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Acidic energy ate its way through his bones, burning through his patience and tolerance for being inside the same four walls for any length of time. He hated spinning his wheels. But it was too late in the day to bust in on Anders Bloom or Sylvie’s estranged blogger friend Ivy Rhodes without looking desperate and setting off alarm bells. On a case like this, sticking to the plan often meant the difference between success and failure.
His pacing took him into the kitchen. A glass jar filled with spaghetti caught his eye and offered the possibility of tomato-flavored salvation. Some good gravy would cover up her teasing scent. Without the lavender distraction, he could focus on beefing up the suspect dossiers. Immediately, he set to work scrounging for ingredients.
Tony’s mom would have a heart attack if she ever opened one of Sylvie’s cupboards. Not that they were bare, but they weren’t filled to overflowing with cans of tomato paste, jars of spices, and gallons of olive oil. He dug past a mound of energy bars into the darkest recesses to pull out two cans of diced tomatoes and some dried basil. Right on cue, his stomach growled.
“Do you have any garlic?” he called.
Sylvie glanced up from her laptop and leveled her slightly bleary green eyes on him. She’d been sitting there in her own world, trying to get the rest of the week’s posts uploaded before she had to give up her laptop to his computer guy, Carlos. For the past two hours she’d been typing away and muttering that gray being the new black was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. He’d always figured black was the only black, so he’d stayed quiet.
“Garlic?” Her breathy voice twisted something inside him.
“Yeah, you know, it’s a white bulb thing. You use it for cooking.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m laughing so hard here you’re making my sides hurt.” She tilted her head back and rolled her shoulders before arching her back in a long stretch that lengthened specific parts of Tony’s anatomy.
Peeling his gaze away, he forced his gaze back to the can of tomatoes in his white-knuckled grip. But his ears, attuned to her every move, caught the scrape of her chair on the tile floor, the soft patter of her feet, and the creak of the refrigerator opening. The mental image of her ass bending over in those second-skin-like yoga pants as she searched the fridge was almost worse than seeing it in real life.
A soft giggle brought him out of his fantasy. That sliver of difference between his imagination and the even-better reality hit him smack in the jaw.
She stood with one hip cocked and a smirk on her face. “Careful there, Iron Man, or you’ll dent the can.” She tossed the garlic bulb to him like a pop fly.
He stifled a groan and caught the garlic before it hit him between the eyes. “Thanks.”
She hopped up onto the island and swung her legs over the edge. “You’re cooking?” She swept up her thick hair into one hand and then looped it around until it formed a complicated knot, which she locked into place with a pencil.
His fingers itched to pluck it out and watch the honey strands fall past her shoulders. The lip of the tomato can bit into his palm. “Making gravy.”
“Turkey or meatloaf?”
“Pasta.”
“You mean pasta sauce?”
“Yeah. Gravy.”
She jumped down from the island and tugged a yellow apron from a drawer, pulling it over her head. “I just uploaded my last post. What can I do to help?”
The apron strings circled her waist, drawing his attention to her curves. He had to get the woman out of the room or he was going to go all Hulk on the defenseless tomato can. “I got it.”
“No doubt about that, but I need something to do that doesn’t involve stalkers, murderous drivers, or the trend of empire waists in the latest collections.” She yanked a stockpot from a cupboard. “Come on, throw a girl a bone.”
So tempting. If she only knew…
“You can start tearing up two slices of bread for the meatballs.”
“Aye, aye, captain.” She fetched a loaf of bread from the pantry, hit the MP3 player’s on button, and turned her back to him while she tore the bread into little bits.
A dance beat filled the kitchen. Definitely not his music of choice, but he developed a new appreciation for the quick beat while watching Sylvie twitch her hips in time with
the bass thumps. Tearing his gaze away, he grabbed the stockpot off the island and went to work making the gravy.
The kitchen wasn’t his normal domain, but he could make a few things pretty well, thanks to Nonni. His grandmother had one unbreakable rule: If you wanted to eat in the dining room as a kid, you helped in the kitchen. He’d started stirring the sauce when he was tall enough to see over the top of the pot without a stool, and had moved on to meatballs when his younger sister hit a growth spurt and took over with the wooden spoon. Sylvie’s kitchen didn’t have all the ingredients he needed for Nonni’s recipe, but there was enough there for a simple sauce.
They worked together in silence while it simmered on the stove, the oregano scent thankfully drowning out the lavender. However, his hypothesis tanked because he still couldn’t snuff out his extrasensory awareness of her. His body stood as primed as a fourteen-year-old boy’s during his first slow dance with the hottest girl in school.
She grooved around the kitchen chopping parsley and gathering ingredients. “I wouldn’t have pictured you as someone who liked to cook.”
He shrugged. “Since I like to eat, it seemed smart to learn the basics.”
