“Did you roll all the meatballs yourself?”
I smiled, knowing I had her. “I did.” I didn’t admit to her that making the soup had distracted me from texting her every five minutes.
“Do you have anything to go with the soup?”
“How about grilled cheese with fresh, homemade sourdough bread?”
“Hell yes, feed me, Hawk.”
FIFTEEN
kendra
Drawnby the promise of sourdough grilled cheese and homemade soup, Hawk had me agreeing to go to his place when I should have been going home and getting a good night’s sleep. I had the day tomorrow to prepare for the workweek. The last thing I needed was to be out all night.
After spending an entire week with my family and being surrounded by people, I honestly wasn’t ready to go back to my apartment and be alone.
I loved the independence of living alone. Normally, I looked forward to the quiet of my tidy little space. But after a week of being surrounded by love and people in love with their partners, it didn’t feel the same.
Hawk pulled into the garage attached to the building, and I followed him through the maze to an elevator. He waved a fob in front of a sensor, and we headed up to level P.
Penthouse?
The door opened onto a private entry the size of my apartment. Yup, it was the penthouse. Of course, it was. If Ihad forgotten the difference between our lives, this was a reminder.
Unaffected, Hawk led the way. I wasn’t expecting it to smell homey, but it did. The aroma of the soup and freshly baked bread were the first things I noticed.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“I’m trying to wrap my head around the person I thought you were and the person you are.”
His smirk, the one I had initially mistaken for cockiness, turned boyish.
“Do you like what you see?”
His eyes bore into me, and in him, I saw a man hoping to impress. He understood that even if he could buy a woman anything they wanted, he wanted a woman impressed by hand-rolled mini meatballs. While few men had the wealth he had, he valued connection over stuff.
“I like what I smell, Hawk. I’m starved.”
“Come, sit.”
He pulled me towards the expansive marble kitchen island and pulled out a stool for me. I surveyed the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, which presented an unparalleled city view, then refocused on the man navigating the kitchen with practiced ease.
“Red or white?” He held two bottles of wine up for me.
“Either. You pick.”
“Since you usually order Chardonnay, let’s stick with that.”
I warmed when I realized he had noticed that detail. Yes, my past few dates were disasters, but I couldn’t ever remember a man who noticed my drink preferences. Some had complained about the cost, but that was the extent of it.
My stomach growled as the buttered sourdough grilled on the stove. I watched as he ladled the soup from the pot into a large bowl, my mouth watering.
“Where did you learn to cook like this?”
“My Italian grandmother. Her mother had immigrated from Sicily, and she learned everything from her. Nonna then passed everything to me and Colby.”
“Crosby isn’t Italian.”
