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I stopped stirring and turned to him. "I'm cooking."
"Is that what we're calling it?"
I wiped my hands on the apron that had an attractive nearly naked guy on the front. "I was trying to make dinner so you wouldn't feel too much pressure with everything that’s happening."
Jensen stared at the stove for a long moment, then his eyes darted to me, then back to the stove again. And finally, he just came over and wrapped his arms around me.
I automatically hugged him back. I didn't normally do emotional displays. I wasn't much of a hugger. The one exception was Jensen. If he was giving out hugs, I was first in line to get one.
Because you’re pathetic.
No, I wasn't pathetic. We were friends.Bestfriends.
Which is why you’ll never, ever be with him.
I shook off the thought. I didn't want to be with Jensen.
Liar.
Okay, so there was a part of me that at one point thought I could be with Jensen. That part had died a long, slow, lonely death. It was never going to happen. Jensen was not mine. He was my best friend, and I'd seen what happened to women who got too close to the flame.
I was never getting burned like that again. And the more honest I was with myself about that, the less getting embraces from Jensen hurt.
"I'm so sorry about your grandmother."
He shook his head, moving his chin back and forth over my hair. My wild mane of curls was already a mess. I was dreading wash day, but I didn't complain that his actions were inducing more tangles. "What do you need me to do?" I asked.
"You're already doing it. Just being here. And even though your culinary skills need major help, the thought is really what counts. How do you feel about takeout?"
"NowthatI can do. Sorry I tried to poison you."
He chuckled. "It's not the first time. I don't know why you insist on trying to cook me anythingever." Then he added, "Not to worry, the bag is by the door. I had a feeling you'd be here."
And just like that, Jensen had reversed the roles. The man was all things to all people. "You weren't supposed to do that.Iwas supposed to be looking afteryou. Not the other way around."
He shrugged. "I had a feeling you'd be here trying to take care of me. And for the record, we're best friends. Sowetake care of each other. When I moved out here after grad school, who actually had a place to stay and let me crash on their couch for six months?"
Yeah, the early days. I'd been an apprenticing painter for Peter Maine at his gallery in San Diego. I'd sold a piece early, and I saved all my money and was able to afford a decent place to stay in. It had been like summer camp.
"Well, the way I figure it, I was paying you back for letting me move in with you sophomore year. So tell me, how is she?"
Jensen let me go then leaned back against the fridge, one leg propped back against it. "She's actually not terrible. She'll stay there a few more days for observation. But the doctor thinks there might be a problem with her medication, so they're trying to figure out the right dosages. Until they do that, they said no stress, no running around. She's to take it easy."
I snorted. I might not know Grandma Lucy personally, but from everything Jensen had told me, the old lady was never slowing down. "How'd she take that?"
Jensen shook his head. "About as well as can be expected for her. She was in no kind of mood for that noise."
I cocked my head and studied his face intently before hopping up onto the counter. "Okay, spill, Jensen. You always have that look when you aren't sure how to get out of a problem."
He rubbed the end of his nose, and I wondered just what kind of trouble he'd gotten himself into.
"So, you know how Grandma has been trying to get me to settle down?"
I nodded. And every time Jensen brought home some blonde with big boobs and an attitude, I often had to bite my own tongue. But that was neither here nor there. "Yeah, what's that have to do with anything?"
"Well, I might have told her I had a girlfriend to get her off my back."
I rolled my eyes. "Of course you did. Why would you do that? You should have known that at some point she was going to request to see this girl." The look on his face told me that something just like that had happened. "Jensen. Spill it."
