Page 36 of Fall for Me

Chelsea clapped, laughing. “Pure art!”

Heat spread through me. Could she see the heat in my face under this glaring light? “Just practice.”

“I learn something new about you every other minute, Seamus.”

That heat grew, and the smile slipped from Chelsea’s face, but her eyes stayed on mine.

Both of us seemed to grow awkward then, and I suddenly remembered the onions, which would probably be halfway to blackened now. “We better get back inside.”

I held the gate open for her. If her eyes were on me, I didn’t see, because I was carefully avoiding looking at her. As she passed, I felt heat coming off of her. Like her presence did something to the atoms in my body. Like they gravitated toward her.

But then it was gone, and she was heading into the house, asking me where she could wash up.

* * *

After dinner, I looked at Chelsea with a strange mix of feelings roiling around in my stomach. I rarely had women in this house, and when I did, they weren’t usually sitting at my kitchen island. In fact, over the past six months, I think the only woman I’d had in here was Winona Chambers, and she didn’t even count. Winona was one of the guys, and played poker with me, Eli, and a couple of other dudes every month, sometimes at my place.

Chelsea was an entirely different story.

The hardest part had been watching her eat. She devoured her food with the effusiveness of someone who hadn’t seen food in weeks. She was so expressive with the supper I’d made her—a burger with blue cheese and soft, sweet caramelized onions—I had to put my own down to watch.

“Maff goff,” she’d said around her mouthful. I think that was my God. Then something that sounded more or less like this was the best burger she’d ever tasted.

Now I knew, as she leaned back in her barstool and stretched, closing her eyes contentedly, that that same down-low part of me knew getting her to stay wasn’t completely innocent. Even after everything that had passed between me and Eli. Somehow I had meant everything I’d said to him—that I’d look after her; that I understood his worry—that she felt at peace here. But I’d also wanted her to stay, just for me.

And now I felt like a traitorous asshole about it.

“What?” she asked.

Shit. She’d opened her eyes and was staring right at me.

“Do I have something on my face?”

Incidentally, she did. A spot of something up on her cheek—a crumb from the toasted bun. I was standing close to her—I’d come over to clear her plate—and before I knew what I was doing, I reached up and thumbed it off her cheek.

Only I kept my hand there a moment too long. It was like my hand had a mind of its own and wanted to stay touching the soft skin there.

Then I realized what I was doing and lowered my hand.

“You liked it?” I asked.

“What, you touching me?”

I felt my cheeks go hot.

Then she grinned. She was fucking with me. “The burger.”

“Yeah, I liked it, Seamus. How come Eli never told me you were such a good cook?”

“I don’t cook for Eli.”

She laughed. “No, I guess not. Well, thanks for cooking for me, even if it was because you were obliged to, you know, take care of me.”

“It’s not an obligation.”

She blinked. I’d said that too fast.

I knew she was teasing me, but suddenly I wanted her to stop. It was too much. Too confusing. Too like flirting. Back before everything, when she first came back, I’d told myself she was flighty. Preoccupied with partying. But she wasn’t that girl anymore. And hell, even if she was, I knew now that there was more to her.

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