Been There Done That (Leffersbee #1) - Hope Ellis Page 0,94

bleak and terrible my breath caught.

“Let’s get some breakfast in you.” He stood, efficiently scooped me off the steps, and herded both Sir Duke and me into the kitchen.

It was a hell of an effective way to change the topic.

Once inside, I watched him as he moved around my small kitchen and acquainted himself with the disorganized contents of my cupboards and drawers. He’d pasted on a smile for me but I read the tension in his tightly drawn shoulders, read the turmoil tight on his face. Something was wrong and he was doing what he’d always done: suppressing some powerful emotion while focusing his energy elsewhere.

“Where do you keep your whisk?”

I rose from the kitchen table and tucked a crutch under one arm.

“Don’t get up. Just point.”

“It’s my kitchen and you don’t know your way around. Plus, I wanna watch what’s happening. I have a feeling you’ve haven’t cooked for yourself in a long time. You might not know what you’re doing.”

I wasn’t fooled by the wry grin he sent my way. “You don’t remember my killer omelets?”

“I do. But when was the last time you made one?”

He intercepted my progress to the sink, cutting me off at the butcher block-topped island. His hands went to my waist and he lifted me, deposited me on a nearby counter.

“You can watch from there. But don’t move again.”

I pointed out the correct drawer and he retrieved the whisk.

“So, what do you think of my house?” I looked around, trying to see my house, my life, though his eyes.

He hesitated as he reached for a mixing bowl. His head was behind the door of the refrigerator when he finally answered.

“Well . . . it’s a fixer-upper, right?”

“Yeah. I was supposed to fix it and flip it.”

He squinted at me as he cracked eggs into the bowl. “So, why didn’t you?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. It grew on me. Then Leigh came to live on the other side and flipping it didn’t seem so important anymore. Is it that bad?” I looked around with new eyes, assessing the hardwood floors that probably needed updating sooner rather than later and the worn cabinets.

“It just doesn’t look like you. I keep expecting Scooby Doo and the gang to show up and investigate a haunting, that’s all.”

He passed my Bluetooth speaker and his phone to me. “Be a good sous chef and get these connected.”

I blinked down at his phone in my hand, opened, unlocked. Unguarded.

I was pretty sure this exact scenario would be Walker and Jackson’s worst nightmare.

“What are you going to play?”

“You’ll see. I think you’ll like it.”

He was right. I did.

He picked one of the playlists from his streaming service, a virtual love-letter to Motown, heavy on Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin.

“I see my father’s influence had a lasting effect,” I said, after we’d both bopped around to Stevie’s “Sir Duke.”

He smiled from his post at the stove where he waited, spatula in hand, to flip the omelet. “Yes. Although I never picked up his signature Soul Train moves.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Eh, he wasn’t half bad.”

“I was similarly corrupted by your mother’s Coldplay obsession. I can’t hear ‘Yellow’ without hearing your mother sing it. I still remember her impromptu concerts, singing into the empty paper towel roll in the kitchen.”

The song transitioned and Aretha took over, singing, “Ain’t No Way.”

Nick stared into the skillet, though I doubted he saw its contents.

“Time to turn,” I said, fighting the inclination to climb down from the counter to help. To gather him in my arms and hold him close, close enough that I could share his burden and ease whatever put the current look on his face.

He seemed to return from his reverie, shaking his head. “I’d forgotten about that. I remember the time I found her in the kitchen, in the middle of the night, listening to ‘Fix You.’ Singing along, looking so sad. She turned it off when she saw me. For a while I’d wondered who she wanted to fix. Later I realized it was her. She wanted to fix herself.” His eyes closed briefly. “That was right before we left.”

He passed by me to grab the plates he’d set aside.

I grabbed the corner of his shirt and pulled him back in my direction.

Surprise bloomed on his face as he allowed me to tug him into my space, in the space between my legs.

“Nick.” I hesitated, suddenly at a loss for words and courage.

I almost regretted my moment of impulsivity with him this