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“It’s almost eight o’clock, sweetheart. When did you get here?”
“Not like you’d have any idea, seeing as you were gone before I got up this morning.” She shrugs and turns back to the chocolate torte in her hands, giving it a thin layer of icing. “Besides, this isn’t reallywork.”
“You’re baking. I beg to differ.”
She looks up again, a wave of laughter in those glassy green eyes. “I can bake forfunsome days, you know. And I had an idea.”
I join her, looking down at the torte. It’s not just the dark chocolate being smoothed over the top, there’s a splash of color.
A cardinal, I realize too late.
A bright-red cardinal with black eyes and an expression of pure mischief.
“For my mother?” I ask.
“Nope.” She looks up at me with the sweetest smile. “For you.”
I glare at the black cake. “Sweetheart, you know I don’t do—”
“I know. You want to shoot anything sweet into the sun, but hear me out.” She taps the dark base of the torte. “Dark chocolate and espresso. Just a pinch of sugar. I used the darkest cocoa we have. This baby isn’t my usual. So you’re going to shut your mouth and love it.”
“It looks… edible,” I growl, ignoring how the fact that she made me a damn cake makes my heart twist.
“Well, duh. I made it, didn’t I?” She throws me a look that cuts me in two. “So, why did you have to rush off so early? Work?”
“Yeah, always.” I drop a kiss on her temple and the tip of her nose. “Sorry if I woke you up.”
“No, you didn’t wake me. I slept in with Sarah opening and it was heaven.” She turns back to the torte and finishes the cardinal. “I was actually planning on getting this done as a surprise, but then you turned up.”
“Sorry. Do you want me to leave?”
“I never want you to leave,” she whispers, before stilling for a second. I freeze too, and we stay like that until she unwinds and lays her instruments of sugary torture down. “I’m calling it done. Just gotta box this pretty up and head home.”
Home.
My home, she means.
Fuck,ourhome.
It sounds so natural on her lips now I barely stop to question it.
There’s a new normal in my big, empty house.
A normal involving this sunny woman and a self-propelled furball on a mission to plaster his hair to everything. I’ll have to start giving my cleaners Catness hazard pay.
A normal where she’s there, considering my house home.
A normal that has me smiling every time I walk through the door, expecting to see her.
“Sure,” I say, leaning back and dragging my eyes away from that bastard cardinal that looks like it knows all my past sins—and the sins yet to come.
“And after dinner,” she continues, “we can share some of this. It should go well with coffee.”
“Okay, I’m sold.” I tense and step away.
“Also, we need to talk,” she whispers, glancing up at me and away. Hesitant. Unsure. Afraid. “I mean really talk, Dex, and not about the company.”
“Okay,” I say again, and she smiles, looking down at the torte with its cardinal, an icing symbol of the unholy hold she has on my heart.
