It wasn’t that I was surprised, exactly. Jasper hadn’t said anything that suggested he was going anywhere. The wordsthere’d be travelsettled into me with more weight than they should have had, given that we had known each other, in this new way, for a grand total of two days. I set my spoon down on the edge of my bowl because my hand had gone a little unsteady, and I didn’t trust myself with it.
“Are you going to take it?” I asked. I kept my voice as light as I could.
“I don’t know yet.” He was watching me carefully, not looking for a reaction, exactly, just not planning to miss one. “I’ve been putting him off. I keep meaning to decide, and then I don’t.”
“Well.” I managed a small smile. It even felt almost real. “That sounds sort of like a decision.”
The smallest smile in return. “Yeah. Maybe.”
I waited, in case he wanted to say anything else. He didn’t. And I didn’t push. I had the distinct, quiet sense that this was a door he’d cracked open to let me see it existed—not a door he was ready to walk through, and not a door he was ready to close either. He was telling me because he wanted me to know. He wasn’t telling me because he wanted me to decide with him. And I had no right to decide with him. Not yet, anyway.
So I picked up my sandwich and took another bite and let the door sit there, cracked open, in the corner of the room.
Chapter 17
Cara
Jasper was easy to talk to. He’d been easy to talk to yesterday, too, but in my own kitchen, with the soup warm between us and the wildflowers on the table and Wentworth still gazing adoringly at his elbow, he waseasier. He sat in my chair like he’d been sitting in it for years. He knew when to talk and when to let the pause hold. He laughed in that small, quiet way that wasn’t really a laugh, and once, briefly, when I told him about Wentworth trying to eat the vacuum cord, he laughed out loud, and I had to look down at my bowl for a second because the sound did something ridiculous to my heart.
When we finished eating, he stood up before I could and started gathering the dishes.
I protested. He ignored the protest and started running water in the sink before I’d finished sayingYou’re the guest.
“I wash,” he said. “You dry. I have a system.”
“That’s not a system, that’s a division of labor.”
“Well, it is a labor lunch,” he teased. “Right?”
“Fair enough.” We stood side by side at the sink. The kitchen was small enough that standing side by side meantactuallyside by side—his arm was maybe four inches from mine, and every time one of us shifted, the distance got smaller.
He handed me a wet plate, and my fingers brushed his on the rim. I didn’t pull back. Neither did he. His fingers rested against mine for just a second longer than they had any reason to, and then I took the plate from him, and felt the heat of where his hand had been on mine for a full ten seconds afterward.
A little later, he reached past me for the dish towel, and his chest brushed against my shoulder on the way, and I forgot how to breathe for a full half-second. When he pulled the towel back, the faintest, most deliberate amount of pressure trailed across my back as his arm passed behind me.
I did not look at him, and I couldfeelhim not looking at me. There was a small, pleased tilt at the corner of his mouth that I caught in my peripheral vision and refused to acknowledge directly, because I was pretty sure if I acknowledged it I was going to do something like drop a plate or say something I couldn’t take back.
“You’re doing that on purpose,” I said to the sink.
“Doing what?”
“You know what. Flirting. Trying to get me all—um…”
“Maybe I am.”
“I’m going to start dropping dishes.”
“I’ll catch them for you.”
I set the last bowl into the drying rack, he turned off the water, and I stepped carefully sideways out of his space before I could do anything embarrassing. I made us more tea because I wasn’t ready for him to leave yet, and he accepted the second mug because I was fairly sure he wasn’t ready to leave yet either. We carried them into the living room and sat down on my soft, well-loved couch with the mismatched pillows and the knit blanket I’d never bothered to fold properly. He sat on one end. I sat on the other, not crowding him, but not hiding on the far arm either. Our knees were maybe six inches apart.
Knightley jumped up almost immediately and settled himself into the narrow space between us, arranging his paws like a small, dignified chaperone. I nearly laughed out loud.
“He does that sometimes,” I said.
“Chaperones?”
“He just likes to be in the middle of things.”
