FIFTEEN
WES
Tellme you’ve got something sweet for me.
My words hung between us, thick as steam off the pot and just as hard to pretend away. I’d be a liar if I said they had been completely innocent.
Clara blinked once, slow, like her brain had to buffer before it could decide what to do with that sentence. Her fork hovered over her plate, the prongs catching the warm overhead light. A beat passed where the only sounds were the heater ticking and the faint hush of snow sliding down the window outside.
My throat tightened.
Oh god, did I lick my lip? What the fuck.
Heat crawled up the back of my neck as my brain started scrambling for a version of that sentence I could live with. A joke. A roommate thing. A harmless comment about dessert.
My body didn’t seem interested in harmless.
Clara stared up at me in an oversize sweater that swallowed her shoulders and made her look smaller than she was, sleeves shoved up like she’d been cooking with both hands and zero hesitation. Her legs were tucked under the chair, the denim just tight enough to show off the curve of her ass, and the sight of them did something stupid to my gut. Her hair fell loose aroundher face, softened from the heat of the kitchen, a few strands curling near her jaw.
She looked ... pretty. Too pretty for my table. Too alive for the man I’d been lately. They were details I had no business cataloging.
The curve where the sweater dipped at her collarbone.
The way her fingers worried the edge of her napkin like she needed something to do with her hands.
The steady rise and fall of her chest when she breathed.
I hated that I noticed any of it. I hated that the noticing came first, and the self-control had to sprint to catch up after, but for the briefest moment, I’d felt likemeagain. Somewhere our conversation reminded me of the guy I used to be—the one who liked to flirt and was damn good at it.
Clara’s gaze flicked down, one quick dart to my hand on her plate, then back up to my face. Her cheeks colored just slightly, the kind of flush that made my pulse jump in a way I hadn’t felt in months. Her expression shifted—shock fading into something more careful, more assessing, like she was deciding whether to pretend she hadn’t heard the double meaning or call me on it.
My eyes had stayed on her mouth for half a second too long. My brain had supplied an image of her lips parting—again—only this time not to take a bite of spaghetti. The thought hit fast and hot, a flicker of lust that made no sense in my chest, because I wasn’t a man who got to want things right now. Wanting was for people who had their shit together. Wanting was for men who didn’t sleep on couches and flinch at the sound of footsteps in their own hallway.
My stomach tightened as I turned.
Allowing her in my house had been a mistake.
Wanting her at my table felt like something else entirely.
Clara cleared her throat, the sound small and careful. “You’re ...” She started, stopped, then tried again like she was choosing her tone on purpose. “You’re really doing the dishes?”
The question was simple, but the way she asked it wasn’t. There was something tentative under it, as if she didn’t trust me not to snap if she moved the wrong way.
My jaw clenched as I barely glanced over my shoulder. I forced my eyes to stay on her face and not dip, not betray me, not do the thing they kept trying to do—trace the line of her legs, the softness of that sweater, the way she looked too damn good in my kitchen.
“I said the cook doesn’t do dishes,” I replied, but the words came out too clipped, too defensive, like I was arguing with someone who hadn’t attacked me. “I meant it, Duchess.”
Her eyes went wide. “Duchess?”
I smirked, feeling the glimmers of the old me poking through again. “Well, you’re too hardheaded and wild to be princess.”
Clara’s mouth twitched into a half smile. She lifted her shoulder. “Okay.”
My pulse stuttered as I busied my hands with the dishes.
Her eyes held mine for a second longer than necessary, then glanced toward the freezer like she needed an escape route. “If you’re looking for something sweet ...” Clara licked her lips, and my dick twitched. “We might have ice cream.”
What the hell was happening?