What If You & Me (Say Everything #2) - Roni Loren Page 0,51
it would be to unbutton that dress and find every spot that made her sigh. She was temptation personified.
And she’d kissed him on the cheek. Fucking hell.
He schooled his expression into one of neighborly appropriateness and climbed out of the car. After grabbing his grocery bags, he headed up the walk.
Andi slid her sunglasses to the top of her head and smiled. “Hey there, neighbor. Need some help?”
His knee-jerk instinct was to say no, that he needed no help, but he stopped himself. Help meant more time with Andi. “Yeah, sure.”
She set her book down on the rocking chair and then met him at the top of the stairs. He off-loaded two bags to her and then unlocked the door. She followed him inside, trailing him to the kitchen.
He set his bags down and took the others from her. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” She leaned over and peeked into one of the bags. “Cooking anything interesting, Chef?”
“Just got the basics today. I keep it pretty straightforward. It’s not as fun cooking for one.” He started pulling out the things that needed to be refrigerated.
“You know, I’m happy to be your test subject,” she said, leaning against the counter and smiling. “I mean, I can probably find time in between my gourmet dinners of grilled cheese and frozen burritos to fit in a meal or two.”
He put a carton of eggs in the fridge and peeked back over his shoulder, surprised by the comment. “That can be arranged, but I hope you’re not really surviving by grilled cheese and burrito alone.”
She winced. “Boxed mac and cheese makes an appearance sometimes, too. And hot dogs if I’m feeling fancy.”
He shut the fridge and turned fully to her, trying to read if she was joking. She wasn’t. Knowing that she was living on cheap, food-type products disturbed him more than it should. “No one in your family ever taught you how to cook for yourself?”
She shrugged. “This is going to sound super pretentious, but my parents had hired help, so meals just appeared. If I went into the kitchen while Ms. Jenkins was cooking, she’d shoo me out. Even she knew what a hazard I was in the kitchen.”
“Well, of course you were a hazard if no one ever bothered to show you how to cook. It’s not something anyone’s born knowing how to do.” He pulled a few other items from the bags, an idea poking at his brain. He cleared his throat. “I could teach you a few things if you want.”
Her expression brightened. “Really? Do you have a death wish?”
He laughed. “I have full faith that I could teach you how to cook something other than boxed cheesy things without anyone dying in the process. It’s an important life skill. Cooking and not dying, I mean.”
She cocked her head in a playful tilt. “The Horror Virgin teaches the Cooking Virgin?”
“Sounds like a fair exchange to me,” he said, glad to hear she still wanted to meet up for movies. “We could add a cooking session to our movie nights.”
“So I get food and a movie buddy?” she asked. “I’m in.”
“Yeah?” The answer pleased him more than he wanted to admit, a buoyant feeling moving through him. “Great.”
“But that actually wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.” She bit her lip like she was fighting a cringe.
“Oh? I didn’t realize you wanted to talk. I thought you were just a benevolent grocery-carrying neighbor.” He quickly put the rest of the cold things in the fridge. He’d organize them later. Right now, he felt like whatever she wanted to talk about was something he needed to pay full attention to.
She scuffed the toe of her Doc Martens on the floor, stalling. He got the impression he was seeing a flashback of what Andi had looked like as a teenager—Andi without her trademark self-assurance. “So about last night. Specifically, about how it ended.”
He braced his hands on the small butcher-block table he used for an island, his knee aching. “What about it?”
This was the part where she was going to say he acted weird or inappropriately, that he’d let the lines blur with that hug.
“I think I may have given you mixed signals.”
He shook his head. “No, that was my—”
“Because I was,” she said, cutting him off. “The signals were mixed because I was mixed up.”
He swallowed down his retort, not fully understanding. “Okay.”
She took a breath, her shoulders lifting and falling with it. “We talked about how it wasn’t a date. We