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I avoided Kip for the rest of the day.
It was easy because he was gone by the time I got back. Thankfully. I’d found my senses once I’d warmed up and gotten back inside, and I felt confident and angry enough to shout at him about the ‘tanning my ass’ comment and general ‘manly man’ bullshit on the beach.
Him ordering me around for the duration of this marriage was not going to fly. He was acting like Rowan did with Nora, all macho and dominant.
Granted, that worked for her, and he really pulled it off. Plus, she got really fucking amazing sex from it all.
Maybe the alpha thing might’ve worked—on occasion—if I got mind-blowing orgasms, but we were not doing that. Our marriage was on paper only. And fuck if I was only going to get the shitty parts of these masculine American men without the benefits.
I stewed on it in the bath with Taylor Swift blasting so I didn’t have to hear him when he came home. If he came home.
Ugh. It was still gross and uncomfortable thinking of him living here. In my home.
I didn’t do roommates.
Even when I first moved to the States and had fuck all to my name, I scrimped and saved and worked my ass off in order to live in a semi-sketchy neighborhood without having to label my food or whatever the fuck you had to do when you lived with someone.
No thank you.
It’d been years of shitty apartments before I finally found Jupiter and my cottage. Like it was fate. Like the universe was finally giving me a break. A sanctuary.
I had cultivated a lovely space that was my own.
And now Kip was here.
But I’d also put myself in a situation where him living here was my only option. So I really only had myself to blame.
Suffice it to say, I was not in the best of moods once I dragged myself out of the lukewarm bathwater.
I was also still hungover and fucking starving. I’d grazed on what I had in the pantry—which was basically nothing because I’d purposefully not stocked up for Kip moving in. I didn’t want to give him any ideas about me being some kind of fucking housewife.
I’d done something to be petty toward him and only ended up punishing myself. Served me right. I was in my mid-thirties. I should probably grow up.
When I walked into the kitchen, I’d been mentally hyping myself up to enjoy some baked chickpeas with a bunch of old cheese melted on top. But I was assaulted with something else.
A smell.
A fucking delectable smell.
And Kip. In my kitchen. Cooking. With an apron and everything. I was sure I didn’t own an apron.
I stopped in my tracks to stare at him. He’d obviously been in here a while if the dishes on the drying rack were anything to go by. I hadn’t heard him return on account of Taylor Swift reverberating in my bones.
“What are you doing?” I asked, peeved about the use of my oven and about how fucking good whatever he was making smelled.
“Cooking,” he said, tone teasing.
Gone was the pissed-off macho man of before. I was glad for it too. That version of him was confusing and somehow more infuriating in a hot way. This cocky version was infuriating in a way that was… safer.
I scowled at him. “I have eyes,” I snapped. “You know how to cook?” I asked, surprised. When I’d been to his house—granted, it was only once—it had been messy with all sorts of take-out boxes and packages of microwave dinners lying around.
I’d taken those hints to deduce that he didn’t cook. Or clean.
But the tidy workspace and the smell in my kitchen directly argued with that.
He glanced up at me. “I have been known to in my life.”
