Page 30 of Melt for You (Slow Burn 2)
I groan, rolling my eyes. “Forty-five minutes of this every night and I’ll go insane.”
“Aye. With lust.”
“Oh. My. God.”
“You can just call me Cam, darlin’. Though it’s accurate, God seems a wee bit formal.”
I make a sound of exasperation that contains a lot of snarling fricatives and go back to assembling the meat loaf.
Cam is quiet until I put the loaf into the oven and set the timer. Then he says, “So. Pretty boy. Tell me.”
The thought of Michael’s expression when he looked at the roses on my desk brings a smile to my face. I wash my hands in the sink, dry them, then lean against the counter with my arms folded ove
r my chest and meet Cam’s gaze. “It was brilliant. He came over first thing in the morning to see about the chair he ordered me, and there’s this huge bouquet on my—”
“What chair?”
I’m startled by the force of his question. “Oh. He thought my office chair was broken because I was being my usual clumsy self and . . .” The way Cam’s face darkens when I call myself clumsy makes me quickly rewind. “I mean, he thought my chair was broken and ordered me another one.”
“This was before he saw the roses?”
“Yeah. This was during the conversation I had with him on Sunday, when I found out he was getting divorced.”
“When you say he thought it was broken, that makes it sound like it wasn’t actually broken.”
“It wasn’t. It’s hard to explain without getting you mad, because I’ll have to describe what happened, and honestly I don’t see any way around that without mentioning that I’m clumsy.”
Cam gazes at me steadily. “Huh.”
“What d’you mean, ‘huh’?”
“There’s two parts to it.”
“There’s two parts to a one-syllable word?”
“To the explanation.”
“Why do I feel like I should be sitting for this?”
Cam motions to the chair across from him, which I sink into, weirdly nervous about what he might say.
Drumming his fingers on the table, Cam says, “Part one is the interestin’ fact that pretty boy ordered you a new office chair.”
I chew my lip with worry. “Why is that interesting?”
“Interestin’ that he noticed. Interestin’ that he took the initiative. Interestin’ that he made it happen so fast. Interestin’ that he dropped by to make sure it was done. All of it made even more interestin’ because you’re of the opinion he doesn’t know you exist.”
I lean forward, my eyes wide. “That’s what I thought!”
“What did he do when he saw the flowers?”
“He sort of . . . glared at them, like he wanted to throw them away.”
A muscle flexes in Cam’s jaw, but he’s silent.
“What’s part two?”
“That you care if I get mad when you’re too hard on yourself.”
