Page 60 of Frosted and Sliced

He nodded. “I mean, yes and no. I had a place, but it wasn’t a home.” His free hand touched her cheek, caressing. “Ribs asked me to do the seminar, and I had no expectations of that, outside of seeing Maine, a place I’d always wanted to go. And then I almost knocked this woman down the stairs, the cutest, softest, sweetest woman, who smelled like vanilla and warm sugar all the time. And something happened to me, something inexplicable. Because I had spent so much time hardening myself, trying not to feel anything at all. And here was this person who made me feel things. I didn’t like it. It was very uncomfortable, and I was glad go away.”

“But you came back,” she prompted.

He nodded. “Because I couldn’t get away, not really. I kept thinking about you. I keptfeelingthings. It was maddening. And I…what’s the word…Iyearned. I had never yearned for anything or anyone before. I yearned for you and this place and…” he glanced around, as if the room might offer a solution. “I yearned forhome. My house was never a home, growing up. It was more like a prison, and my mom was the warden. I felt desperate to escape. But here, with you, I felt desperate to return.”

“But you didn’t know how to do that,” she said gently, smoothing her hand on his stomach again, soothing him.

He nodded and took a deep breath. “I wanted to be near you. I didn’t know why, because the feelings, they weren’t good, at least not at first. They were aggravating. They niggledat me, chipping away at that hard outer shell. But you kept coming at me, offering me food, conversation, laughter, warmth, friendship. All the things I didn’t realize I’d been missing.”

“Is that all this is? Friendship?” she asked. This time she was fairly certain she’d whispered.

He shook his head.

“Okay,” Georgette said. If he couldn’t say the words, so be it. Because he had proved his love for her, time and again. He had kept her safe, watched over her, helped her with the inn, taken care of her in innumerable ways. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

“No,” he said. “This part I can handle, andI’mgoing to kissyou.”

“So be it,” she said, lips still smiling gently when his met hers.

CHAPTER 26

Georgie and Burke slipped so seamlessly into their new relationship that hardly anyone noticed it. Even Brody didn’t comment on it. And when Burke joined them for Christmas morning, he didn’t make a peep.

Cotton and Elyse came for an after-Christmas breakfast, and neither of them mentioned it. Georgette might have started to question her sanity and the new reality, if not for the subtle change in Burke. His eyes trailed her everywhere she went, hungrily taking in her proximity whenever she wasn’t near him. Or maybe he’d always done that, as Cotton said, and she’d merely failed to notice. Whatever the reason, it was nice, that bit of connection between them, as well as the little touches that signified their togetherness, touches she saw mirrored between Cotton and Elyse. She remembered when they all went out together and she’d yearned for those little intimacies as proof of connection. Now she had them, and they were as sweet as she’d hoped they’d be.Belonging, possession, intimacy.They had all those things now, along with the solid base of friendship they’d spent so many months building together.

Burke felt it too, Georgie could tell. He’d relaxed in subtle ways, opening to her bit by bit as he settled into the new statusquo and began to trust Georgie with this new layer between them.

“I want to introduce you to my roommates from culinary school,” Georgie said one night after Christmas. She felt mellow and relaxed now, after the rush and success of the winter festival, almost boneless with rest and relief.

“What about Carol?” Burke asked, remembering that Georgie and Carol had been slightly on the outs since Carol dumped Brody in favor of her now husband.

“Including Carol,” Georgie replied, tone definitive. She had more grace for Carol now, since Burke, because she understood better. Brody had said he loved Carol, but he never put himself out there for her, never sought her more than the five days a year they spent together. Maybe Carol’s husband had proved his love for her in more tenable, concrete ways, more than words. Like Burke. If so, Georgie couldn’t blame her for going after what she wanted, even if it meant Brody had been hurt in the process.

“All right,” Burke agreed.

Progress,Georgie thought. The last time she had a group chat with her friends, Burke had disappeared like demons were chasing him, not reappearing again until hours later, when he was certain the call was over.

This time he sat front and center beside her on the couch. “This is Burke,” she blurted as soon as the call began.

Her friends beamed at her, delighted for her. She beamed in return. Her brother and her friends here were her ride or die, but so were these women, who had stood by her since she was an eighteen year old orphan away from home for the first time, solo in the city, her brother in Maine a world away. They had helped her take those first crucial steps into adulthood, giving her the courage it took to return home and buy her inn.

Carol’s husband popped into view, as if he’d been hovering on the periphery of the conversation. “Burke.TheBurke?” he asked.

Burke leaned closer to the laptop. “Jones, is that you?”

“Yes, is that you? I thought The Colonel had you squirrelled away somewhere on a project.”

“No, I finished that forever ago. I’ve been with Georgie a while.”

“That’s fantastic,” Jones beamed.

“You know The Colonel is my dad,” Poppy inserted.

Burke glanced at Georgie to see if that was true, but she shrugged. Poppy had never talked about her father, insisting she wanted to live her own life on her terms. Georgie always assumed that meant they had a fraught relationship; she never would have guessed it was because her father was involved in Burke’s world of espionage. Was everyone secretly a spy? Lately it seemed so, or at least that no one was what they appeared to be, on the surface of things.

“Hey, why are the men monopolizing this roommate meeting?” Sparrow demanded. “Georgette, how’s your stupid brother?”

“The same,” Georgie said.

---