Page 17 of Adrian (Love Under the Lights 3)

“Maybe I can give it a try, and then you can surprise her the next time you visit,” I suggested with a smile.

“Don’t let the omelets fool you. I’m basically hopeless in the kitchen except for them,” he warned before finishing off the last few bites of his breakfast.

As soon as my plate was empty, he took the dishes over to the sink to rinse them off. When he bent over to load the dishwasher, I stared at his perfect ass and mentally kicked myself for falling asleep without getting a kiss last night. The couple of brushes of his lips over mine this morning had me wanting our first real kiss even more.

When he straightened and turned toward me, I yanked my gaze up and pretended that I’d been looking at his appliances. “A kitchen like yours deserves to be cooked in all the time.”

“Mi cocina es tu cocina.”

Adrian speaking English was already sexy enough, but hearing another language in that deep voice of his was almost more than I could handle. My ovaries metaphorically exploded at his perfect accent, and it took me a moment to remember what I’d been about to say. “I have the perfect recipe for you to try. You’ve already proven you know how to chop vegetables and stir stuff together. That’s pretty much all you need to do to make one of my favorite chicken dishes.”

“I thought I’d do steaks on the grill tonight. Do you want to teach me how to make your chicken recipe for dinner tomorrow night?”

I loved how there were no games with Adrian. He wanted to spend time with me, and he didn’t have any problem letting me know it. “Yeah, that works for me.”

“Let me know when you’re about thirty minutes away from being done with your paper.” He pushed my laptop toward me. “I’ll pull out the steaks so they’ll be at room temperature when I toss them on the grill.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to head back to my place to study? I’m not going to be very good company for the next four or five hours,” I warned, knowing that I had a habit of forgetting everyone and everything around me once I got going.

“Don’t worry about me. I have plenty of shit I can take care of while you’re working on your paper, and I knew you’d be busy most of the day when I invited you over,” he reassured me with a smile.

Taking him at his word, I focused on my laptop, textbook, and notebook for the next seven hours. I quickly discovered that my ability to focus on the task at hand was greatly diminished by my continued awareness of Adrian. He wasn’t easy to ignore, not when he made my heart race whenever he was near. I found my gaze drifting out the French doors when he went into the backyard to check the pool, coming quite close to drooling when he pulled his shirt off while he did some work in the yard.

He wreaked havoc on my concentration, and it took me a couple of hours longer than I’d planned to get my paper wrapped up. Even though he’d forced some cheese and crackers on me for a snack a few hours earlier, I was starving by the time I was done. “Thirty-minute warning,” I called out before I scrolled up to the top to begin proofreading.

Adrian timed dinner perfectly, and it didn’t take long for us to finish the strip steaks and baked potatoes he’d made. After we cleaned everything up, he led me over to the big leather couch in his living room. “Have you ever seen Coming to America? I noticed that you didn’t have it in your DVD collection, and I’m willing to bet you’d love it.”

“Of course I’ve seen Coming to America! So often that I wore out my DVD,” I explained with a laugh. “Eddie Murphy is probably one of the few movie stars I’d actually recognize if I ever met him in person. He’s a comedic genius.”

“I’m not sure how you manage it, but you just keep on getting more perfect.” He pulled me close as he found the movie on his streaming service. I cuddled into his side, unable to speak at the moment because I was overwhelmed by his compliment. Adrian was the first person to ever say such things to me, and it was a big boost to my self-confidence. He was so blatant about his attraction to me that I wasn’t my usual shy, bumbling nerd around him. It was a huge relief because I’d want to kick my own butt if I did something stupid to ruin this before we even got started.

Resting my head against his shoulder, I looked up at him when he hit the pause button just as the movie was starting. “Stay here tonight.”

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