“OK,” he said, in the no-nonsense tone of a dentist about to drill a tooth.
Then he turned from the sink and looked at Jaimie.
Big mistake.
She had set the counter. There was no other way to phrase it. She’d found place mats somewhere. Cloth napkins. She’d put one of the Mason jar candles, the most utilitarian of emergency items, on a small flowered plate he’d never have imagined anyone could find in a kitchen of his. A matching plate held…Oreos.
Yeah, well, his housekeeper had been with him for a while. She knew his tastes ran the gourmet gamut from Oreos to Twinkies and back again.
He stared at all of that. Then at Jaimie.
She looked hesitant.
And delectable.
She’d caught her bottom lip between her teeth and he wanted to replace her mouth with his, nibble on what would surely be sweet, tender flesh, absorb the taste of her lips…
“What’s all that for?” he growled, because growling was safer than what he was feeling.
Color swept into her face.
“I thought—you know, just to brighten things…” She swung away from him, snatched up the napkins and he cursed himself for being not just an unfeeling SOB but an idiot.
“You’re right,” he said, grabbing her wrist, tugging the bits of cloth from her fingers. “We need to brighten things.”
“No. It was foolish to—”
“It was smart. No,” he said quickly, when she shook her head, “really, it was. Morale’s important at a time like this. Keeping things cheerful. Focusing on the positive, not the negative…”
Crap.
He was babbling. Not just babbling. Psycho-babbling, the way some of the shrinks did during debriefings, but he had to say something to turn that lovely mouth up at the corners.
“Just think,” he heard himself say, “if you’d taken me up on my dinner offer, we’d be in some little restaurant right now. Nothing as nice as this. I mean, who’d want linen tablecloths? A waiter hovering over us? And candles. Skinny ones. What do you call them?”
“Tapers,” she said.
“Tapers. The word always makes me think of those animals in South America. The ones that look like guinea pigs on steroids.”
Good. That had won him a faint smile.
“And what would we have had for supper? Surely not Soupe des Légumes à la Maison.”
Yes. A definite smile.
“And then, dessert. Some glop a dude in a cheap tux would light up, tableside.”
She laughed, which was what he’d counted on, and he sent up silent pleas for forgiveness to every maître d’ who’d ever performed magic with Cherries Jubilee.
“Who’d want that when we have this? Heck, the only thing missing is music.”
“Mmm,” she said. “That would be nice.”
She had surprised him with that admission.
She could see it in his eyes.
Well, damn, she’d surprised herself.