Page 82 of Falling Overboard

It didn’t take me long to finish mixing the wet ingredients. I added the dry, stirred, and then put in the chocolate chips. I rolled dough into balls and put them on one of the trays. I got the first batch in the oven, and only then did I grab myself a cup of espresso. I stared out into the inky blackness just beyond the porthole. It was a cozy moment and I found myself wanting to share it with Hunter.

Then he came into the galley, like I’d accidentally summoned him.

“What are you doing up?” I asked, shocked.

Not only because he was awake but because I still had burning, detailed images in my head of him kissing and undressing me.

Just like I had, he blinked against the harshness of the galley lights. “You got up. And I can’t sleep when you’re not there.”

He casually lobbed that emotional nuclear bomb at me and I had nothing shored up to protect myself against the cuteness and depth of it. What did that mean? It felt like my legs had been disconnected from my spinal column, and I had to lean against the counter to stay upright.

“You’re making cookies?” He phrased it as a question even though it was pretty obvious what I was doing.

“Y-yes.” I did not need to start stumbling over my words now.

“Do you need help?” he asked. He reached over and took a bunch of cookie dough and popped it into his mouth.

I pointed my wooden spoon at him. “What are you doing? That’s not for you!”

He licked some of the dough from his finger. “You can’t tease a man with the smell of baking cookies and not let him have one.”

I moved the bowl away from him. “You should have enough willpower to refrain.”

“You have no idea how much willpower I have,” he grumbled more to himself than to me.

Not willing to let my brain make another dangerous leap to an illogical conclusion, I said, “It’s also bad to eat cookie dough.”

“I like to live dangerously. Bring on the raw eggs.”

“Salmonella’s not pretty.”

“Given what I’d just tasted, it would be worth it.” Then he reached for my cup of espresso and took a drink. “Decided to have a little bit of coffee with your caffeine, did you?”

“Ha ha.”

“Someday soon we’re going to have to discuss your chemical dependence on coffee. You might have a problem,” he teased.

“I don’t have a problem with coffee. I have a problem without coffee.” I turned around and got a clean mug. “Speaking of, do you want one?”

“Yes, please.”

Not that I’d minded that he’d taken a sip from mine. I liked sharing things with him. “How strong do you want it?”

“Strong enough to show up on a drug test.”

“Double shot of espresso, coming up.”

When I handed the mug to him, he thanked me and then asked, “Are you coming back to bed?”

How he said it—like we were a real couple—knocked my breath clean out of my lungs. The way his words made me want things I couldn’t have ...

My knees were weak all over again.

For a moment my throat felt too tight, like it was going to prevent me from being able to speak at all. I coughed. “I can’t. I have to stay here until the batter end.”

He grinned at my pun, the way I knew he would. It helped to lighten that heavy, thick tension I’d been feeling.

But only a little bit.

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