Chapter 13 #2
“Do you have enough ingredients to even be offering that?”
He turns his head. “No, but I’ll make it work if it means you’ll stay.”
“You’re being oddly persistent tonight.”
His eyes trail down my body, the slow perusal lining my skin with goosebumps. “I’m persistent every night. Forget the million and one texts I sent?”
I purse my lips to stop a smile from blooming. “Touché.”
Closing the cupboard, he holds out two types of pasta’s. “Gnocchi or fettucine?”
“Surprise me.”
His eyes narrow, contemplating. “I think you’re more of a fettucine girl.”
My eyes spark at that.
Kieran’s smirk grows as he puts the gnocchi away. “And looks like I hit the nail on the head.”
“You always do.”
He moves through the kitchen with such grace it has me pausing.
I’ve heard the stories of him and his cereal and how he steals food from Grayson and his other teammates.
Even Bella would call me complaining about how Grayson never gets first choice of his own food because Kieran beats him to it every time.
“You can cook,” I state, my voice conveying my shock.
Kieran snorts. “I don’t know if you can call boiling water and creating a sauce cooking.”
“No, no.” I shake my head. “Kieran, you can cook. Why the hell do you steal other people’s food?”
I expect him to be cheesy with his answer, flirtatious even, but instead his features grow somber.
“Growing up, I never had someone cook for me, not until I met Grayson and Allie made me dinners.” His voice grows so quiet I doubt he wanted me to hear him whisper, “It tastes different when they love you.”
The admission stuns me.
And once again, I want to cry for the little boy Kieran was, the one who desperately wanted and deserved to be loved.
“I had to learn early on how to take care of myself. At the foster home, once you were of ‘age,’” he says with air quotes, “we were expected to cook for ourselves.”
As he passes me in the kitchen, he checks me with his hip. “Come on, don’t lose that spark because of me.” He holds up some parsley with a wide grin. “I’m perfectly fine and healthy. See?”
“Just because you’re fine now doesn’t make what happened to you okay.”
He pauses, slowly lowering the parsley as he stares at me, Emmy’s Paw Patrol playing quietly in the background. “You could cook for me.”
“I’d love to, but I never learned how to cook.” I chew on my bottom lip, a little embarrassed. “I was always too sick to stand in a kitchen for hours and learn.” Even twenty minutes had my legs swelling and my head growing dizzy.
Kieran stuns me from my thoughts as he wraps an arm around my shoulders, his heat sending a tingle of energy down my spine. He pulls me toward the cooking area he’s set up on the bench. “You have me now, and I’m more than happy to share my secrets of the kitchen with you.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
I must pull a face because he chuckles, his warmth still making my head spin, and the dizziness for once is not due to lupus.
“Cooking isn’t scary, sunshine.”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
With my head tilted back to look up at him, he offers me such a warm and inviting smile, his eyes all but sparkling as his thick black lashes frame them and…I can’t stop my heart from melting just a little.
“Why do you want to teach me?”
“Because I’d do anything to spend more time with you.”
I suck in a sharp hiss of air. “Emmy’s in the house. You’re not allowed to flirt with me.”
“You told me no flirting. You never said anything about honesty.”
His gaze deepens before he seems to rip himself away from me. “Come on, sunshine, let me show you something I love.”
My eyes squeeze shut right as the pasta hits my cheek, slowly dipping down my skin. “Oh my god. Did you just—I can’t believe you just did that!”
Kieran bursts out laughing and when I finally manage to open my eyes around the tomatoes, I find him doubled over in laughter. “You dared me to do it!”
“I didn’t think you’d actually do it!”
“Never challenge an athlete. Did Bella not teach you anything? We’re cocky, competitive bastards.”
“Well, I didn’t need to be told about the cocky part.”
Kieran snags a dish towel and steps toward me, holding his hands up in surrender as I move to step back. “Let me help you. It’s…” He chuckles. “It seems I got you really good.”
Leaning back against the cabinets, I lift my chin, allowing him to move forward, but what I don’t expect is how close he gets.
Kieran doesn’t stop until our hips are aligned, his concentration solely on my face whereas my eyes wander to his arms, his biceps, the bulging veins as he ever so gently cleans my skin.
The softness of the movement steals my breath, and I suddenly can’t breathe, not when he’s this close to me.
Kieran falls silent as he stares, his heart shining in his eyes. The tension between us grows to such a feat it’s shocking that it isn’t a tangible thing I can clasp in my hand. “I adore your freckles,” he says softly, as if it’s a secret he’s been harboring.
“My freckles?”
He nods, his eyes roving my face. “There’s so many of them, and yet they make you who you are. I couldn’t imagine you without them.”
His lips part, his tongue darting out to lick them. Placing the hand towel down behind me, he lifts his hands and flips his hat backwards, allowing him to move forward ever so slowly. With an arm on either side of me, caging me in, he captures my undivided attention.
His lips are inches from mine—mere inches—and I have such a sudden urge to kiss him that I have to physically restrain myself from leaning forward.
His voice, a dark rumble of thunder, rolls through my body. “Tell me something that’s on your life list, sunshine.”
My eyes snap away from his lips. “I’ll share one if you finally tell me why you call me sunshine.”
He gives me a lopsided grin. “It’ll have to be a good one. No holding back on me this time.”
“When have I ever done such a thing?” I tease.
He leans forward a fraction, his chest brushing mine on every deep inhale I force myself to take.
“Tell me something that’s on your list,” he repeats.
I’m not sure why I say it.
Perhaps the gravel of his voice commanded me, the earnest way his eyes implored mine, or maybe it’s because the last time he asked me to share one in exchange for a secret he was so openly vulnerable with me that it felt wrong I shared such a miniscule item in return.
