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Noah laughed lightly, his attention still on his task. “It’s all in the wrist action,” he said and smirked.
The air between us was charged with need.
“Can’t wait to taste it,” I said, my voice low and suggestive.
“No doubt it’ll leave you wanting more,” Noah replied with a grin, sliding the cake tins into the oven, and checking his watch. Then, he pulled over a saucepan, flipping it and catching it before placing it on the stove.
God, there was something so damn sexy about competence, and the way he flipped that saucepan was all… jeez, is it hot in here?
He pointed at it. “For the sauce, but I’ll do that when we eat.”
“Can you do that again?” I can’t believe I asked that.
“Do what?”
“The saucepan thing?”
He lowered his voice. “What if I drop it and everyone laughs at me?”
I swallowed. “What if you don’t drop it, and I get even more turned on?”
He leaned into me. He was so close and?—
“It’s done!” Scott announced, and I slumped back down into my chair, so damn hard I could probably chop wood.
Clearly, I had a saucepan-spinning kink. Or a baking one. Or maybe it was a Noah kink.
Yep, definitely Noah.
Fox fell asleep leaning against Noah a little after nine, despite declaring he was going to stay up all night because he was having fun. It was just him and me at the kitchen table as of five minutes ago. The kids were in bed, the adults had gone home, or in the case of Scott, gone upstairs to find his reading wife to see if she was okay.
Well, that was Scott’s story, and he was sticking to it.
“Fox looked tired,” I murmured, fixing the final lid on three small containers of the toffee cake Noah had made and placing them in the refrigerator. The dessert had been the highlight of the meal, or maybe it was sitting facing Noah that was the highlight.
“He’s had a bad day,” Noah murmured.
“At school?” That worried me. As his teacher, I wanted to know if he was struggling.
“No, not this school; his old life. From before.”
“As his teacher, and with us… y’know… but if you need to talk…”
Noah smiled and seemed grateful for the offer, but I got the feeling he’d be happier dealing with everything himself. “I should get him home.”
“Yeah, I need to go too,” I murmured and reached for our coats, grabbing all three of them.
“Fox? You need to get your coat on,” Noah said and succeeded in waking a grumpy, exhausted Fox long enough to get him wrapped up and to their car. I locked the front door of the ranch house—all the Sheridan siblings had keys—then headed to my own car. It was a lot harder to get my chair up the hill than it was to come down, but I reached the parking lot as Noah closed the door on Fox. His breath gusted white in the cold air.
“They need to install a chair lift,” I grumped.
“I could have helped…” Noah began, then stopped. I saw this all the time—people thinking they’d overstepped. I was as independent as he was, but somehow, worry from him didn’t grate—it felt like affection.
“I’ll take all the help I need, but I’m a stubborn ass, so I will probably curse you out for daring to think I can’t do things,” I said, and we exchanged smiles.
“Okay then, thank you for welcoming us in for dinner, it was…” He searched for the right words. “The best kind of night with family and friends, and it’s been a long time since Fox and I have had that. Most of the friends I had were Briggs’s people, and Fox… today… it hit home for him what he’d had to leave behind.”
He pressed a gloved hand to his temple, and I didn’t want to be sitting when he needed something from someone. Aka me. I pushed myself to stand, feeling a sense of determination as I stepped toward Noah.
