Can't Stand the Heat - Louisa Edwards [117]
Adam yawned, too. “I could sleep for a year.”
“Hmm. Not with all the covers on the floor.”
“You cold, sweets? Here.” Adam swung over the side of the bed and grabbed a handful of cotton, dragging it over them both as he cuddled Miranda to his side. “Lemme warm you up.”
She snuggled against him happily. The pure joy of it made Adam’s arms contract around her shoulders involuntarily. Propping her pointed chin on his chest, Miranda gave him a searching look.
“How are you holding up?”
Adam exhaled noisily. “Better. Worlds better, here with you in my bed, all naked and pretty. If we could just stay like this for the rest of my life, I’d be extremely happy.”
“Yes. But eventually you’ll have to go back to the restaurant.”
Adam felt a pang. His restaurant, his sanctuary, had been violated. By that loser, Rob, who never deserved even to set foot in Market’s kitchen.
The sympathetic tilt to Miranda’s head said she knew what he was thinking.
“It’ll be easier than you think,” she said softly. “Once you’re back there, in your groove, everything will fall into place. You were born for that life, Adam. And Market is yours, every inch. No idiot with a grudge can take that away from you.”
Adam swallowed convulsively to get his heart back down in his chest where it belonged. “You’re so good to me,” he said. “Jesus. When I think how I almost messed this up . . . Miranda, I know I made you mad before, about Jess and Frankie and not telling you. But I swear, no more secrets. I hate ’em, anyway. Only the truth between you and me, from here on out.”
An emotion flitted across her face, powerful and dark. Something like shame or pain mixed with the fiery light of determination. It was gone before Adam could pinpoint it or describe it to himself, replaced with dancing eyes and a saucy grin that made him wonder if he’d imagined it.
“If you still feel weird when you get back in the kitchen, I bet we can come up with something to exorcise those demons. A little after-hours private party, just you and me and the butcher block . . .”
Adam laughed, his spirits lifting at the thought of his prim little scribbler consenting to semipublic sex, for any reason.
Tilting her chin up with one finger, Adam curled down and kissed those swollen lips.
Yeah. Everything was going to be okay.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Sunlight poured into the room, hitting the bed at a strange, unfamiliar angle. Miranda blinked and squinted into the brightness. It took her a minute to remember where she was.
Adam’s townhouse.
Curious to know what time it was, she twisted around in the bed to see if she could locate an alarm clock.
Adam snuffled into the bedding next to her, brows lowered in stubborn refusal to wake up. Miranda grinned.
She finally gave up on a clock and dug her watch out from the pile of clothes beside the low, wide bed.
Eleven o’clock! She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept past eight. Miranda let out an involuntary noise, part squeak, part gasp, and Adam cracked an eye.
“Time’s it?” he muttered into the pillow.
“It’s after eleven,” she told him, wondering if she ought to get up and get home. Her first thought on waking had been that damn manuscript and how badly she wanted to call up the publisher and square everything away so the ugly thing would never see the light of day.
“Not all that surprising,” Adam said, ending her internal debate with one sharp tug at her shoulder, pulling her back down beside him. Miranda didn’t put up too much of a fuss; his big body generated a cozy, furnacelike heat that tempted her to cuddle at least a few minutes more.
“The trauma of dealing with Rob Meeks’s pseudohomicidal tendencies, a stopover at the ER, then a bout of incredibly diligent and impressive lovemaking—that kind of evening takes it right out of you.”
“Well, sleep is very healing,” she attempted to say primly, but Adam crooked his fingers in her side and tickled her mercilessly until she collapsed in a giggling heap against him.
“I’ll tell you what was healing,” he mock-growled. He rolled her under him and stared down. Miranda tried to catch