Page 48 of Never the Same

I continued cooking, praying she wouldn’t talk again or press me as to why I didn’t like carrying my father’s name as my own.

Once she had the table set, she surprised me by picking up my beer, taking a small sip like she was taste-testing it to see if it was her thing. I wasn’t sure if she should be drinking in her condition, but I wasn’t about to tell her what to do.

She winced and set it back down.

Doesn’t like beer. Check. At least not the cheap stuff.

While I drained the pasta and mixed it with the sauce simmering on the stove, she made herself at home in the living room open to my kitchen. She went straight for my bar cart, snagging the bottle of Pappy Van Winkle.

Muscle memory?

I did my best to ignore her as she returned to the kitchen in search of a glass, but it was impossible not to notice her. She pushed up on her toes to reach my highest cabinet where I kept my whiskey and wineglasses, and her shirt lifted higher, revealing the fact she didn’t have shorts on. I caught sight of the curve of her ass cheek and a hint of black satin—then forgot how to breathe again—before turning around to snatch my beer.

I lowered the lip of the bottle from my mouth just as Ranger shot me a funny look.

I’m only human. He didn’t need to be a mind reader to know I was struggling here; who could blame me with Hollis strutting around in my shirt?

I carried the pan over and dished out some pasta with the sauce into our bowls. “More to your liking?” I asked as she took her first sip.

“Much.” She sat opposite of where I set my bowl at the four-person table in front of the bay window, blinds closed.

“Makes sense, since it’s yours.” I grabbed my beer and joined her. “You brought it here last weekend. It was originally meant for Alex, but we wound up drinking it together instead. Right here at this table, in fact. You insisted I keep it here for the next time you break in and—”

“Break in?” she echoed.

“That’s your thing. You never ring the bell. You like to sneak in to—”

“Drive you crazy?”

I nodded, fighting a smile at the memory of the one time she’d broken in and found me in only a towel.

She eyed me over the rim of her glass as she sipped. “Well, I have excellent taste.” She traded her glass for a fork. After a few bites, she asked, “Where’d you learn to cook? For Americanized Italian, it’s still fantastic. Not that I remember what Italian Italian tastes like.” She licked some sauce from her lower lip.

“I had to learn to fend for myself as a kid or starve,” I admitted in a stone-cold voice, hating opening up, sitting there shocked that I’d done it again. “Went for option one.”

She studied me for a handful of seconds, then swept the pity under the rug as if understanding I’d hate that, too, and drank the bourbon and left well enough alone.

Thank you very much.

She even let us eat our meals in peace without another word, which I’d be eternally grateful for. She finished every last bite, seemingly satisfied with my food, which shouldn’t have made me so damn happy, but it did.

She leaned forward, grabbing the crossword book from the other side of the table. “Valiant.” She flicked the page with her finger. “The last one you didn’t fill in, that’s it.” She grunted a breath of frustration. “It drives me crazy I know that and not anything about myself.”

I honestly couldn’t begin to imagine what that was like.

She swapped the book for her bourbon. “You have a lot of country on your playlist,” she said as I left the table to pour plain pasta in Ranger’s bowl before beginning to clean up.

“I do.” Hopefully, she’d stop with the comments and questions and just let this night end as smoothly as possible.

But then she had to go and bend over to place our dishes in the bottom rack of the dishwasher.

I bit down on my back teeth and was a good boy and immediately looked away.

Ranger lifted his head from his bowl, and I swear, he was smiling. Loving every minute of my pain. “Payback, dude,” I mouthed. See if I give you any treats tonight.

“So, where’d you grow up?”

I turned around, hating how much I didn’t hate seeing her in only my shirt, standing there with a dish towel over her shoulder. Frustrated at myself, I went the asshole route in answering her. “You don’t need to know where I’m from.”