“Food can be fun, Mara.”
“Not this food,” she grumbled and slammed the door behind me, skirting around me as she motioned for me to follow her into the kitchen. “It’s nothing fancy, just pizza. Deep dish pizza, which I made. To go with the cookies.”
She didn’t believe that, and neither did I, but I gave her a break because she was nervous too. “I love pizza. Can’t say I’ve eaten much deep dish, though.”
“It’s my favorite. Homemade sausage, mozzarella, mushrooms, onions and bell peppers. Oh and garlic. Lots and lots of garlic.”
“That’s cute,” I told her with a smirk. “Your determination to avoid the temptation of kissing me again.”
Mara sucked in a breath. “I didn’t kiss you. You kissed me.”
“I did, and it was hot as hell,” I assured her and took a few steps forward to bridge the gap between us. “But I have to point out, Mara, that you did kiss me back. And more.”
She shrugged and took a step towards her, which left her no where to escape as I took another step forward. “You’re a good kisser and I lost myself for a second. It won’t happen again.”
“Then it won’t matter where I put my hands. Or my mouth.” I stepped in just close enough that we were almost touching, but not quite. Her eyes darkened and her breath hitched. “Will it?”
“No,” she practically moaned and then cleared her throat. “No, it won’t,” she said with more certainty this time. “Not even a little bit.”
“Good to know,” I told her and took a step back, enjoying the challenge she presented.
“Drink?” Before I answered, Mara had pulled two bottles of amber lager from the fridge and set them beside a bottle opener, motioning for me to open them up. “Thanks for the cookies. Homemade was a nice touch.”
My chest swelled at the compliment, because the Mara I remembered was good at gratitude but terrible at compliments, giving and receiving them. “You’re welcome. I figured you might be sick of baking since you do it all day, and I thought it might be nice if someone baked you something for a change.”
She laughed and shook her head. “It was very thoughtful, Xander. Even if they are hideous.”
They were. “The stupid cookie cutter kept sticking.”
When she threw her head back and laughed, it took my breath away. In that moment Mara was so free and so damn happy, it was almost as if the years had melted away. That the thing that had divided us had never happened, and this was our life. Our real life.
“You need to oil the edges and make sure the dough is cold. Very cold.” She turned with a softness I hadn’t seen from her since high school. “They taste good, so who cares what they look like.”
“Your cookies always look perfect.”
She shrugged off the compliment. “You can’t ask people to buy ugly pastries, it’s not good business. I get to eat the ugly ones, which is why I try to go running twice a week.”
I took in her appearance again. “I don’t know Mara, I really like the way you wear cookies. A lot.”
She pointed at me, fighting a smile around the edges of her lush mouth. “None of that.”
I held up my hands defensively, not dropping them until she turned her attention back to the pizza she assembled with her back to me, which I didn’t mind because it gave me the perfect view of her backside. She had a few more curves than she did back when we were in high school, but as I told her, she wore them well.
“So, I, uh, looked into your friend Lonnie. I think she and Kyle are together.”
She froze for a second, and I wondered if I said something wrong, but her shoulders slowly relaxed and then she spoke. “I was thinking the same thing. It’s too much of a coincidence that they both disappeared together.”
“Don’t say disappeared.” I was still hoping they were just runaways, because that left hope. For everyone.
“Do you think they’re still in Pilgrim?”
I nodded when she spared me a glance over her shoulder. “Kyle didn’t take his car, so I have to think they are, but with all the abandoned farms and smaller structures on those properties, it will take some time to find them. Do you know who they hang with?”
“No. Lonnie helped out for a few weeks in the bakery, that’s how I met her. When she stopped, she would come by for leftover pastries when she was hungry.”
I frowned. “Hungry? Her foster family-,”
Mara cut me off. “Not everyone who signs up to become a foster parent does it because they love kids, Xander. There’s a lot of money to be made if you don’t spend it all on the children.”
Shit. She spoke about it with such certainty, such knowledge that I hated to think of a young Mara going hungry. “Did you stay with a family like that?”