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I frowned. “What about him?”
He shifted from one foot to the other, obviously uncomfortable. “Did anything ever happen between the two of you?”
I snort-laughed and clapped my hand to my mouth.
“What?” he demanded. “He’s a good guy, and you two are close.”
“So are you and I,” I pointed out.Yet we’re tragically not together.
He grumbled. “I’m just saying.”
I sipped my tea and, finding it too hot, put it down, then opened the fridge to see what I might be able to make for dinner. “Nothing has ever happened between Max and me. He’s too much like my brother.”
Unlike his twin. Unfortunately.
“Have you ever been in love?” he asked.
I scowled and dropped a kumara onto the counter harder than necessary. “What’s with the third degree about my love life?”
He shrugged. “I feel like I let you down in that department while I was busy with my own shit. All this stuff that’s coming up made me realize there’s a lot I don’t know about you, and I hate that.”
“You know more about me than almost anyone.”
“I don’t want it to be ‘almost.’”
I nibbled my lower lip as I rinsed the kumara and then searched for a vegetable peeler. It was hard to dismiss his question when his intentions were good. But if I told him I had been in love, he’d ask who with, and that would open a can of worms I wasn’t prepared to deal with. I needed to distract him, but based on how persistent he was being, that would take something big. My mind sifted frantically through ideas, then my mouth seemed to open of its own volition.
“My books are spicy,” I blurted, then felt heat rush to my cheeks. I squeezed my eyes shut and inwardly cursed myself.
What the hell, Grace?
14
NATE
“Um, spicy?”I asked, baffled. “I didn’t know books could be spicy.”
Her face was the color of cooked tomato. Whatever she meant, it was obvious she didn’t want to explain, but she heaved a sigh and started talking.
“It means there’s rather, uh, graphic sex in them,” she said, raising her chin as though daring me to make a stupid comment. “A couple of my books have some light kink.”
“Kink?” I repeated, like an idiot. “Like, whips and chains? I thought you wrote historical novels.”
She pressed her lips together and scrunched her nose like she’d rather be having literally any other conversation. “I do write historical novels, but they’re romances. Love stories set in different time periods. As for whips and chains, not so much. More like blindfolds and ropes.” She moistened her lips. “Some dominance and submission, but nothing heavy.”
I stared at her, half-convinced we’d slipped into an episode ofThe Twilight Zone.My sweet, bookworm best friend was apparently a secret vault of information about sex stuff I’d never even considered.
Mind. Blown.
“You,” I started, but couldn’t think of what to say. “I… um…. Ropes, did you say?”
She laughed and rolled her eyes, her expression lightening for the first time. “Yes, Nate. Ropes. Bondage. Some people do that. Sometimes, it isn’t even sexual.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “When you told me you wrote historical novels, I was thinking World War II type stuff. But you’re telling me it’s more likeDownton Abbeywith kinky sex?”
“Close enough, but some of my books are sweeter than others.”
Here I’d always thought of her as remarkably wholesome. Who was this woman with the tattooed ex she’d married on impulse and her secretly kinky stories?
