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“No wonder you can cook,” she said finally.
The dryer buzzed, and she was grateful for the excuse to step away from him. His proximity made her too warm; the conversation, too confused. She needed space and air.
She opened the dryer door and squeezed a sock. Dry.
Ben helped her pile the warm clothes onto a countertop, and they began to fold them, side by side.
“You said you were a beekeeper.”
“I am. When I got divorced, Sandy took the restaurant. I signed a noncompete agreement that says I can’t open another one.”
“She can do that? Keep you from being a chef forever?”
“No, I could open a pizzeria in Fargo if I wanted, but I agreed not to open another real restaurant in New York or the boroughs for two years.”
“How long ago was that?”
“A year next month.”
“So you’re … what? Just biding your time with the bees and the gardening?”
“Something like that.”
“And then you’re going to open another restaurant?”
“If I can find some backers, yeah.”
May stopped herself from asking how likely that was. It seemed as if it might be a rude question, like asking someone who they’d voted for or how much they earned. Like saying, Are you a good chef or a mediocre one?
“Does that mean you’re making me breakfast again?” she asked instead.
“It could mean that.”
“If you make me breakfast, I’ll stay.”
“And the kiss?”
He didn’t change his tone or move closer. When he reached for a T-shirt, his elbow brushed her arm, and her chest broke out in goose bumps.
From his elbow.
“Another rain check, I think.”
They folded laundry together. He got the basket and set it onto the counter, and they piled the warm clothes inside. When they’d finished, she turned to get her purse and found him where she hadn’t expected to, and they moved into each other—a slow-motion collision that wasn’t precisely an accident.
At least, not on her part.
Her hands lifted to investigate the rigid sculpture of his biceps just beneath the sleeves of his T-shirt. His palms spanned her waist. Then her hips. When he pulled her toward him, his thigh came between her legs, and the heat spread with a slow pulse, up and out, across her stomach and her thighs. Into her breasts, her neck. Her face.
The detergent smell of the laundry room, the tumbling clothes, her new panties drying over the edge of his green plastic laundry basket—none of this had been part of her fantasies. She’d never intended to run
from Dan and end up with this divorced farming beekeeper ex-chef, with his surly attitude and his crooked smile. His secrets.
She had never imagined the feel of Ben hard against her hip, his quiet breath on her face.
She couldn’t have, even if she’d known to want to.
“I’m cool with a rain check,” he said. “But tomorrow, your vacation starts.”
