Page 26 of The Kiss of Deception

My title will soon suffer the addition of two little letters, all the why’s he picked me twisting into all the reasons I wasn’t enough to keep the most eligible bachelor on the East Coast.

The fairy tale whose ending was not happy or ever after.

By the time I arrive at The Lucilla, the moon has clocked in for its night shift. Like her, hours of work await me. Paragraphs to write, research to do, questions to prepare.

“Come in,” Miles hollers the instant I touch the doorknob.

Scowling at it, I snatch my hand back like my fingerprint triggered an alarm that warned him of my presence before I announced it.

“You actually cooked.” I stop behind the snowy sectional, watching steam rising from boiling pots.

Isn’t this scene becoming a recurrence? In a matter of days, I’ve visited this house more times than I had in a lifetime.

Without turning from the glass-ceramic stove, he angles his face just enough to give me a glimpse of his frown. “That’s what I said.”

“I assumed it was part of the lie.” I admit with a shrug.

My bag slides down my arm. I hike it up, leaning forward despite myself, trying to catch a glimpse of what he’s cooking. My height fails me once again.

His face falls but he turns back to the pots. “Well, I’m not a jerk—”

“Arguable.”

“I said I’d cook for you. Therefore, I’m cooking for you.” He ignores my caustic retort.

Miles does it quite a lot—ignore my blatant rudeness. Unlike me, my pocket filled with registers of each time he was less than proper.

“I’m not hungr—”

“Sit down, love.” Miles halts my lie, pointing the wooden spoon behind me toward the living room side of his open plan, still without turning. “Finish your work. Then we’ll eat.”

“Do not order me around.” I straighten, clutching my backpack to keep my tone even. “And do not interrupt me.”

“Yes, love.”

And I fail. “Blackstein!”

The hand stirring the contents of an Inox pot briefly halts. He’s finally listening, I think.

Then he tilts his indented cheeks to the ceiling—and he grins.

“I love making you scream. And I love it when you scream my name.”

I’m particularly prone to flippancy when I’m mad.

And I’m furious a lot in his presence.

“Do you get off on embarrassing me?”

“I can assure you that embarrassing you was never my goal.” The divots on his cheeks deepen as he watches mine. “I do like to see you blush, though.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I take one step forward, crossing to the kitchen space.

My internal temperature spikes to new records, and I’m not surprised my cheeks are red—justifiably so.

Like he sees the storm approaching, Miles secures the wooden spoon on the edge of the pan and turns down the stove.

“I was trying to do a nice thing for you,” he says, giving me his full attention. “It’s like you purposely misinterpret.”

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