Page 99 of Dallas

She used the spatula to put a stack of four pancakes on a plate. Then she added syrup, chocolate chips, whipped cream and a cherry. And held it out to him. “Be mad at me while you eat this,” she said.

“It’s impossible,” he said, sounding defeated as he took the plate and sat down at the small kitchen table, his bad mood lightening even more when he noticed the cup of coffee already in position for him.

“I know.” She smiled and put a pancake onto a plate for herself, sticking to chocolate chips and whipped cream, and sat across from him.

He took a bite and moaned, a deep, guttural sound that echoed in her stomach and made her feel all strange and jittery.

“Good?” she asked.

“So good.”

First the pancake batter show, now he was making sex noises while he ate. The man was a damned hazard to her health.

No, this wasn’t the first time she’d beeninappropriately aroused by Jace. There was...well, all of high school. But he’d dated other girls, and she’d dated other boys. And then there were a few months of melancholy longing sprinkled throughout the next twelve years. But nothing she couldn’t deal with. Nothing she couldn’t ignore.

Like a few weeks ago when they’d watched that movie and he’d put the popcorn bowl in his lap. It had forced her mind to what was beneath the bowl. To whether or not he felt her reaching in the bowl. To what he might think of that.

But then she hadn’t seen him for a couple of days due to work obligations, and she’d gotten her head on straight.

It was just that there had been two incidents in the space of a few hours and since she was living with him for the time being, there had been no blessed distance to make sure she could get her brain back in order.

The Jace lust had to end. It was just bad. Bad bad bad. If they were going to live together for the next four weeks she had to somehow manage it without drooling like Poppy.

“I’ve got to head out,” she said, standing and stretching. “I need to get everything going at the bakery. Thank God I just make cupcakes and pies and not breads, or I’d have to be there at three a.m. Still, the meringue will not whip itself.” She wiggled her eyebrows and reached down to the floor by her chair to retrieve her purse.

“What are you doing with your mongrel?” he asked.

“My purebred—” she bent and smooched Poppy on the lips “—stays home. I run a bakery. Unsanitary.”

“You just made pancakes withitright there.”

“She’snot unsanitary to me. She’s unsanitary per regulations laid out by the state of Oregon. I think she’s a peach. But then, I don’t really want hair wafting onto the cupcakes either.”

“What am I supposed to do with her?”

“I’ll take her out now and she can stay inside until I close up shop. That’s what I normally do.”

“You want her to stay in the house?”

“She can’t stay in the van. It’s cold. Sometimes I leave her outside, but not all day in the snow.”

“She’s a Newfoundland, Sam. Aren’t they...waterproof like ducks?”

“Poppy is an inside doggy,” she said.

“You’re overindulging.”

“Ah, Jace, you overindulge in bleach and I love you anyway.”

“Bleach, unlike your dog, leaves things cleaner than before it blew through the kitchen.”

“I was the one splattering pancake batter, not Poppy.”

“Then maybe I should keep her and throw her owner in a snowbank.”

“You wouldn’t. I’m too cute.”

Jace felt all the electricity that had flowed through his veins when she’d hit him in the chest with pancake batter now run toward his heart and encircle it, giving it a hard jolt. Dammit, she was too cute.

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