33
Gordon slowed as he reached his cottage.
Talia’s car was parked in the gravel drive.
For a moment, he only sat there with his hands on the steering wheel, staring at it.
Her car.
At his place.
Not because she had nowhere else to go. Not because she was waiting for an interview. Not because Luke or Edye had put her there.
She was here because she wanted to cook for him.
The thought hit him in a place he did not know how to protect.
He parked beside her car and shut off the engine. The evening air was warm, carrying the smell of dust, grass, and something rich drifting from inside the cottage. His stomach tightened before he even made it to the porch.
Food.
Real food.
Not leftovers.
Not something Elise had packed because she knew he would forget to eat.
Food someone had made for him because she wanted to.
Gordon climbed the steps and opened the door.
The smell hit him first.
Garlic. Butter. Roasted vegetables. Chicken. Herbs. Something creamy and savory enough to make his mouth water.
Then he saw Talia.
She stood at his stove in bare feet, one hip angled slightly as she stirred something in a pan. She wore soft pants and a fitted top, and the domestic ease of her in his kitchen stunned him so completely that he stood there with the door still open behind him.
Talia glanced over her shoulder.
“You’re letting flies in.”
He blinked.
Then he closed the door.
Her mouth curved as if she knew exactly how hard his brain had stopped working.
Gordon crossed the room to her without thinking. She turned just enough to face him, spoon still in her hand, and he wrapped one arm around her waist.
He kissed her.
Briefly.
Not because he wanted it to be brief, but because if he let it go on any longer, the food might burn and he might forget he was supposed to have a civilized dinner with her.
“The food smells delicious,” he said against her mouth.
Talia’s eyes warmed. “It’s almost ready.”
His gaze dropped to the pan, then to the counter where a box of supplies sat unpacked, a cutting board had been used, and a towel hung over the handle of the oven. She had turned his kitchen into something alive.
His kitchen.
His chest tightened.
“Do I have time to shower?” he asked.
She looked him over. “Why?”
“I spent the last hour doing sweat labor with Eli, and I feel icky.”
Talia’s lips twitched. “Icky?”
“Yes.”
She leaned closer and sniffed him.
Gordon held still.
Her brows lifted. “Go shower. I don’t want to confuse the smell of my food with your unique aroma.”
He laughed and kissed her again.
This one lasted a little longer.
Her hand came to his chest, and for a second he forgot about sweat, dinner, showers, and the whole civilized world.
Then she pushed lightly. “Go.”
He obeyed before he made a worse decision.
The shower was quick but thorough. Gordon scrubbed the dirt and sweat from his skin, washed his hair, and tried not to think too hard about the fact that Talia was in the next room making dinner in his cottage as if she belonged there.
That did not help.
Because he did think about it.
He had thought about very little else all afternoon.
He had tried to keep his excitement to a minimum. He had worked. He had lifted, hauled, repaired, tightened bolts, checked a hitch, and helped Eli move equipment that was heavier than it had any right to be. His body had done what it knew how to do.
His mind had stayed in the storage building.
Talia’s hands.
Talia’s mouth.
Talia whispering that she did not regret it.
The memory had him so wired that he felt like someone had run a high-voltage line through his bones. Every nerve seemed awake. Every breath carried her name somewhere inside it.
Eli had noticed.
Of course Eli had noticed.
Eli noticed too much for a man who pretended to mind his own business.
“You got ants in your boots?” Eli had asked while they lifted a metal frame into place near the barn.
“No.”
“You sure? You’re moving like a man who either won the lottery or got chased by bees.”
“I’m fine.”
“Fine is where truth goes to die.”
Gordon had tightened his grip on the frame. “Talia is cooking dinner for me.”
Eli’s brows had gone up.
Gordon wished he had said something else.
Anything else.
“At your cottage?”
“Yes.”
“Tonight?”
Gordon gave him a look. “No, Eli. In 2035. She likes to plan ahead.”
Eli laughed hard enough that Gordon had to tell him to keep lifting or drop his end.
“Well,” Eli said once they had the frame set down. “That explains the bees.”
“There are no bees.”
“There are definitely bees.”
Gordon had ignored him.
For almost two whole minutes.
Then Eli said, “First time Rose cooked for me, we didn’t eat until the next morning.”
Gordon had turned to look at him.
Eli was tightening a strap, face casual, voice easy.
“Food was ruined,” Eli continued. “Pan scorched. Biscuits could’ve been used as weapons. Rose still swears it was my fault.”
“Was it?”
“Absolutely.”
Gordon had not known what to say to that.
Eli glanced over at him with that half grin of his.
“A woman cooks for a man, it can mean a lot of things. Sometimes it means she’s hungry.
Sometimes it means she’s saying something she isn’t ready to say out loud.
Sometimes it means she’s testing whether you can sit at a table without grabbing at more than she offered. ”
Gordon’s jaw tightened. “I know how to behave.”
“I didn’t say you didn’t.”
“You implied it.”
“I implied you’re young, excited, and glowing like you swallowed a lightning bug.”
“I am not glowing.”
“You are practically visible from space.”
Gordon had looked away.
Eli’s voice softened then. “I’m not warning you off her.”
“No?”
“No. But women like Talia don’t scare easy and don’t trust easy. If she’s cooking for you, don’t treat it like it’s less intimate than what happened in the storage shed.”
