Page 60 of Trusting Mr. Sterling
Tessa looked at the dress she’d worn to his apartment, hanging on the closet door. At his T-shirt and shorts, folded in her bag, waiting to be washed and returned.
“Terrified. Happy. Confused.”
“Sounds about right.” A pause. “He’s different now, isn’t he?”
“Yes and no. More confident. But he still looks at me like...”
“Like what?”
“Like I matter.”
Lucy made a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “You’ve always mattered, idiot. He just needed time to figure out how to show it.”
“He’s sending a car at eight. We’re doing dinner again.”
“Then stop talking to me and go get ready. Wear something sexy. Text me tomorrow.”
“Bye.”
She hung up.
Her buzzer rang at eight.
She pressed the intercom. “Hello?”
“It’s me.”
She buzzed him up and smoothed her dress. A minute later, there was a knock. She opened the door to find Gabriel in a dark suit, holding roses.
“I thought you were sending a car.”
“I was. Then I decided I wanted to see your face when you opened the door.”
“You’re sweet.”
“Hi.” He looked her up and down, his gaze slow and unhurried. “You look incredible.”
“You brought flowers.”
He handed them to her. “Is that old-fashioned?”
“It’s perfect.” She stepped back to let him in while she searched for a vase. He was standing in her living room, looking at her cookbooks, and she felt more exposed than she had in his bed.
While she arranged the roses, he wandered to the kitchen counter where the battered cookbook sat open, propped to a page held together with rubber bands and sticky notes. He picked it up carefully.
“This is well-loved.”
“It was my grandmother’s.” She set the vase on the counter. “She taught me everything. My culinary career started with that book.”
He opened it carefully and studied the handwritten notes in the margins. “She annotated the recipes.”
“Every page.”
He laid the book back open on the counter and kissed her properly this time, slow and certain.
He tasted familiar. Solid.
“Ready?”
