Page 14 of Never Let Me Go

Marisa kissed him one last time, a gentle peck on the lips. “It’s not your job to make me happy,” she said. “That’s up to me.”

Chapter 4

The morning after the tornado, Jeff felt like a poor slob on a medieval torture rack. Torn in different directions. And helpless.

Right now, he was at the mercy of half a dozen people. Getting professional help after a natural disaster was a humbling lesson in waiting. Waiting for roofing guys. Waiting for the inspector. Waiting for insurance approval.

Truth be told, he didn’t mind dealing with decisions and forms and questions. It kept his mind off Marisa. And whether she was prepared to give him another chance.

He hadn’t slept at her house last night. He couldn’t. Instead, he had crashed on a friend’s couch. The sofa was lumpy and too short, but it kept him away from temptation.

Tonight, though, Marisa was expecting him.

It was 6:00 p.m. when he made it to her place and parked at the curb. She had asked him to pick up pizza. The box resided in his back seat now, the smell making his mouth water. He’d known how to get here, of course. From the one time he had taken her home after their Valentine’s Day date.

Back then, he had been in a hurry to go. Tonight, he studied her small house carefully. It was on a side street where the homes were modest and the lots small. Definitely a fixer-upper. He might have expected a woman in her midtwenties to choose an apartment, but maybe Marisa was rentingthis house.

His stomach flipped and flopped as he walked up the small path. Begonias and peonies bloomed in unrestrained profusion on either side of the front door. When he rang the bell, Marisa answered almost immediately.

Her face was flushed, her forehead damp. “Hey,” she said. Her smile hit him deep in the gut.

“Hey, yourself.” He kissed her casually, pretending not to notice when she became flustered.

She motioned him toward the kitchen. “I know it seems silly that I’m a caterer and I asked you to pick up pizza. But it was a busy day. I did make us homemade dessert, though.”

He took a strand of her sunshiny hair and rubbed it between his fingers. “I don’t expect you to cook for me,” he said. “You’re giving me a room. That’s plenty.”

Tonight, she was wearing shorts—neat khaki shorts that showed off her amazing legs. A pale pink T-shirt clung to her breasts in distracting fashion.

Marisa was uneasy. He could tell. She buzzed about her kitchen setting out napkins and silverware and small china plates.

“We can eat off paper,” he protested.

She shook her head. “Food tastes better when the presentation is good.”

“If you say so.”

When they were seated at the table, she cocked her head and smiled. “You look frazzled. How did things go today?”

He leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Not as quickly as I had hoped. But reasonably well. The insurance is going to cover everything. If I’m lucky, they’ll be able to do the roof soon. No rain in the forecast for the next week.”

Marisa beamed. “That’s wonderful.”

Because he couldn’t handle having her smile at him amid their platonic arrangement, he surveyed her kitchen. Now he understood why she had picked this house. The kitchen was spacious. Marisa had clearly done renovations in this room, even if the rest of the place still had a 1970s vibe.

Two high-end stoves were stacked in a wall unit. The dishwasher was a fancy model with plenty of cubic capacity. And her countertops offered ample room for food prep on a large scale.

He finished his first slice of pepperoni and started on a second. “I’m impressed with your setup,” he said.

“Thanks. I’ve changed my focus these past few months. I’m doing more small events and individual family dinner parties. I think that’s my sweet spot. By this time next year, I will have paid my parents back the money they gave me while I was in Atlanta.”

“Was that part of the deal?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “There were no strings attached to the cash. But I want to be free to make my own choices without feeling obligated. Mom and Dad are wonderful. But they thought I was going to do large-scale catering. That’s how I started.”

“So why the change?”

She shrugged. “I was already getting burned out. Cooking three hundred pieces of chicken all at once...or six pans of mashed potatoes. It’s not easy without an industrial kitchen.”

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