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“It wasn’t a fire,” she insisted.
“There was smoke.”
“Yes, but it wasn’t on fire. It was just… smokey. I was perfectly safe, I assure you.”
He stared at her with hard eyes. She remembered those eyes. They were the same accusatory eyes from when he’d found her at her house when it was still smoking. Agatha brushed off that thought. When she’d met him, he’d been unwilling to listen to reason. He’d grown so much since then. He wasn’t going to revert to the person he once was.
“The eggs got burnt. That’s all. I’m fine, but the eggs are ruined—clearly—so I’m fixing us up some new ones.” She took the pan from him, her fingers grazing his. The spark from his touch was still very much alive, and her eyes jumped to meet his in that moment.
His blues smoldered like there was a fire that licked at him just beneath the surface. All at once she was able to forget the worries from the night before. Just being with Zeke like this—like they were something more, felt so right. She exhaled, and that was it.
Zeke placed his hands on her waist. She gasped, the pan clattering to the sink so she could get a good grip around his neck. “Why is it that I can’t stop thinking about you?” he said. “I can’t stop remembering the way you feel in my arms or worrying about you out here all alone.”
“I’m not alone,” she whispered. “You’re not far at all.”
His lips quirked upward. “You make a good point. One of these days, you’re going to get tired of that fact.”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
Zeke looked at her upturned face. “You better be right.” He dipped his face toward hers, capturing her lips in a firm, unyielding kiss. This one was different than all the others somehow. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something had changed. He was more brash, more demanding. It was like he’d finally realized that she was all in and he wanted to show her just how much she meant to him.
Her heart reacted to that thought as if it had caught fire, too. The room spun, hotter and hotter as she let herself give in to this man. Their kiss deepened, and the world itself disappeared. They might have completely lost themselves if it weren’t for an incessant buzzing.
At first, she tried to ignore it, and she might have been successful if Zeke hadn’t pulled away and looked for the source.
Agatha stumbled a step, and Zeke had to hold onto her upper arm to help steady her. When she got control of her bearings, she looked around the room and located her phone next to the stove. She gave him a playful smile and held up a finger. “Hold that thought.”
With quick and yet unsteady steps, she hurried toward her phone and picked it up. Thomas’s image populated the screen and reality crashed over her like a bucket of ice water, extinguishing all the fire that had just erupted around her.
She placed the phone to her ear. “Thomas? Is everything all right?” So many scenarios played in her head. He was hurt. He was stranded. Something terrible had happened and now he was locked up in county.
“I’m fine, Mom. But I need to talk to you about something.”
At some point, Zeke had found his way back to her and had wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her back against his chest. She sucked in sharply, stifling her urge to gasp or giggle. “What are you doing calling me so early? You never do that.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry about what? Calling me so early? Are you sure you’re okay?”
Zeke held her in his arms, and she squeezed her eyes shut as if that would be enough for her to focus on what her son was saying. She leaned in against Zeke but then thought better of it and pulled away, holding up that finger again and mouthing the word, “Thomas.”
He stopped, his expression sobering.
Guilt immediately accosted her. She was torn between her son and the man whose kisses she would willingly drown from. Agatha turned away from Zeke and bit down on her cheek hard enough to draw blood. Brief clarity filled her mind as she waited for an answer.
“I’m fine…” he repeated. “Are you sure you’re okay? You sound out of breath.”
She grimaced and then forced a laugh. “I’m just caught a little off guard. You said you wanted to tell me something?”
There was a small pause. It was long enough that she might have thought he hung up on her, except she could hear male voices in the background coming and going. Finally, he put her out of her misery and spoke up. “I wasn’t entirely honest with you last night. I wasn’t going on a work trip.”
Agatha was speechless for one of the first times in her life. This was unexpected. Thomas had lied to her face and come to confess all in under twenty-four hours. She didn’t dare ask him the truth; something told her that it would scare him off and start a fight. On top of that, she wasn’t sure they wouldn’t argue. She still felt betrayed by him.
“I know it wasn’t right. I shouldn’t have told you I was working.”
Was that it? Was he seriously going to tell her he’d lied and not tell her what he was actually doing? She burned with the need to know what was going on. What was so important to him that he felt he had to lie to her?
“I know you will probably want to know where I really was or why I wasn’t at home.”
