Although, if any woman was worth slaving away in the kitchen for, it might just be the woman currently curled up in his bed.
After calling room service and asking them to send up five different breakfast options, Seth poured two cups of coffee, frowning when he realized he didn’t know how Brooke took hers.
Which felt sort of strange, considering they’d spent a good deal of the last ten hours naked together.
It was an uncomfortable reminder that this wasn’t like him. He’d had one-night stands before, mostly in his early twenties, but those had all been the sort of drunken hookups that ended with one of them leaving in the early-morning hours with a headache and regrets, not spending cozy mornings in bed.
And as for the women that had awoken in his bed, he knew them. He took them to dinner and did the flowers-and-expensive-wine routine before seeing them naked.
There’d been none of that with Brooke, and yet he did know her, he realized as he poured some milk into his coffee. It was strange, since she’d been a part of his life for only a few weeks and much of that had been spent with them at each other’s throats, that she didn’t feel like a stranger.
She didn’t feel like a one-night stand, either, if he was being honest. What a fucking mess.
Seth gave a slight smile as he heard a rustling sound from the bedroom and, picking up the coffees, headed back to where Brooke was waking up. He leaned against the doorjamb as the lump that was Brooke’s body was starting to stir—she was a burrower when she slept. When he’d awoken, she’d been curled into a tight little ball, only her long blond hair visible above the covers.
Now a slim arm appeared as she stretched, then another, and then finally her head as she rolled upward to a sitting position, unfortunately having the presence of mind to tuck the sheet beneath her armpits, covering up those gorgeous bare breasts.
She blinked sleepily as she tried to get her bearings.
“Morning,” he said quietly as her gaze came to rest on him.
Brooke’s hand immediately flew to her head, only to let it drop again with a sigh. “It’s hopeless, huh?”
“Let’s just say you look thoroughly bedded,” he said, pushing away from the doorjamb.
“Translation. My hair’s a mess?”
He smiled, wisely avoiding the question, and held up one of the mugs in his hand. “I didn’t know how you like your coffee. This is black, but I’ve got sugar and some milk in the fridge.”
“A spoonful of sugar would be great. No milk.”
“I think I can handle that.”
Seth headed back into the kitchen to add sugar to her mug. When he returned, he noticed that Brooke had done some sort of feminine witchcraft on her hair, turning the previous cloud of tangles into a tidy braid hooked over one shoulder.
“Is it bad to say I liked your hair better before?” he asked, handing her the mug before sitting on the side of the bed and shifting to face her.
She snorted into her coffee. “Why, because it reminded you of all your manly prowess last night?”
He smiled. “So you admit it was prowess.”
Her eyes flicked to his. “Let’s just say, last night was good. Very good.”
Seth thought of himself as an evolved man, but he apparently wasn’t that far beyond caveman, because the urge to puff out his chest at that moment was almost too strong to ignore.
Instead he took a sip of his coffee and held her gaze. “Yes. It was.”
Brooke bit her lip as she cupped the large mug in two hands. “So, I feel like maybe we should have talked about . . . the after. And also, I didn’t mean to sleep over. It was just—I thought—”
His hand found her knee. “Hey.”
She took a deep breath.
“There was no way in hell I was letting you out of bed last night, much less out of my apartment,” he said quietly.
Brooke took a deep breath and looked like she was about to protest, but they were interrupted by a knock at the door. Her eyes widened slightly in panic. “Someone’s here?”
He reached out and flicked the edge of her braid before standing. “Room service. Stay.”
A few moments later, he’d generously tipped the delivery woman after refusing to allow her to set up the table. Instead he wheeled the crowded cart into the bedroom himself.
Brooke blinked. “Um, how many people are you planning on feeding?”
“I wasn’t sure what you liked to eat for breakfast,” he said as he began to pull the silver tops off the various plates. “I got everything from a cheese omelet to pancakes to eggs Benedict.”
Brooke bit her lip and eyed the room-service cart. “I’m normally a bowl-of-cereal kind of girl.”
“It’s just breakfast, Brooke.”
She was already climbing out of bed. “Exactly. Breakfast. We said it was about one night. Last night. We agreed. Morning shenanigans didn’t play into it.”
“How do a couple of fucking pancakes and omelets equal shenanigans?”
“Don’t play dumb,” she said as she looked around for her clothes. “This can’t be anything. I work for you. Sort of.”