to give her very specific instructions on how to create a perfectly neat fajita with prime portability. Amusement bubbled up inside her as she watched him.
He swallowed a bite. “If I could just—”
“Check yourself before you wreck yourself.”
“What?”
“I went old-school for that one.” She grinned at him. That bemused look he sometimes got—like right now—was growing on her. It made her want to hug him. Honestly, though, she kind of wanted to hug him all the time, cutely baffled look or no cutely baffled look. The thought of squeezing his broad, muscular frame, her front pressed to his, made heat start to curl in her belly like the first drift of smoke from a new campfire. She cleared her throat, knowing she had to get her mind away from hugging Hamilton or the campfire would blaze into a forest-destroying inferno shortly. “Tell me about your job.”
He eyed her as he chewed and then swallowed his current mouthful. “Why?”
“I’m interested.” Forking up some chicken and a pepper, she stuck it in her mouth. Belatedly, she realized that she now either had to chew quickly or talk with her mouth full in front of Hamilton, and the latter wasn’t really an option. He already thought she was extraordinarily messy, and he made her much too conscious of her manners. She compromised and stayed silent, gesturing with her fork in a “spill it” motion.
“But it’s boring.”
“To you or to others?”
“Others. I find it interesting.”
“I bet I will, too. Tell me.” She was pretty sure she could never be bored by anything Hamilton said. It seemed as if all he had to do was open his mouth and she was fascinated. Actually, he didn’t even have to say anything to hold her interest. She was becoming more than slightly obsessed with him, it seemed.
He stared at her, looking slightly lost. “I don’t know what you want to know.”
“Anything.” When that just made him look more hunted, she realized he needed some assistance. It was like he’d never talked about his work with anyone before. She wondered what he said on dates. Did he just let the woman talk, interrupting occasionally to give her proper eating instructions? The mental image amused her, but the thought of him dating also brought a surge of jealousy that she hurried to tamp down. “Do you work mostly in an office, or at home?”
“At the office.” His look of relief confirmed that he’d been lost, which she found so very intriguing. It was the most basic of shallow get-to-know-you conversations. Why was he so bad at it?
“In Denver?”
“Yes.”
“What company?”
“Gaits Dubois.”
“Oh! I’ve seen the building.” She immediately felt like a dummy for blurting that out. It was huge and would be hard to miss, plus it was only a mile or so from the bakery. “Your commute is not much longer than mine. Do you have an office or a cubicle? Or did they wedge your desk in the corner of the reception area?”
He gave her a strange look, as if trying to decide if she was joking or not. “An office.”
“Nice. Do you like the people you work with?”
He paused, and his pained expression was back. “Do I like them?”
It was fascinating and strange how hard he found these simple questions. “Well, I’m sure you don’t like all of them, since no one can get along with everyone—unless it’s a tiny bakery with three people—but what’s your general impression? Are the majority nice people, or do they lean more toward asshole-ness? Do you dread going into work because you might run into Lilah from Accounting, or do you linger in the break room, chatting with Gustavo from HR because he tells entertaining stories?” Somehow, with Hamilton, she doubted that it was the latter.
He was staring at her again. “They’re...fine, I suppose. I don’t really think about them that much.”
“How long have you worked there?”
“Four years.”
Leah choked a little. It was hard to imagine working at a place for four years and not knowing anything about the people there. “Well, it sounds like they don’t bug you, at least.”
“They tried when I was first hired,” he said, before finishing off the rest of his second fajita. She wasn’t surprised he inhaled healthy food almost as quickly as he ate the sweet stuff. As he started fixing his third, Leah smiled. It was strangely satisfying to watch him eat the food she’d made—whether that was cookies, coffee or fajitas. “One of them invited me to a company potluck.” His face showed his absolute horror at the idea. “Most people do not follow basic sanitation procedures. I would never eat food strangers prepared in their homes. They’ve stopped bothering me about that kind of nonsense now.”
Looking at his plate, Leah smirked. “I feel honored.”
“You’re not a stranger.” He took a bite, and she had to wait until he’d swallowed before he continued. “Also, I saw that your kitchen is clean, and I was here for the preparation. There was little risk in deciding to eat this.”
“Like I said,” she said, sitting back in her chair, admiring how much food he could put away. She’d had one fajita, and she was stuffed. “I’m honored.”
He eyed her with that penetrating stare, as if checking her motives, and then he turned back to his food. They were both quiet as he finished off his fourth fajita.
“You own other buildings, right?” she asked, only realizing after she said it how out-of-the-blue it would sound. “Besides the bakery?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you have the day job, then, if you don’t mind me being nosy?”
He looked a little startled by the question. “Why wouldn’t I?”