But Rachel’s face brimmed with amusement. “Don’t be sorry. They’re so much fun. Do they really come over here all the time?”
“All. The time. Their mother says they need a male role model and I’m the closest they’ve got. Want me to take that off your hands?”
“Sure.” She handed over the ice cream, which made him relax a little. Contributing ice cream seemed like a commitment to stay for the entire dinner. Which reminded him …
“Uh oh,” he said with dread. “Something tells me the boys didn’t get around to checking the pasta. Come on in, make yourself at home.” He hurried into the kitchen, where the pasta water was at a full boil, making the lid bounce up and down with a clatter. “I hope you like spaghetti, because it’s the only thing I make well,” he called to Rachel. “Usually,” he muttered.
The pasta sauce had thickened around the edges of the pan and made sluggish gurgling sounds. He turned it off, jabbed violently at it, then went hunting through his cabinets for a package of spaghetti. How could this be such a disaster already?
“I love spaghetti,” Rachel said, making him jump. He hadn’t realized she’d followed him into the kitchen. “Do you mind if I put the ice cream in your freezer? It’s starting to melt out here.”
Oops. He’d left her ice cream on the counter while he dealt with the looming spaghetti crisis. “Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I promise no neighbor kids will jump out at you. Reminds me of the time we got a call from a woman during a blackout. She was freaking out because she’d put her dead cat in the freezer and it was starting to thaw out.”
Spaghetti package in hand, he pulled his head from inside the cupboard, horror dawning as he replayed his words. “Did I really just mention a dead, frozen cat? To a pet therapist who works at an animal refuge?”
Rachel closed the freezer door and faced him. Her face was the same deep red as her top, making him wonder if she’d gotten freezer burn in there. As a trained paramedic, should he do something about that? What was the treatment for freezer burn? What about the treatment for full-on, maximum strength humiliation?
Their eyes met. Dry sticks of spaghetti slid through his fingers and bounced onto the floor like pickup sticks. Rachel burst into laughter.
Chapter 8
Rachel felt all the worries of the last few days float away on a cloud of laughter. The accident, her friends’ injuries, the news cameras, the text from Bradford, and of course, always, the kidnapper, it all vanished at the comically mortified expression on Fred’s face.
“It’s … it’s okay,” she managed when she finally managed to stop the waves of giggles. “You didn’t have to make dinner for me anyway. We can go straight to ice cream. Or straight to Greta.”
Her dog was sniffing at the dry spaghetti and pushing it with her nose, trying to determine if it was edible. Fred bent down to give her a pat on the head. The motion pulled his T-shirt snug against his chest muscles, which made her remember the sight of him without his T-shirt. Which made her mouth go dry.
That image wasn’t likely to leave her any time soon. At first glance, Fred didn’t look like a muscleman, but the guy was rock-solid. His torso was a spectacular landscape of rippling muscles. With his shirt on, he looked like a cute, nice guy. Without his shirt, he looked like someone you didn’t want to mess with. A badass. The easy way he’d lifted her out of the limo made complete sense now.
“Is there any way we could start this evening over from the beginning?” Fred was still crouched next to Greta, staring in dismay at the spaghetti littering the blue-and-white kitchen floor.
And that was the other thing. Fred’s home was so … homey. The windows had ruffled curtains, not reinforced bulletproof glass. Instead of state-of-the-art stainless steel, the kitchen featured worn wooden butcher blocks and counters the color of speckled sunshine. She tried to imagine what would have happened if three exuberant boys had tried karate kicks in her apartment without previously notifying Marsden. There probably would have been lawsuits involved at some point. The thought of the kids made her smile.
“No way,” she told him emphatically. “So far I’ve been treated like a queen. I had the door opened for me and got my own personal martial arts exhibition. I wouldn’t change a minute of it.”
The dimple that appeared in Fred’s cheek when he smiled made her a little weak in the knees. “You’re a good sport. I like that in a guest.”
She smiled back. Something hummed between them, and again the memory of his bare, tautly muscled chest flashed into her mind. No one would guess he had so much hidden power under that shirt. It was as if he was masking his true identity beneath a regular-guy exterior.
He broke the moment by clearing his throat. “Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that was my last package of spaghetti. But …” He whipped a piece of paper off his refrigerator, which was cluttered with photos and magnets shaped like fire engines and Betty Boop. “My sister, who visits a lot, made this list of takeout places. Anything look interesting?”