Page 25 of Sugarlips
I walked inside, leaving Neil to tell the rest of our family his plans for when he came back to Maple Grove. I’d barely made it down the hall when I nearly ran into Chloe standing there… hiding? Was she hiding?
Her eyes went wide when she saw me, and she ducked back into the kitchen. “Chloe? I can see you.”
She poked her head back up from behind the granite counter. “I heard your family arguing and I didn’t know what to do,” she whispered.
“Sooooo… you thought ducking below my counter was the best option? It’s not like they didn’t know you were in here.” I left out the fact thatshewas the reason the little scuffle began in the first place.
She stood up and threw her hands in the air. “Well, I don’t know. I panicked.”
I laughed and tucked my hand into my front pocket. “Clearly.”
She sighed and grabbed her purse off the counter. “I can go. I thought you invited me for dinner, but I can see now that you didn’t—”
I stepped in front of her, blocking her path toward the door. “Don’t go.”
She rolled her eyes. “But you don’t want me here. It’s some family thing. I remember Elaina saying you guys do this a lot.” She waved her hands around the kitchen as though having a family dinner was a magical thing.
“We do. Which is why you joining us isn’t a big interruption.” I reached out and slid the strap of her purse off her shoulder. “Come on. Stay. I made puttanesca…”
Her eyes went wide, her plump lips puckering into an excited ‘oh’ and she skittered over to the stovetop, lifting the lid off of one of the saucepans. “Wait… this isn’t pasta.”
“It’s spaghetti squash. With Mom’s cancer, we try to limit the amount of grains she eats.” I shook my head, grabbing a clean spoon and holding the sauce up for her to taste. “Here… try it.”
She leaned forward, parting her lips and slowly wrapping them around the dome of the spoon. With some girls, I would have figured the low, satisfied moan and the slow drag of her tongue across her bottom lip to be intentionally seductive. Hell, even two weeks ago, I would have thought it was intentional from Chloe. But now I knew better. She wasn’t trying to be sexy. She justwassexy. Naturally. The truth was, Chloe was a total goofball.
She pressed her fingertips to her mouth, her eyes fluttering open. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “It’ssogood. You can cook. You canbake. You’re fit and hot as hell… explain to me how in God’s name are you still single?”
I laughed, ignoring the fireball that surged through my blood with the knowledge that Chloe Dyker thought I was hot. With a shrug, I dropped the spoon into the sink. “One of the wonders of the world, I guess.”
“I’m serious,” she said, following me over to the sink as I washed my hands. “Are the women of Maple Grove blind?”
I glanced briefly at her over my shoulder before spinning around to face her, leaning against the sink’s edge. “I don’t know,” I said. “You’rea woman of Maple Grove. You tell me.”
The second the words left my mouth, I regretted them. She drew back, her eyes searching my face quickly. “I…I was with my cheating asshole of a boyfriend—then fiancé—for years. I wasn’t looking at anyone because I wasn’t single.”
I pressed my lips together nodding and made a quietmmmsort of noise. “And now?”What was I doing? I didn’t want to date Chloe Dyker… did I?
No. No, I did not. Even if she did things to my blood pressure and made my pulse race like I was finishing first in a marathon. Not to mention, my brother would kill me.
Her breath shortened, causing that tight, lacy top to heave with each inhale. “Now…” she swallowed, her eyes dropping to my lips, and her hands fell to my arms, squeezing my biceps. “Now… I’m noticing.”
Behind us, in the hallway, I heard my sister squeal, “Neil, that’s so exciting!”
He must have finished telling them his plans for the training center. Chloe flinched, jumping back, her eyes cast to the floor. Slowly, she dragged her gaze back to mine and whispered, “Even if we’re both interested in… inthat… with everything that’s happened with my sister and Neil…” Her words faded and she shook her head. “Truthfully, I really just need a friend.”
I nodded and forced my face to rearrange into a smile. The dreaded friend zone. “I think you mean abestfriend,” I whispered back, correcting her. Chloe was so damn good at hiding her feelings. So good at seeming okay, it was easy to forget that only a few days ago, she’d learned she was being cheated on by her fiancé. Beneath her tough exterior, she was probably heartbroken. And here I was preying on her; taking advantage of that, even if it was unintentional.
I was rewarded with the most blindingly beautiful grin that warmed me from the inside out. “So … you finally submit to the idea that we’re going to be best friends?”
Considering I only had a couple of guy friends from high school, and all of my culinary school friends had moved away to bigger cities, it was easy to find myself nodding. With my crazy schedule and the 3:00 a.m. wake up calls… I barely saw the friends Ididhave.
I had to admit, in the limited amount of time Chloe and I had hung out, we actually made pretty good friends. I thought back to the other night at her house when I slept there. Despite the heavy flirting, we had fun. A lot of fun. I hadn’t laughed that hard in years with someone who wasn’t family.
“Come on,” I tugged a strand of her hair, playfully. “Let’s get this dinner on the table.”
We parted just as my family came clomping into the kitchen.
Dinner went pretty smoothly.Conversation between my family and Chloe was easy, and she made them laugh with her animated stories of her sorority sisters. As she spoke, her knee would occasionally bump mine. Sometimes on purpose when she was driving home a point. And other times because she was so vivacious that her movements couldn’t be contained to the confines of her personal space.
