Equilibrium by Lorrie Thomson Page A

when he was standing so close. “The music was beautiful.” He was beautiful. “You should write it down.” She should stop offering unbidden advice. “I could let you know when the cookies are done, if you like.” She turned to leave.
    “Um, Laura.” He waited for her to turn toward him. This time she held his gaze, and he grinned. “Do you . . . would you like some company?”
    “Sure.” She exhaled her response, and it came out all breathy, as if she were trying to sound sexy. Either sexy or asthmatic.
    “I’ll just be a minute.” He scrabbled up the loft ladder, and she stared at the ascent of his fantastic firm-looking bottom. He peered over the railing and nodded toward his bicycle on the indoor training stand, the source of the early morning whirring sounds. “Great shop Troy brought me to. Way better than driving into Manchester.”
    Who? Laura touched her face, reconnecting with the anchor of reality and translating the boy’s name: Troy, her son, the other bike enthusiast. “Glad it worked out,” she said. Now they’d have to work on Darcy.
    Aidan nodded and climbed down the loft ladder, shrugged into a white T-shirt. The apartment’s radiator clanged into gear, even though the temperature was kept a steady ten degrees warmer than the rest of the drafty house. Laura chanced a last peek at his chiseled abs, imagined touching his heated skin.
    Just make the cookies, Laura.
    In the kitchen, she threw on the overhead light, not wanting the room to reflect any of the inappropriate notions flowing not so much through her mind but through her body.
    A buzzing sound, and Aidan slipped his cell from his back pocket. On call at Memorial? He checked who was phoning, shook his head, and pocketed the cell.
    Aidan opened and closed his hands at his sides. “How can I help?”
    She uncovered the hill of melded dough she’d pulled from the fridge and tilted her chin toward the right-hand cabinet. “You can take out the parchment paper for me.”
    “Will do.” Without her asking, he tore off two strips of the brown paper and laid them on the waiting cookie sheets.
    His mother must’ve taught him well.
    “When I was a kid, my mother and four sisters used to bake every Sunday. Parchment was the extent of my job. That and eating. I excelled at the eating,” he said, as if reading her mind.
    Laura paused with her hands in the silverware drawer, rewinding to the last words she’d said out loud. Take out the parchment paper didn’t segue naturally to Aidan’s comment about his mother. “And your dad? Does your dad cook?” Jack had left anything remotely kitchen-related to her. He’d scurry through to pinch a taste of whatever she was cooking, and then throw his hands up and back out of the room.
    “Yes.” He gave the parchment an extra press into the baking sheet. “My dad cooked . He passed away . . . let’s see, I was fifteen. So, wow, thirteen years ago.” He smiled. “Doesn’t seem like that long ago.”
    “I’m sorry about your dad.” Even an old loss deserved condolence. Laura added this new information to the Aidan file. Becoming the man of the house at fifteen explained even more than his unexpected foray into emergency medicine at thirteen. No wonder her son was warming to Aidan.
    Laura left the teaspoons on the counter and reached past Aidan into the cabinet. Then, hands clasped around pastry bags, she tensed with the full-body-tingle feeling of being watched, of Aidan’s warm gaze sliding from her braid to her waist and lingering on her backside before gliding back up her spine. She turned back around and couldn’t mistake his half grin, the facial expression equivalent of a shrug.
    Or she could be losing her mind.
    Aidan held up a spoon and a pastry bag. “What do I do with these?”
    “Spoon dough into the opening?” she said.
    “Like this?” Aidan scooped dough and played at trying to force the dough through the smaller opening.
    She shook her head, laughed, and shoveled