The Enemy (It Happened in Charleston 2)

“Nice. Why are you so jumpy?” he asks, looking down at me and making my skin flush.

I don’t have an answer to his question, though. At least not one I’m willing to voice. You turn me inside out.

He shoves his hands back into his pockets and gives a chin lift to Stacy who is waving at him from behind the bar while she waits for the mom and her kids to make up their minds. “Hey, Stacy. This place looks awesome.”

She beams back at him. “It’s all June! She’s the mastermind behind it all.”

I don’t like the way the spotlight suddenly shifts to me. It feels too bright.

“Ha! Mastermind. Pshhhh, no. Barely even.” Basically, I just took a bunch of words from thin air and strung them together until it felt like a real sentence.

Ryan shifts his eyes to me, amusement and concern mingling in them. “I’m gonna look around now. Do I need to strap you to that booth while I do, or are you going to be okay walking with me?”

His taunts bring me back to life, and I jump in front of him and spread my arms in a mama-bear-protecting-her-cub pose. “This is my shop. You’re not going anywhere in it without me.”

“Good. Show me the kitchen.”

See, here’s the thing. I shouldn’t find that statement ominous and sexy. But he’s a chef. Like, a freaking good one. So that sentence coming out of his mouth feels like he’s just told me, “show me the bedroom.”

My knees feel like Play-Doh, but I do an admirable job of walking as I lead Ryan back to the kitchen. He walks too close to me, though. Stacy watches us, and she chuckles, shaking her head at me because, apparently, I look like I am actually walking him back to my bedroom. I push through the swinging door that leads to our little kitchen and then hold my hands out in front of me. “Here it is. Where the magic happens.” I cringe at my word choice.

Ryan looks over his shoulder with a tilted grin and then stalks around my kitchen like the king of the jungle inspecting another lion’s pride. I try to look at the space through his eyes, and just as I feared, it doesn’t look very impressive. Tall metal shelves hold clear containers of various ingredients and dough starters. A long, silver worktable sits in the middle of the room, sprinkled with flour from our morning of rolling out donuts. I have two industrial-sized mixers, lots of extra-large mixing bowls, and several drying carts for after we finish icing the donuts. It’s all pretty standard, and I wonder if Ryan thinks it’s small fries compared to his prestigious big-city kitchen.

He loops around the worktable, and I don’t realize I’ve been lost in my thoughts until he stops in front of me. “Why do you look so sad?”

“Hmm? I’m not.”

He ignores my protest. “Do you not like having me in here?”

“I—I don’t know. I guess I’m still getting used to this new version of you.”

“What version is that?”

I lean back and grip the counter behind me, hoping to look at ease and not like I’m using the counter to help hold me up—which is exactly what I’m using it for. “The one that doesn’t hate me.”

“You mean the one that’s into you?” I jerk my gaze up to his. I’m so used to Ryan playing games with me; honesty is just not something I was expecting. He smiles, and I’m happy to see he still has the same dimple in his right cheek. “Let’s talk hypothetical for a second.”

“Okay.”

“What if I wanted to take you on a date?”

So, on a completely unrelated note to what Ryan just said, what’s a healthy heart rate? I’m pretty sure mine is tipping over into cardiac arrest right now. “I would remind you that you are going back to Chicago after the wedding.”

“Forget Chicago.”

“But it’s where you live.”

He steps closer, the tips of our shoes touching. “You’re bad at hypothetical.”

He’s too close, and I need some air. I slip away from him and move to the other side of the worktable, pulling my hair up into a bun to let some airflow onto my neck. He turns around slowly and watches, amused. I roll up my sleeves and wash my hands before pulling down a tub of dough and dumping it out onto the counter, ignoring the fact that Ryan’s eyes never stray from me.

“Fine. I would say sure. What would one date hurt?” I say after so much time that he probably thought I had given up on the topic altogether.

“You’d hold me to your one-date rule?”

I pause rolling the dough and look up at him. “I hold everyone to it.”

“Forever? You’ll never go out with someone past that first date ever again?”