Page 173 of A Matter of Time

“You can’t hear a smile.” I was fairly certain that if anyone could hear face muscles moving over the phone, it would in fact be Dane Harcourt. “Besides, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud. It sounded wonderful on the website.”

“Oh did it?”

“I’ve got hot-air ballooning for you to do next.”

He hung up on me, and I was still laughing when I heard the quiet cough behind me. I turned and saw a guy had slipped into the kitchen, hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking at me.

“Hey.” I smiled at him.

Slight smile, like he was uncertain. “Paul said to come in here and you’d feed me even though I’m super late and it was really rude of me not to call.”

I chuckled. “Paul’s words.”

His grin was crooked and he had dimples. “Yeah, Paul’s words.”

“Don’t let him make you feel bad. It’s not like he’s the poster boy for etiquette himself.”

He moved farther into the room, closer to me. “I know, right? And it’s not like I could’ve called anyway. I mean, I was in the bug room and⁠—”

My brows furrowed. “Bug room?”

He chuckled, leaning on the counter. “You should see your face.”

“Sorry.”

The smile I was getting made his dark eyes glow. I’d never actually seen golden-brown eyes before, but I was certain now that I had. His straight, shoulder-length hair, long lashes, and eyebrows were all that same raven-wing black.

“So can I eat?” he asked, because I was staring and not moving.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

“No, no,” he said gently, reaching out to touch my shoulder to stop me from opening the refrigerator. “You can stand there and look at me all night if you want.”

I nodded, arching one eyebrow as I turned to get out the food I had just put away.

He laughed softly behind me. “What’s your name?”

“Jory,” I said as I put bowls on the counter. “You?”

“Kai.”

“And what do you do, Kai, that takes you to a bug room?”

His smile was wide as he passed me a plate from the cabinet next to his head. He obviously knew his way around Paul’s kitchen. They had to be close friends. “I work at the Field Museum, and I was in the bug room where we keep these beetles that basically eat the flesh off stuff.”

“Are you sure you can eat?” I asked, squinting at him.

His laughter came from way down deep. “Yeah. Maybe you’d like to come with me sometime and see it?”

My eyes widened. “Go with you to the bug room?”

“Yeah. What do you say?”

“Okay.” I grinned at him. “Sure.”

“When?”

“I dunno. When do you want me?”