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Changing Lissa’s pay had only been the first change he’d made, Nick thought now, as he sat watching her beat the hell out of the bread dough.
New appliances lined the walls of the big kitchen.
The pantry, the cupboards, the freezer were fully stocked.
And the place was clean from top to bottom, not just the kitchen but the bedrooms, bathrooms, his office, the living room, the dining room, the den.
Lissa had started scrubbing things; he’d joined her; his men had added their muscle to the mix and finally it had dawned on him that Esther Finch might be willing to help and that she might also agree to come in every afternoon to tend to the house and help Lissa in the kitchen.
Esther had already been showing up to clean the place every couple of weeks, well, actually, whenever he got around to asking her.
It turned out that working on a steady basis suited her perfectly.
Nick drank some of his coffee.
What suited him perfectly was Lissa.
She was an amazing woman. Determined. Tender. Strong. Feminine. And, unlike most of the long procession of women who’d wandered through his life, she didn’t play games. No pretense. She didn’t back down from her own opinions; she didn’t automatically defer to him.
She was a challenge, and it had been a very long time since anyone had dared challenge Nick Gentry.
Turned out he liked being challenged just fine.
They were equals.
Turned out he liked that, too.
She could beat him at gin rummy. No problem. He could beat her at chess. She rolled her eyes at Little Richard and the Rolling Stones; he rolled his at the Black Eyed Peas and Coldplay. They compromised by downloading a lot of classical guitar because it turned out they both liked it, and because, more than anything, he wanted her to be happy that she hadn’t gone back to L.A.
That she had, instead, chosen to stay here. With him.
Because they were, he’d realized with mild surprise, living together.
He’d had a lot of women. More, he knew, than most men, but he had never actually lived with one. He’d always imagined that living with, being tied to one woman, her toothbrush on the sink next to his, her lipstick on his dresser, would make him feel trapped.
Wrong.
What he felt was honored. Sharing his room with Lissa, his bed, his day-to-day existence made him feel—made him feel—
“Would you hand me that pan?”
Nick blinked. “Sorry. What did you say?”
“That pan. Could you give it to me, please?”
He reached for the pan. She smiled and he felt that smile straight down to his toes.
“Got to pay the price,” he said, whisking it away from her outstretched hand.
She sighed. Dramatically. “You drive a hard bargain.”
“Uh h
uh,” he said, keeping the pan just out of reach.
She sighed again, leaned in and brushed her lips lightly over his.
“Nice,” he said, “but that was only a down payment.”
