0373659504 (R) by Brenda Harlen Read Free Book Online

“Why don’t you come back in half an hour?” she suggested. “By that time, I should have everything well under way for dinner.”
    “Because I’m here now and I can help,” he told her.
    “I invited you to eat dinner not make dinner,” she pointed out, clearly unhappy that he wasn’t going away and letting her control the timetable.
    “I don’t mind.” He followed her into the elevator, where she stabbed a finger at the button for the fifth floor.
    It was a corner unit of the U-shaped building, with a view of the tennis courts and pool. The interior was exquisitely—and he suspected professionally—decorated, with comfortable furniture in neutral colors, framed generic prints on the walls and a bookcase filled with medical texts. They were no personal touches in the room. No magazines or candles or decorative vases or bowls.
    She went directly into the kitchen and, when he followed, he saw that the galley-style cooking area was equally pristine—the cupboards were white with simple steel handles. The white quartz countertops were bare of clutter except for a single-serve coffeemaker. The deep stainless steel sink was literally spotless, without even a spoon or a cloth in sight.
    “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked.
    “What are you having?”
    “Water.” She opened a cupboard to take out a glass and filled it with ice then water from the dispenser in the door of the refrigerator.
    “That works for me,” he said.
    She turned to hand him the first glass—and nearly dumped the contents all over him when she discovered that he was directly behind her.
    Thankfully, he caught it before it tipped too far. “Relax, Avery.”
    She managed a strangled laugh as she filled a second for herself, drinking down half of it before setting it aside.
    “We can go out if you’re not comfortable with me being here.”
    “It’s not you—or not specifically you,” she amended. “It’s just that I’m not used to other people being in my space.”
    “Apparently,” he noted, offering her the bouquet.
    “Oh.” She looked at the bright blooms as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them.
    “They probably want some water, too,” he told her.
    “Of course,” she agreed, moving to the cupboard above the fridge to pull down a clear glass vase.
    She seemed more comfortable when she was doing something, and she kept her attention focused resolutely on the task while she filled the container with water, trimmed the stems of the flowers, then arranged them in the vase.
    “These are really beautiful,” she said. “Thank you.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    She carried the vase to the dining room and set it in the middle of the table. When she returned to the kitchen, she pulled a plastic container—neatly labeled and dated—out of the fridge, then dumped the contents into a glass bowl. He glanced over her shoulder at the thick red sauce with chunks of sausage and peppers, onions, mushrooms and tomatoes.
    “That looks really good,” he said.
    “I don’t always feel like cooking when I get home from work, so a couple of times a month I go on a cooking binge where I make all kinds of things that I can throw into containers in the freezer for quick meals later on.”
    “What do you make besides pasta sauce?” he asked.
    She bent to retrieve a large pot from the cupboard beside the stove, then filled it from the tap and set it on the back burner. “Enchiladas, jambalaya, chicken and broccoli—”
    He must have instinctively cringed at that, because she laughed, the unexpected outburst of humor surprising both of them and easing some of the tension.
    “You don’t like broccoli?” she guessed.
    “Much to my mother’s everlasting chagrin,” he admitted.
    “That’s too bad, because my chicken and broccoli casserole is delicious.”
    “Well, it’s been my experience that the right company makes any meal taste better, so it’s possible I could change my mind if you wanted to make it for me