When she handed him the tray, he realised that she’d brought him coffee and Eggs Benedict. It looked and smelled amazing.
‘Is that home-made Hollandaise sauce?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘If you ever get tired of working with numbers,’ he said, ‘I guarantee you’d have a fantastic career if you opened your own restaurant.’ He still didn’t get why she wasn’t using her talent. Why she was hiding behind numbers.
‘I like cooking for fun,’ she said. ‘Cooking as a business would be a totally different ballgame. And it’d be sad if something I really enjoy doing turned out to be something I felt I was forced to do. Not to mention the unsociable hours I’d need to work; I wouldn’t get to see enough of my parents and Bella.’
‘I guess,’ he said. And it was a logical explanation, one he couldn’t argue with.
‘It’s my turn to organise things today,’ she said. ‘That is, if you’d like to do something with me and you don’t have to work?’
Maybe he should grab this opportunity to put a little distance between them.
Except his mouth wasn’t working from the same script as his head and using his usual cast-iron excuse of working on some architectural design or other, because he found himself saying, ‘I’d like to do something with you.’
‘Great. Maybe we can be ready to leave in an hour?’ she suggested.
‘I can be ready before that. What are we doing?’
‘Something immensely nerdy, but I hope you’ll enjoy it,’ she said with a smile. ‘See you later.’
He watched her walk out of the room, noting the sway of her hips. He was definitely going to need a cold shower after breakfast. And it had been a while since he’d had such a graphic dream.
So did that mean that he was ready to start to move on?
With Grace?
But she’d only just come out of a long relationship where she hadn’t been happy. And although she’d said that she’d wanted to be swept off her feet, the Grace he was beginning to get to know liked structure and organisation. She was very far from being the sort to rush into things. He needed to be careful with her.
Which meant not giving in to the urge to sweep her off her feet, literally, and carrying her to his bed.
The cold shower was enough to restore some of his common sense. He shaved, got dressed, and found her in the kitchen doing a number puzzle in a magazine.
He smiled. ‘Would this be your Sunday morning guilty pleasure?’
‘Busted,’ she said ruefully.
He glanced over her shoulder at the page. ‘That doesn’t look like the kind of thing you see in the newspaper supplements.’
‘I suppose it’s for people who like, um, really nerdy puzzles. My parents buy me a subscription to this magazine every Christmas,’ she admitted.
‘Don’t hide your light under a bushel,’ he said. ‘Most people couldn’t do these sorts of puzzles. Be proud of yourself because you can.’ And why was she so diffident about her abilities? That was really bugging him. He’d actually met her family and liked them. They weren’t the sort who’d do someone down to boost their own ego. So who had made Grace feel bad about herself and hide who she was? ‘Would I be right in guessing that your ex didn’t like you doing them?’
‘No.’
But she looked away, and he guessed that yet again her ex’s disapproving mother had been the sticking point.
‘Not everyone likes puzzles,’ she said, still not meeting his eye.
‘Which doesn’t mean you should take away the fun from those who do.’ And it made him wonder why Grace’s ex had put up with the situation. If his own mother had been difficult with Lyn, he would’ve taken his mother to one side and gently explained that he’d made his life choice and he’d prefer her to respect that and treat his partner with a bit more courtesy—even if they couldn’t be close friends, they could still be civil to each other. Though Roland’s mother wasn’t the cold, judgemental type who placed importance upon appearances above all else, and he knew that his whole family would adore Grace. She would adore them, too.
Not that he intended to introduce them to each other. This was way, way too soon.
She closed her magazine. ‘I’ll just do the washing u—’ she began.
‘No,’ Roland said, and put everything from his tray in the dishwasher before she could argue. ‘Didn’t you say you wanted to leave soon?’