“I feel bad. I wanted to help, since I didn’t do any of the cooking.”
“You’re in luck. There’s still a few in the sink.”
“Well, I didn’t feelthatbad,” he mumbled, and she snickered.
With a sigh, he scrubbed his hand over the back of his neck and stood up, heading toward the kitchen.
“Want some company?”
He turned to see her looking at him over her book, her expression hard to read.
“Sure,” he said. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
She closed her book and trailed after him, refilling her wineglass before hoisting herself onto an empty stretch of counter.
Neither of them said anything for a long moment as he set down a dish towel on the counter next to him and turned on the sink, running his hand under the tap as it warmed up. But to his surprise, it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. It felt easy. Lived-in. Domestic.
It shouldn’t have felt this natural. Playing house with her like this, in a place neither of them lived, when they weren’t together anymore, when they hadn’t ever done this kind of thing even when theyweretogether.
And yet somehow it felt like the thousandth time and not the first: lingering in the kitchen late at night after everyone they’d hosted had gone home, him doing the dishes, her drinking wine, both of them basking in the afterglow of good food and good company, quietly appreciative that they were alone again all the same.
He pushed the thought out of his head. “Do you need a ride back to the hotel after this?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shake her head. “I was planning on staying here tonight.”
“Here?”
Lilah idly swung her legs against the side of the counter. “Yeah, I mean, why not? I paid for it.”
He glanced over at her. “Actually,wepaid for it. I have just as much of a right to that bed as you do.”
He was teasing, mostly, but tried to keep his expression serious. In return, she arched an eyebrow.
“I’ll pay you back for your half.”
He grinned, turning back to the sink. “I don’t know…spending the night somewhere other than that hotel is sounding pretty good to me right now. I don’t think my back will ever recover from that mattress.”
“How do you know this one is any better?”
“Only one way to find out.”
She didn’t respond, just sipped her wine. Maybe he was taking it too far, crossing into pushy. He looked over at her again. “I’ll go back if you want me to.”
She met his eyes, her tone neutral.
“I didn’t say that.”
He felt a ghost of a smirk cross his face but said nothing, turning back to the sink. He tried not to let his mind race about the implications of what that meant.
As if she could hear his thoughts, she added, “If you stay, you know nothing’s going to happen tonight, right?”
“Isn’t that jinxing ourselves? Now it’s all tempting and forbidden.”
“You’re right,” she deadpanned. “Maybe we should just have sex now to remove the temptation to have sex later.”
“Now you’re talking.”
He could tell she was working to keep her voice stern, to fight the laugh bubbling up underneath it. “I mean it.”
