Fire Me Up (16 page)

Adrian unlocked the door to his apartment, ushering Teagan inside the tiny, bare-bones foyer that matched the rest of the place before pulling the door shut behind them. He'd known when he came up with this idea that he was playing with fire, but her words from last night reverberated through him, pushing past his well-placed defenses in a way that was impossible to ignore.

He
hadn't
cooked for himself in far too long. And while he might not be ready to put his shit-kickers on that path yet, he could sure as hell cook for her. Even if it was just for tonight.

“You don't have to babysit me, you know,” Teagan said, yanking him from his thoughts with her infuriatingly sexy frown. “Contrary to popular belief, I can manage a night off.”

“Eating a frozen dinner while doing enough Internet research on street fairs to make your eyes bleed doesn't count as a night off.” Adrian turned and took the five meager steps needed to reach his kitchen, forcing himself to focus on the food rather than the ripe curve of Teagan's pout. “So if it's all the same to you, why don't I cook some dinner so you can actually relax?”

Her frown intensified. “You're not supposed to cook.”

“No, I'm not supposed to lift anything heavy, remember? But you've got medical training. I'm sure you'll keep me in line.”

For a second, Adrian just watched her from his spot at the kitchen counter. Jesus, she was a work of art, all deep, sinful hips and sexy curves. She stared back at him, amber eyes unflinching, before she finally gave a nod.

“Suit yourself. But you try and pick up anything heavier than a glass of water and we're going to have a go.”

Relief spread out in his chest, leaving a dark chuckle in its wake. “Fair enough. I'll even give you the best seat in the house.” He canted his head toward the other side of the counter, where the small breakfast bar separated the kitchen from the rest of his paltry living space.

“This looks like the only seat in the house,” she flipped back, hooking her fingers under the polished wood of the bar stool while swinging one impossibly long leg over the seat. “Do you have some kind of moral objection to furniture?”

“I'm not really ever here to use much of anything.” Adrian grabbed the bag of potatoes he'd picked up earlier this morning at Joe's Grocery and one-handed the thing open. His place might not be all decked out, but he had the necessities. Most of them were in the kitchen cabinets.

Of course, Teagan didn't let up. “Well, yeah, but come on. No pictures on the walls, no curtains over the blinds. You don't even have a couch.”

“I don't need a couch.” He flipped the kitchen faucet with a shrug, testing the running water with the back of his free hand. “Having too much stuff just makes it harder when you move, anyway.”

“If a couch is too much of a commitment, you could start small, you know,” she said with a brassy smile that could stop crime. Christ above, he was never going to get used to the heat coming off of this woman.

“Small, huh?” He pulled back on the urge to clear his throat even though his voice sounded like forty-grit sandpaper. “Like just a throw pillow?”

“No offense, but you don't strike me as the throw pillow type. I'm thinking more along the lines of a house plant.”

Adrian barked out a laugh. “Better make it a cactus unless you want me to kill the thing.”

“Tough and prickly. Now that does seem more your speed.” Teagan propped her elbows on the time-scuffed breakfast bar, her gaze flickering over the kitchen before landing on him with a hint of curiosity. “So, um, what are you cooking?”

She nodded down at the potato in his hand. It glistened under the steady stream of water from the sink, and Adrian cupped the vegetable in his palm, moving the fingers of his unhurt hand over the hard flesh in sure, even strokes to remove the residual dirt.

“Gnocchi. Have you ever had it before?” He finished with the potato in his grasp, admiring the imperfect texture and the heaviness of it before trading it for another one. Damn, the ten days he'd gone without food in his hands felt more like ten years.

And the time he'd gone without actually listening to the food as he cooked felt like pure eternity.

“No.” Teagan fastened her steady stare over his hands, but the waver in her voice gave her away. “My mother did a lot of French cuisine, really old-school classical dishes. We had coq au vin up to our eye teeth, but Italian food, not so much. Is it complicated?”

“Are you kidding? Four ingredients, that's it.” He finished with the potatoes and put them in a stockpot, barely covering them with water from the tap. “Gnocchi is a cross between pasta and potato dumplings. Total comfort food. My
nonna
used to make it all the time.”

Teagan slid from her spot across from him at the counter, all swaying hips and
dare me
bravado as she moved next to him and curled her fingers around the handles of the stockpot. “I'm sure it's good then.”

“It is. What are you doing?”

One fiery brow popped. “No lifting. Where do you want this?”

She was close enough for him to catch the warm scent of rosemary riding the air around her, and okay, this was going to be an exercise in self-restraint.

“Front burner's fine.” Adrian stepped back as she slid the stockpot over the burner grate with a muted scrape. “Might as well do the other one now, too.” He filled a second, larger stockpot with water from the sink before stepping back to let Teagan angle it over an adjacent burner. But as soon as the task was done, she retreated to her spot at the breakfast bar, clearly wanting no part of the kitchen unless it was absolutely necessary.

“It sounds like your
nonna
was a great lady,” Teagan said, her voice soft yet serious. “You must miss her.”

“Yeah.”

Nonna
's ancient kitchen in Brooklyn, with the harvest gold refrigerator circa 1972 and the lovingly worn Formica countertops, flashed through Adrian's mind's eye, the image fresh as loaves of bread on the windowsill. The pang in his chest told him to shut up, that he was supposed to be making her dinner, and revealing all his down-deep feelings like this wasn't part of the deal. But the look on Teagan's face, along with how much she seemed to hate cooking because of her mother, struck him with startling clarity.

She needed to believe something good could come out of the kitchen, and he had the power to show her.

“My biological mother left me on the front steps of a church in Queens when I was nine days old,” Adrian said, the words surprisingly easy in his mouth. “Family Services tried to find her, but in a city like New York, it was wasted effort. Clearly, she didn't want to be found, so I became a ward of the state.”

