Shorty snorted as they walked. “She won’t need to if she’d run away with me and leave your sorry butt behind.”
Lacey giggled again. Shorty’s deep chuckle joined her as he brought her through the door to his domain, seating her with a flourish at the scarred table Dev had haunted for many a dawn when he was a kid throwing papers.
“Go turn that batch, Dev, while I make this pretty lady some fresh coffee.”
Dev saw Lacey’s surprised glance and shrugged. “I spent half my teenage years here, helping Shorty make donuts in return for all I could eat.”
Shorty called back. “The boy had a hollow leg. Ate twice as many as he ever made, I promise you that. Snitched more when he thought I wasn’t lookin’, then headed out on that paper route early every mornin’.”
Lacey looked surprised again. “You were a paperboy?”
“Yeah.” Dev waited for it to sink in that after his father’s death, he had lived not far away, in a part of town where she wouldn’t be caught dead after dark.
Instead she rose and came to stand beside him, watching. “Was it hard, having to get up so early? What about school?”
The last thing he wanted was to discuss those years with her. He pointed to the donuts floating in the boiling grease. “Better stand back. This can splatter on you.”
But Lacey just moved closer, watching him turning two at a time as Shorty had taught him. “May I try turning one?”
Dev shot her a glance. She was serious. He shook his head. “That dress is too expensive to ruin.”
“The handles are long enough. I’ll be careful.” She glanced up at Shorty. “May I?”
Shorty was watching both of them, his look assessing Dev as much as Lacey. “Don’t know why not. Show the lady how it’s done, boy.”
Dev glanced around, saw Shorty’s spare apron hanging nearby. With quick steps, he snatched it down and returned to slip it over Lacey’s head, then stood behind her, realizing it was far too big for her.
So he wrapped the strings around her narrow waist twice, then tied them behind her, the rich scent of her perfume tracing through the sugar-laden air.
And he recognized that his hands were unsteady with the need to touch the sweet line of her hips, to pull her back against him and bury his face in her hair, to kiss her nape.
Shaken, he glanced up and saw sympathy in Shorty’s eyes. It pulled him back to what was real, what made sense. He didn’t know this Lacey who had layers and hidden depths, and the bald fact was that he probably never would.
But tell that to the rebel inside who had never cared very much what was sensible—or forbidden to him.
He pulled her back slightly to his left side, shielding her with his body while he demonstrated the fine art of judging when a donut is done. He pulled two out, flipped them neatly into the chocolate glaze, then went back for more. Then he reached for the first two and flipped them up on the shelf above, where the glaze dripped back into the pan. Then he handed the sticks to Lacey.
She worried at that lush lower lip with her teeth while she concentrated, and Dev was hard-pressed to pay attention to the donuts. She executed the first two perfectly, her smile of triumph real and bright. When she turned toward him to exult, her breasts brushed lightly against his arm, and Dev felt it all the way down to his bones. She froze but she didn’t move away, her gaze locked on his.
Shorty’s voice cut through the haze. “Coffee’s done.”
Dev and Lacey all but leapt apart. Dev cleared his throat and turned back to the dough. “If we want more, we’d better get cracking. Shorty does his the old-fashioned way, and he’ll have people standing in line when morning comes.”
A tiny frown winked between her elegant brows. Dev saw the confusion in her eyes and wished he could make himself walk away from her right now. There was nothing confused about his body’s response to hers, nothing at all.
His mind was another matter altogether. Light and easy, Dev. Remember who she is, who you are. What she did.
So he busied himself finishing a batch for them, studiously trying to forget that she stood a heartbeat away. Then they each loaded a stack of paper towels with the fruits of their labor and moved to the table where two cups of coffee sat, leaving Shorty behind to go on with his work.
Dev watched her closely as she took her first bite of a donut almost too hot to touch.
Lacey closed her eyes in bliss, moaning softly. Dev’s body tightened at the sound. Then those witchy silver eyes opened, and she licked her lips. “That is the single best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life. Pure, raw sin. It surely must be illegal.”
Her smile was little short of wicked. “I’m going to eat at least a dozen.” She took another bite, and a breathy sigh escaped.