Chapter 9
Kate
“She’s pretty,” I said, as we walked into the house.
“Who is?”
“Your girlfriend. Is she older than you?”
Donovan didn’t answer. He simply moved around me to grab a soda out of the fridge.
“Hungry?”
I brushed past him, kicking off my shoes and dropping my bag in the living room.
“Why do you feel this need to hide things from me?”
“Who said I was hiding anything?” He glanced at me as he cut open a bag of frozen vegetables, pouring half the contents into a saucepan. “There are just some things that I don’t feel you need to know.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my client, not my friend.”
For some reason, that cut right through me. I spun on my heel and started for my bedroom, but then I turned around again.
“How can you divide things up like that? We practically grew up together.”
“We did.”
“And then you left—”
“—at your request.”
“It’s just stupid. You know everything about my personal life. Why can’t I know about yours?”
“Because that’s not the way this works.” He turned from the chicken he was cutting up. “I need to know about you because that’s the only way I’m going to protect you.”
“So we spend the next few days living together and I’m not supposed to ask personal questions?”
“You can ask whatever you want. I just won’t promise to answer them.”
He turned back to his work, tossing the diced chicken into the saucepan with the frozen vegetables.
“What are you making?”
“Stir fry.”
I shook my head, going to the stove and taking a sauté pan out of the drawer underneath. I grabbed his saucepan and tossed the concoction inside the new pan, pouring a little oil over the whole thing so that it wouldn’t stick.
“You have to give it all room to cook evenly.”
“Thank you,” he said, wiping his hands dry since he’d just washed them, ignoring everything I was doing behind him.
“Where’d you learn to cook? Or am I not supposed to ask that, either?”
“Ash.”
“Ash cooks?”
He glanced at me, catching the sudden interest in my voice. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk.”
I shrugged. “You can kiss women in front of my bank, but I can’t ask questions about your boss. That’s really fair.”
“I didn’t kiss her.”
“You did. I saw you.”
“She kissed me.”
“And that makes a difference?”
“It does to me.”
“Who is she, anyway?”
He was quiet again, clearly uninterested in quelling my curiosity.
I pushed the meat and vegetables around with my spoon, my anger stewing just like the food. “Do you make a habit of letting women kiss on you while you’re at work?”
“I thought we had this conversation last night.”
“Did we?”
“You seem awfully obsessed with my romantic life.”
I glanced at him and caught the teasing light in his eyes before he turned away, taking a long swallow of his soda. I found myself almost wishing I was that bottle. A stupid thought if there ever was one. But then my eyes moved over his hands, and I remembered how those hands felt on my skin, how the heat from his palm on my breast made me gasp once upon a time.
“You’re blushing again.”
“I am not.”
I turned my attention back to the food, pushing it off the burner.
“It’s done.”
He came up behind me to look, purposely pushing his body up against mine. But he was the one who was surprised when I turned and slipped my finger through the space between the buttons on the front of his shirt and tugged him a little closer.
“I think you like playing games with me. I think you like to keep me in the dark because you get off on the fact that I’m curious at all.”
“Who’s playing games with whom?” He brushed a piece of hair away from my eyes, his fingers lingering on my cheek. “One minute you hate me and the next you act like a jealous bitch.”
“You don’t know a bitch if you think—”