The Heartbreaker of Echo Pass - Maisey Yates Page 0,37
I guess.”
“And dessert,” he said.
“Indeed.” She looked around the room. And he looked at her. At the fine line of her neck, that pointed, determined chin and surprisingly soft looking mouth.
He couldn’t remember how he’d seen her that first time. Only that he thought she was plain.
She wasn’t plain at all.
It would be better if she were.
“I better head out,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I have some work to do.”
He might be tired, he might be damned sick of being outside, but he wasn’t going to stay in here with her. Not any longer.
“I guess so... I guess I’ll clean.”
“You don’t have to. Hell, don’t you have a bakery to try and open?”
“Well, yes. But... I guess until I actually open there’s not a whole lot for me to do. I have to get a permit and things like that.”
“Right.”
“So, I’ll just stay.”
“If you insist,” he said.
“I do,” she said.
“All right. See you later. If you’re not here when I get back.”
“Right.”
And for some reason, turning and walking away felt difficult. And he couldn’t just blame it on lack of sleep, or his bad temper.
Couldn’t blame it on anything other than the woman standing in his cabin.
And her damn cookies and sad life story.
A little bit of manual labor would do him good.
The only thing that sleep had for him was more nightmares anyway.
And he was all out of patience with that.
CHAPTER NINE
SHE HAD DECIDED on a few things before she had come up today. Not just his cookie, not just that she might share a little bit about herself and her life, but that she was going to make sure he had a fresh meal.
And so, she had outfitted herself with everything she needed to make a good camp dinner. She was going to make burgers. And she might even stay for dinner.
What exactly are you doing?
She pushed that thought to the side. She was being nice. She had briquettes and a lighter, and she was determined that she would get a perfect sphere on the hamburgers. She had cut up lettuce and tomatoes, and had pickles and mustard and mayonnaise. Barbecue sauce. Lots of cheese. Basically everything required to make a good burger. She was grilling onions and put the buns on the grill as well to add a little something.
Usually, it was her brother who did the grilling, but there wasn’t a whole lot of cooking that she wasn’t more than competent at.
And while she worked on dinner, she thought about the exchange they’d had earlier. About the way he seemed to fight allowing himself to enjoy anything.
About the way he had looked at her.
Like he was trying to see something beneath her skin.
It had made her feel hot all over, and like her clothes were particularly itchy.
She liked him.
Which made her feel stupid and juvenile. But it was more than just a crush like she’d had in high school. It was deeper, and came with some feelings that were decidedly adult. Ones that she couldn’t quite untangle, because she...
She knew how sex worked. She wasn’t young. She knew basically all there was to know. But that was just theoretical.
And in terms of what she actually wanted... Well, she didn’t quite know all that.
She felt perplexed. By the deep attraction that was building on her end. And a bit embarrassed. She had never felt anything like this in her life. And she wondered if he could see it. Wondered if it was somehow written across her forehead. And how humiliating, because it wasn’t just like having fluttery feelings for someone. Like thinking she might want to hold a guy’s hand. This was fraught and deep.
She wanted to touch her mouth to his.
And how the hell did you have that conversation with a man anyway? Not that she wanted to kiss him, but that she wanted to kiss him, and had in fact never been kissed before.
Maybe that was the real reason she’d been drawn to Elliott. Because if there was one nice thing she could say about a guy that bland, it was that at least gaining some experience with him might have felt a little bit low stakes. Regardless of the fact that even he probably had more sexual experience than she did—because the rock next to the charcoal grill had more sexual experience than she did—she would have felt like they were somehow still on more equal footing.
She knew that she wasn’t on equal footing with Griffin. Whatever his experience was. That was beside the