Gordon had gone still.
Eli had not looked at him when he said it.
That was how Eli did things. He never came straight at a man the way Luke or Edye did. Luke would stand in front of you and tell you what truth you were avoiding. Edye would look through your face until your soul gave up and confessed. Eli gave you bits and let you come to your own conclusion.
He had known.
Maybe not the details. Gordon hoped to God not the details. But enough.
Enough to warn him.
Enough to say be careful without saying it.
Gordon had mumbled something and gone back to work.
But the words had stayed.
Don’t treat it like it’s less intimate than what happened before.
Now, standing under the shower with water running over his head, Gordon understood exactly what Eli meant.
Talia cooking in his kitchen was not small.
Maybe to some people, it would have been. Maybe for a woman with a full life, a busy kitchen, family meals, and people who expected her at holidays, cooking dinner for a man might not feel like much.
But Talia had already told him enough.
She did not often have people to cook for.
She did not often feel chosen.
Neither did he.
So this meal was not just food.
It was trust placed in a skillet.
Care stirred into a pan.
A question set carefully on his table.
Gordon turned off the water and stood for a moment in the quiet steam.
He did not want to scare her.
He did not want to rush her.
He did not want to give Luke, Edye, Elise, Earl, Eli, or anyone else reason to think he could not be trusted with her.
But what none of them seemed to understand was that Talia already belonged to him.
Not like property.
Not like something he could claim because he wanted it badly enough.
That was not what he meant, even inside his own head.
She belonged to him the way a sunrise belonged to the land that waited all night for it. The way a song belonged to the silence before it began. The way a man who had spent most of his life unwanted recognized the one person he would make room for, fight for, and wait for, however long it took.
She was his.
Even if she did not see it yet.
Even if she went back to Houston.
Even if she tried to pack him away in her notes and call him a chapter in a story she had already finished.
Gordon dried off, put on clean jeans and a T-shirt, and ran a towel over his damp hair. He looked at himself in the mirror.
Twenty-two.
Still too young in her eyes.
Still too marked by his past in too many others.
Still learning what kind of man he wanted to be when no one was pushing him into becoming the worst version of himself.
But he knew this much.
He would not chase Talia like a boy afraid of losing his favorite thing.
He would not corner her.
He would not make her regret choosing him, even for a moment.
He would be steady.
He would be honest.
And if she needed an anchor, he would become one strong enough to hold.
When he stepped out of the bathroom, the smell of dinner wrapped around him again.
Talia looked up from the stove.
Her eyes moved over him, taking in his damp hair, clean shirt, bare feet. Something warm flickered across her face before she looked back at the pan.
“You were fast,” she said.
“I was motivated.”
“I hope that motivation includes hunger.”
“It does.”
“Good, because I cooked like you plow fields for a living.”
“I don’t plow fields.”
“You know what I mean.”
He walked into the kitchen, careful not to get too close too quickly. “What can I do?”
She glanced at the counter. “You can set the table.”
His table.
Again, that strange feeling hit him.
He opened the cabinet Elise had stocked with plates, pulled out two, then grabbed silverware from the drawer. Talia watched him for a second, her expression soft and unreadable.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“That never means nothing.”
“It means I’m thinking.”
“About?”
She stirred the sauce, then turned the burner down. “About how different this place feels with food cooking in it.”
Gordon set the plates on the small table near the window. “Different good or different bad?”
“Good.” Her voice gentled. “It feels less like a place somebody furnished for you and more like yours.”
He looked around.
At the couch Edye had chosen. At the table Luke had said was sturdy enough to last. At the clean curtains, the empty second bedroom, the shelves with nothing on them yet. At Talia standing in his kitchen like she had carried warmth through the door with her.
“It does,” he said.
She smiled.
Then she lifted a spoon and held it out. “Taste.”
Gordon stepped closer.
He took the spoon from her hand, but she did not let go right away. Their fingers brushed. The moment stretched, small but charged.
Then she released it.
He tasted the sauce.
Creamy, rich, garlicky, warm with herbs and pepper.
His eyes closed before he could stop them.
When he opened them, Talia was watching him with nervous hope.
“Well?” she asked.
Gordon swallowed.
“It’s good.”
Her face fell slightly.
He realized too late that good was not enough.
“It’s very good,” he corrected. “Better than anything I’ve eaten in this cottage.”
“That bar is leftovers.”
“It’s better than a lot of things I’ve eaten anywhere.”
Her smile returned, but she tried to hide it by turning back to the stove. “That’s better.”
“I’m not good at fancy compliments.”
“You’re good at direct ones.”
“Then directly, I want to eat that until I can’t move.”
She laughed. “That is possibly the most sincere compliment I’ve ever received.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
The quiet after that felt warm.
Not empty.
Not dangerous.
Just warm.
Gordon finished setting the table while Talia moved around the kitchen, checking vegetables in the oven, stirring sauce, fluffing rice. She knew what she was doing. There was ease in her movements now, confidence where she had been uncertain in other parts of the day.
He liked seeing her like this.
Comfortable.
In charge.
Barefoot in his kitchen, feeding him because she wanted to.
The thought made his chest ache with a tenderness so large he had to look away.
She was his future.