Page 5 of Imagine Me and You

She stood and picked up her empty bowl, crossing to Jace’s spot and taking his bowl too. “Don’t worry, Jace, I’ll be good,” she said, bending down and kissing his cheek.

The moment her lips touched Jace’s skin, she knew she’d made a big mistake. She didn’t just go around kissing him on the cheek. She’d done it before, but she didn’t make a habit of it. Andfor some reason, this time had sent a rush of heat over her skin, a flame through her veins.

Calm down, woman. It was a kiss on the cheek, not second base.

Her body didn’t get the memo. Her lips burned and her nipples tightened, begging silently for attention because they knew she sure as hell wasn’t going to beg for him to touch her.

Nope. She was not.

She cleared her throat. “I’ll even do dishes.”

She turned and headed toward the kitchen and Poppy stood and followed her, her tags jingling with each footstep. There was something perfect about this moment. Something so domestic and calm.

Except for the lingering crackle of fire on her lips. That wasn’t calm at all.

This moment, except the crackle, embodied all the things she’d always wanted but never had. But she would have her own home soon. And it would have Poppy. It wouldn’t have Jace, but he would still be in her life.

That was all that mattered.

For now, she had his big, beautiful kitchen. Spotless and perfect. Like everything else in his house. She’d always admired the way he’d transcended his upbringing. The way he’d made something so orderly out of the chaos he’d been raised in.

She was afraid she’d inherited her mother’s transient, hippie dippy nature. And in terms of her taste in incense, she didn’t mind. But the restlessness she felt, the dissatisfaction with her surroundings... those seemed to be ingrained deep in her.

But instead of moving, she bought a new lampshade and curtains. Her feet were itchiest when it came to jobs. She’d had more jobs than most people twice her age. Not because she couldn’t do the jobs she got, and not because the businessesshe’d started had all failed, but because she’d simply never found anything to latch onto.

But Mrs. Brown had taught her to bake. Survival skills, the older woman had said. And that had always been a part of her life. So when the bakery downtown had gone up for sale, Sam had scraped together her meager life savings and poured herself into her new project with a vengeance. When she was bored, she infused buttercream frosting with lavender instead of selling everything.

The next big step in defeating her restlessness was buying a house. And then when she needed a change, she’d paint a wall.

She was rising above like a mother effing phoenix.

Then there was her love life. Men didn’t stick with her, much like she couldn’t stick with a career. Or rather hadn’t been able to. No men, same job for the past two years.

She deserved a trophy. The Deferred Orgasm Award for Excellence in Abstaining While Getting Your Crap Together. Yeah, she was on the upswing for sure. Except for this little hiccup. But as always, Jace had her back, so the disaster wasn’t too big.

That was Jace. Steady. And neat. So many things she wasn’t.

Which was why she needed him. One of the many reasons why.

“You don’t have to do dishes,” he said, following her into the kitchen. “You cooked.”

She started rinsing the bowls, smoothing away stew chunks with her thumb beneath the running water. “I want to.”

“Seriously, it’s fine.”

She glanced over at him. He was leaning against the counter, his relaxed posture at odds with the tension coming off of him. “Oh my gosh. You don’t think I’ll do a good enough job on the dishes, do you?”

“That’s not it,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, a sheepish expression on his handsome face.

“No, it totally is. Jace Colter. You don’t trust me to do dishes.”

“You’re scrubbing them with your thumb, Samantha.”

“They’re going in the dishwasher!”

“You have to pre-clean them correctly.”

“Holy frick, Jace. Your issues can be perfectly adorable, especially when they culminate in you wiping my kitchen table off after we have dinner at my place, or you vacuuming my couch before you sit on it, but this,” she said, holding up the bowl, “not so cute, my friend. It’s going in scalding hot water that will disinfect everything. It’s not like I let Poppy lick it.”

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