Chapter Forty-Eight
Four days passed, and the Thanes still hadn’t come home.
Jane stayed in contact with Aunt Courtney, who extended her weekend getaway with Teddy into a weeklong visit to her second home in upstate New York.
All of this meant that Jane and Chance continued to play house in their parallel universe where responsibilities and jobs didn’t exist.
That meant a lot of time spent getting to know each other.
In bed. Out of bed. In the shower again.
They talked about everything and nothing.
She liked that the quiet times didn’t feel awkward.
She didn’t feel pressure to fill the day with witty banter or come-hither flirtations.
In truth, their time together felt real.
Except, it wasn’t. They were playing pretend. Any time his cell phone buzzed, her stomach dropped to the floor like a boulder thrown into a canyon, certain that Chance would be called to the other side of the planet.
But ignoring the ticking time bomb of real life, Jane could almost pretend that this make-believe fairytale would live on indefinitely.
A warm breeze rolled over the pool, sweeping flyaway strands into her face.
Jane set down her newest reread and pushed the hair away.
The large umbrella next to the pool had shielded her from the bright afternoon sunlight, but now the sky held an orange hue.
It was later than she realized, and she was feeling snackish.
Jane checked the time on her phone. Not quite dinner time.
Gigi had encouraged Jane to use a food delivery service while they were gone. Uber Eats and Postmates were part of her grand plan of evasion, as though gossip reporters would never question that she and Dax were home if they needed meals brought to their door.
Delivery was getting old after a few days in a row. Such a first-world problem, but be that as it may, Jane placed a bookmark in her paperback and went in search of her man.
She walked into the massive kitchen to find Chance standing in front of the fancy-pants double oven, a mitt on his hand and a dishtowel over his broad shoulder.
After days of delivery and no mention of cooking, the scene in front of her stopped Jane short. “Are you cooking?”
He winked. “One of my many talents.”
“Really?” She arched an eyebrow and sauntered to the set of super-complicated double ovens.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Word on the street was that using them was akin to programming the space shuttle.
Only those with culinary degrees or experience with mass spectrometers could get the thing to turn on—that never struck Jane as a benefit, but to each their own.
The thing likely cost more than the house she grew up in.
“It’s a roast. Not rocket science.” He flicked the hand towel against her shoulder as she peered inside.
“You’d be surprised.” She was astounded to see a very lovely-looking roast surrounded by root vegetables.
“I’m impressed,” she added, her mouth watering at the delicious aromas emanating from the oven.
Turning around, she noticed the kitchen island had been set for two.
How was Chance Evans a single man? He was too good to be true.
She slipped onto the stool and watched as he moved around the kitchen like a professional chef. He poured her a glass of wine, and she took it. “You think of everything, don’t you?”
He grinned, poured himself a glass, and raised it. “We’re only here for a short time. Let’s make it a good time.” He laughed. “I read that in a fortune cookie once.”
She grinned and sipped to hide her melancholy. He drank, seemingly oblivious to the depressing idea that their time together would end abruptly. The oven timer sounded, and he hopped back to his chef duties, pulling the roast out and working the kitchen like he’d lived in this house his whole life.
He sipped his wine. “How are you supposed to know if this stuff is any good?”
“Do you like it?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Guess so.”
“Then it’s good.” Her heart squeezed when he grinned. Amusing him might just be her superpower. There was no other reason a guy like Chance, the Midas-like man with the golden touch—and looks and whoa, those bedroom moves—liked her romantically.
With expert finesse, he moved the roast onto a cutting board.
“Did you ever work in a kitchen?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“You didn’t do time at some prestigious culinary academy?”
He snorted. “Not unless you count KP duty in the army.”
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Kitchen patrol,” he explained. “A lot of peeling potatoes and washing dishes.”
“Ohhh.” She wrinkled her nose. “Fun—but you have to tell me how this became one of your many talents.”
His lightheartedness sobered, and Chance concentrated on slicing and then plating the roast beef.
“When I was a kid, it was just my mom and me, and my mom was sick. She had issues with food.” He moved the plates from the prep area to the kitchen island.
“I got it in my head that if I made the right food, and she really liked it, she’d get better.
