Switch (Landry Family 3)

“No, it’s not. You were in the kitchen. Kitchens are where food is made. You are sexy. Men in kitchens are sexy.”

“Really? I had no idea.”

“Trust me,” I laugh. “So, do you?”

He hands me the glass and keeps the tumbler. Staying standing, he looks at me like I’m a touch crazy. “Sometimes. I don’t cook much. Too much goes to waste. I do have a cedar plank I use to make salmon sometimes. It’s really good.”

“I don’t like fish.”

“You don’t like fish?”

“I think it’s because I’m a Pisces,” I wince.

“That makes no sense,” he chuckles. “I also make crepes. Do you have any strange aversions to eggs or gluten?”

“Nope,” I say. “I love all things butter, eggs, and gluten. It’s a part of my balance thing. I eat all the terrible things and then do yoga.”

“I thought you went to yoga for stress?”

I look at him blankly. “I do.”

He laughs, shaking his head, then taking a sip of his drink. “What about you? Do you cook?”

“I try,” I admit. “I like to bake. You know, with—”

“Butter, eggs, and gluten,” we say in unison before laughing.

Our voices meld together in the air between us. It’s a delicious feeling, warm and cozy and even better than I ever imagined it would be.

Pulling my legs up and under me, I watch him in the light of the fireplace.

“I bet your kitchen is a wreck,” he says. “I’ve seen your desk and there are no liquids. I can only imagine you in a kitchen.”

“Yeah, it gets a little wild. Want to cook with me sometime?”

“No. No, I do not. I would never survive that with how messy you are,” he jokes.

I’m staring. I know it. I know he knows it when he pulls his brows together and tosses me a questioning glance.

“I was just thinking I love looking at you like this.”

“In sleep pants?” he laughs. “Wow. I now officially have a complex about how I look in a suit.”

“You rock a suit like no one else,” I smile. “But this is so different. You look all cozy and casual. It shows that maybe there are more sides to you than the demanding CEO,” I wink.

He sits next to me, fresh from the shower we took together. Sinking into the leather, he lays one arm along the back of the sofa. “I think you know there is more to me than that.”

“I do. But I feel like you keep so much of yourself closed off and your nose to the grindstone. Why?”

His features wash in a look that tells me he was expecting this question or one similar. It also tells me two other things: he’s prepared to answer it but he doesn’t want to.

He doesn’t right away. Taking a sip from his tumbler, he watches me over the rim. I expect he’s giving me a chance to change the subject, to get antsy by the look in his eye, but I

don’t. It’s time. Things between us keep building, and I don’t know to what end.

“I don’t trust a lot of people,” he says finally. His tone is smooth, but I hear the grit behind it from the force he’s using to make himself talk about a subject he doesn’t want to broach. “It’s hard for me to really open up beyond my family.”

“But you have friends, right? And, you know, probably girlfriends sometimes.”