little dance step, half-turning to grin at me. “Best answer.”
As I walked into work, I admitted that the answer felt good to me too.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The next couple of weeks passed in a blur. On the work side, Miles was preoccupied with staffing and finding a restaurant manager. Jordan focused on booking entertainment. They were both constantly in a state of panic over what to do about a head chef. They’d scheduled demos with their top choices, but they each already had a favorite going in, and since the debate was in full swing this morning, there would be getting no work done here.
“Guys, want me to invite my brother to the tasting?” I asked. “He’ll know exactly what you need.”
“He won’t mind?” Miles asked. “I got the feeling he didn’t like me.”
“He likes you fine,” I told him. “He’s protective, that’s all.” Miles and I hadn’t brought each other home to our families yet. On my side, it would provoke the kinds of loaded and uncomfortable questions even I didn’t know the answer to. I wouldn’t put it past my dad to straight up ask him what his intentions toward me were.
Which is why I hadn’t mentioned exactly who the new tenant was. They knew it was a jazz club. I just hadn’t told them it was Miles, and I’d dodged having to explain it when they’d been out of town for Miss Mary’s goodbye party.
My parents had left me to manage the building for over a year, focusing their time on multi-family residential units in and around Mandeville, a New Orleans suburb on the far side of Lake Ponchartrain. New Orleans wasn’t exactly a fast-paced city; people took their time here in a way they didn’t in most other big cities I’d visited, but my parents liked the even more low-key suburban pace.
I wasn’t trying to hide Miles from them, exactly. But they were going to be super protective on my behalf, having lived through the Starstruck fallout.
“I’m going to run into the office to work.” I gave Miles a quick kiss. “I’ll talk to Dylan and see what he thinks.”
On the personal side, the days had taken on a rhythm over the last two weeks, me starting mine downstairs until the regular renovation bustle took over and I headed out to work. I came home at the end of each workday to Miles waiting for me, pulling me in for a hug and a long kiss the second I walked in. Then he’d either coax me into singing something for him, or sometimes we’d go back to his place and hang out in his studio where he’d play something he was working on.
We ate dinner together most days too, sometimes cooking for each other, more often going out so he could “research” different chefs he and Jordan were considering. And before, after, and in between, there was so much making out.
Miles was becoming more familiar to me in a physical way as we learned each other, what made him growl low in his throat or close his arms around me so tight that it made it hard for me to breathe. Those moments also lit a fire low in my belly that raced out to every nerve ending.
If this was love, then I’d only ever felt twitterpated before. The rest of the room faded when our eyes locked, and when he sang to me, his voice alone made me boneless. He invented reasons to touch me, begged me for stories from all the years he hadn’t known me, sang the Usher lyrics to me softly every time he walked me to the door, but with a small change. I got it bad, he would sing. And I would smile and give him one last kiss before he left or I went home.
But that was the thing: the only time he ever mentioned his feelings was in his music, and even then, other than the Usher lyrics, it was never a song specifically to me. He showed me every day that he wanted to be with me. But he didn’t say, “I love you.” Was the music enough?
I didn’t say it either. Having my feelings splashed across tens of millions of screens when we were kids made it impossible for me to say the words first now. I needed it to be him.
We’d been officially together for all of two weeks. There was time. I didn’t need to worry about this. It would happen when it needed to. Besides,