Page 27 of The Fine Art of Faking It
Davis systematically dried the mixing bowl with a dish towel, twisting it slowly around and around. “I’m weak with hunger,” he explained, his eyes twinkling.
Shaking her head, Eden dropped a pat of butter into the pan.
“What’s the craziest guest request you’ve ever accommodated?” Davis asked, changing the subject. He poked around under the sink cabinet and found the dishwasher detergent.
“Besides eggs at 1:30 in the morning?” Eden batted her lashes sarcastically at him.
“You’re still funny. I always liked that about you.”
Not in the mood to reminisce about their high school days, Eden answered. “Peacocks.”
“Peacocks?”
It was for this Jane Austen meets Woodstock marriage proposal. The intended loved peacocks, had a figurine collection of them. Her boyfriend wanted to have peacocks strolling the lawn here.”
“Did you find some?” Davis asked.
Eden poured the egg mixture over the melted butter. “Of course,” she sniffed that he had to ask. She always delivered. “I had to lock up Chewy and Vader because they kept chasing the birds. But that couple got their peacocks.”
Davis’s laugh filled the kitchen. “Did she say yes?”
The memory teased a smile out of her. “Most enthusiastically. She tackled him to the ground and the ring went flying. I had to wrestle it away from a particularly aggressive peacock.”
“You do go the extra mile.” Davis filled the dispenser with detergent and glanced in her direction.
Wordlessly, she closed the distance and stabbed the appropriate wash cycle buttons.
Davis grinned. “Team work.
“Mmm. So, what was so important that you had to work through dinner?” she asked, changing the subject and returning her attention to the eggs.
“My parents aren’t big believers in technology and the nine-year-old computer that housed our payroll program decided to die a painful death.”
Eden winced, feeling his pain. “Back-ups?”
“Now there’s a novel idea,” Davis said dryly. “I should have known better when I asked my father if everything was cloud-based and he said ‘isn’t everything?’.”
She bit her lip and reached for the gruyere. Maybe it felt a little nice to know that Davis too could suffer from the downside of business ownership. That it wasn’t all champagne and profits across the property line. “I take it, no, it is not cloud-based?”
“My father seems to believe that the internet lives in the sky and therefore is—”
“Cloud-based.” Eden couldn’t help but laugh. “My parents got rid of their Wi-Fi in the house because they said it was spying on them and killing their house plants.” Her father’s basement bumper crop of pot had actually dried up due to an irrigation issue,notthe internet.
Davis laughed again and Eden felt a warmth in her belly. She ignored it and grated a light layer of gruyere over the fluffy eggs. Since she’d made them, she pulled two plates out of the cabinet, scooping eggs onto both. She turned and admired his work. The countertops gleamed and the dishwasher hummed quietly. He’d even scrubbed down the sink, Eden’s personal definition of a clean kitchen.
“I suppose you’ve earned these.” She handed him a plate. His fingers covered hers as he reached for it. Reflexively, she looked up into those soft brown eyes.
“Thank you, Eden.”
Why did her name sound so good from his mouth? Why did the brush of his fingers warm her blood to molten?
“Thanks for everything,” he said.
Her body’s response to him pissed her off. Where was her sense of self-preservation? If Davis were a cliff, her body would happily stroll to the edge and throw itself over.
“Stop. Thanking. Me.” She’d been nice enough for one night. “I’m going to take these with me and get some sleep. Forks are over there.” She gestured with her chin. “See you at breakfast.”
She could feel him watching her as she left the room still clutching her plate of eggs. Why hadn’t she ever felt this frisson of awareness with anyone else? She’d dated men, enjoyed taking them to bed. Yet, not one of them had set her body vibrating like a tuning fork the way that one, sleepy-eyed look from Davis did.
