Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,115
back. I’ll take you straight up.
She hadn’t realized that there was a door back there that went directly upstairs, but there was. Adam opened it, and the sight of him, in a worn T-shirt and faded jeans, made it feel like the air had been scooped out of her lungs.
“I can’t imagine you in a suit,” she said.
“What?”
“You were in finance.”
“Yeah. I probably still have the suit somewhere.”
“I need to see it.”
“Not tonight.”
“Why not? Maybe I have a James Bond fantasy.”
“Well, when you put it that way. Maybe.”
He closed the door behind them and she followed him up the narrow staircase. “What are you doing?”
“We have to eat, right?”
“Sure. But...”
Her words were cut off when they entered the apartment, and she smelled something decidedly undiner like. Pasta. She was certain. And there was a green salad sitting on the table.
A bottle of wine. Two glasses.
“What’d you do?”
“I cooked for you. And I had to make sure that it was different than the way that I normally cook for you.”
“Why?” she asked.
He was feeding her. He was giving her...a romantic dinner. And they hadn’t done romance. Not at all. Everything they’d done in this apartment had happened in that bed. Well, sometimes the shower. But they’d been naked, and their conversations had been short. Between bouts of hard, fast sex before Rachel ran back to her real life.
“How long has it been since someone took care of you? And I don’t mean in that church meal train, feel-sorry-for-you kind of way. When was the last time someone took the time to do something for you?”
“I don’t... I don’t know.”
“You take care of everyone. And the only time you ever let someone else take care of you was when you came into my diner and ordered a hamburger. I like taking care of you, Rachel.”
“I—”
“Sit.”
She was so shocked that she obeyed. Like she was a golden retriever.
He went over to the stove and took a pan of lasagna out of the oven. She watched him move, his broad shoulders, narrow waist and lean hips. The way that the muscles in his forearm shifted as he worked.
In this context she could imagine him in a suit. He had authority. Wore it with the same ease that he wore those faded T-shirts. Not the kind of authority that was louder, and demanded respect and attention.
It was measured.
Easy.
He poured her a glass of wine, served her, then sat across from her, looking at her with the kind of intent that made her skin heat up.
“Thank you,” she said, because it was the polite thing to say, but she wasn’t sure she was actually that grateful. Because it was...
She didn’t know quite how to do this.
She’d fallen into the role of caretaker for her family. It had been easier. Easier than sitting around and waiting for bad things to happen. Easier than hoping that someone else would do the difficult things.
Easier than sitting around and just having feelings.
And, yes, sometimes she had felt overwhelmed, but then she was able to marinate privately in righteous indignation.
When someone did things for you...
She didn’t quite know how to handle it.
He was easy to talk to. Even with her conflicting feelings. He told her more about his house outside of San Francisco. Told her more about Jack and Callie. They talked about good times with them. Not about his estrangement.
And, somehow, that led her into talking about Jacob.
“I knew I was in love with him right away. But, then, I was seventeen. You don’t worry about whether or not something is real when you’re seventeen. You just feel it, and you know. It was the easiest thing in the world. Our relationship was the easiest thing in the world. It seemed so unfair when he got sick. Because we could’ve fixed anything. Could have faced anything. In terms of marriage, in terms of those day-to-day problems that you have. But we couldn’t...make him well. There was no amount of love that could fix it... People feel sorry for us. For me. But I had a great marriage. I don’t feel sorry for me.”
She felt sad sometimes, but never sorry.
“What kind of man was he?”
“Nice. Very even-tempered, which is a bonus, since I’m not. He liked to take things slow. He was a photographer, and we would go for long drives, and sometimes...he wouldn’t even take a picture. He wanted to look at the scenery, to see it and take it all in first. And then sometimes he would go back