I caught her wrist gently. “You don’t have to?—”
“Theodore Riggs, you will sit your ass down and let me feed you, or so help me God, I’ll use this wooden spoon on you.”
I held up my hands in mock surrender, unable to keep the grin off my face. There she was—the woman I’d fallen in love with all those years ago, fierce and protective even when she was the one who needed taking care of. “Yes, ma’am.”
She turned back to the stove, and I watched her move through the familiar motions—ladling stew into a bowl, cutting thick slices of the bread she’d somehow found time to bake, and arranging everything on a plate like it was going to be photographed for a magazine. Even when she was falling apart, she couldn’t help but make everything look perfect.
“You know,” I said, settling into the chair at the table, “Coulda just thrown a frozen pizza in the oven and called it a day.”
Steam rose from the stew as she set everything in front of me, her eyebrows bunching together. “Why would I do that? You hate frozen pizza.”
The fact that she still remembered—still cared enough to remember—did something uncomfortable to my chest. “Just meant you didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”
“It wasn’t trouble.” She brushed off the compliment, already turning back to check on whatever was in the oven. “I needed something to do with my hands.”
I took a bite of the stew and immediately made an involuntary sound of pleasure that earned me a raised brow from across the kitchen. But it was exactly like I remembered. Tasted like home. LikeSunday dinners when the kids were small, and the biggest crisis in our lives was Sky refusing to eat her vegetables.
Kelsey poured us both a cup of coffee before sitting down across from me at the table. “Better?” she asked, the side of her mouth lifting as she watched me sop up the last bit of stew with the bread.
“Getting there,” I said, patting my stomach. “Might need to sample those casseroles—you know, to keep my strength up. Wouldn’t want me wasting away to nothing.”
She rolled her eyes but moved to fix me a plate, and just like that, we’d found our way back to something that felt almost normal.
Almost like us.
12
Two Days Until Christmas
teddy
The hot waterfrom the shower eased some of the ache from my shoulders and back, but my body was still hellbent on reminding me I wasn’t in my twenties anymore. I’d spent another morning outside, splitting wood until my back seized up before plowing the drive with the UTV, trying to work off my need to touch Kelsey. The storm had finally blown itself out, leaving behind a world buried in white and roads that would be impassable for days.
I toweled off and pulled on clean jeans and a black long-sleeved shirt, the fabric sticking to my damp skin. Christmas music drifted down the hall—Perry Como, from the sounds of it—singing about candy canes and holly. Like we needed reminding that it was beginning to look like Christmas after back-to-back blizzards.
After tying my wet hair back into a low knot, I made my way into the kitchen to find Kelsey bent over the island, rolling out gingerbread dough. She’d found another one of my flannel shirts, a green one that had always reminded me of the color of her eyes. Her hair was still damp from her own shower, leaving wet spots on the shoulders where it had dripped. Every time she leaned forward to reach the far edge ofthe dough, the hem rode up just enough to reveal the curve where her thigh met her ass, and I lost the ability to think straight. Nothing but smooth skin disappearing under worn flannel.
I cleared my throat before I did something stupid like drop to my knees right there in the doorway. “Need a hand?”
She glanced over her shoulder, one of her brows lifting in surprise. “You wanna help bake?”
“Hell, someone’s gotta make sure you don’t burn the first batch.” I rolled up my sleeves and moved to the sink to wash my hands.
“Cookies only seem to burn when you’re involved,” she shot back, but I could hear the smile in her voice. “Or have you forgotten the time you set the smoke alarms off?”
“That was a fluke.” I dried my hands, remembering exactly how those cookies had burned—because I’d had her bent over the deep freeze in the laundry room, my hand down the front of her pajama pants. “Can’t expect a man to remember his own name, much less when the cookies need to come out of the oven, when you’re making sounds like that.”
Pink bloomed across her cheeks. She turned back to the dough, pressing her weight into the rolling pin. “Don’t distract me.”
“Distract you?” I moved closer, all innocence. “I would never.”
“Right.” She sprinkled some flour over the dough before dropping the bag back onto the counter, sending a puff of white into the air. “Because you’ve always been so good at keeping your hands to yourself when I’m trying to bake.”
She wasn’t wrong. Never had been able to resist her in the kitchen, something about the sight of her in an apron flipped all my switches. The concentration on her face when she measured. The way she’d bite her lip when reading a recipe. How her hips moved to the music she always seemed to have playing while she worked.
“I’ll be good,” I lied, already plotting.
“Sure you will,” Kelsey replied with a snort, shooting me several skeptical glances as she continued rolling the dough. I waited until she was focused before making my first move—reaching around her to the drawer on her left, deliberately brushing against her hip.
