Without thinking, I reached across the counter and rested my hand lightly over hers.
She stilled immediately. Her skin was cool beneath my fingers.
“You aren’t alone anymore,” I said.
Her eyes lifted slowly to mine and the air between us finally gave up pretending this wasn’t happening. The kitchen felt smaller all at once.
Winnie’s thumb brushed faintly against the side of my hand. “You make it very difficult,” she murmured.
“For you to be alone?”
She shook her head. “For me to remember what’s sensible.”
My heart kicked hard against my ribs. I stepped around the counter before I could talk myself out of it.
Winnie watched me approach with that impossible look in her eyes that always made me feel like she was holding herself back from something enormous.
I stopped directly in front of her. Close enough to smell tea and jasmine and the faint trace of night air lingering in her hair. Taking the mug from her, I set it on the counter.
“You know,” I said softly, “you keep saying things like that, then acting surprised when I kiss you.”
A small breath escaped her. “You shouldn’t.”
“Too late.” My hand found her waist. Her fingers curled into the front of my shirt almost immediately.
And then I kissed her. Soft this time. Slow. Not desperate like the other day. Just warm and deliberate and terrifyingly tender.
Her mouth parted beneath mine, and she slid one hand up my chest. I felt her melt into me, and my entire body reacted before my brain could catch up.
God, I wanted her. Not only physically anymore, though absolutely that too.
I wanted this. The closeness. The ease. The way she fit beside me like she’d always belonged there.
When I deepened the kiss, Winnie made a soft, broken sound into my mouth that nearly destroyed what little remained of my self-control. I touched her cheek gently, and she leaned into it instinctively.
Then suddenly, she pulled back abruptly enough that I blinked in confusion. She stepped away, breathing unevenly, one hand pressed against her mouth.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Did I?—”
“No.” She closed her eyes briefly before looking back at me. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just—there are things you don’t know about me.”
Something in her expression made my stomach tighten. I frowned slightly. “Then tell me.”
God, I meant it too. Whatever it was, I wanted to know. I mentally prepared myself for the possibilities—apast relationship, enormous debt, trauma, some bizarre secret second family hidden in New Jersey. I didn’t even care.
Winnie looked at me like she wanted to speak. I could see the conflict moving across her face.
“Dad?” Bianca’s sleepy call drifted faintly from upstairs.
Everything broke at once. Winnie retreated a few more steps, her composure snapping back into place so quickly it almost felt unreal.
“I should go,” she said quickly.
“What? Winnie?—”
“Bianca needs you.”
She grabbed her sunglasses from the counter.
