Bam.
“My nose is higher than yours,” he said.
She lifted her chin a fraction. “It’s not. I’m looking down at your eyes.”
He tipped his forehead forward until it touched hers, and the bridges of their noses aligned.
It wasn’t sexual contact, or even sexy, and yet time slowed. All her senses filled up with Ben. His breath on her mouth. His warm forehead against hers. The smell of soap and end-of-the-day male.
“Let’s measure again.” She turned back around and waited for him to do the same, because it was safer to press her shoulders to his. Safer to push the back of her skull against Ben’s and feel him without having to see him, too.
“May?”
“Yes?”
“We’re exactly the same height when you wear those boots.”
Given the alignment of every single part of her body with every single part of his, she thought he must be right about that.
“I honestly don’t have an opinion on that, positive or negative,” he said.
“Okay.”
“I do have a number of dirty thoughts.” He waited a beat. “You want to hear them?”
Of course she wanted to hear them. And yet she hesitated, because she wasn’t sure how they’d gotten here again, and so quickly. Weren’t they supposed to be awkward right now? Deep into serious conversation or argument, rather than ignoring all that stuff in favor of this physical flirtation?
“I’m—I’m not sure.”
“All right,” he said calmly. “Just let me know when you do.”
“You’re giving me a rain check on your dirty thoughts?”
“Exactly.”
The word stroked over her collarbones and dragged down her eyelids. He shifted. His arm nudged her waist.
“I’m sorry I kissed you.”
“You said.”
“Are you?”
“Sorry?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“No.”
A long pause. “Does that mean I can do it again?”
“Do you want to?”
She felt movement, and then his breath hit the back of her neck. His hands slid over her shoulders and down her arms. Up again. A light touch that made her shiver. “Yes.”
She closed her eyes. Was she waiting for him to turn her around and kiss her, or was she waiting to make up her own mind? She didn’t know.
She only knew that she felt safe here, surrounded by the fragrance of soap and damp dryer lint and Ben’s body. Despite everything, and even though it didn’t make any sense.
“Hey, May?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you staying?”
“I haven’t decided.”
She had, though. It would take a powerful force to drag her away from him.
“Hey, Ben?” Her eyes were still closed.
“Yeah?”
“What happened? With Sandy?”
She felt the tension come into him, charging all the atoms in the air between them. Part of her wanted to retract the question, but that part of her had no place here, with him. That part of her needed to stay out of it.
Ben stepped away.
She turned around to see him rub his palm over his head. “She doesn’t go by Sandy Hausman anymore. She goes by Alessandra Alesci.”
He said the name carefully, as though she might recognize it. “Should I know who that is?”
“It would be nice if you didn’t.”
But Alessandra Alesci—she’d heard the name before, hadn’t she? “Give me a hint.”
“You ever shop at Shaker Prospect?”
Oh.
Oh.
“She’s the one with the cookbook and the spatulas and all that?”
“One and the same.”
May occasionally bought gifts at the Shaker Prospect store at the mall. Alesci’s smiling face graced a number of products, her name endorsing a premium line of gourmet sauces and powdered mixes—everything from steak sauce to orange-poppyseed scones.
“I think I bought my mom her cookbook last Christmas,” she said.
“My cookbook.”
“The one where she’s on the cover with the striped apron?”
“I wrote it. Most of it anyway. But Sandy’s name sells more books.”
“You’re a …” A ghostwriter? A cook? She wasn’t sure how to end the sentence. This conversation had taken her out of her depth.
“I’m a chef.”
She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.
“No wonder you can cook,” she said finally.
The dryer buzzed, and she was grateful for the excuse to step away from him. His proximity made her too warm; the conversation, too confused. She needed space and air.
She opened the dryer door and squeezed a sock. Dry.
Ben helped her pile the warm clothes onto a countertop, and they began to fold them, side by side.