Teagan didn't say anything, but a flicker of understanding lit her expression, and it pulled more of the story right on out of him.

“I was almost adopted twice. The first time things fell through, I was still a baby, so I don't remember any of what happened, and nobody ever told me the details. But the second time was . . . different.” He swallowed hard, bracing for the inevitable pity party that came whenever people heard a story like his.

But Teagan just said, “How old were you?”

“Six. I lived with the family for about a month. But I had trouble getting used to having a permanent home after all that time in the system.”

“It must not be easy, being placed after six years of living in foster homes.”

Damn, her matter-of-fact demeanor and see-everything eyes were going to upend him, they really were. “Yeah, but I wouldn't even unpack my clothes, let alone play with the other kids in the neighborhood or go to school. I kept thinking I'd wake up and Family Services would tell me I had to go somewhere else, so I just kept to myself, you know? Waiting.”

“What happened?” Teagan asked.

“The couple eventually decided they wanted a kid with no ‘adjustment issues,' so they sent me back into the system.”

This time she flinched. “God, Adrian, I'm so sorry.”

He stemmed her apology with a wave, twisting the thick knobs on the cooktop. The telltale
click-click-click
of the gas burner popped against his nerves, but it was quickly followed by the
whoosh
of dancing blue flames that always calmed him.

“I'm not. If that stuff hadn't happened, I wouldn't have ended up living with my
nonna
. And if she hadn't adopted me, I never would've figured out where I really belong.”

“She taught you how to make this?” Teagan pointed to the cooktop, leaning in close enough for Adrian to see the genuine interest playing over her features.

“My
nonna
could make gnocchi with her eyes closed, literally. She taught me how to do more than just taste food to know whether or not I'd gotten it right. For her, it was all about the feel of it under her hands, the smells . . . the whole experience mattered, start to finish.”

“My mother used to be so serious about cooking. I mean, there was no doubt she loved it. But I think she took it as more of a personal challenge than a labor of actual love.”

Ah. Well that explained where the stubborn came from. “
Nonna
took cooking seriously too, just in a different way. For her, it was about listening to the food. Really letting it nurture her
and
the people she cooked for.”

“Yeah.” Teagan's eyes went wide for a single breath before slamming shut, and when she reopened them, they were brimming over with
don't touch
. “That was a bit of a foreign concept in my house.”

“You want a glass of wine?”

“What?” She blinked, but no way was he going to let go of distracting her now. Plus, if anything could divert her attention and make her relax it was a bottle of wine and a kickass meal.

“Call it an exercise in relaxation. Are you in?” He put just enough mustard on the words to make them a dare, knowing she'd bite. But her stress was going to swallow her whole if she didn't offload some of it. Teagan wouldn't last three days, let alone three more weeks, at the pace she'd been carving out.

She paused. “Wine's not really my thing, remember?”

“Mmm. You'll like this.” Adrian watched the flare grow in her eyes as he slid a bottle of merlot from the adjacent pantry, returning to the work space to unearth a corkscrew from a drawer. “Come on, I'll even let you uncork it. What do you say?”

Teagan unfolded her curves-and-attitude frame from the bar stool, but she didn't hesitate to reenter the kitchen. Her movements challenged him right back as she curled her fingers around the bottle, easing the sharp, silver point of the corkscrew into the cork without looking.

“I say you're awfully presumptuous.”

It didn't come out sounding like a compliment, and heat stirred low in Adrian's gut before heading south. He knew that daring her into the kitchen, even with good intentions, was a bad plan. Experience told him putting two volatile things too close together only meant they were bound to explode. But then she looked up at him with a slow and sexy smile on her decadent mouth, and damn it, part of him wanted to watch her ignite.

“If you want to insult me, you're going to have to do better than that. I've heard the presumptuous thing once or twice before.” Adrian pulled the wineglasses he'd borrowed from the Double Shot from a cupboard, placing them just far enough away on the counter that Teagan would have to take a step closer to pour.

If he was going to get her into the kitchen, he might as well go all freaking in.

The cork gave a soft pop as she released it from the mouth of the bottle, and she inclined her head at him in thought. “Okay. How does pompous ass suit you?”

Damn, he wanted this woman more than he wanted his next freaking breath. “Barely lukewarm, Red.”

“Egotistical cretin?” Teagan asked, the words sounding strangely seductive in her throaty voice as she cut the space between them to pour.

“Ah, getting warmer.”

Her hip brushed against his, ever so slightly as she leaned in to place the bottle on the counter, pulling back to return to the breakfast bar. Adrian let out a breath, sliding one of the glasses toward her before lifting the other to take a sip. The rich notes of the wine slid across his palate and lingered, heady and smooth on his tongue, and he edged closer to the counter, watching her.

“Getting warmer, huh? Hmm.” Teagan tapped a finger against her lips in thought before brightening. “Narcissistic muttonhead,” she offered, folding her hands in front of her with an angelic smile.

Adrian's laugh came from deep in his chest. “Well done. Now you're hot.”

The corners of Teagan's strawberry-red mouth twitched upward into a smirk that sparked through his blood, and she nodded down at the stove. “And it looks like you're boiling.”

Understatement. Of. The. Year.

“Okay, wine boy,” Teagan said, holding on to her smile as she took the glass of merlot in her hand. “Do I need to do anything highbrow before I drink this?”

“Hold the glass up to your lips and breathe in first,” Adrian said, moving to gather more ingredients from the narrow pantry by the refrigerator.

“You're always this bossy in the kitchen, aren't you?”

He didn't hesitate. “Yes.” She scoffed softly, but he continued before she could work up a smart comment. “In order to enjoy a good glass of wine, you have to do more than taste it. You've got to gather it in and make it a part of you.”