Page 37 of Don't Forget Me
“Cookies,” she squeaked. “I made cookies.”
With a confident grin, he walked by her, cursing as he reached for a cookie and dropped it onto the counter with a yelp. “Hot.”
“So hot,” she said again before clearing her throat. “I just took them out of the oven, dummy.”
A low chuckle emanated from his chest. “Dummy?”
“I have kids, okay.” Turning her flushed face away from him, she busied herself cleaning the bowls in the sink. “I could have called you a butthead or a booger.”
“I’ll take dummy then.”
“And you will not take a cookie until they’ve cooled.”
“Yes, Mother.” He shook his head with a laugh as he walked away.
“I’m not your mother!” she called after him. Slapping a hand to her forehead, she ran through that conversation in her mind. Gah, she was an idiot.
But seriously, Nick was every girl’s fantasy. How could he walk around half-naked and not think she’d go all gooey inside? It was just his looks, nothing else. A biological response to a half-naked man.
That was what she told herself.
Leaning over the sink, she splashed water on her face. It had been so long since she let any man get in her head. Corey was the last, and she ended up a single mother battling cancer without the man who’d said he loved her.
It ruined any ounce of trust she’d had.
But she couldn’t regret it. Elizabeth believed in reasons—there was a reason everything happened. She’d fallen for Corey because Evelyn and Owen were supposed to exist.
The cancer came the first time to turn her into the person she was supposed to be. Strong, resilient. After that, nothing in life seemed insurmountable.
And the second time? To teach her how precious every moment, every action was. There was no guarantee there’d be more, so she had to make them count.
She didn’t yet know what this coma would mean in her life, but she had faith it wasn’t without purpose.
By the time she’d put the cookies on a plate and cleaned the kitchen, she was ready for a nap before getting up to make dinner.
All her grand sleep plans were thrown out the window when Nick re-emerged towel drying his hair. He wore a loose pair of basketball shorts and a simple cotton shirt. She liked that he didn’t try to impress her.
The dimpled smile he sent her way was enough to do that all on its own.
“You’ve changed,” she blurted.
He looked down at his clothes. “If you want me to take this off, I will.”
“No.” She rolled her eyes. “I mean you. When I first met you a couple weeks ago, there was this grumpy aura to you. Now though… I don’t know, you seem lighter.”
One of his shoulders lifted in a shrug. “The longer I’m here, the easier it is, I guess.” His eyes caught on the bookshelf in the living room. “Want to play a game?”
“A game?” She followed his gaze to a stack of board games.
“Could be fun.”
Fun? Nick Jacobs wanted to have fun? “Who are you, and what have you done with the man I met when I got here?”
He turned away with a smile and walked to the bookshelf, taking the game off the top. “I used to play Upwords with my brother. He gave me endless grief about buying it because he said it was like an easier form of Scrabble.” He set the box on the coffee table and lowered himself to the floor. “But I knew he loved it.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother.” Like every other fan, she’d thought she’d known the actor in the movies, the one featured in interviews or sitting down with talk show hosts, but she’d started to wonder if there was a version of him he gave the world and one he held back.
“We didn’t advertise the brother thing because Stephen had dreams too. He didn’t want to achieve them by being Nick Jacobs’s brother.”
