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“You promise?”
“I know that you’re only keeping me for the pancakes.”
She turned around in my embrace and smiled up at me insolently. “Oh, I’m keeping you for your otherattributesas well.”
Then, before I could devise an appropriate reply to her innuendo, she laughingly bounded out of my arms and out of my reach. Her green eyes were bright as her sunny smile.
“I will be waiting for you downstairs!”
I shook my head as I put on my boxers and my pants, hearing her sweet laughter trailing into the kitchen. Today, I was seeing a side of her that I never thought I would see again—sultry, carefree,happy.
It was almost like the time when we were teenagers and thought we had all the time in the world to be together.
“I don’t want to worry about tomorrow,” she had said.
That was perfectly good advice for today.
* * *
“Hey, Buddy!” she said cheerfully. “Oliver’s making breakfast today.”
I folded my arms across my chest and raised an eyebrow at her as I walked into the kitchen. “After that stunt you pulled earlier? I might require some groveling.”
The minx had the utter confidence to peek up at me from her fluttering lashes and said, “I still have a lot of pancake syrup in the kitchen.”
That, coupled with the seductive drop in her voice nearly made me want to throw her over my shoulder and give her a couple of reasons to embrace the benefits of intermittent fasting.
Buddy, though, seemed to be on board Amanda’s train as he barked joyfully at the prospect of swiping pancakes and probably some bacon to go along with it. He tugged at my boxers impatiently and Amanda laughed as I struggled to keep it on, following us both into the kitchen.
“You’re both very bossy, you know?”
She just laughed and got out a bowl and the ingredients for some pancakes. “I never figured out how you and Mrs. Compton always seemed to make the best pancakes in the whole wide world.”
“It’s a trade secret,” I told her as I kissed her neck.
“What would it take to make you give up all your secrets?” she asked, tilting her head to the side like a curious sparrow.
“Can’t. It has to stay within the family.”
Her eyes clouded for a moment. “Oh.”
She smiled and moved aside to give me space, hugging me from behind as I measured out the ingredients and mixed them into the bowl. I swiped her nose with my flour-covered finger and she wrinkled it like a little bunny, prompting me to laugh a little. Buddy joined in on the fun and we all ended up laughing the whole way.
“I never really learned how to flip pancakes,” she told me.
“Come here and I’ll show you,” I offered her. I gathered her into the circle of my arms and placed her hand on the handle, moving through the motions, throwing the pancake briefly into the air before catching it with the pan.
Standing here behind her, the scent of her hair, my hand over hers as we flipped the pancakes…
I honestly don’t know how life could get any better than this.
I had never felt such a connection with anyone else. It was like there was something else that tied me to Amanda, making it seem almost impossible to leave her.
But I had my work back in London and Amanda’s life was in Georgetown.
There was Grandma Margaret to worry about and a whole other slew of things.
She couldn’t just get up and decide to go across an ocean from me.
