Can't Stand the Heat - Louisa Edwards [48]
The thought prompted him to finally meet Frankie’s eyes, and the smoky invitation he read from across the kitchen made Jess swallow his heart back down into his chest, where it lodged uncomfortably, beating raucous and loud against his ribs. He shifted awkwardly in his jeans, which suddenly felt too tight, and beat a hasty escape down to the staff changing room.
So much for getting control of his hormones.
THIRTEEN
Where should he take her? Adam wondered. He’d paused just outside of Market, brought up short by the lack of any real plan.
“What are we doing now?” Miranda asked in that snotty tone she used when she felt off her game and didn’t want the other players to know. It startled Adam momentarily that he’d already started cataloguing this woman’s tones, and he took too long to answer.
“Well?” she prompted, finally succeeding in wrenching her hand away from his. Adam had sort of forgotten he’d grabbed her, but when he thought about it, he knew he’d been enjoying holding that hand for a while now.
Miranda Wake seemed to bring out the impulsive in him. That kiss! Everything perked up at the memory of the hot, sweet friction of her mouth on his.
Adam squeezed his eyes shut for an instant, willing his unruly body to settle down. “You are not the boss of me,” he told his dick.
“No,” Miranda retorted, making Adam’s eyes fly open. “As you enjoy repeatedly reminding me, you’re the boss here. So where is this alleged cooking lesson going to take place?”
Rattled, Adam made a split-second decision. “My place,” he said decisively. “There’s plenty of room, and I know how everything works.”
“Your place?” She sounded uncertain. Adam guessed he couldn’t blame her. After that kiss—Down, boy—it sounded a little like an elaborate plan to get into her pants.
“It’s not like I’m asking you up to see my etchings or something,” he said, attempting to be reassuring. “We’re gonna cook. That’s it.”
“Hmph. Unless you decide to do something else, just for the fun of it,” she muttered underneath her breath. But she didn’t make any real protest, and the lines of suspicion next to her mouth softened—Christ, I’m cataloguing her expressions, too?—so Adam figured they were good to go.
Taking off across the street at a slow lope, he called over his shoulder, “I want to hit the market, get some supplies.” When she didn’t move, he turned around and walked backward for a few steps, spreading his arms as a cab zoomed between them, inches from his pelvis. Adam took a moment to be grateful that his dick had absorbed its earlier chastisement. “You coming or what?”
Primming her mouth like a schoolteacher, Miranda waited very correctly for another car to go by before stepping off the curb and crossing the street. Adam supposed she would’ve preferred to go all the way down to the corner to avoid jaywalking. Something about this woman just tickled the hell out of him, and he knew he was grinning by the time she reached him.
The Seventy-seventh Street market wasn’t as big or as varied as the Union Square Greenmarket, but it was convenient. Adam knew some of the vendors pretty well from popping over to grab ingredients when he couldn’t wait for his regular suppliers, or when he only needed a tiny amount to tide him over.
“There’s a good dairy stand,” he told Miranda. “On the far corner. Not as amazing as Dava Whitehurst’s, downtown—this one doesn’t have goat cheese or crème fraîche.”
“I remember Dava,” Miranda said. “She was quite a unique person.”
Adam slid her a look out of the corner of his eye, trying to see if she meant that in a bad way. But it didn’t seem like she did. Her face was open and bright, taking in everything with that look that said she was taking reams of mental notes.
“Dava’s a character,” Adam agreed. “I think you can taste it in her product. There’s something a little different about all her stuff, from the milk and eggs to the chèvre with lavender and honey.”
Miranda gave him an intrigued, if skeptical, glance. “You can taste that?”
Adam shrugged. “Maybe it’s all in my head. But it’s not like the brain has