Page 145 of Ice Princess

He retreats into the kitchen and I follow him in a daze. “W-what…” I clear my throat and do my best to hide the tremble in my voice, “you’re making dinner?”

He nods.

“Why?”

“Why not?” He opens a cupboard and then closes it.

It’s a fair argument. “What are you making? Spaghetti?” I try to peer into the bags.

“Risotto with fresh salmon and?—”

“You’re cookingsalmon?”

Gunner grunts the affirmative and continues hunting through my cupboard for pans.

“Since when do you know how to cook salmon? Actually, since when do you know how to cookperiod?” I ask, reaching past him and finding the pan that he needs.

“My mother believes every man should know how to cook, clean and fold his own laundry.”

“Stop.” I lift a hand. “If you keep going, I’ll start fangirling over Carol and that’ll be uncomfortable for the both of us.”

He leaks a smile. Gunner doesn’t smile often and, even when he does, it’s just tiny smiles like this one, yet it makes his face ten times more appealing.

I want to stay and stare at his face, but I tear myself away from the kitchen and take a quick shower.

Since I don’t have time to blow-dry, I run a towel over my hair, throw on lip gloss and one of my favorite pink dresses and head back outside.

Gunner gives me a once-over and a corner of his lips inches up in a stamp of approval.

“See,” I call him out, breezing to the living room, “I look better now, don’t I?”

“You looked nice before too,” he assures me. “I liked the bunny slippers.”

I grin and sink into the couch, setting the laptop into my lap. “Did your Uncle Robert keep you busy today?”

Gunner grunts. “He uses my away games as an excuse to double my workload.”

“Youcouldsay no.”

“It’s fine. It works for us.”

Smiling, I grab my fuzzy pink pen.

For the next thirty minutes, Gunner quietly takes over my kitchen. Except for the sizzle of oil in the pan and the slight crackle of the salmon skin crisping, I wouldn’t even know he was there.

Part of his silence, I’m sure, is a by-product of his reserved nature, but I also get the sense that he’s intentionally being as quiet as he can to allow me to concentrate.

Unfortunately, it isn’t working at all.

Instead of calculating the estimates for our senior citizen outreach gift baskets, I keep getting distracted by Gunner’s bulging biceps.

Ugh.Does hehaveto sauté vegetables so sexily? Does he realize how charming he looks filleting a salmon? What if my smoke alarms go off from how hot he is stirring the rice?

I force my eyes back to the data I collected.

But those pesky orbs bounce back to the kitchen minutes later as if they’re dogs hopping back to their owner.

Gunner rolled the sleeve of his shirt up to his elbows and I get an eyeful of his impressive tattoos. They’re so intricate and well done. And manly. I love the way they add character to his otherwise stoic personality, as if hinting at the rebel underneath the mask of the perfect Kinsey prince.

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