Page 14 of One Snowy Seduction
“Because my wife suggested we do something together.”
His wife? That wasn’t what she’d expected.
“Should we be expecting her to join us for breakfast?” she asked, the sharpness of her tone loud and clear.
He looked over at her and said, “We’ve been divorced for eighteen months now. She found somebody—a rapper, or entertainer—who was more fun and eager to give her the attention she desired.”
Teesha hadn’t asked him for that much of an explanation. Just saying he was divorced would’ve been enough to calm the ire that had sprouted when she’d thought she’d had sex with a married man. Still, she found herself asking, “Wow, she left you for a rapper.” She tried unsuccessfully to hide the shock in her tone. There was a big contrast between Kendrick—the low-key, funny, computer guy—and what came to mind when she thought of a boisterous, extroverted rapper or entertainer. “Why didn’t you pay attention to her?” she continued with another question.
He picked up the cutting board and used the knife in his other hand to scrap the onions off and into the bowl of eggs. “It’s kinda hard to work for the money and run around the country playing with her while she so effortlessly spent it.”
“I see,” she said with a nod. “So you’ve got money. That’s interesting. I remember when we split a quarter pounder meal at McDonald’s because we were both so broke and were tired of eating ramen noodles for dinner.”
“You took the half of the sandwich with the pickle,” he said with a wry chuckle.
“No matter how many quarter pounders we had in those days, there was always just one pickle on it like that was some kind of rule.” She shook her head at the memory.
“A dumbass rule,” he added and they both laughed.
The kitchen went quiet again and he began grating the cheese.
“You want toast?” she asked.
“Sure,” he replied.
She found the bread and took out four slices. “I wasn’t running,” she said after putting them in the toaster and pressing them down. “I just thought it’d be easier for us to figure out what happened last night if we weren’t in this forced proximity situation. But alas when it rains, apparently in the French Alps, it actually snows.”
He gave her a crocked grin. Then he stopped what he was doing and picked up the dish towel. He wiped his hands and tossed the towel over his right shoulder before coming to stand next to her. He didn’t touch her; of that she was part glad and equally disappointed. Her mind hadn’t stopped replaying everything he’d done to her last night. Every touch, every kiss, every moan. Even the feel of his dick pulsing inside her as he’d emptied his release into that condom, had been a memory she knew she wouldn’t forget any time soon.
“How do you feel about what we did last night?” he asked. “Because, really, Teesha, that’s all that matters.”
There was an air of truth to his words. It didn’t matter what anybody else thought about her having sex with a guy she’d sworn to hate. Not that she’d planned to tell anybody in the first place. But she knew what else he was saying. There shouldn’t be any worries as long as she’d done something she wanted to do.
“I wanted you. You wanted me.” She shrugged. “I feel like we both did what we wanted to do.”
He nodded in agreement. “Then what’s there to deal with if we stay here together for the rest of the week? The same way you went to your room last night after we finished, you can go to your room any time that you feel like you’re having too much of me.”
“That’s not why I went to my room,” she said. And really, was there too much of Kendrick? If so, her body sure hadn’t reached that threshold.
He hadn’t brushed his hair, but he had brushed his teeth. She could smell the minty-fresh toothpaste because he was standing so close to her. The t-shirt he wore had no sleeves, so his arms were bare again, that lion tat on one bicep and a cross with initials in it on the other. They were his mother’s initials—DKR, Donna Katherine Ross. She was killed in a botched liquor store robbery with her boyfriend when Kendrick was eleven. His Aunt Renee had raised him in a house with four other children after that. Renee had a drug addiction and the twins had learning disabilities as well as other health issues because of that addiction. Kendrick, as the oldest child in the house, had been tasked with babysitting more than he’d been told to go to school. He’d hated it there and had worked hard for the full scholarship to college. He’d escaped just like Teesha had.
“So, are you gonna tell me the reason you bailed on my shrimp marinara?”
He was grinning now, that irresistible Kendrick grin that always had her forgetting whatever test or stressful thing her parents had said or done to her at the time. Her initial reply was a shrug. “I don’t know, it just felt…different. You know. The way we were last night, that’s not how we used to be. It wasn’t the “us” I remember.”
Rubbing a hand over his chin, he nodded. “Yeah, I can understand that. But we’re not the same people we were back then.”
Their gazes held. “But if we’d just met last night, would we have done what we did?” Because if they were gonna forget everything that happened in their past and only live in the now, then worrying about making another mistake just took on another layer for her.
He didn’t have a quick answer this time, or at least he hesitated before reaching for her hands, taking them both in his. “I’m not gonna stand here and tell you I never thought about you in that way before. I did, a couple of times but I brushed it off because, you know, we were best friends. Then when we weren’t best friends anymore, there was this emptiness that I don’t even know if I understood at the time because we were still so young. But I missed you, Teesha. That, I know for sure. I’ve missed you all these years.”
She released a shaky breath she hadn’t known she was holding. “I didn’t think you were attracted to me back then.” In that moment she felt like she was that twenty-year-old with the itty-bitty-titties and flat butt. “LaShawn Danvers had you playing all those love songs in your room.”
“And you were sitting in the gym knowing you hated that place, but just waiting for any opportunity to see what was his name? The dude that didn’t play all that well but thought he was going to the NBA.”
She grinned. “James Winters. They called him Jazz.”
“Yeah, that’s him. With his sorry three-point-shootin’ ass. I wonder what happened to him, ‘cause you know I may’ve moved out of the country but I ain’t never see him in the NBA.”
