Rogue Devil (The Rourkes #11) - Kylie Gilmore Page 0,31

about to strut back to your place for a whisk?”

I elbow him in the ribs, and he makes an exaggerated oof sound, wincing and bending over. “Damn, Chloe, have you been lifting weights with pencils again?” He grabs my pen from the counter and does an arm curl like it’s a dumbbell, patting the bulge of his bicep with his other hand. I don’t know whether to laugh or reach out to feel the hard curve of muscle. He grins at me, his blue eyes sparkling devilishly.

I pull two forks from a drawer and hand him one. “Get whisking.”

We stand side by side, whisking the eggs in the center of our flour bowls.

“What’s next again?” I ask since I was distracted during the video.

“We have to gradually push the flour into the center to mix it.”

“Got it.”

“You totally spaced when Massimo told us all this. What were you thinking about?”

Sex. “Neurogenetics.”

“Ah. Me too.”

I laugh.

He nudges my shoulder with his. “What? You think you cornered the market on neurogenetics daydreaming? Nuh-uh. It’s all I can think about.”

I shake my head, smiling. “I’m sure.”

We finish up whisking and cave in the bowls, making a mess of the dough.

“Are you sure this is going to turn into pasta?” I ask. “It looks awful.”

“Give it time. Massimo says he helped make this when he was a kid. I’m sure two adults can handle it.” He grins. “We can always call for pizza.”

Two hours later, we’ve got the meat filling on top of a bunch of square pieces of pasta, and we’re working on making the little tortellini pouches. I’m having a blast.

“Are your feet hurting?” he asks. “Mine are.”

“A bit.”

He goes to the other side of a half-wall countertop that separates the kitchen from the living room and retrieves two cushioned black stools for us to sit on.

“I should’ve thought of that,” I say, taking a seat. We’ve been on our feet for hours.

“You were distracted by Massimo and neurogenetics,” he says, sitting next to me. “Aren’t we all?”

I smile and keep working on my cute pouches of pasta. “I think we made too much. We’re going to have hundreds of these little buggers.”

“You can never have too much pasta.”

“Uh, yeah, you can. Too many carbs and you’ll puff out like the Pillsbury Doughboy.”

“He should totally stop eating himself. Ooh, that sounds dirty. Naughty Chloe.”

I roll my eyes.

He’s quiet for a moment as he works. “I heard it’s tough to get into Harvard Medical School. Do you have a plan B?”

I still. He looked into it? I glance over at him, but his focus is on his pasta, so I return to my own pasta. “Yeah, it’s tough. It’s my goal, but, of course, I’ll apply other places.”

“Where?”

I glance over, surprised he wants to know. I’ve still got a year left at Columbia. Does he expect we’ll still be hanging out by the time med school rolls around? That’s kinda nice that he cares so much about our friendship. “Johns Hopkins, Penn—”

“NYU?”

“Yeah, I’ll apply there. Also, Stanford.”

“That’s in California. NYU’s a great school. So’s Columbia.” Those last two are in New York. Aww, he wants us to keep hanging out. It’s so sweet.

“I know,” I say softly. “I’ll apply there too. But my first choice is Harvard.”

“And after that?”

“I’ll do my residency, and then I hope to get a fellowship at a top cancer research center.”

“Which could be someplace besides where you go to medical school?”

“Yes. It’s a whole other application process.”

He shakes his head. “That’s a lot of hard work to reach your goal. Probably a lot of moving around too.”

I lift my gaze to his in question.

His eyes are serious, though he keeps his tone light. “Not as hard as making tortellini, but still.”

There’s a definite tension in the air, something that wasn’t there before. I don’t know what to do about it, so I ignore it. I can’t change who I am, and it’s better if he knows that up front.

“Speaking of tortellini,” I say, breaking the tense silence, “I’ve got like a thousand here compared to your measly twenty-one.”

“Oh, you noticed my pyramid of greatness.” He’s got neat rows of tortellini—six, five, four, three, two, one.

I throw the top tortellini at him and it bounces off his forehead.

“You’ll regret that, Travers,” he says, pelting me with tortellini, two at a time.

“Hey!” I grab a huge handful and fire back.

He keeps coming at me, dodging tortellini before pushing me back to the counter behind me, his hands on either side of