“Ben is my dad. And no offense taken.”
“What does your story mean?”
“That this is real.” I tilted her head with my fingers, so my lips could reach hers and kissed her. Relief spread throughout my body when she wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me back. “You know, kissing you reminds me of the dinner we started the other night and never finished, which also reminds me that I’m starving.”
“I’m hungry too.”
I almost asked if it was for food, but there was more Tara and I had to talk about before I started dropping sexual innuendos.
Being in the kitchen with her, preparing much the same food as I’d started the last time, proved to be an exercise in restraint I was certain I’d fail. Noticing the flush on her cheeks, I could guess Tara was remembering the same things I was.
“Excuse me,” she murmured and left the kitchen. I could hear her footfalls first on the stairs and then in the bedroom above where I stood, the same one she’d slept in before, and where I’d put her belongings.
A few minutes later, she was back, sketchbook in hand. I looked out the windows at the night sky, wondering what she planned to draw. A few seconds later, she plopped down in a chair, facing me.
“Please tell me you’re sketching the refrigerator.”
She laughed but didn’t put down her pencil.
I tried to catch a peek every so often while I cooked, but her arm was in the way. “Are you going to show me?”
“Maybe.”
By the time I finished preparing our dinner, Tara had filled several pages with sketches. I walked over to the table and held the plates while she put the book away.
“Wait,” I said, setting my dinner down. “Show me what you drew tonight.”
She looked up at me and raised a brow. “Are you seriously going to hold my food hostage until I show you?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll warn you that I’m going to go back and add horns to every sketch of you.”
I shrugged. “Let me see.”
“If that didn’t smell so good and I wasn’t starving, you’d never get away with this.”
When Tara opened the book and showed me a couple of the pages, I was stunned, particularly since I’d watched how quickly she drew each image. I set her plate in front of her. “You can have my dinner too. That’s how good those are.”
“You’re just saying that because I made you look so handsome.”
I studied the image and looked up at her. “Nah, I am that handsome. Look how much more attractive you made the refrigerator look, though.”
She smiled, something I wouldn’t have predicted she’d do earlier. I couldn’t stop myself. I stood from the seat I’d just taken, and kissed her. I wanted her, every bit of her, but I couldn’t have her. Not yet. Not until we talked about the guy I’d seen in the casina.
“What?” she asked when I sat back down.
“What, what?”
“You were joking around, and now you’re…it’s like you’re angry.”
“I’m not angry.”
She set her fork down and folded her arms.
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“The thing you’re not angry about?”