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I stepped back and let him inside. “I know. I’ve been watching the weather.”
My kitchen felt tiny when he was in it. His gaze went to the wood stove, and then he smiled. “I see you figured it out without help.”
I nodded. “I had one like that in a…home, growing up.” I had almost said foster home and caught myself.
“You know, I am beginning to wonder if you’re ever going to need me at all. You’ve yet to text or call me.”
I bit my bottom lip to keep from smiling like an idiot. Did that mean he wanted me to text and call him? Why was it making me so happy? Had I not just told myself I had to stop thinking about King like this? He was a man. I had to leave here soon. I could never be honest with him.
“I was considering it just now, but you showed up before I could make up my mind if I should be worried or not about the weather.”
The pleased smile that made his eyes light up was not helping me with my unwanted attraction to him.
“That makes me feel needed,” he replied. “It’s nothing to worry about, but I thought I’d stay here until it blows over. I didn’t want you riding it out alone in case the power goes out. Not that you’d mind that, but from my experience, women aren’t real crazy about being alone in the dark.”
I hadn’t thought of that, and I wasn’t sure there was a candle in this place. I hadn’t looked for any. “Thank you. I don’t think I’d like being out here in the dark.”
“All right then, let’s eat while we have light,” he said, holding up the paper sack in his hand. “The best burgers and hot fries you’ve ever put in your mouth.”
He’d brought food. Burgers and fries. He wanted me to eat burgers and fries with him. I had to stop myself before throwing my arms around his neck. Every time I thought I had this under control, he did something like this. Something no one else had ever done for me.
“I’ll get some plates and set the table,” I replied.
“Set the table? That’s not the way you eat burgers from the Doghouse,” he informed me. “These burgers must be eaten out of the bag, on the sofa, in front of the television.”
I hadn’t eaten anything on the sofa since I had been a kid. Smiling at the idea, I nodded. “Okay, then I’ll get the drinks. I have water, milk, and orange juice. Oh, and I still have that wine that you bought with the groceries.”
He smirked. “The wine.”
“I don’t have wineglasses here.”
“Good. Bring the bottle,” he called over his shoulder as he walked into the living room.
I took a deep breath and gave myself a mental scolding for going all fluttery in my chest when he was around. “It’s just dinner with a friend,” I whispered as I went to get the wine and a bottle opener.
Taking my time, I uncorked it before meeting him in the other room, then took out two regular drinking glasses from the cabinet.
Pausing as I entered the room, I realized I hadn’t considered that we would be sitting so close on the sofa together. It was an average sofa, but the table in front of it was on the smallish side. King had taken out the burgers from the bag and placed them on the table, along with a large container of what appeared to be fries, covered in sauce and crumbled cheese. He’d stuck two plastic forks in the fries and placed them between the two burgers.
“I got plenty of napkins. This shit gets messy,” he said, looking up at me.
I walked over and set the bottle between the two burgers. Then gave him one of the glasses before setting the other in front of me.
He reached for the bottle. “Too proper to just drink out of the bottle, huh?” he asked with a teasing lilt to his voice.
I shrugged. “I wasn’t sure that was what you meant, and, well, I do have glasses, just not actual wineglasses.”
He poured wine into my cup, filling it over halfway, before he filled his to the top. I laughed, and he cut his eyes over to me.
“What? It just keeps me from having to refill it so much.”
I nodded and took my glass to take a sip.
King picked up his burger and took a large bite, then grabbed the remote control. It was hard not to just watch him. The way his jaw flexed as he chewed and the muscles in his neck moved. Why was I doing this? Men could dominate. They had the power to control. King had saved me, but hadn’t I thought Hill was saving me once too? When I’d met him at the diner where I was waiting tables, wondering where I was going to sleep that night. My roommate hadn’t paid her part of the rent, and I couldn’t afford all of it. The landlord had given us two weeks, and my roommate had vanished during that time.
How many times had I wished he had never walked into the diner? How many times had I wished to be homeless instead of the life he had placed me in?
Yet here I was, reacting to another man in ways I never had with Hill. I was getting funny feelings in my chest. He had been showing up in my dreams. I had to get some control over it. Stop it. I was leaving soon. How easily I kept forgetting.
