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“We saw some bunnies,” Jayce said, his eyes wide with excitement.
Walking into the kitchen, Liv dropped her jacket onto the back of a chair. “There was a family of rabbits in the field. Must have been the Easter bunny.”
“Is the Easter bunny going to bring me some chocolate eggs?” Jayce asked.
“That’s right, buddy,” Liv replied, stopping to take an exaggerated sniff of the air. “Oh my God, that smellsheavenly.”
“Yep,” Arran said, shifting away from the pan so that Liv could have a nosy at it. “I’m making us some jollof rice and grilled chicken.”
Stirring the pan and appearing as if she wanted to dive into the fragrant contents, she was more appealing than ever.
“It’s my grandmother’s recipe,” he added. “Mum learned to make it when she married Dad because he’s so utterly crap in the kitchen.”
Liv laughed, reaching into the cupboard to get out some plates.“Andyoualways profess to be crap in the kitchen too. So how come you’ve got this recipe up your sleeve?”
Grinning, he set Jayce down because the kid was wriggling like a grass snake jacked up on energy drinks. “Part of my cover. If I pretend to be crap at cooking, then other people tend to do it for me.” Jayce went off toward the living room, no doubt to play in the fort, which was now a permanent feature.
She raised her eyebrow at him, and it did nothing to aid his efforts to cool his libido. “You sneaky little git.”
Laughing, he dug out some cutlery to set the table. “It works with other stuff too.”
“Mm-hmm,” she replied, getting out some glasses and filling them with water. “Like what? Teach me your underhanded ways.”
There are plenty of things I want to teach you.“If you load the dishwasher wrongly, then someone else comes along to put it right. Then they elect to do it every time because they’ve deemed you incompetent.”
Shaking her head, she shot him a withering look. But even that was sexy on her.
They plated up the food, and Arran organized a small portion for Jayce, which he’d made in a separate pan with less salt and seasoning. He went through to the living room to fetch a reluctant Jayce out of the fort and bring him to the table.
Liv took a bite of her food and groaned with pleasure. “This tastes amazing.” Shooting him a frown, she gestured at him with her fork. “I can’t believe you’ve never made this for me before. A year of friendship and not so much as a cup of soup.”
He tried to ignore how the sound of her groaning made him feel. And the dirty scenarios it created in his mind’s eye. He gave her his best pout, complete with puppy-dog eyes. “I was saving it for you. Because now you’re mybestfriend.” He squashed thethought that it was actually because, deep down, he wanted to impress her.
Raising her eyebrows, Liv munched another mouthful. “Don’t let my brother hear you say that. He’s got dibs on being your best mate.”
He shrugged. “Maya’s his best friend now, and that’s all good with me. Anyway, I’ve known you as long as I’ve known him. We just didn’t get close until…” He tailed off. They’d gotten close after Liv had been one of the people, along with Sam and Nico, who had come through for him when Jess called the wedding off. He’d known that Sam and Nico would; they were his rocks. But he and Liv hadn’t been close before that. Yet now he couldn’t imagine a time when they hadn’t been. Plus, he didn’t want to. The idea of Liv’s friendship not being a big part of his world was unbearable.
She was giving him a soft look, clearly knowing where his tailed-off sentence had been going.
Just then Jayce cut through the silence with an excellent rendition of “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” distracting them both from the shared moment. They joined in with him as they ate their dinner, performing the actions with cutlery in hand.
Once they finished their food, he watched her as they cleared the plates together, acutely aware that although she had been one of his rocks over the past year, she had never leaned on him in return.
At first, he’d been convinced that was because Liv was the only one without relationship baggage, whether it be manipulative exes, rejection issues, dead husbands, or—in Nico’s case—terminal commitment-phobia. But the more he got to know her, the more of a conundrum she became. Did she really have it all together? Or was she so determined to be there for everyone else that she kept her own issues to herself? There had been more than one occasion when she would say something mysterious, like that whole soul-mates-dying-in-unison thing. Or she’d retreat into her own thoughts the way she had when she’d been studying his latest portrait.
Arran eyed her as they loaded the dishwasher. The dark waves of her hair were partially obscuring her face. She was like an open and a closed book all at once.
A thought slid into the back of his mind. Liv spoke easily of Sam’s rejection issues after their dad had abandoned the twins and their mum. And yet she never mentioned how it had affected her. It dawned on him that, more than anything,hewanted to be the one she confided in. The one she chose to lean on.
—
After they’d gotten Jayce bathedand to bed, with Arran making doubly sure that not a drop of water got splashed onto Liv’s clothing during the bathing session, they settled into the fort in the living room. He was aware that he shouldn’t utter the sentence on the tip of his tongue, but he was going to say it anyway. “Are you sure you don’t want a beer? You can stay over and drive home in the morning. I can sleep on the couch.”
“No, thanks,” she said quickly. “I’d better head home.”
He nodded, hiding his disappointment. “No worries.” His phone started to ring so he pulled it from his pocket, frowning as he clocked Jess’s name on the screen. He answered it. “Hey, Jess.”
Her words were a little slurred. “How’s Jayce?”
