The skin on my arms and neck tingled. “Is that some kind of veiled reference about a woman’s place and all that?”
“I’m not very interested in what every other woman is doing right now,” he said, feathering soft, indulgent kisses along my jawbone. “But I do think your place is absolutely right here.”
I swallowed hard and forgot about trying for a witty reply. In fact, I’d forgotten the day of the week and my mother’s middle name when we were interrupted by a sharp rap on the front door.
“Hello? Anybody home?” Jack’s voice preceded the sound of the screen door opening.
Kai jumped back from me as if burned. His eyes were wide as he called, “Hey, Jack. Be right there.”
“Close neighborhood,” I hissed while patting my cheeks, hoping they weren’t as flushed as they felt.
Kai strode around the corner and into the front hall. I lifted Polly and two spatulas into my arms and walked toward their conversation.
Jack took one look at me and whistled. “You guys were totally making out. Sorry.” He took Polly before I lost control of her wild lunging.
“What?” Kai said, trying to look relaxed. “No, listen, we were just getting some things together in the kitchen.”
Jack snorted. “Dude, I may be an ancient married man to you, but I still recognize a hormone or two when I see it.” He nodded at me, which made my cheeks deepen another two shades. I was going to kill him.
“I’d even say you should go back to the kitchen and carry on, but Manda looked like her head was about to spin off its axis when she sent me over for you two. She says it’s time for reinforcements and cupcakes.” He turned to go but not before wrestling Kai’s spatulas out of Polly’s chubby grip. She howled in protest, and Jack had to holler to be heard.
“See you two at the house,” he said as he took long strides down Kai’s front walk. “Sorry again for the interruption.”
Kai left me to go turn off some lights and grab his keys, birthday candles, and the cupcakes off the kitchen table. I waited on the porch and was deadheading a pot of herbs when he took my hand.
“I feel like a teenager caught making out in my parents’ basement,” Kai laughed.
I set a slow walking pace. The party could wait. The week ahead at Thrill was a going to be a doozy, full of promotional events and industry meet-and-greets. These few steps between Kai’s house and a gaggle of screaming kindergartners were likely going to be our only moments of alone time for too many days.
“True,” I agreed. “But Jack has also seen me cry off all my makeup, get a bloody nose during a double date then bleed all over my date’s white pants, and burn my upper lip into one long mustache scab when Manda and I tried a home waxing kit. He is fully accustomed to seeing me in compromising conditions.”
“Wait,” Kai said, his hand up to stop my words. “How could you allow yourself to date a man who wore white pants?”
I let him laugh because, honestly, the mental image of Dan Richards and his white trousers was still alarming fifteen years later.
Kai sniffed. “I’m going to assume it was Avery Michaels. Don’t even tell me if it wasn’t because it’s so much more fun to think that it was.”
At the mention of Avery’s name, I felt some of the blood drain from my fingers, even though they were still cocooned within Kai’s warm grasp. My mind filled with images of Avery’s face so close to mine, his mouth finding me and pushing hard, the heat of the fireplace on my back and the insistence in Avery’s voice and words.
Kai’s gentle nudge pulled me out of my silence. “You okay?” he asked. We came to a stop at the edge of the Henricks’ sidewalk.
I swallowed. Tell him, I thought. Come clean. He deserves that.
“Kai,” I began.
He waited.
I couldn’t. In fact, I reasoned quickly, I shouldn’t. Avery meant nothing to me, and his weird and sudden affection the night before didn’t change that. The tension between Kai and Avery certainly needed no fanning from me. To dredge it all up needlessly would be cruel.
I smiled. “Nothing,” I said. “Just wanted to warn you about something.”
“What’s that?” he said.
“It’s the cupcakes.” I frowned as if facing a moral dilemma. “You’re about to go down.” I tried my best to look earnest. “The first step is always acknowledging you have a problem.”
Kai’s phone chimed the arrival of a text. He narrowed his eyes at me for a retort but glanced down at the screen.