Goes down easy: Roped into romance by Alison Kent Page A

favorite foods in the world.”
    Book chose the beef. “I seem to remember that. The last time we ate dinner together it was Chinese. You and the spring rolls were inseparable.”
    “My weakness,” she said, sighing before biting down. “Mmm. I don’t know what it is, but I think I could live on these.”
    “When was the last time you had them?”
    She had to stop and think. “I believe it was the last time you brought them to me.”
    “Sounds like it’s absence making the stomach grow fonder.”
    She laughed. “Or it’s the company that makes everything taste so good.”
    Book chuckled, dug through the beef and came up with a sliver of bok choy. “If I didn’t know you as well as I do, Della Brazille, I’d think you were flirting with me.”
    She considered him over her bottle of beer. “Would that be a bad thing? If I were?”
    He stopped chewing. He stopped picking through the meat and the vegetables. He stopped moving altogether, for a time that seemed longer than she was able to wait.
    Finally, he set the carton of food on the table, his chopsticks sticking up like a television antenna, and cocked one knee as he shifted on the seat to face her.
    She started counting the beats of his pulse at his temple, but lost track long before he spoke. “What are you asking me, Della?” He shook his head to delay her answer. “I mean, I heard you. I just don’t know how honest you want me to be.”
    She closed her eyes because she already had her answer. She’d heard it in his words, in the tone he’d used when he’d spoken. But she’d seen it even more clearly in his expression, something she was certain he’d meant to hide.
    Her gift was both a blessing and a curse. And right now, as in the kitchen earlier with Jack, she wished she was blind to the energy she was picking up from Book.
    “It’s strange, isn’t it?” she asked, opening her eyes again and taking him in. “How long we’ve known each other. The horrors we’ve shared. Yet we’ve never really been honest as a woman and a man.”
    He hunched forward, his shoulders straining the fabric of his suit coat, and spread his hand on the seat cushion next to her leg, giving her the choice, to touch him, or not to touch him.
    “Is that what you want?” He flexed his fingers in the fabric. “Do you want me to tell you the truth? To admit how much you mean to me?”
    She placed her drink on the table at her side and straightened, covering his hand, wrapping her fingersaround his, then reaching up to caress his cheek. She didn’t say a word. All she did was touch him, feel him, sense him.
    And then he shook his head, a sly smile crossing his mouth. He turned his palm up and laced his fingers through hers. “I don’t have to tell you anything, do I? You already know.”
    “I know, yes,” she admitted, hearing his breath catch, his pulse pound harder and faster. “That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to hear it, anyway. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a man declare his feelings to me.”
    He brought her hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to the center of her palm. She couldn’t even begin to describe the winds of change sweeping through her.
    “I’ve never been very good at expressing myself with words,” he admitted, his voice tight, his tone gruff.
    Oh, but her heart was filled to the brim and on the verge of bursting. “That’s hard to believe, when you have such a very nice mouth.”
    He arched a brow. “Then let me use it to show you how I feel.”
     

    P ERRY WOKE with a jolt, uncertain what had startled her from sleep, feeling as if she were in an unfamiliar place when she knew that she wasn’t. She was sleeping in her bed. In her room. In her own home, surrounded by all of her things. And then she remembered.
    The thing that was different was Jack.
    When she’d told him she wanted him to stay the night, he hadn’t reacted. At least not in the ways herlimited experience with men had taught her to expect. He didn’t