I checked the pasta to see if it was al dente yet, but it was still too chewy. I turned back to Lucas. “If by ‘like that’ you mean entitled and a jerk, then yes. Pretty much.”
He raised his brows and rubbed at his jaw thoughtfully. “Okay. Is there anything I can do to help ease the awkwardness?”
“Thanks for asking but it will be like this until they leave.” He watched me work as I moved from the stove to the oven where the garlic bread was toasting.
“We should find out when that will be. I’d prefer sooner rather than later.”
I raised my brows at him. “I warned you. Hopefully the sleeping arrangement isn’t too heinous to live with.”
When my eyes flicked up to catch his gaze, they locked and for long, thick moments there were no words. There was no sound aside from the boiling water and the sizzle of the sauce on the stove.
But so much was being said. I saw it, just for a brief moment, a flicker of that same spark that had ignited his eyes the night of his family’s party. The night we’d kissed so intensely. The night he’d made me feel so amazing atop his piano.
That moment ranked right up there among the all-time highlights of my sex life so far. And to think it was one brief encounter—and a first, between us. I couldn’t help but ache to know what we would be like together if we did more.
And goddamn it all, I wanted more. Apparently so did he.
But he was going to resist with every fiber of his being.
I could see that, too, in his eyes, in the distant and cold way he acted sometimes. When he held himself back from being kind and open. As if anything else would put him too close to danger.
I wasn’t ashamed to admit that I craved that same danger he was avoiding. With a deep breath, I broke off the stare and quietly asked him to take the basket of garlic bread to the table.
Our guests ate my dinner with gusto, then predictably left the plates on the table. They were too distracted, apparently, having discovered Lucas’s console system hooked up to a brand new 4K TV in the den and his considerable game library. Lucas, in his long-suffering, went in to get them set up on his system. Perhaps he figured that would keep them occupied and out of trouble.
He didn’t know them like I did, though.
And me, I ended up clearing the table alone after having cooked everything. It gave me a chance to plot how I was going to get them out of here.
Call the fumigators?
Or an indoor painter?
Or a dog catcher to haul them off to the accommodations they truly deserved?
To his credit, Lucas came in on the tail end of me cleaning up and finished for me, loading the dish washer and kindly thanking me for a delicious dinner. We joined the buttheads in the den for a time while they continued to game. They even had the nerve to ask Lucas for cheat codes, for which he refused to oblige them.
They both sucked hard at pretty much every game. When I told them I wanted to join in, Derek purposely started the game without adding me. But he handed the controller over to Lucas and stood up.
“I need to use the washroom and I’d like to chat with Kat for a minute if you don’t mind.”
I glanced over at Lucas, who gave me a look, as if asking if it was okay to pwn Mike into next week.
“Just wanted to catch up is all,” Derek coaxed. I darted a look at him and then sighed. “Okay fine.”
After he used the washroom, we met in the empty dining room where they had been sleeping. Lucas had hauled some big beanbag chairs in for their comfort. Derek sank into one of them while I grabbed a chair from the kitchen table.
If I had to storm out of here in a huff, I didn’t want to have to fight my way up from a beanbag to do it. When I came back, he had his big duffle bag in his lap and was rifling through it. After a moment, he pulled out a taped-up box and held it out to me. I could see my name had been written across the top of it in black Sharpie in Mum’s distinctive handwriting.
“Your Canadian junk food care package, as promised. Mum even