“Now that they’re occupied, we need to talk.” He leaned against the counter.
She bit her bottom lip. “Did you find out anything?”
He shook his head. “No, still waiting on Howard to fill me in, but it feels like he’s dodging me. I was talking about ourrelationship.”
“Oh.”
He turned and pulled a pan from one of the bottom cabinets, set it in the sink, and turned on the water.
“I think it’s best if we stay as close to the truth as possible.” He turned to look at her.
“What do you mean?” She thought the whole point of this relationship was to keep from blowing her cover.
“I mean how we met and how our relationship started.” He held the pot under the faucet.
“It’ll be easier that way. So we met the first time at the motel shooting,” she said.
“Yeah. I think it’ll be okay to say we met again when I came with Aubrey looking for her cat. We can just leave out the part about me being your handler. I was just out helping my new coworker because I didn’t want her going door to door alone.”
“Okay.” Sam nodded. “I mean, everything about how we’ve interacted since then can be told. The girls started to get into trouble, and we were thrust together.”
“And that’s when the attraction started.” He shut off the water, set the pan on the stove, and turned on the burner. Then he turned the knob to preheat the oven. “Can you grab the bread from the freezer?”
She grabbed the boxed cheese bread from the freezer and started opening it. Liam pulled a cookie sheet from under the stove and set it on the counter. He reached for the box.
She held it out of his reach. “I’ll help.”
Liam nodded and turned back to the stove, sprinkling some salt in the water.
Sam pulled the bread slices apart and started lining them in the pan. “Then I was in danger, and your protective instincts took over.”
“Bingo.” He turned around and leaned against the cabinet. “We need some ground rules as well.”
“Right. We’re supposed to be portraying a couple, and there will be coupley things we need to do.”
“I hope you were okay with me holding your hand and walking you to the car. I noticed one of the guys watching us.”
“No. That’s fine.”
An ashamed expression crossed his face. “And I realized I’ve kissed you twice without your permission. I need to apologize for that.”
Her mouth fell open. She hadn’t expected an apology.
“I’m not in the habit of doing that, but both times it seemed like an appropriate boyfriend reaction, and I didn’t have the option to ask.” He looked sheepish.
“I’ll admit it took me off guard, but it was necessary.”
“Are you comfortable with physical affection, like hand-holding and hugs?”
This was such an odd conversation. “Um. No kissing on the lips.” Not that she was a prude. She’d kissed a few guys in her time, but when she had very real feelings for them. Kissing Liam—that seemed too intimate.
His gaze dropped to her mouth, just for a second, a flicker of heat in his eyes that made her breath catch. He cleared his throat, as if reminding himself of the stakes. “Understood. The mission comes first.”
“I think if we stick to hand-holding and hugs, it should be fine. I’m not an overly affectionate person to begin with, so the guys won’t think anything about us not being touchy-feely.” She walked to the cabinets and started opening them, looking for the spaghetti noodles.
He pointed to the cabinet to her left. “Noodles are in that one.”
“Thanks.” She handed them to Liam and realized she was now far closer to him than before.
