“Agreed. She’s a masterpiece of the ‘hell hath no fury’ genre.”
I shake my head, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks. “You are full of surprises, Leo Roussos.”
“Good,” he says. His voice has dropped an octave, and his gaze locks onto mine with a sudden, searing intensity that makes the oxygen in the kitchen feel thin. “Keeps things interesting, don’t you think?”
“Interesting is…a choice,” I manage to say, my voice sounding like it’s being squeezed through a straw. I reach for the last big platter—the one that held the cross-eyed Flounder—but my hands are still slick with soap. The ceramic starts to slip. I gasp, my heart jumping into my throat, but Leo is faster.
He lunges, his hand closing over mine on the edge of the platter, pinning it against the side of the sink before it can shatter. The sudden movement brings him flush against my side. His chest is a warm, solid weight against my shoulder, and the smell of him—cedar, sandalwood, and the faint, sugary scent of the kitchen—is suddenly everywhere. It’s an atmospheric takeover.
“Got it,” he breathes. He doesn’t pull his hand away.
I look down at our hands—his tanned and large, mine pale and covered in suds. My knees feel like they’ve been replaced with cotton candy. The needle on the record player hits the end of the track, thethump-hiss,thump-hissof the dead air breaking the silence like a gunshot.
Leo lets go of my hand, and the immediate lack of contact feels like someone just turned off a space heater. I’m finally brave enough to look up, and he’s just standing there, grinning and shaking his head in a way that suggests I am a riddle he’s actually starting to enjoy.
“What am I going to do with you?” he asks softly.
I wonder if Leo Roussos has any idea that he’s pretty. Not just handsome—which he is, in that structured, “I spend my afternoons discussing Roman aqueducts” way—but genuinely, infuriatingly pretty. He has these long, soot-colored eyelashes that are an absolute crime on a man who probably hasn’t ever considered the existence of a lash curler, and when he smiles, there’s a dimple that craters into his left cheek. It’s a stealthy dimple; it only makes an appearance if you’re paying an embarrassing amount of attention. Which, based on the fact that I can practically map its coordinates, I am.
I swallow again and offer a jagged little laugh. “I don’t know. Maybe fire me and hire a nanny with actual domestic competence?”
“Too late,” he says with a smirk. “I’ve already decided I like this one.”
My heart does an Olympic-level floor routine in my chest.
We fall into a rhythm that is terrifyingly easy. He takes out the trash while I wipe down the rest of the counters. We move around each other with the practiced choreography of people who have been doing this for years, rather than months. It’s the‘excuse me’and the‘just behind you’of two people who are suddenly, acutely aware of where the other one is in space.
By the time the floor is swept and the counters are reflective enough, the apartment looks like the party never happened. The cat-mermaid’s glittery reign has been suppressed for now.
I head toward the hallway, looking for a clean towel to dry my hands, and tug open a door that definitely isn’t the linen closet. Instead, I find a graveyard of board games—including Monopoly, Clue, Jenga, Sorry! and a deck of Uno cards held together by a rubber band. At the bottom is a Scrabble box, the corners worn down to the grey cardboard.
I walk back to the kitchen where Leo’s trying to get a stubborn streak of frosting off the kitchen table. I hold up the box, the tiles rattling inside. “Want to play?”
Leo looks up, his hands pausing mid-wipe. “You don’t want to do that, Annie.”
“And why not?”
“Because I have an extensive vocabulary and a competitive streak that has been known to end friendships. It’s not going to end well for your ego.”
“Oh, I’mterrified,” I say, already marching the box to the kitchen table. “I suppose I’ll just have to suffer through the crushing weight of your intellectual superiority.”
He laughs. “Don’t say I didn’t give you a fair warning.”
I pivot toward the cabinet and grab the first bottle of red wine I see—something with a label in a language I can’t pronounce. “I’m definitely going to need an anesthetic for this.”
“Again with the hostile takeover of my kitchen,” he says, but he’s smiling. “At least grab the good stuff.” He reaches past me, his arm brushing mine for a heartbeat that feels entirely too long, and pulls a different bottle from the dark recesses of the cabinet. It’s a Bordeaux, older, the label yellowed at the edges.
“I didn’t know Scrabble was a black-tie affair,” I say, watching him work the corkscrew with an efficiency that is, frankly, rude.
“The Scrabble isn’t,” he says, meeting my eyes as the cork pops with a satisfying thwack. “But watching me systematically destroy you deserves a vintage.”
“That is a lot of big talk from a man who just admitted he’s a secret Alanis Morissette superfan.”
He pauses, pouring the deep red liquid into two glasses, and gives me a look that is far too charming with it being past midnight. “Touché, Annie. Touché.”
* * *
Twenty minutes in and I can already tell Leo’s going to thoroughly kick my ass.
