11. ELLY
11
ELLY
T he whole time I’m up in my room, I’m listening for noise downstairs. Is he going to fuck her? Are they going to keep me up all night? Lydia looks like a screamer. A grab-the-headboard-and-yell-the-house-down kind of screamer. My stomach churns at the mere idea, and it occurs to me that I hadn’t thought this whole housemate thing through. Jack’s going to be bringing woman after woman home, and I’ll be sitting here alone, listening to the noise.
What a thought. I’m not sure I can eat at all now, and the plate of food is stinking out my room. I open the window, but it doesn’t help.
I creak open my door. Downstairs, heels clack out into the hall, and the front door opens and closes. Has Lydia gone? Has Jack Lansen, the ultimate womanizer, sent her away? Surely they can’t have eaten all that sushi already?
Now I’m curious, and dammit , I don’t want to sleep in here with a full plate of food.
Taking my plate, I creep downstairs, barely breathing in case Lydia is still here. If she is, she’s probably laid out naked on the island with sushi all over her.
The kitchen door is ajar, so I reason that she probably isn’t in there. But then again, she and Jack together are probably a pair of exhibitionists. Just in case, I close my eyes as I knock.
“Yeah?” Jack replies.
Keeping my eyes closed, I push the door open and tiptoe into the room, my free hand extended before me. “Is it safe? Are you naked?”
Jack chuckles, and the deep rumble of it makes my previously churning stomach flutter. “No.”
I pop my eyes open, only to be greeted by Jack’s gorgeous smile, and I can’t help but grin back at him as an unreasonable wave of giddiness surges over me. He’s sitting at the island, digging into a huge bowl of my stew, with a side of cumin potatoes and tabbouleh.
“Sushi didn’t do it for you, then?” I ask.
“I had a more appealing option. Something more to my taste.” His tone is so suggestive that a blast of heat sizzles through me.
I arch a brow, keeping my voice casual. “We still talking about food?”
“Were we ever?”
I can't keep the smile off my face as I say, “You’re a bad man, Jack Lansen."
“What?” he asks with false innocence. “I’m beginning to wonder if you have a one-track mind.”
“Me? If I do, it’s because you—”
His eyebrow creeps up again, cutting me off. “I what?”
I don’t dignify the question with a response. “She’s gone, right?” I ask after a moment. “She’s not in the bathroom or something?”
Jack laughs. “She’s gone.” Then his face turns serious, and he glances at my full plate. “You didn’t eat either?”
“Didn’t feel like it.” He lets that one settle for a moment, the slight frown on his face his only response. “Can I join you?”
He pats the stool next to him, and I drop onto it, and that giddy, happy feeling at being next to Jack washes over me again like it never left. I put my bowl next to his and we eat side by side.
“I can’t believe she showed up like that,” I say, after swallowing a few mouthfuls.
One edge of Jack’s lips tilts up. “Just a regular Friday night for me. Normally, there’s a queue all the way down the street.”
“Bullshit,” I exclaim, and his smile expands. “It’s five degrees out there. She must have been freezing.”
“Says you in your tiny skirts.” He nods at my bare thighs. I press them together, trying to ignore the stirring of heat between them that answers his glance.
“Eyes up, Lansen.” The reprimand elicits a short rumble of laughter from him, which delights me. “I’m wearing my skirts for me, not you.” We eat together quietly for a few moments. “I thought you weren’t interested in Lydia.”
Jack side-eyes me. “I’m not. I told her as much at the racetrack, but she evidently chose not to hear me.”
I muse over this for a moment. “Definite red flag, right there.”
“You got a thing about red flags?” His eyes narrow, but there’s a teasing light behind them, which makes my stomach flip. “You’re not worried about me, are you?”
“No.” The heat of a blush spreads over my cheeks. “But you need to be able to spot the red flags if you have to work your way through all these…” I push the fruit bowl aside, revealing the pile of photos, which are still lying on the island.
Jack’s open expression shutters as he reaches out with his free hand and grabs the pile, dragging it closer. “You weren’t supposed to nose around.” His voice is serious for the first time this evening, and I feel a stab of regret at having caused it.
