Chapter 17
She returned to the kitchen to find Mac standing in it, looking about thoughtfully. As if mulling what kinds of repairs it might need.
She walked past him, opened up a drawer, fished out two forks, and handed one to him.
He sat down opposite her at the card table.
They ate the still-warm lasagna from opposite sides of the pan. Silently. He ate with unselfconscious gusto, chewed with his mouth closed, and waited for her to gesture that it was okay to plow through the next third because she didn’t want it. She was impressed.
Suddenly he paused and went so alertly still it was as though he was about to say, “Hark!”
“Is that toilet still running?”
She listened. “Yep,” she concurred grimly.
“I think it was last replaced around 1950. Valve probably needs replacing.”
She sighed. “Naturally.”
And that was it for the conversation until he put his fork down about ten minutes later.
He leaned back and regarded her as if she might be the next course.
“That was good.”
“The lasagna?”
“Of course the lasagna. The other thing was...” He paused, and gazed, ceiling-ward, apparently mulling, then slowly lowered his head again. “...Do you have a thesaurus? Because I’m not sure a word has been invented yet for what that was.”
Her heart flipped over.
And their gazes locked.
She got up from the table abruptly. She collected the forks and the scraped-clean lasagna pan and put them in the sink. She ran the water for a rather unnecessarily long time over the forks.
And there was a little silence.
“Soooo now that I have you in sexual thrall... yooooou will sell me the hooooouse.”
He mimicked a hypnotist’s intonation.
It was a foray.
He was trying to gauge her mood.
She snorted. “You’re notthatgood.” She still didn’t have the nerve to turn around yet.
She could practically feel the rays of his smile on the back of her neck like a sunbeam. He was perverse, Mac was, but every time it was like opening up a window and allowing crisp air in.
“If that’s just your way of daring me to up my game...”
Oh God. Just theideaof him upping his game and how he might demonstrate that made her knees turn to butter.
She drew in a long, deep breath for courage and pivoted.
Yep, he was still as good-looking as three seconds earlier.
He looked a trifle warier.