AllFreeNovel
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“Dinner.”
She set aside her laptop and sprang up. He watched, entranced, as she reached over with a soft smile and started pulling out containers.
“There’s a Haitian restaurant on Beekman—Espwa. It’s owned by a friend of Constanza’s.”
“Your adoptive mother.”
She blinked up at him. “You remembered.”
“I did. She’s from Haiti?”
“Yes. Her father was Haitian. Her mother was from Puerto Rico. She came here after she lost her husband.”
He watched, waited. She stared at him for a long moment before looking down at her food.
“My father died when I was three. I don’t remember much, but he and my birth mother loved each other.” Her lips turned down into a frown. “She didn’t take his death well. I didn’t have any other family, so I ended up in foster care when I was five. Bounced around for ten years until I landed with Constanza. She adopted me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about.”
The casual shrug she gave him didn’t distract him from the pain in her eyes, the slight bunching up of her shoulders, the nervous graze of her hand pushing a strand of hair out of her face.
“You lost both parents. I know what that’s like.”
Her head jerked up. His surprise at his own admission didn’t stop him from holding her gaze. He wasn’t sharing for himself. He was sharing to help her, an important distinction.
“Yes, I suppose you do.”
“It hurts.”
At last, she nodded.
“Very much. So does getting bounced around, never knowing where your next home will be.”
“Does that have anything to do with your work for a temp agency?”
She speared him with an arched brow and a slight frown. “Is this an impromptu counseling session, or are we working?”
His lips curved up. “Do I make you nervous, Evolet?”
She held his gaze, as if to show him she could. But as they stared, he saw the change come over her, the rise and fall of her chest, the darkening of her eyes, the parting of her lips. She was the first to look away, with a casual toss of her head as she stabbed her fork into one of the takeout containers.
“No.”
Oh, he was a selfish bastard, he thought with a satisfied smirk. He enjoyed hearing the slight hitch in her breath, seeing the tinge of pink in her cheeks. The woman might’ve been cool and competent in her work, but she still felt the attraction between them, wanted him just as he wanted her.
“Daniel’s a fantastic chef. I rarely make it down to this part of the city, but when I decided to stay, I thought you might be hungry because I was hungry and...” She trailed off, then took a deep breath before she surprised him with a chagrined smile that was simultaneously stimulating and endearing. “I’m babbling. I’m nervous and I’m babbling.”
There you are.
Here was the woman he’d danced with in a glamorous ballroom, whom he’d followed into Central Park and kissed in the rain. Here was the woman who, for a couple minutes her first morning here, had verbally sparred with and aroused him with her spunky attitude.
“Why are you nervous?”
She shot him a look that told him he was an idiot. “I stayed past my usual quitting time without talking to you and took over your office. It might seem presumptuous or...”
“No, no,” he said with a delighted smirk as the pink in her cheeks turned to a red similar to the shade of her dress. “Or what?”
