Page 14 of A Shot at Love
At that moment her stomach rumbled loudly. When she laughed and placed her hand, open palmed, across it, Ky didn’t know which was stronger: the jolt that leaped around his heart at the sound of her laughter—low, but so seductive—or the heat that palpated through his lower region as he watched her hand flex and contract against her abdomen. Even though she was fully clothed Ky knew the skin under the material would be soft, tight, and hot.
“Obviously, you’re hungry,” he said.
“Obviously. When all hell broke loose this afternoon at my apartment I was in the process of making something to eat. I’d been working since early this morning and when I got home after being at your offices for over three hours, I realized just how hungry I was.”
Ky didn’t miss the irritation in her words. “We keep this house filled. There’s plenty to eat. What can I make you?”
Her eyes widened with surprise. Ky wasn’t in the habit of cooking for people other than his family or friends. Not that he wouldn’t. The women in his family had seen to his culinary education while he was growing up. Standing in the safe-house kitchen with this incredibly desirable woman, Ky realized he not only wanted to cook for her but he wanted to make something that would be satisfying both nutritionally and emotionally.
“You don’t have to cook for me,” Gemma said. “I’m a big girl. I’m used to fending for myself.” Her lips lifted in one of those smiles Ky was starting to want to see on her face all the time. “I couldn’t be Kandy Laine’s sister and not know how to cook, even a little.”
“I just thought, with your knee and all, you wouldn’t want to be hopping around the kitchen. I’m more than willing to whip us up something quick.”
He couldn’t read the look she tossed him.
“If Ky is offering to make dinner, let him,” Jon said as he came into the kitchen. “At least we’ll get something edible.”
With a shrug, she said, “Okay. Mind if I sit here and upload these to my laptop so I can work on them?” She held up the flash drive. “The lighting is better in here than in my room.”
“Not at all.”
“I’ll get your laptop,” Jon said. “You rest that knee.”
When Gemma smiled her thanks, Ky swore the feeling dropping in him wasn’t jealousy. He wanted her to smile at him like that: naturally, and with warmth. So far, she’d scowled at him more than anything else, and although it was tantalizing to see the passion in her anger, he realized he’d like nothing more than to see that emotion revealed in a much more enjoyable way.
“Do you have any food restrictions?” he asked as she sat at the breakfast bar, her injured leg propped up on the stool next to her.
“None.”
With a nod, he set about making a simple dinner for the three of them.
But he never forgot she was in the room.
With a dishtowel tucked into the front of his trousers as a makeshift apron, he got to work. While the chicken breasts browned in olive oil in the pan, she typed away, every now and then exclaiming, or drawing in a breath while she fiddled on her laptop. As the orzo softened, he glanced over his shoulder and saw her unlined brows meeting in the center, those gorgeous blue eyes zeroed in on the screen. Whatever she was looking at had her total and complete concentration as her fingers flew across the keyboard.
“It smells great in here,” Jon said at one point when he came back into the kitchen.
Gemma’s head shot up, a look of puzzlement on her face. “Oh, my God, it does,” she said. “I didn’t even notice.”
“You’ve been pretty engrossed in your work,” Ky said while he dropped a handful of parsley and some lemon wedges into the pan.
“You making YiaYia’s lemon chicken?” Jon asked, settling onto a bar stool next to Gemma.
“YiaYia?” she asked, her gaze ping-ponging between her two protectors.
“My grandmother,” Ky explained.
“She can make shoe leather taste good,” Jon said with a laugh.
Ky filled their plates. “Jon, get drinks.”
“Water okay for you, Miss Laine?”
“Water’s fine, and it’s Gemma.”
