Page 36 of At First Flight
Lila steps back, brushing her hands on her jeans. “Duty calls.”
“Yeah,” I say even though part of me wants to keep her right here. Just a little longer.
She turns toward the hallway, pausing just long enough to look over her shoulder. “Thanks for the help, Dean.”
Anytime, I almost say.
But she’s already gone, the faint scent of sugar and soap lingering in her wake.
And me? I’m still standing in the kitchen, gripping a dish towel, heart pounding like I’ve just stepped off a ledge.
The house is finally quiet. It’s the kind of silence you only get after bedtime with kids—the echo of laughter still clinging to the walls, dishes stacked in the sink, and the hum of the dishwasher the only sound breaking through the calm.
I should be down the hall. Technically, I’m still logged into an investor meeting I bailed on twenty minutes ago. But I made my excuses, closed the laptop, and came downstairs instead.
And there she is.
Lila.
Sitting at the kitchen table in an oversized navy blue sweatshirt, she has her sleeves pushed up and her hair falls loose around her face. She’s got a mug of tea tucked under her chin and her laptop open in front of her, brows slightly furrowed as she types.
I lean against the doorway and watch her for a second, unnoticed. A small crease appears between her eyebrows when she’s concentrating. She bites her lip when she's rereading something. Every now and then, she glances at her notes with a soft sigh, then goes right back to it.
Even when she’s working, she’s calming to be around. I walk over and pull out the chair across from her. She looks up, startled.
“Sorry,” I murmur. “Didn’t mean to interrupt the scientific breakthrough.”
She huffs a soft laugh, closing her laptop halfway. “Hardly. I’m just reviewing a proposal I put together last year, thinking I could recycle part of it for another request.”
I raise a brow. “Anything I can help with?”
She tilts her head, curious. “Do you know much about immunoglobulin E antibody-mediated food responses?”
“Not a damn thing.”
She laughs again, and God, that sound burrows somewhere deep in my chest.
“But I do know a thing or two about putting together a pitch. If you want someone to bounce it off.”
“I might take you up on that,” she says, fingers sliding over the rim of her mug. “It’s just… hard to focus sometimes. Hard to make it all fit.”
She doesn’t say what exactly she’s trying to fit together, but I know. Work. This new life. It’s a lot.
So I nod and don’t press. “How about I grab my laptop and work here with you?”
Her eyes widen slightly, surprised. “You want to work… at the kitchen table?”
I grin. “I’m not so high-and-mighty that I can’t trade a leather chair for a little wood. Besides, the view’s better down here.”
She ducks her head at that, cheeks turning pink. But she doesn’t tell me to stop. Doesn’t tell me to go.
Instead, she nods.
I dash into my office to grab my laptop, then return to settle across from her. We fall into a rhythm for a few minutes—keys clacking, mugs refilling, companionable silence stretching like a blanket over us both.
At one point, Lila pulls her knees up into the chair, leaning forward over her notes. A strand of hair falls over her cheek, and I have to physically restrain myself from brushing it back.
She catches me staring.
