Page 76 of Secondhand Smoke
Instead, he slipped his hands into his pockets to keep them under control. She seemed to be doing something similar, her denim jacket pulled close even though the forecast was set to be in the low nineties in the afternoon.
“Did you miss me?”
Oh, it wasaddictive, the way she turned her head to the side, biting her smile and hiding her pink cheeks behind her discolored hair. It made it easier to ignore the tinted bags under her eyes.
He chuckled, his heart inflating the way it did when he wanted to pet a puppy.
“I said I would,” she mumbled.
Oh. Oh.Oh.
Oh, it wasmaddening. She had to know. She had to be playing with him. She had to know what she was doing to him.
It was one thing for her to say that high in the middle of the night, but it was another when sober in daylight.
It was real.
His face ached from smiling. His chest was going to explode.
“Have you eaten?” he asked.
Nell turned back to him cautiously like she hadn’t expected him to ask that. But neither had he. It was the only thing he could come up with that wasn’t spine-chillingly embarrassing or outright degenerate to think, much less say aloud. And there was a lot of that in mind.
“Not yet.”
He nodded toward the house. “How do you like your eggs?”
* * *
“You never said you could cook.” Nell poked her fork into the center of her egg, the golden yolk bursting and flooding her blue plate.
Barrett watched her carefully dip her toast into it and take a bite before he dug into his own scrambled eggs. He was going to make sure she left this place full. Up close, sitting next to her on his countertop stools, she looked thinner than he remembered.He wouldn’t consider himself an expert on a woman’s weight, but her cheeks were sharper than last week.
He planned on making sure they were filled in by the time he left again on Friday.
“If it were up to me, you’d be eating some fancy Benedict right now. You’re lucky I didn’t burn that toast.”
Nell snorted and downed another bite. “Well, you make an exceptional fried egg.”
“You asked for sunny side up.”
“They’re close enough in my book.” She smiled up at him through her light lashes.
Barrett chuckled and bit into his toast, leaning his chin into his palm to look at her. “You’re too sweet for your own good.”
Her chewing slowed, and she tilted her head up. Her eyes stayed on him, studying.
Barrett’s confidence waned under her gaze, icy blue holding him in place for long seconds. He cleared his throat. “What?”
“You really mean that.”
“Obviously.” Barrett’s smile strained with his confusion. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”
A crease grew between her brows. If his fingers weren’t covered in breadcrumbs, he would reach out and smooth it out for her.
“Why do you look so surprised?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I just . . . I thought I wasn’t.”
