Page 54 of Teach Me
Jess accepted her cup with a smile. “Good morning.” The first sip scalded her tongue with rich sweetness. She savored it, closing her eyes in enjoyment before glancing around the kitchen. “Have you been up for a while? I don’t remember you leaving the bed.”
“That’s because you were snoring.”
Jess pulled back, doing her best two-cent impression of shock. “I do not snore.”
“Yes, you do.” Conlan bent down until his nose rubbed along the side of hers. “And even if you didn’t, you’d never know.”
She pinched his stomach lightly just for the twinkle in his eye. Conlan’s laugh was as full and rich as the coffee he’d made, which she savored in slow sips while admiring the male beauty he so effortlessly displayed. God, no one should look that good in the morning.
He looks even better at night.
Yes, he did, no doubt about it. She hid her grin behind the rim of her coffee cup.
Con moved to the fridge and started taking out things for breakfast. “You like eggs?” he asked, head down near the shelves.
“Hmm?” She tried hard not to swallow her tongue at the view of his ass she was getting. “Sure.”
Okay, so the word was slightly strangled. She could swear she heard a muffled laugh from the vicinity of the fridge’s open door, but she refused to acknowledge it. He had a big enough…ego…as it was without feeding it. “I thought you couldn’t cook.”
“Not couldn’t,” he threw over his shoulder, “just don’t like to. But breakfast tastes better at home.”
Jess smiled into her coffee. “So this house belonged to your grandmother?”
Conlan stood, arms stacked with way more food than it should take to feed the two of them, and kicked the refrigerator door closed. “Not in this incarnation, but the original cabin did. I rebuilt this place around the time my dad retired. We did the work together, and I brought in a team for the heavy stuff.”
Jess trailed him across the kitchen to the stove. “Your dad’s in construction?”
“From the time I was little, yes. I grew up around construction sites—slave labor, you know.” He held up a package of bacon and a package of sausage. “Yes?”
“Uh, sure.” Both? She shrugged and reached for the packages. “Let me help.”
“Uh-uh-uh. You sit.” He nodded toward the stools pulled up to a bar-like section of the counter. “Let me fix you some breakfast.”
“You’ve been fixing too much the past couple of days,” she protested, but she sat anyway, her hands soaking in the warmth from her coffee cup. Something about his protectiveness, the care he lavished on her, had gone farther toward making her feel better than any pain medication or time spent in bed. Not that time spent in bed was a bad thing unless you spent it there alone, which she had all day yesterday. Even pouting hadn’t worked, but still some tiny part of her had melted at his adamant refusal to “hinder” her recovery, as he’d called it. If she had anything to say about it, her recovery would definitely be hindered today.
She divided her time between watching him fry bacon and scramble eggs and watching a couple of cardinals flitting between two feeders perched outside the window. The moment felt domestic, deceptively comfortable.
“How much do you know about Brit’s background?”
The question jarred her out of domestic bliss. She shifted on her stool. “Not much. His folks have lived here forever. His father founded Holbrooke Technologies in the early eighties, and after college Brit came back and took the position he has now. He works a lot.”
Silenced filled the next few minutes as Conlan dumped bread in the toaster and spooned fruit into a couple of small bowls. “Did he ever talk about past relationships with you?”
“Why does this feel like an interrogation?”
“Because it is?” Conlan stepped up to the bar, two plates in hand. “I need to know all I can about the enemy, Jess. Recon isn’t possible; you’re my best source of solid intel.”
She struggled with that for a moment, with letting Brit into the space between them, but he was right and she couldn’t ignore what was going on any more than she could ignore Conlan. Standing, she said, “He didn’t really talk about other women.” She rounded the bar to take the plates from him, then trailed him to the stove. As he dished up food, she continued. “I know he was engaged a couple of years ago, but they broke it off before the wedding. I was new at Ex Libris and not hanging out with my parents’ crowd as much then, so I didn’t know her, just rumors mostly.”
They settled at a small table in the breakfast nook off the back of the kitchen. “So how did you meet?” Conlan asked, spearing a strawberry. His face didn’t change, but his voice went tight.
He didn’t like talking about this either. Somehow knowing that made it a little bit easier.
“My parents. They managed to rope me into attending an annual charity ball they helped organize every year, and my dad”—her voice teetered on cracking—“he introduced us. Said Brit had great potential.” She managed a small laugh. “What he meant was Brit had money and was interested in his shy, awkward daughter.”
She didn’t glance up, didn’t want to see pity in Con’s eyes. Choking down a couple of bites of her breakfast gave her a minute to get herself back together.
“And then your parents were killed in a car accident.”
