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THIS NEXT BIT was going to be tricky. I hadn’t expected Charlotte to show up in the bar to thank me personally. I absolutely hadn’t thought she’d show up with a proposal that got me exactly what I wanted. Or, rather, would get me exactly what I wanted if I negotiated the terms right. Negotiating anything with Charlotte demanded my complete attention. I had no doubt she could run circles around me if I let her and that she’d be more than willing to use her considerable advantage to get what she wanted. I also knew she’d never back down and that once she agreed to something, she’d hold us both to it.
I ran through the possibilities in my head. I wanted to propose a one-for-one kind of thing. One naked encounter and one time with our clothes on, in equal proportions. But that sounded too much like a relationship and made it too easy for her to call foul and walk out the door.
What I really wanted was more time with Charlotte. Time to work past the artificial barriers and see if there was something else there—beyond the fucking phenomenal sex which, up until I had her in my arms, would have been enough. Still would be if that’s all we got. I’d accept it and be grateful. I just wanted a chance to try for more.
I watched her watching me, saw the way she puzzled through what she thought Iwas thinking, like she was unraveling my as yet unformed plans. I panicked.
“Cooking lessons.”Cooking lessons? How was that going to help?
But the more I thought about it, the better I felt. It gave us a chance to do something together. Something with a strong sensual component. People had been using food as a tool for seduction longer than alcohol. I knew she didn’t know how to cook, and her inherent curiosity would keep her engaged. By the time I worked through all of that in my head, I was feeling kind of brilliant and Charlotte was looking at me like I was a little—or a lot—off.
“I want us to have sex, and you want us to cook together? I’m honestly not sure how to feel about that.”
“In fairness, I want us to have sex too. I’ve got a running list of filthy things I want us to do together and another list of all the ways I want to make you come. The cooking is an addendum, not a substitution. I want both.” I’d put it out there. Now I waited to see what she’d say. It was like fishing for a sexy lawyer. I had to stay quiet, wiggle the bait, and see if she’d take the hook.
I had to stop my thoughts from spiraling to crazy places before I blurted out something about fish.
“What kind of cooking lessons?”
I gripped the counter to keep from smoothing the crease in her forehead with my thumb. I loved watching this woman think. Even more, I loved the way she didn’t school her expressions when we were together. My inherent nature and years behind a bar made me more observant than most. Not in the Sherlock HolmesI see from the mud on your shoes, you’ve been in the north countiesway. In theI can tell you’re interested in trying something, but you’re scaredkind of way. When I paid attention—something I always did where she was concerned—I had a decent shot at reading Charlotte. But if I’d honed my skills at observation, she’d developed an equal or greater skill at hiding her thoughts. She could hide from me if she wanted to. I fucking loved that, for whatever reason, she seemed okay with me seeing her. The real woman, not the curated version.
“Standard low country food, Creole like mymemecooked, and anything else you’re interested in. I want to do something more involved than mid-coital omelets but it doesn’t have to be more complicated than you want.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” I didn’t want to jump the gun and start celebrating too soon, but it sounded like she’d agreed to everything I wanted. Or, rather, to everything I felt safe asking for to start. We could work up to the rest.
“Why not. Four weeks. We meet once a week for sex and once a week for cooking lessons. But...” She held up her finger again.
I knew I was getting ahead of myself. Charlotte would always have conditions.
“When we’re cooking, we’re just friends. Completely platonic. No kissing. Nothing romantic. It would be too easy to blur boundaries.”
Which was kind of the idea, but that was okay. A month was long enough to see if there really was something beyond the phenomenal chemistry. Time together gave me something to work with and friends was more than we’d had at the start. I could see she was still turning something over in her head. I forced myself to wait and let her finish her conditions before I agreed like an overeager prom date.
“Scheduling is going to be a challenge. I don’t spend this much time on anything outside of work, but it’s important the cooking and the sex aren’t too close together. Twenty-four hours apart, at least. I mean it, Ford. We can’t blur the lines. If either of us starts to get too emotionally involved, I’m pulling the plug.”
“Deal.” I held my hand out and watched her expression shift from wariness to cautious acceptance. I loved that she didn’t try to hide her feelings from me. I was going to see it as a positive—something honest between us—and not that she didn’t care enough to bother.
I STRIPPED OFF MY SKIRT and reached for my jeans, tossing them aside at the last minute for a pair of yoga pants. Ford was coming to my house to cook. I still wasn’t sure how I missed that when I’d agreed to the cooking lesson thing. I’d assumed we were going to meet somewhere to take lessons together. From a professional. Not that he’d insist on coming to my house to teach me himself.
I’d thought about making the argument that being alone together in the last place we’d had sex—and the mid-coital omelet—might blur the lines established in our agreement, but I could already hear him chastising me for not being able to handle being alone with him. There was no way I was giving him that much gloating material.
Instead, I’d tried to suggest a professional kitchen. He’d called mecherin that accent that threatened to melt me and pointed out I had everything we needed in my kitchen except food. I couldn’t argue; Elena made sure my kitchen was stocked for a gourmet chef’s needs. It was my fault it never saw any action. Or hadn’t until Ford. He’d already changed that.
I offered to order the food we needed if he’d give me a list. He’d actually laughed and said not to worry about it. He’d bring everything. Which meant I didn’t have anything to do until he showed up at my house except obsess about my clothes and there was no way I was doing that. That was date behavior, not something friends worried about. I switched back to the jeans, pulled on a T-shirt and grabbed my e-reader. I’d just finished a friends-to-lovers story I adored. I didn’t have enough time to really sink into somethingnew, but I could at least pick my next read.
Work left me very little time to read for pleasure and my TBR grew faster than I could tame it, but as I scrolled through the dozens of books on my Kindle, I kept thinking about the book Ford had been reading at the bar the night we met—Discovery of Witches. I tried to push my thoughts back to the romantic comedies I usually gravitated to, but the sexy vampire-witch story wormed its way into my head.
Rather than waste the time I had fighting the inevitable, I gave in and bought the e-book, grabbing a grapefruit seltzer while it downloaded. I wanted a glass of wine, but not as much as I wanted my wits sharp when Ford was in my kitchen, teaching me to cook. The fact that he’d commandeered my reading list was enough upheaval for one evening.
“It begins with absence and desire.” Hmm. The opening line to the Harkness book hit a little too close to home. At least the desire bit. I could pretend for now that I didn’t think about Ford when he was absent. It was a lie, but I could pretend. I swiped to the next screen and lost myself in the book about a book.
I didn’t realize how late it had gotten until the soft knock on the door announced Ford’s arrival. My nerves spiked and I drew in a slow, deliberate breath, willing myself to calm the fuck down. At least the book had kept me from agitated pacing more suited to a date than an evening with a friend. I was going to keep saying the friend thing over and over in my head until I had the label tattooed on my brain. There was no way I was letting this slip into anything else.
As soon as I opened the door, Ford met me with a bag full of groceries and a smile that made my stomach do a little flip. I wrestled with the sudden worry about how to greet him. My girlfriends usually got hugs when we met for coffee—or really anything—but that felt like blurring a line with Ford. He didn’t wait for me to decide. Shifting the grocery bag to one arm, he gripped my waist with his other hand, leaned in to press a quick kiss to my cheek and then gently nudged me to the side as he entered and headed to the kitchen.