So, I was constantly in the kitchen, making all sorts of stuff from a pretty young age.
” Pain flickered in his eyes. “Turns out, you can’t show your love through cooking and fix someone’s struggles. ”
Jane pursed her lips together. “Chance… I’m so sorry.”
With a flat shit-happens grin, he tilted his head toward her and met her gaze.
That eye-locking connection turned a switch in her chest and maybe did something for him as well because he didn’t put up the false bravado to hide his pain.
“You’d think I’d hate cooking,” he added quietly.
“But I don’t. I think she knew, and damn did my mom love me.
” He glanced away for a long moment before he continued, “I cook for people I care about.”
A knot tied in her throat, and hell, she felt like one wrong word, and she’d cry.
Chance dropped a kiss onto the top of her head, pulled the hand towel from his shoulder, and tossed it onto the counter. He cleared his throat and settled onto the chair next to her. “Ready to eat?”
With a story like that and half a glass of wine polished off, she couldn’t do anything more than nod.
He placed the linen napkin on his lap and began eating, a clear signal that he was done with the emotional chitchat and waited for her to do the same.
The lights were low. The kitchen smelled buttery and delicious.
Despite being near tears, the surprisingly romantic ambiance of their dinner for two made her fall a little bit harder for him.
He speared a piece of roast beef. “Hope you like it.”
So tender she could cut the meat with a fork, Jane tasted it as he watched.
Her eyes sank shut. Rich and flavorful and homemade.
That made it even better than a Michelin-star chef-prepared meal.
“Oh, my god, Chance…” She savored that first bite like she had their first kiss.
For as much as she wanted both, she’d been unprepared for her intense response. “It just melts.”
He laughed modestly and took his own bite, then nodded his approval. “Not bad.”
“Ha,” she managed between mouthfuls.
The conversation lingered over their dinner and refills of wine. He told her a few KP stories that made her grateful to have always had a dishwasher, and more than a few Army stories that made her wonder how he was still alive.
As they finished their dinner and the last of the wine disappeared, Jane thanked him again for the delicious meal.
Again, he demurred. “This kitchen isn’t what I’m used to, but I made do with what I had.”
She laughed, and then added solemnly. “I understand. It must be hard to work with a brand-spanking new appliance.”
His eyes scanned the kitchen. “All new?”
“Oh. Yeah. The Thanes constantly remodel. New appliances right before our trip, and they’re redoing Teddy’s room for the hundredth time.”
“Why?”
She rolled her eyes. “I think it must be like clothes to them. Some people don’t like to be photographed in the same outfit over and over. They like to keep everything fresh for the public.”
Lines etched across his forehead. “They let people tour their house?”
“Oh, sorry. No.” She waved her hand in the general direction of the main sitting rooms where most of their interviews took place.
“Gigi is obsessed with the production of their new miniseries documentary—you must’ve heard about that one.
” How couldn’t he? Even if he didn’t follow pop culture closely, someone should’ve mentioned it to him to be aware of from a security point of view.
“There were a lot of media appearances listed in my intel package. Past, current, and future. I was more interested in which security threats were bogus hype and which ones were real.”
“Oh, you’re missing out on a lot of great stuff then,” Jane added with biting sarcasm. “How else will you know what shade of gray is the right shade of gray? Which five-figure double oven is best for roast beef?”
He groaned. “I don’t think I want to know any of that.” He slid from his chair, placed their plates in the sink, and took her hand.
Jane placed their napkins in the small laundry basket under the counter and put the silverware on top of the plates as Chance poured them more wine, handing hers back and slipping his arm around her shoulder.
A warm tingle rolled down her spine that couldn’t be blamed on the vino. He smelled sexy and delicious, a combination of his cooking and that familiar scent of red-blooded, hard-bodied man. Jane leaned into him and let Chance lead them from the kitchen into the main living room.
The ceiling reached high above, over two stories tall, and the central focal point of the well-designed room was a massive stone fireplace in the center.
“If I really lived here.” He faced them toward a wall, and with the lift of his glass, he pointed. “That’d have to go. I’d knock it down.” His wine glass gestured toward the hall that they’d just come from. “That one too. Maybe all the walls over here.”
“Why?”