“You left them out. It’s hardly nosing if they’re right there in the middle of the island. Lydia’s picture is in there, so I assumed you were working your way through them.”
He grips his fork a little tighter, and his other hand presses down harder on the photos, as though he wants to make them disappear.
“You gonna pick another one?” I ask.
He holds my gaze, making an uncomfortable heat flare in my chest. “No.”
“But she wants you to,” I probe. “Your mother.”
He gets up, pulls open the cupboard which conceals the bin, and drops the whole pile of pictures in there. He slams the cupboard shut and takes his seat next to me again, rolling his eyes to the ceiling with an audible exhale, as though he’s sending a prayer up to heaven. “What my mother wants is irrelevant. I make my own choices.”
Heat is still rolling through me, and Jack throwing the pictures away only fanned the flames. My picture is definitely not in that pile his mother chose, which means he could still choose me. But Jack says nothing to indicate that’s what he means, and I wish the thought hadn’t occurred to me at all.
We sit in silence, but now I feel awkward. I’ve completely ruined the rapport we had going on. Nice one, Elly . I shouldn’t have asked him about the pictures. I finish off the last few bites of my food and stand to clear my plate, trying to ignore the fact that Jack’s usually cheerful face is fixed into a disgruntled frown. I drop my plate and cutlery on the side of the sink, because the sink itself is full of all the dirty utensils and pans I used earlier.
“Woah, hold up,” he says when I reach the door, and his tone is so commanding that I stop.
“What?”
“You can’t leave this mess. Look at the place. It’s like an Elly-bomb went off in here.” He points around the room with his fork. “This is chaos. You gotta tidy this up.”
I stare at him, trying to work out if he means it. In the flat, I always left my dirty dishes in the sink. Our kitchen was a tip, until one of us caved and sorted it out. As Jack stares at me, I reflect on how pristine his kitchen looked before I started cooking and then I take in the scene before me.
Shit . I’m a slob, and Jack is… Jack . Neat. Tidy. Clean and smart and professional.
I wince in embarrassment, and I have to force myself to raise my eyes from the mess to meet his expectant gaze. “Oh.”
“Yes,” he says, nodding. “Oh.”
The way he’s looking at me is scrambling my brain. He’s not even coming onto me or leering at me this time. He’s just watching me, waiting for me to start cleaning his kitchen.
I’m conflicted. Part of me is so embarrassed that I hadn’t thought to tidy up, that I want to get down on my hands and knees and lick the crumbs off the floor, just so Jack will smile at me again. But another part of me wants to shove his handsome face into a bowl of tabbouleh because I cooked all of this for him— admittedly I didn’t tell him that — and he’s sitting there eating it with relish, issuing orders like he owns the place.
But he does own the place. This is his house, and it’s really generous of him to let me stay and to open up his life to me this way. He could have demanded twice the rent to let me stay here. Actually, ten times the rent is more realistic because this house is spectacular.
Once my lease is up, I’ll never be able to live somewhere like this again. I don’t want to ruin it by refusing to clean a few pans on my first night.
He raises a brow, obviously taking my hesitation as a refusal. “Kate might not have cared that you leave the place a mess, but I do. If you want to stay here, you have to tidy up when you cook. I want to make this very clear right now, because if I don’t say anything your mess is going to piss me off too much for us to live together.”
Wow. He must really hate mess. Or maybe it’s me he doesn’t like.
Definitely shouldn’t have asked him about those photographs. That’s what tipped his mood into this dark spot.
As I stare at him, all handsome and smart in his white shirt, looking more like he’s at the boardroom table than the kitchen island, I can’t help wondering if he spends his evenings scrubbing pots when he’s here by himself. I can’t imagine it. “Do you clean up yourself when you’re alone?” I ask not because I want to avoid the work, but because I really want to know.
“Not normally, no. My housekeeper takes care of it, but she’s away until next week. I told you. And I like my privacy. I keep staff to a minimum, so yes, when I need to, I clean up after myself. But that aside, you leaving the kitchen like this is unacceptable.”
I barely hear his last comment because I’m hung up on the fact that he values his privacy, but was willing to let me live here, and that urge to please him flares right up.
I can always shove his handsome face into a bowl of tabbouleh another time.
I roll up my sleeves and get to work.