Page 31 of Burning Love
“Nope. I also know how to handle them since I have lived with them for so long.”
“Handle, huh?”
She smirked. “I think you like a woman that knows how to handle you.”
He laughed, but it was forced. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“I guess we’ll have to find out.”
“We will,” he said. “And the steaks should be done.”
She grabbed the plates and handed them over; he put a steak on each one. She’d never eat the whole thing and she’d told him that when they picked them up at the store on the way here.
She ran into the house and got another plate to put her half on it for him later. No reason to have it sitting on her dish.
“Are you going to be busy this week? I’m not being clingy, just talking. I’m so used to loud meals, the silence is kind of uneasy.”
“Do you talk to yourself when you eat alone?”
“I play music or the TV is on. It comes from living in a house full of noise. Though I’ve got a sibling that loves the silence now.”
“I didn’t have that,” he said.
“Now that it’s just my mom and me, we talk when we eat together. I’m not always sure I want that either, but it’s nice too.”
“Because she’s nosy?” he asked.
“Yep. But she talks about my siblings too. For years I always felt like the failure and those conversations were to remind or nudge me to make some decisions in life. Instead they were more about companionship for her.”
“Seems you’re making decisions fine now. Are you going to tell her about this?”
His hand was going back and forth between them.
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “We don’t even know what this is. You were upfront and told me it was going to be casual.”
“Nothing about you is casual. I can tell right away.”
Her smile lifted high. “I don’t think so, but I’m not clingy nor do I have high expectations of things.”
He stopped chewing, his dark brown eyes watching her face. “I’m trying to figure out if that is an insult or not.”
“You know, Jace. You make it hard for someone to talk to you. You say you’re not committing to anything. I bet you do that all the time so you don’t ever have a woman come back and say you led them on.”
“Yep.”
“You’re old enough that I’m going to assume someone burned you and we’ll let it go at that. We aren’t anywhere near a place that you’d tell me more.”
“Nope,” he said, grinning.
It gave her hope that maybe he could move past it though. That he wasn’t just a jerk.
Then she asked herself why she’d try to change someone who might not want to change.
“You didn’t have to agree so easily,” she said, closing one eye at him.
“I don’t play games,” he said seriously.
“Neither do I.” Her smile was gone.
