And that was when she remembered. Jumping out of her seat abruptly, she rushed toward the kitchen. “I’m burning the rolls,” she called out, by way of explanation. It didn’t smell like anything was burning, but they were almost certainly more than overdone.
“Shit,” she said to herself as she pulled the tray out of the oven. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” She’d thought she’d had everything under control. At least, she’d thought she’d competently handled the basics of the meal.
But she always forgot the damned bread.
Holding the tray of rolls with a hot pad in one hand, she turned away from the oven.
Saw Kent looming about a foot away from her.
Dropped the tray and watched the hot, very browned rolls tumble all over the floor.
“Damn it,” she bit out, dropping the hot pad in disgust.
Kent looked at her quizzically. “Did I startle you?”
“Yes, damn it,” she grumbled, getting down onto her knees to start picking up the rolls. She wasn’t at all pleased about being on her knees in front of Kent, but she could hardly leave the food on the floor. “You scared the hell out of me.”
To her astonishment, Kent lowered himself to the floor beside her. Reached out to help her retrieve the scattered rolls. “My apologies. I was just making sure you didn’t need any help.” He studied her face intently. “Why are you so flustered?”
“Because you’re acting like an ass,” she hissed out, forgetting discretion or courtesy in her confusion and her annoyance with him. She shook her fingers a little to cool them down after she dropped one roll back onto the tray.
He arched an eyebrow. “I’m an ass because I accidentally startled you by standing in the kitchen?”
“Don’t be dense. Leave Aaron alone.”
His lips quirked. “Am I supposed to know what that means?”
“You know very well what it means,” she huffed, making sure her voice didn’t carry over to the table. Since they were both on the floor, they were hidden by the island, but she could hear her father and Aaron carrying on with the conversation. “I’m trying to make a good impression on him and you’re mucking it up on purpose.”
Kent chuckled. “Now why would I do that? I was just trying to get to know him.”
He was obviously lying. Obviously having a very good time at her expense. In another situation, Cali would have enjoyed the witty give and take between them. But this was not an appropriate time for such banter. And she wasn’t happy about it at all.
“You were not! So stop.”
He gave her another half-smile. It wasn’t his real smile, not his open smile that she almost never saw. Instead, it was his smug, social smile, but it was definitely better than his flinty coldness. “Right.”.
She was pretty sure that she couldn’t believe him.
He picked up a couple more of the cooling rolls and she couldn’t help but notice that he did so—of course—with the same smooth grace he did everything else.
It suddenly occurred to her that they were both on their knees on the hardwood floor next to her dishwasher. Something about their position felt so intimate and domestic that she felt a wave of heat wash over her.
This was Kent and he was supposed to fit neatly into a nice, little, glittering compartment in her mind, rich, influential, professional, ruthless, icy, unfeeling, untouchable.
He wasn’t supposed to be on the floor of her kitchen.
Too rattled to look over at him again, she noticed one more roll that had ended up in a corner. She leaned forward onto one hand and then stretched out the other hand to grab it.
Kent had apparently had the same idea. Because he too was on his hands and knees. And he too had reached out to get the roll.
Cali’s hand closed around the roll and then Kent’s hand closed around hers.
Their faces were very close together now and Cali forgot all about their undignified positions. Something about the way Kent’s hand felt over hers made her vividly recall all the ways that he’d touched her before.
A smoldering heat ignited out from the contact of their hands and Cali could feel it rippling out throughout her body. She still wanted him. Really wanted him. Dear God, she still wanted to feel his body moving against her.
Knowing she was deeply flushed, she stared at their clasped hands. Finally got up enough courage to raise her eyes to Kent’s face and then desperately wished that she hadn’t.
He was gazing at her intensely, a hot look in his eyes that she remembered very well. He was obviously feeling it too. This attraction hadn’t gone away. Cali felt tingles in certain parts of her body that made her want to whimper.
Frozen in position, she lowered her eyes back to the floor, painfully aware of the amount of cleavage she was revealing to him by leaning over onto her hands this way. But she couldn’t seem to get up.
[…]
“Kent,” she whispered, as his fingers tightened over her hand.
“Yes?”
She got shudders from how warm and husky his voice sounded, but she made herself ignore them. “Kent, this roll is still kind of hot.”