Meet Cute (Love, Camera, Action #5) - Elise Faber Page 0,55

him . . . and from the call on my cell.

Then Maggie started chortling, right around the time I began mixing in chocolate chips.

“What?” Tal and I asked at the same time.

“She’s good, Tal. She is good.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Ignore me,” Mags said. “Deliver the homemade cookies. Just bring a security guard with you.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary—”

“It is,” Tal said.

“Yes,” Mags added. “Listen to your big sexy man.”

“She’s glaring at you now,” Tal stage whispered.

“She’s scary when she does that,” Mags whispered back.

I sighed. “I’m going to have to watch it with you two.”

“She’s got angry eyes,” Tal said.

“Ooh, extra scary.”

I snorted, tried to hold on to those angry eyes, but I couldn’t do it. Not with these two jokers teasing me, not with the love I felt for both of them in my heart. “I’m ignoring you,” I said, scrounging until I found a cookie sheet and beginning to scoop out the dough, and since I didn’t do this quietly, it wasn’t long before Tal slipped into the other room to chat about business things instead of teasing me about my scowling.

Which was just as well.

Without interruptions, I quickly got the cookies in the oven, and soon the house smelled like sugar and butter and chocolate.

The best smell ever.

Luckily, I made a double batch (with my years on the force, I wasn’t stupid about how much junk food humans, especially those at work, could fill their stomachs with), and before long, I had security team members drifting into the kitchen, looking longingly at the cookies cooling on the racks.

I parceled them out, giving plenty to the guards with the longing eyes, and the rest I put on a platter before grabbing a stack of napkins.

Poking my head into the other room, I held up the tray as I met Tal’s eyes.

He was still on the phone, although he’d switched cells, since mine was on the coffee table, and it sounded like he was also no longer talking to Mag, since his tone was far more serious and the conversation far more involved. Slipping out, I grabbed one of my cookie-bribed guards to watch my back, made sure I was fully dressed—no more pants-less pictures please—and headed out the front door.

The first thing that surprised me was the noise.

I’d been inside so much, and outside only in that small, secluded garden, that I hadn’t realized the baseline amount of noise a crowd of people made. Noise that increased in volume when the remaining paparazzi spotted me, lifting their cameras, that strange whirring of their shutters clicking filling the air.

Then the voices joined in—a hum turning into a drone, excitement drifting up from the gate.

I strode down the long driveway toward the crowd, thinking this was probably exceptionally stupid, even if Mags and Talbot hadn’t vetoed the idea. Still, I thought it was sweet that they were protecting Tal, and by extension, me, and I knew how much a small gesture like this could make a person feel wanted.

And that, more than anything of these last couple of days, was the thing I wanted to take away from this experience the most.

Care didn’t have to have strings.

Care didn’t need to be grand and overt.

Care could be an omelet in the morning, chicken parmesan in the evening. It could be searching cabinets for “girl shit,” just as easily as it could be standing in front of a person invading our space.

The little things were those that I had been missing for so long. Those were the things Tal gave me.

And those were the things that I was going to give back to the rest of the world.

I wanted those people who didn’t have those little things, the quiet joy, to have them from me, even if they were just cookies warm from the oven and a quiet thanks.

“There’s a lot of people,” I whispered, feeling my steps slow unbidden. This had all seemed so easy in the house. Just bring cookies to the nice people outside. They’d appreciate the thought, and it would make us both feel good.

That was true.

What was also true?

There were a lot of eyes currently watching me navigate my way barefoot down the driveway, not a stitch of makeup on, my legs in black sweats, my torso covered in a bulky hoodie of Tal’s.

It wasn’t exactly glamorous.

It probably wasn’t another image I wanted plastered everywhere.

“Shit,” I whispered.

“I’m here,” the guard, whose name was Tex, said. “And we already have back up positioned by the gate.”

“Right,”