Or maybe it’s just because his cologne is so heady I feel like I’m floating, wholly wrapped up in the atmosphere that is Kieran Ashford. I’m spinning out of control and I never want to get off this Tilt-A-Whirl. I find myself blurting, “It’s a list of all the firsts I want.”
I lick my suddenly dry lips, noting how his eyes drop and stay there.
“What firsts are we talking about?” he drawls.
Sucking in a sharp breath, I push the boundaries of whatever is happening in this moment and lean forward, standing on my toes. Kieran meets me halfway, dropping his head to allow my lips to brush the shell of his ear. “I’ve never…been with anyone,” I confess.
Kieran stops breathing.
He pulls back ever so slowly, opening a fraction of space between us.
I expect to be bombarded with shyness, for that scorching blush to tickle my cheeks, to feel embarrassed that I’m twenty-five and have never been with anyone, but with Kieran’s eyes heating me like an inferno, I feel unequivocally free as those words part my lips.
“Never?” he asks, the timbre of his voice having dropped.
“Never,” I breathe.
Dropping from my tiptoes, I flatten my feet to get some much-needed space from the intensity of his gaze, but he just moves with me.
“And do you…want to?”
“Mm-hmm,” I murmur, nodding.
His swallow is audible. “Layla—”
Placing my hand on his chest, I cut off whatever he was about to say. “Tell me why you call me sunshine.”
His eyes flick back and forth, searching mine, before he grins. “I’ll do you one better.” Lowering his head, he mirrors my earlier movement and places his lips along the shell of my ear. It takes everything in me not to moan at the simple touch.
I get it, I think to myself. I get what all those girls were talking about on those blogs.
My hand is still on his chest, and I’m not sure why but I can’t pull it away, can’t force my hand to move from his warmth.
“My confession,” he all but purrs, “is that I haven’t been with anyone in nearly two years.”
That has me snapping out of it.
I push him with all my might, anger flaring in me, swift and fast. I’m not sure why but I feel oddly…betrayed?
“Don’t lie,” I spit. “After what I just told you? Don’t lie, Kieran.”
His eyes are wide and wild. “I’m not lying.”
“Bullshit.”
He moves back toward me, crowding my space. “Call bullshit all you want, Layla,” he says gutturally. “I don’t lie, especially not to you.”
Before I can stop myself, I blurt, “The puck bunny sites have endless—”
“Kept tabs on me while you were away, sunshine?”
“Of course I wasn’t. I was just…” My mind whirls for a reason why I was on those sites. I myself don’t even know why I checked them regularly. “Looking out for Bella.”
He barks out a laugh. “Now look who’s lying. Admit it, you were keeping tabs on me.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Absolutely not. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m sorry, love, but the only one being ridiculous is you.” He taps my nose with his finger before sauntering over to the stove to stir the sauce we neglected. “It’s ridiculous to believe the things people post on those sites.”
“But the girls—”
“Are liars.” He turns to face me. “You shouldn’t believe everything you see written in the press.”
My brows are so deeply furrowed that I feel like reaching up and smoothing them out with my fingers. “But the details they have…”
He shrugs. “I’m not saying I’m innocent. I have slept with women—”
“A lot,” I add for him.
He rolls his eyes. “Fine, yes, a lot. I have a colorful past but they use that and the details already online about me to conjure up new stories.”
Rearing back, I grimace. “Why would anyone do that?”
“Why would any of them post sordid personal details of our sex lives for a second of fame on a puck bunny site?” he deadpans.
“B-but you’re…” Swallowing, I choke out, “Over a year?”
“Don’t look so shocked.”
“Well, I mean you’re…you.”
“Thanks,” he says dryly, turning away from me.
Kicking off from where I was leaning, my body seeks his once I hear the hurt in his voice. “Kieran, I’m sorry, it’s just—”
“It’s fine,” he cuts me off, stirring the sauce.
Guilt is an ugly emotion, one that settles deep within my gut as his shoulders tense.
Moving behind him, I gently place my hand on his back and at first, he flinches, that single reaction making the guilt inside me grow to a mountainous height.
Yet as I keep my touch on him, he relaxes ever so slowly.
“I’m sorry,” I say, my words thick. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”
Kieran turns his head, his five o’clock stubble grazing his black T-shirt. “I’m not a liar. I’m many things, but I’m not a liar, Layla,” he whispers.
“I’m sorry, I let my shock get the best of me. Can you forgive me?”
He’s quiet for a moment, his eyes trailing down my body, taking in every inch as if he’s committing me asking for forgiveness to memory. He places the wooden spoon down and turns. “Care to make it up to me?” he finally asks.
My lips twitch at that. “What do you have in mind, Ashford?”
“A date.”
My eyes bulge and before I can protest, he lifts his hand up to silence me.
“You called me a liar. I think I deserve a date.”
I scoff. Kieran doesn’t date…never has and never will. Whatever made him do this streak of celibacy doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t spend more than one night with a woman.
“I’m your nanny,” I say as an answer.
All he does is shrug. “So? Be my nanny and go on a date with me.”
Rolling my eyes, I move past him to grab bowls for the pasta. “Taking your flirting game a little too far this time, don’t we think?”
He steps behind me. “Who said it was ever a game?”
“Everything to you is a game,” I whisper.
Maybe I’m trying to protect my heart, maybe the look in his gaze scared the hell out of me, but the second I say it I regret it immediately, especially as something in his eyes shutters and he steps away.
Now I’ve well and truly put my foot in my mouth.
Kieran recovers quickly, pretending nothing is wrong but for the rest of the night he doesn’t flirt with me and I have to keep telling myself it’s because Emmy is with us.
But I can’t get his look of pain out of my mind.
Self-protection comes in many forms and mine just so happened to hurt him in a way I wish I could rewind time and take those words back.