Ignite On Contact (Brotherhood by Fire #2) -Jaci Burton Page 0,25
My mom always tried to get us to eat more slowly, but I guess I never grew out of it.”
She reached across the table and laid her hand on his. “I understand. But maybe you should take a breath, slow down and enjoy every bite.”
He wanted her to keep touching him. “I’ll keep that in mind in the future.”
“I’ll try to remind you.”
His lips curved. “You do that.”
By the time Roxanne came to clear their plates, he noticed she was much more subdued and treated him like a regular customer instead of a potential boyfriend, so he was satisfied that there’d be no more flirting. He was going to have to bring Carmen with him again. Not that that would be a hardship.
He paid for their meal and they left the restaurant, climbed in his truck and drove to the home improvement store.
“What do you need light bulbs for?”
She pulled out a list of the types of bulbs she needed and for which rooms, so they hit that aisle first.
“You should let me put some LEDs in your kitchen. Make it much brighter in there.”
“My can lights aren’t wired for LEDs.”
“I can rewire those in an hour or so.”
She leaned against the cart. “Really? And what might that cost me?”
He shrugged. “Empanadas?”
She laughed. “Sounds like a deal to me.”
“Great.” Once she told him how many can lights she had on her ceiling, he grabbed everything he’d need for the retrofit project and put it in the cart.
Carmen looked down into the cart, then up at him. “You know what to do with all of that?”
He nodded. “I’ve got this, Carmen. Trust me.”
She gave him a dubious look. “I divorced the last guy who asked me to trust him.”
Rafe swooped his arm around her waist and tugged her against him, right there in the light bulb aisle. He lowered his gaze to hers, forcing her attention on the seriousness in his warm brown eyes.
“First, hopefully you didn’t divorce him over electrical issues. Second, the one thing I want to make clear to you, Carmen? I’m not your ex. And I can be trusted.”
For a few seconds, she couldn’t breathe, because she was mesmerized by his eyes, and by the feel of his strong, muscular body aligned with hers.
There were so many things she wanted to do in this moment, the first being explore every inch of his body, from his broad shoulders to his amazingly sexy forearms to what she was certain were rock-hard abs, none of which she could do in the electrical aisle of the hardware store.
Dammit.
So, instead, she nodded and took a step back, taking a strong breath so she could gather some oxygen into her lungs.
“Okay, on to faucets, then?” he asked.
She nodded enthusiastically and smiled, mainly because her throat had gone bone-dry and she couldn’t form words. Or maybe her brain cells had fled south, fueling all the quivering currently going on in her sex.
Her libido could just calm the hell down, because they weren’t going to have sex in the bathroom fixture aisle, either.
Deciding to focus on faucets instead of sex, she wandered the department, looking around until she had narrowed her decision down to two. She was surprised Rafe didn’t interject his opinion, but she was happy about it, too. Her ex would have never let her pick out her own kitchen faucets, since he was big into traditional gender roles.
“I know many people like the touchless ones, but I’m not sure having the fancy option is worth the money.” She looked up at Rafe.
“We had one for a while,” he said, “and then two years later the touchless feature stopped working. But that’s entirely up to you if you think it’s something you need. The other one you picked out is just as good; it just doesn’t have the touchless feature. I don’t think you can go wrong either way.”
And again, he left the decision up to her. She pointed to the nice stainless steel faucet that had the pull-down faucet, but without the touchless feature. “I think this one.”
“Nice choice.” He picked up the box and put it into their cart.
Now that they had everything they needed, she figured they’d head to the checkout. Rafe surprised her by deviating into the plumbing aisle.
She frowned. “Where are you going?”
“Your grandpa needs a new showerhead.”
“Really. And you know this how?”
“Because I gave him a shower that night he fell in the bathroom, remember? There are only like three holes working in that showerhead.”