I had never cared enough to learn, and I went back to the fridge and found myself frowning at it in much the same way Ranger had. “Butterbrod?”
“Eh?”
“Was talking to myself.” I found a package of Spanish ham. “You will eat ham and eggs?”
Ranger’s expression brightened. “I’d eatyouif you can find anything like that in your theme park of a fridge.”
He did not mean literally. Sexually. It was sarcasm,surely. But imagining something else wavered my balance.
Ranger flashed to my side. Like he had the eggs, he stole the ham. He didn’t touch me, but his arm circled my waist, guiding me as I moved to the stove.
It was intrusive. No one but family had been this close to me for a long time. It wasnice. But I had learned this about Ranger—about Asher. He had rough hands and a savage mouth. But beneath it all he could be one of the sweetest humans alive.
“Don’t drink that, luv. It’s old as fuck. Here... have this one.”
The memory was old. As insignificant as the cold tea he had not wanted me to drink. But for all my life had been a hazy place for some time now, I saw him then as clearly as I saw him now. “Why did you come?”
Ranger set the ham beside the eggs and put some space between us. “Jakov asked me to.”
“That tells me his motivations, not yours.” Without him close, I shivered. “Why did you say yes?”
“Why do you think?”
“He paid you?”
Ranger’s dark brows knitted together. “Yeah, Vik. Sack of fucking gold lured me here. Now you need to do something with these eggs before I fucking expire.”
I let myself stare at him. At the bruises on his face that did not upset me as much as the hurt in his eyes as his gaze slid to the window. This man... it was difficult to offend him, but somehow I had, and I liked it even less than the full-body ache blooming in my bones. “I was going to boil the eggs.”
His frown deepened.
“Fry them?” I tried again.
He shrugged. “Okay.”
Okay.
I had not used the stove in months. Or even a pan in a kitchen that was the size of the entire flat in northern England. I did not know where the oil was. If there was any. But he was here. Ranger. In my kitchen. And he was as hungry as he was annoyed, and I could fix that.
Blyad, I could fry an egg.
I made him breakfast without lighting the house on fire. He was quiet while I worked, watching me from the other side of the counter. “You would like coffee?”
“I don’t care.”
“Tea?”
“Fuck off.”
Because he did not like tea. He drank milky coffee and could eat a whole packet of biscuits in one sitting.
Jake had a coffee machine. I slid Ranger’s breakfast across the counter and pressed enough buttons for it to spit out a mug of molten caffeine that could probably power a train.
He will not drink coffee like this.
I poured half of it away and topped it up with more water. With cold milk from the fridge. “This is okay?”
“You know it is.”
