Page 66 of Breaking Conviction
Despite Naomi’s warning, Wes went in and grabbed his pick. Before even getting his hand around the molten hot cookie, he dropped it, yelping no doubt at his still sensitive fingers. Naomi picked it up, swirled more caramel on top, and blew on it before taking a bite.
“Hey, that thing was like lava! How come you can pick it up?”
“I’ve been burnin’ my hands since I was a kid and I’ve built up a tolerance to it.” Naomi shrugged with a laugh. “My momma and grandmomma taught me how to cook. Since my daddy had a sweet tooth, bakin’ stuck with me best.”
“That makes sense.” He nodded with a thoughtful look on his face.
She narrowed her eyes and scoffed. “Really? A woman in the kitchen joke?”
“No. Sheesh, always so quick to be hostile.” The hurt look on his face made her chest tighten.
“Sorry, that was snippy… I think I need to work on that.”
Thankfully, Wes was a damn saint and let her rude behavior roll right off him before he leveled his gaze at her. “It just makes sense because you smell like a sweets shop. It’s intoxicating, actually.”
Once again, she melted as the heat returned to his eyes.
Gah, he knows how to flip my attitude like a damn switch.
She leaned into him, drugged by the thought of his lips on hers, when all of a sudden he closed the gap between them and licked the warm caramel off the dessert in her hand.
“Ah! Off! I don’t want your tongue lickin’ all over my cookie!”
He howled with amusement and it took a second, but she realized what she said and groaned into a laugh of her own.
“I didn’t mean it like that. Obviously.”
“Oh, so you do want me to lick your cookie? Happy to oblige, love.”
Her cheeks warmed and she covered her face with her hands with a groan. Wes chuckled as he reached for the last cookie from the hot metal and yelped again.
“What is wrong with you?” She snorted. “Why don’t you learn?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Well, if I wasn’t persistent in life, I’d miss out on a lot of things I ended up really,reallyliking.” He gave her a pointed look and she darted her eyes toward the desserts like a coward.
She tested out the temperature of a couple of cookies on the plate before choosing the coolest one, twirling more caramel on it, and handing it to him.
“Here, try this one.”
His eyes were on her lips and she smirked before tucking a finger in her mouth to lick off some of the chocolate.
“There’s a thin line between persistence and insanity. Tryin’ the same thing over and over expectin’ a different result, and all that.”
“True.” He nodded at her before averting his eyes. “Insanity would explain a lot about me, actually.” The sentence was muttered in a much darker tone than any of his flirting, and she didn’t like the change. She scoured her mind to think of anything else to talk about.
“Well, except for the insanity part, tryin’ your best to make things work is better than just givin’ up, at least.”
He tilted his head, his lips in a thin grim line. “But, that’s not always true… is it? I think you know that now.”
His words brought that darkness in her life back to the forefront of her mind and she felt her good mood shutter closed. “Good point. Maybe I need to break free from that particular line of thinkin’. It nearly got me killed.”
It took Wes stilling beside her to realize what she’d said. The admission had surprised her probably just as much as it had him. She could tell that both of them were waiting for the other to speak, to figure out how to navigate the truth of her poor choices and misguided determination. After a moment of silence for the life she’d had, she finally spoke.
“I-I don’t think I’ve ever actually said those words... out loud.” She swallowed and collapsed back against the counter.
Wes’s arm curved around her back and he pulled her into his chest, closing the distance between them but giving her the emotional space to continue talking.
“I was with that man... Tryin’ with him off and on for five years. I hoped and wished for Thea to have the life I did… before my daddy passed.” She sighed. “He was my world, ya know? Momma’s too. When he was gone, so was the woman I’d grown up lovin’, and I got lost, too. So I always wanted the life my daddy gave me, for Thea.”
