“Hey, come on!” A grin that made him impossibly more beautiful. Putting down her coffee mug, he came around the counter, and damn it, he wasn’t wearing jeans. “I bet I can convince you otherwise.”
When he put his hands on her hips and tugged her forward, she slammed the box of waffle mix against his chest. “Stop right there, mister.” Her stomach was flipping, her skin hot.
He wrapped his arms around her instead and leaned in to press his forehead against hers. “Good morning.”
“I hate mornings,” she said, trying to keep her voice strong. It was difficult—she’d never seen Noah like this. In a good mood, yes, but never this good. He seemed to be smiling with his whole body. If this was what she got to wake up to every day, she might just come to like mornings.
“I’ll make the waffles from scratch,” he said, his cheeks creasing.
Her mouth fell open. “Since when can you cook?”
“I didn’t say I could cook. I said I could make waffles.” Moving one hand to her face, he cupped her cheek, that heartbreaker smile still on his face. “I had a job in a diner once, remember? Not long after the guys and I first came to LA. Anyway, the cook taught me.”
“Female cook?” she asked and saw the answer in his wicked smile. Affecting a scowl, she pushed at his shoulders, had to fight not to keep stroking the hot silk of his skin. “Let’s see these famous waffles.” She didn’t really want him to release her. Being close to Noah when he was like this… it made her want to laugh and cry at the same time.
He rubbed his thumb over her cheek before letting go. “Where’s your flour?”
“Same place as your pants,” she muttered and, when he threw back his head and laughed, couldn’t help her own smile. “Go put on clothes or you might burn something important.”
Still grinning, he returned to his bedroom and came back out wearing only a pair of jeans she recognized—hard not to when the denim had a tear just below his butt and threadbare patches all over. “Do you wear those outside?”
A shrug. “I wore them onstage during the tour.”
Jealousy bit into her with sharp little teeth. Stomach tensing, she shoved away the nasty, vicious emotion. Being jealous of all the women who wanted Noah—who’d been with him—would destroy the two of them before they ever had a shot. She had to let it go, but it was hard. So damn hard.
“Found it!” He held up her flour container with a triumphant look on his face.
Smiling, because how could she not with him here, looking at her that way, she helped gather the other ingredients. He was just finishing up the batter while the waffle iron heated when her cell phone rang.
Glancing at the screen, she saw it was her agent. “Harper?” she said, figuring it had to be bad news if the other woman was calling her at six thirty in the morning. “Hit me with it.”
“Esra Dali just called.” Harper’s voice was ebullient. “Wants you in for a screen test at ten.”
Kit gripped the edge of the counter. “You sure he wasn’t drunk?” she asked, trying to keep her heart from racing and failing spectacularly. “Pretty early for a call.”
“He keeps crazy hours. You make sure you get your butt down to the studios by ten, otherwise I’ll disavow all knowledge of you.”
“Where do I need to go?” Writing down the details, she hung up to see the gorgeous rocker in her kitchen pouring batter into the waffle iron.
It was as wonderfully surreal a sight as the words she spoke. “I have a screen test for Redemption.”
Noah’s face lit up. “Fuck yeah.”
An hour and a half later, after they’d polished off the waffles and she was in her garden, meditating to put herself into the right mind-set for the screen test, Harper called back. The normally cool and collected agent was beside herself.
Thanks to Kit’s suddenly red-hot profile, the cosmetics company had sent in a revised offer that extended her proposed contract to include all international markets. “I don’t see any nasty clauses this time,” Harper said, “though I’m flicking it to the legal eagles to check. You should be signing on the dotted line tomorrow if all goes well.”
Kit hung up to the knowledge that her financial problems were close to over and that, if all went well, her career was about to shoot into the stratosphere. She should’ve been as ecstatic as Harper, but…
Her eyes lingered on Noah where he sat against the cherry blossom tree, lazily strumming his guitar while she sat cross-legged on a yoga mat a short distance from him. The music didn’t bother her when she meditated—she liked it, liked him nearby. But even when physically close, it felt as if he stood an ocean apart from her.