That was never going to happen. You live together now.
Valid. And Mal needs more from me than the obsession I’m developing with his mouth. He deserves more. I’m just not sure I have it. Not until the food in my belly stops feeling like poison I need to expel, and I get some sleep.
Fuck, I need to sleep.
I’m good at keeping my emotions to myself. Drives Jack and Sol crazy when they need more from me too.
Mal, though. As fatigue sweeps over me, heavier now I’ve eaten, he seems to see every scratchy wave of it.
Or maybe I’m too tired to think straight. In the time it’s taken me to lose track of the conversation, he’s come closer and claimed Oscar’s seat.
His bare calves transfix me, if only to stop my gaze travelling up his muscled legs, and his proximity makes my skin tingle.
I push my hair back from my face.
Mal tracks the movement, barely a flicker of his green eyes, but I see it as much as he sees me.
“The pub isn’t on its knees.” I finally find the breath to speak. “At least, not compared to how it was when we bought it, and it’ll be better by the end of this summer.”
Mal nods. “Tourist season. I get it. Then what?”
“Then we weather the winter while the business rates don’t change and there’s no footfall in the evenings. It’d be easier if we could open the kitchen, but it’s hard to find a chef who wants to live off-site and stay the whole year on the shitty wage we can afford to pay.”
Mal takes it all in, leaning forward a little.
It’s a struggle not to match the movement, but I stay eased back in my seat, trying not to imagine it’s the rocks at that beach and he’s about to bear down on me, seize my jaw, and?—
Mal shifts. Not to press me against the wall and kiss me, just his leg, the faintest hint of motion. But it brings him closer to me. Our knees brush and I feel it, I feelhim, everywhere. And it’s not even sexual, though it is. It’s something else, and I don’t know what to do with it. Instinct has me wanting to run a fucking mile, bad habits so engrained they’ve become my entire personality. But I don’t move, neither does he, and we find a new game of chicken to play as his voice wraps around me again.
“That’s some pertinent information for a business you don’t have much to do with.”
I shrug. “I don’t pull pints that often. Never said I didn’t pay attention.”
“When did the kitchen last open?”
“Last autumn.”
“Why did it close?”
“I told you. Chefs don’t stay.”
It’s a half-truth and unnecessary. But I’m curious. I want to test Sol’s theory with something benign, just because, even though every instinct I have about this man tells me it’s accurate.
Mal’s brought a mug to the table.
Coffee, undrunk and cold.
I wonder if he takes it like Jack, dark and strong, no sugar. Because he’s so used to being stuck on operations without milk he’s long forgotten about it. I slide my hand into my pocket and find the object there and wonder if the coffee’s decaf, like it needs to be—for Jack and for him.
Mal tilts his head, as if he’s privy to every thought rolling through my brain. “Why did the last one leave?”
The last chef.
We’re talking about chefs.
Not the organ in Mal’s chest where my attention has drifted unbidden.
Could be worse.