Reality waited in the kitchen. At the stove and the worktable.
Cooking. That was why she was here; that was what this was all about. She drained everything but that from her thoughts.
Big men, hungry men needed a dessert. She still had flour. Lard. Apples. Sugar and even cinnamon.
An apple pie would take too long. Or maybe not, if she made a lattice crust.
Peel. Slice. Sauté. Roll out the dough. Pop the pan in the oven.
Time to go back into the dining room and see how things were going.
The men looked up. They nodded, smiled, and went back to eating.
Nick looked up, too.
“Won’t you join us?”
Such a simple question. So polite. But that look in his eyes…
Her heart thumped. She shook her head, made motions toward the kitchen.
“No. Thank you. I’m not hungry and I have—I have dessert in the oven…”
She caught her lip between her teeth. Nick’s eyes turned midnight blue. Oh God, she thought, and she all but rushed from the room.
Would he come after her? Would he?
No.
He didn’t, and why on earth would she have thought he would? Whatever had occurred before had been an aberration. Just a hot sexual flare. Those things happened. You didn’t have to understand the reasons, not all the time. Things just happened even when you didn’t particularly like somebody, and she certainly didn’t like Nick Gentry and he sure as hell didn’t like her.
Her sisters didn’t understand that. The hot-sexual-flare thing.
She was sure Emily and Jaimie just didn’t get it. Well, they did, now, with the men they’d fallen for, but surely the sex thing had only happened after they’d felt some kind of emotional bond.
They’d always been the hearts-and-flowers type.
She’d taken a more logical approach. You didn’t always need moonlight and roses.
Sometimes, all you needed was a man’s touch. His body. His possession. And be honest, here, Melissa, that’s the gold standard and when, if ever, was the last time you really, really had that?
She bit back a moan. Was she nuts? What was with all this soul-searching?
Nick Gentry had come on to her. She’d reacted. End of story.
She liked sex. She liked men. At least, she had, in the past, in the days before she’d realized what out-and-out bastards men were. Besides, she wasn’t into one-night stands, and that, obviously, was what an encounter like this would be.
Her head was spinning. What she needed was something in her belly. She hadn’t eaten since—since when? Had she even had anything this morning?
Why had she turned down Nick’s suggestion that she eat with him and his men?
The pie was ready, though it had turned into more of a cobbler than a pie. She took it out of the oven, got down a bunch of bowls, put some of the cobbler in one of them, picked up a spoon and scooped up a mouthful.
She blew on it. Blew on it again. Still, when she put it in her mouth, it burned.
Like Nick’s kiss.
That amazing kiss.