Page 66 of Rising Heat
I blink.
“There’s dessert?”
He looks over his shoulder and flashes me that warm smile.
“I made tiramisu.”
“Who are you?”
His laugh fills the room as he heads for the kitchen.
“Careful. You’re starting to sound impressed.”
I follow him in my socks, shaking my head.
“I’m not impressed.”
Tyler turns at the sink, one brow arching.
“Not even a little?”
“Maybe. Slightly.” I lean against the counter, folding my arms. “But I’m willing to admit your pasta may have temporarily compromised my judgment.”
“You’re trouble, you know that?”
The smile he gives me says otherwise.
I laugh it off, and for a moment it hits me how comfortable this feels—standing in my kitchen, warm from wine and candlelight and the low-grade danger of Tyler being all too easy to be around while he rinses dishes like he’s done this a hundred times before.
The kind of easy that has nothing to do with charm and everything to do with trust sneaking up on you while you’re busy paying attention to something else.
It’s ridiculous considering we’ve only known each other for barely a month. And yet somewhere between the pasta, the conversation, and the way he always seems to know exactly when to push and when to simply listen, my guard appears to have wandered off without consulting me.
Tyler holds out a spoon.
“Tiramisu?”
Our fingers brush as I take it from him.
“Careful,” he says, his voice dropping just enough to send a ripple through me. “This part’s addictive.”
I look up at him then—at the warmth in his eyes, the confidence underneath all the teasing, the way he never seems to ask me to be anything other than exactly who I am.
Then, involuntarily, I think about the floor beneath us and the other man downstairs. About how neither of those thoughts seems willing to leave me alone.
I take the spoon anyway.
And know, with sudden and complete clarity, that I’m gloriously, totally fucked.
CHAPTER TEN
darcy
I wake to the type of silence that only comes with storms.
No traffic. No sirens. No bass from some asshole’s car at the corner light. Just a dense, pressing stillness, and when I open my eyes the bedroom window is completely white— thick curtains of snow drifting past in soft sheets, quieting the street below until the South End looks less like a neighborhood and more like a snow globe someone forgot to shake.
I stay where I am for a moment, listening. The old building settles around me. The feathery comforter I always kick off at two a.m. is tangled at my feet. My sketchbook is open on the nightstand, face down, where I abandoned it last night, because apparently the boundary between me and unfinished work does not exist.
