He broke off when he glanced over and saw her. She was sound asleep.
Vincent gently pulled the remote out from under her hand and turned down the volume, thoroughly amused when he heard gentle snores coming out of his partner.
Jill Henley snored. How…
Cute.
It was cute.
He grinned to himself, reaching for his phone so he could capture it on video and use it for some good-natured blackmail in the future, only to find that his thumb didn’t hit Record like he meant it to.
Instead he found himself putting the phone away.
And then he looked at her. It was probably creepy, a man staring at a sleeping woman who was not his wife or girlfriend, but he couldn’t look away.
Jill looked younger than her age, even when awake. She had a girlish face and figure that gave her a perpetual twenty-three look, something he knew she loathed and loved in waves.
But sleeping, she looked… womanly.
Not old, not haggard, but as though she held all of the secrets of the world in her dreams; secrets only she knew.
Secrets that he wanted to beg her to share.
She made a smacking sound with her mouth and then rolled onto her side, one hand sliding up under her cheek, the other…
The other reached out toward him.
He froze, staring down at her small hand where it lay between them on the bed.
She hadn’t been reaching for him, obviously. She was asleep. Didn’t know that he was there.
And yet, he suddenly found it hard to swallow. Found it hard to look away from her pointy little nose, and the way a few strands of straight blond hair escaped her ponytail to lay against her cheek.
Before he realized what he was doing, he slid his hand along the bed until his fingertips were millimeters from hers.
And then he touched her hand. Just softly. His fingertip against her knuckle, the rough pad of his finger against her smooth skin.
He allowed himself to linger, just for a moment, his finger tracing each of hers. Drawing circles on the back of her hand.
Vincent wanted to flip her hand over. Wanted to touch his fingers to the nerve endings of her palm. Wanted to press his lips there. Wanted to lever himself over her, and— Vincent pulled his hand back. Slowly.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
The touch had been almost nothing—it was less than chaste.
And yet he thought of it, long, long into the night.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hey, babe.”
“What’s up?” Jill asked, not looking up from where she was carefully chopping an onion. Maria Moretti had always made this look easy, but Jill had nearly taken off the tip of her middle finger.
“Are you aware that you have eight different types of pasta in here?”
“Um, you try being practically adopted by the Morettis and not come to think of it as a food group.”
Tom kissed the side of her head as he passed her from the pantry on his way to the fridge. “They’re lucky to have you.”
Jill smiled and rolled her eyes. “Biased much?”
Tom was too busy peering into her fridge, debating white wine options. “Annnnnd, every last white is Italian. Another Moretti influence?”
She gave him a quick glance, searching for any sign of irritation, but saw only amusement.
“They’re all good, I promise. Even the ones you’ve never heard of.”
He glanced at her and lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, I’ve heard of all of them.”
Jill snorted and set the knife aside. The onion was close enough to chopped. “You’re such a snob.”
“Didn’t hear you whining about my wine prowess while I was verbally dueling every sommelier in Florida,” Tom said, pulling out a bottle as he wiggled his eyebrows.
“What, do you guys draw corkscrews at dawn on your yacht?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said as he searched her cupboards for wineglasses. “We never drink before noon on my yacht.”
Jill accepted the glass he handed her, and he clinked their glasses together. “To my second time in your apartment,” he said warmly.
She smiled and tried to ignore the implication behind his teasing words.
She was going to marry a man who’d been in her apartment twice. A man who hadn’t known what cupboard she kept her wineglasses in, a man who hadn’t even been the slightest bit irritable despite the fact that his plane had sat on the tarmac for two hours, a man who…
Jill paused as she was sipping her wine. “Tom, you don’t really have a yacht, do you?”
He smiled, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “Do you really want me to answer that?”
Oh God. He had a yacht. She was marrying a man with a yacht.
Tom glanced down at the massacre on her cutting board before flicking at a too-big piece of onion. He gave the barely minced garlic a skeptical look.
“Darling.”
“Mmm?” The wine was delicious as she wanted it to be.
“How deft are your cooking skills?”
“You really want me to answer that?” she asked, repeating his earlier question.
He bent his knees slightly and captured her mouth for a kiss. “Want me to take over?”
She pulled back from the kiss. “You own a yacht and you cook?”