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I stood for a moment and watched Lucas. What would it be like to be with him? He would come home and finish work while I cooked, or we’d cook together. We would eat and probably argue about something. Then he’d strip off his clothes and let me touch him everywhere.
He closed his laptop with a bang, and I jumped from my daydream. “I love snow days on the island,” he said. “Nothing moves. It’s just still.” He looked me over, a spark in his eyes. “Let’s take a walk in the snow.”
“What?”
“It’s early. Let’s walk, listen to the quiet. Everyone’s where they’re going to be. No traffic noise or mess, only the sound of snow and water, maybe a buoy bell in the chop.”
Oh. “Okay. Give me a minute to turn off the stove and check the bread rising.”
“You bake bread?”
“I’m a pastry chef, Lucas. Yes, I bake bread.”
“Man, this day keeps getting better and better. My little sister Tess makes great rustic bread, but she’s away in grad school most of the year. This is awesome.” He rubbed his palms together, and his eyes glittered.
The walk was quiet, even serene, with all the sounds muffled. We both slipped a few times on the sidewalk, reaching for the other to steady ourselves, our frosty breath mingling. By the time we stomped back into the house, we were both drenched with the wet spring snow clinging to our coats.
“Shake everything out here. If you want to wash anything, I can throw it in with mine.”
“Um, okay. Do you have some sweats I could sleep in? I could change into that.”
“Right. Yes. Let me show you.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me up the stairs. I was perfectly capable of walking up without help, but I didn’t let go. To the right of the top was a full bathroom. “Here you go. Emily still has some stuff in here. Take a shower. It’ll warm you up. I’ll grab the sweats and leave them right outside the door.”
“I promise to lock it this time.”
His eyes held mine. “Damn,” he said, and my heart thumped.
The hot water warmed my chilled skin. That sparkle in his eyes warmed other places. I dried off with a fluffy towel and grabbed the bottle of lavender lotion sitting on the counter. The scent brought back that day in the farmhouse bathroom. But my memory looked again at the long linger of our eyes caught in the mirror. Lucas hadn’t acted disgusted by my body that day or since. He touched me more when we cooked or stood closer when we talked. That night at the bar with Kennedy and how he held me to him, he let her believe it was a date. Would he have done that if he’d been disgusted by what he saw?
Gently, I opened the door and found a small pile of clothes and the duffel I had brought in from my car earlier. I had jeans and a fleece pullover inside the bag. No undies or bra. Crap. I forgot to pack them with the other clean stuff after the spill at the farm. My only undies and bra were lumped in with my other things, headed for the washer. Commando it was. I dressed in Lucas’s sweats, grabbed my wet stuff, put my duffel on the bed in what I assumed was the guest room, and went downstairs.
“Here are my clothes. Where should I put them?” I asked as I stepped into the warm room at the back of the house.
Lucas hopped up from the sofa freshly showered, his woodsy scent infusing the air. He showed me to the laundry room, and I added my pile to the load. It was intimate in a way, our things washing around together.
While the bread baked, I puttered around the kitchen, cleaning up and making lists for future meals. Lucas went back to his laptop. Thirty quiet minutes later, I took the fresh loaf of bread from the oven. It smelled delicious. The snow had slowed but not quite stopped. It might be gone by this time tomorrow, but tonight, it was a magical shield holding out reality.
Lucas immediately stood next to the island as I set the warm loaf on a cutting board. “That smells great. Let’s eat.” I smiled at the shadow of the little boy he must have been, always eager for dinner.
“Want to watch a movie or something? We can eat in there.” He motioned toward the sofa.
He pulled up one of the Marvel movies on the big flat screen, and we sat on the floor with our backs against the sofa, our legs stretched out under the coffee table. It was all so domestic, and even though I knew it wasn’t real, I indulged in the fantasy that it was. We ate the savory soup, slathered rosemary butter on warm bread, and drank a bottle of deep red Cabernet while the floodlights outside glistened against the falling snow. This wasn’t so bad. I was warm and full, and relaxed.
18
LUCAS
“Why Seattle?”I asked.
“What?”
I swallowed the last bite of bread. I always thought my biggest vice was sweets, almond cake specifically, but Jo’s bread was a new challenger on the scene, competing hard for the top spot on that list. “The restaurant. You could have gone anywhere in the country, so why Seattle?”
“It was the offer on the table when I finally reached my limit in San Jose,” she said. “And Reef was a force. He was going to make it or die trying. I could relate. It felt like the right move at the time.”
The evening couldn’t have gone better if I’d planned it. The food was excellent, the company even better. We talked over the movie, discussing our favorite theories about the Marvel Multiverse and what if Iron Man was a woman as well as Captain America.
We’d moved from the floor to the couch when my tailbone went numb, and now Jo was curled up on one end, snuggled under a fleece throw blanket. I was leaned back against the other arm, my legs stretched out along the cushions. She’d graciously covered my feet with a corner of the blanket, and I tried to soak up the closeness any way I could.
