“I’ll probably survive.”
Lillibet shook her head as she brushed salty powder off the front of his shirt. “Did they get in your clothes?” Her hands froze at a telltale crunch. “Oops.” She poked him, confirming the cracker’s location. “That’s not in your pocket.”
“No,” he agreed, feeling the crumbs work their way into his chest hair.
“I guess it’s better than getting rice crackers in your pants.” She bit her lip as her gaze traveled past his belt buckle. “At least you know how to work the shower now.”
Speaking of showers, the atmosphere in the kitchen seemed to be getting steamier by the second.
“Pretty sure the floor got the worst of it,” Jefferson said, seizing on a safer topic.
She crunched over to the wall and turned on the overhead light. Together they surveyed the mess. Crackers were scattered like confetti.
“I get snacky when I’m writing.” It sounded like an apology. “I didn’t think anyone else would be awake, or I wouldn’t have come down like this.”
She crossed her arms over the front of her thin T-shirt. The neckline was stretched out enough that a bra strap would have been visible if she’d been wearing one. Jefferson made an executive decision to concentrate on her face.
A trio of freckles marked the delicate skin under her right eye. Knowing that tiny detail felt almost as intimate as seeing her in pajamas.
“I have shorts on.” Lillibet hiked up her shirt, offering a glimpse of plaid flannel to reassure him she wasn’t running around in her underwear.
He nodded, acknowledging this important distinction. Even though the shorts were the size of a handkerchief. And she’d inadvertently flashed a few inches of tanned stomach. Jefferson dragged his thoughts in a less dangerous direction. “Where do you keep the dustpan?”
“Um. It’s—around here somewhere.” She opened one cabinet after another, frowning at the contents.
“You don’t always live here?” he guessed.
“No.” She half laughed at that. “I mean, I’d love to. I wasn’t trying to be like,What, this shack?But no.”
Her tone was hard to place. Wistful? Amused, but not really? Maybe she didn’t get a vote on which of their many residences they called home.
“And you have a housekeeper.”
“Right. Hard to know what to do with all that help—aha!”She raised the dustpan in victory before kneeling in the sea of snack food.
“I can do it.”
“It’s my mess.” There was a crunch as her shin made contact with a cracker.
“I think you could claim self-defense,” he said, joining her on the floor. For every cracker he picked up, another was pulverized into dust. “Might be more of a vacuum job.”
“I don’t want to wake anyone up.”
He nodded, less out of consideration for the other people in the house than from a selfish desire to be alone with Lillibet, even if they weren’t doing anything more exciting than cleaning the kitchen. When they finished, he stood first, reaching down to offer Lillibet a hand. She hesitated before letting him pull her to her feet.
“I lav you?” he asked when they were facing each other.
She jerked her hand away, as if she hadn’t realized she was still holding on. “What?”
“Your shirt.” He dipped his chin to indicate the peeling red letters.
“ILavaYou. It was a barbecue place. They went out of business,” she added, in case he’d been about to propose a middle-of-the-night excursion. Her fingers twisted the fabric, pulling it taut across her chest.
Jefferson developed a sudden interest in the lines of grout at his feet. “So, Lillibet. What were you writing?”
“Libby.”
He risked a glance at her face.
