On the Steamy Side - Louisa Edwards [58]
She was right. Across from each other in the cozy breakfast nook, Lilah and Tucker slathered the warm, tender biscuits with creamery butter and the strange, thick honey. It had an almost grainy texture that was a delicious contrast to the crumbly biscuits and melting butter. Tucker hesitated before taking his first bite, possibly a little gun-shy after his first breakfast, but once he tried it, his eyes lit up. After a few moments of silent, dedicated eating, Tucker looked up at her, honey smearing his mouth and crumbs dotting his chin, and said, “This is good.”
Lilah tried to contain her joy at his initiation of conversation in a single smile. “I’m glad you like it.”
He nodded and went back to eating. Lilah attempted not to worry that it had been an aberration and that Tucker had already resumed his self-imposed vow of silence. Just when she was about to start gabbing again to fill the quiet air, he slid her a glance. She smiled encouragingly, and with a tentative voice, Tucker said, “You had a lot of cousins, huh?”
Lilah was in the middle of one of her best Walt stories, the one where he convinced the twins, Hannah and Keith, to climb to the very top of the magnolia tree behind the house, when Devon came back in.
Fresh from the shower, Devon was devastating. A close shave emphasized the sharp angles of his jaw, the slight cleft in his chin. His hair was wet and spiky, a casually tousled look that Lilah was sure took several minutes and a couple hundred dollars’ worth of product to achieve. He was wearing casual clothes, suitable for a day sweating in a hot professional kitchen, but even swathed in loose black pants and a plain white T-shirt, there was no denying his masculine beauty.
Still, Lilah thought she might prefer him as he’d been early that morning—sleep-mussed hair and a pillow crease running down his stubbled cheek.
Even from a few feet away, he smelled like soap and the spice of his cologne. Lilah inhaled as deeply as she could without being obvious. She smiled up at him.
“I was just telling Tuck about my family back home,” she said.
Devon smiled back, but the happy expression faded as he took in the plates in front of Tucker. The one he’d prepared was nearly untouched and had turned into a cold, congealed mess of runny yellow mush and neon-orange fish eggs. The other plate was nothing but crumbs, and Tucker was in the middle of dotting his fingertip around the plate and picking those crumbs up with his sticky, honey-covered digit. He froze guiltily when he realized Devon was watching him.
Devon, bless his heart, tried to laugh it off. “Slow down, kid, I bet Lilah will make you more biscuits if you ask nicely.”
He picked up Tucker’s other plate and took it to the sink. Lilah watched him scrape the food off it into the garbage disposal, feeling awful. Some father-son bonding experience this was turning out to be! Tucker wouldn’t eat Devon’s food, but scarfed down her biscuits like he’d been on starvation rations for weeks.
His thin shoulders were hunched again, and he was curled in on himself the way he’d been before she started drawing him out with stories about her cousins’ wilder days.
“I think the salmon roe was maybe a bit adventurous for someone his age,” Lilah said apologetically.
Devon added the scraped plate to the dishwasher with a clatter. “Doesn’t matter,” he said with that wide, fake smile she’d last seen on the television screen. “No big shocker, I suck at figuring out what would sound good to a kid. I’m just glad you were here to fix him something he’d eat.”
“Do you want a biscuit?” Lilah asked, her heart squeezing tight.
He shook his head without looking at them. “I’ve got to get to the restaurant. See you later. Or not, if you’re asleep when I get home. Let Paolo know if you want to go out, he’ll drive you anywhere you need to go.”