Page 63 of I Can't Help It

Timmy throws his head back as they start to walk away. “Hailee, you promised!”

“I’m sorry about the confusion!” I call after them. “It, uh—it won’t happen again!”

“Yeah, right!” the girl (Hailee?) retorts, waving me off. “You’ll probably go back for seconds once we’re gone!”

Now I’m the one gaping.

And blushing.

“Well, that was crazy,” Ava says, widening her eyes at me. “First, a police officer. And now, kids? I wonder who will interrupt us next time.”

She proceeds to laugh, but I’m marinating in embarrassment and dread. “Ava, I’m so sorry. I should’ve had more self-control instead of getting carried away, and I—”

“Don’t be sorry.” She steps toward me with a smirk on her face. “Because I’m not.” And then her lips are close to my ear as she whispers, “I’m glad you didn’t have more self-control.”

Her warm breath teases my neck, causing sparks to erupt everywhere, and I bite back another groan.

Spoiler alert: I’m already wanting seconds.

And thirds.

And fourths.

I want a never-ending buffet of Ava and her kisses.

“Mmm,” she says, brushing a kiss to the edge of my jaw. “I’ll see you downstairs in a few minutes.”

She disappears into the room with her suitcase, and I stand there dumbfounded.

How is she so composed after all of that?

I feel like it’s going to take an eternity for me to recover.

My legs are shaking so bad, I don’t even know if I’ll make it downstairs without tripping all over the place.

I’M IN HEAVEN

Ava

Thank God we weren’t graded for our cooking class, otherwise the whole group would’ve gotten a big fat “F.” There were a lot of kitchen mishaps though, so I guess we’d probably deserve the hypothetical bad grade. Let’s look at everything that went wrong…

1: Luke accidentally used sugar instead of salt for the garlic butter mixture we had to brush over the tops of our turkey and cheese paninis. (Yes, we realized his mistake too late.)

2: Someone else was shredding cheese for a salad, and then she cut herself on the grater. (The cut wasn’t really bad, but it took at least five minutes for the bleeding to stop.)

3: Another guest almost slipped because of some water that was on the floor. (If he had slipped, our fruit tray and its accompanying caramel dip would’ve been everywhere.)

4: Then, I practically started a fire while trying to cook skillet potatoes. (It’s a good thing Luke noticed that I left a kitchen towel wayyyyyy too close to the stove burner.)

This is why I stick to chicken nuggets.

Chicken nuggets are easy.

Chicken nuggets have a lower chance of starting fires.

And now I feel like one of those cows begging everyone to “eat mor chikin.”

“So, the cooking class…” Luke trails off as we walk toward his SUV. “That was interesting, huh?”

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