I open the bathroom door and take the stairs slow.
Halfway down, I can smell coffee and I hear humming.
I stop on the bottom step.
I can’t see into the kitchen from here, only the hall. I take the last step, cross the hall, and stop in the kitchen doorway.
And I have to put my hand on the frame because my knees do something stupid.
He is at the stove.
Adam has changed out of last night’s clothes. He is wearing nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants…hanging low on his lean hips in a way that should be illegal… bare chest, and Lord have mercy, the chest! The wolf’s head tattoo on his right pectoral. The mountain range across his collarbones. The dark ink down both arms, across his ribs and disappearing into the waistband of his sweats. The cut of his bulky shoulders. The flat of his defined stomach with that line of muscles running down it that, frankly, I thought only existed on male models. But he’s here. He’s real. He’s a real man, in real life, in my kitchen, making coffee. Bigger and more beautiful in daylight in sweats than he was yesterday in his suit, and that’s a sentence I would not have believed forty-eight hours ago.
Adam turns, sees me in the doorway with my hand braced on the frame, and his face softens. The Mad Scot of Edinburgh looks atme in my rumpled dress with my hair undone and my bare feet, and his face softens, like he is looking at some treasure he was hoping to find and was not sure he would.
Then his wicked mouth pulls up at one corner, eyes doing the slow head-to-toe thing, and Lord, I bet he is remembering!
“Mornin’, love.”
His voice is gravel, warmth, and Scotland, all at once, at seven in the morning, in my kitchen.
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
His lips twitch further. Then he picks up a mug from the counter and brings it to me with the milk and sugar containers.
I look down and focus on preparing my coffee. When I look back up at Adam, he’s watching me.
“Did ye sleep, love?”
“…some.”
“Mm.” He runs his knuckles down my cheek. “Good lass.”
I take a sip of the coffee because if I don’t put something in my mouth; I am going to do something I’ll pay for later.
It’s perfect. Nothing like the instant crap we’ve been surviving on.
Adam turns back to the stove. There’s a pan on, and he has an egg in his hand. He’s making breakfast. This dangerous mobboss is in my kitchen in low-hanging sweats, cracking an egg into a pan with one hand.
I am going to need to sit down.
Imelda jumps in my lap. I drink my coffee, staring at the muscles ripple on Adam’s broad back. All ink and tanned skin… and I don’t know what my life is anymore.
Footsteps come down the stairs, quick and light, and I have time for one panicked thought…she’s going to see him like this…before my daughter rounds the corner into the kitchen and stops dead in the doorway.
Jasmine is dressed for her shift in black jeans, her coffee-shop barista polo, hair in a ponytail, and light makeup. She has her apron rolled up in her hand, and her bag slung over a shoulder. Ready for the day.
She is also staring back and forth between Adam and me. Smirking. Taking in his bare chest, my messy hair and rumpled dress from yesterday…
I’m gonna die.
“Mornin’, lass.”
Adam doesn’t turn around. He clocked her without looking, and just cracks another egg into the pan.
“Coffee?”
“Um…yes, please.”
