“Aren’t you sweet,” she went on, her accent a bit thicker than usual as she cocked her head to one side. “Nash said it was a romantic dinner for two with you making your specialty.”
“I make pulled pork sandwiches.” Wow. Way to really romance her. Do you even understand the assignment here? It’s not to be a complete caveman. Do you even have an inner Nash or Dixon to charm her?
The short answer? No, he did not, never had, and never would.
Instead of being put off by the dinner announcement, though, her eyes lit up. “What kind of sauce?”
“I make my own. The latest is a mix of Memphis and Kansas City flavors with a dash of Carolina vinegar.”
“Oh my.” She raised herself up on her tiptoes and brushed a kiss along his jawline. “I might just marry you if you keep talking like that.”
Okay, she was joking. He knew that. His brain was still zooming into mental wedding-planning Excel spreadsheets, building on everything he’d put in there since she’d shown up at his gym and wrecked him for anyone else. He was still trying to swerve from deciding between a church wedding or a ceremony out at Gable House with the lake in the background when she gave him a real kiss. This one wasn’t soft. It wasn’t hesitant. It was the kind that teased, promised, and tormented all at the same time.
He went from shocked receiver to giving as good as he got in a heartbeat, letting his fingers get tangled in her long hair as he angled her face upward. All of him focused in on her. The way she opened beneath him, not surrendering so much as daring him. And when she broke the kiss and took a step back, her eyes hazy with lust and a self-satisfied grin on her face, he nearly growled his frustration.
That’s when it clicked. This wasn’t just the kind of hello-good-to-see-you-again-can-we-get-naked-soon kiss, as much as he hated to admit it. This was straight-up revenge for the elevator.
The knock-him-on-his-ass kiss.
The extra Southern in her accent.
The view of her in that dress as she walked down the hall to the kitchen, the sway of the material across her round ass leaving absolutely no question about the fact that Miss Sweet Little Ol’ Me wasn’t wearing panties.
Griff shoved his hands through his hair, willed his dick to calm the fuck down, and chuckled as he shook his head. The woman was forever a few steps ahead of everyone else, and he was here for it.
It only took two steps to catch up with her. The look she gave him told him she knew he knew and that it didn’t matter because she was going to make him pay for it. That was okay. He was here for that, too. He was here for whatever Kinsey wanted.
They made it a few steps into the kitchen when she pulled to a stop.
She let out a short gasp and turned to face him. “You make your own sauce, spend hours smoking the pork, and you have a box cornbread mix?”
The can of green beans and box of corn bread sat on the butcher-block island in the middle of his kitchen along with the tray holding the most gorgeous pork shoulder that he’d been smoking since early this morning. Okay, so maybe he was paying a little too much attention to the main course.
“Sides aren’t really my thing,” he said.
“Thank God I’m here.” She grabbed the dishtowel hanging from the door of his oven and tied it around her waist. “Tell me you have a cast-iron skillet.”
Griff opened up the cupboard underneath the stovetop and pulled out his seasoned cast-iron skillet that Grandma Betty had given him when he’d first started cooking.
“Bacon?” she asked.
He took out a pack of thick-cut hickory-smoked goodness.
She tipped over the boxed muffin mix. “Cornmeal?”
Figuring out where she was going with this, he grabbed the cornmeal out of the pantry along with the baking soda and salt.
Kinsey clapped her hands together and did a happy shimmy with her hips. “If you have eggs, butter, and buttermilk, we are in business.”
“The butter and eggs I have,” he said. “Let me run to the corner market for the buttermilk.”
She reached out and stopped him with her hand on his forearm before he could start for the door. “You have regular milk and lemon juice?”
He nodded.
“We can make it work.” She went up on her tiptoes and gave him a quick kiss, then did a spin move accompanied by clapping again. “Oh, this is gonna be fun.”
She started moving around his kitchen like she owned the place, setting him to work measuring ingredients for a recipe she knew by memory while she fried up the bacon—the bits for the green beans and the drippings for the cornbread skillet. By the time the corn bread was done, his kitchen smelled like heaven, and Kinsey’s cheeks were flushed with pleasure, giving him all sorts of ideas that had absolutely nothing to do with dinner.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Kinsey
If Meemaw had known that Kinsey had used the family cornbread recipe for sin, her grandma would have gone for her flyswatter.
Sure, maybe—just maybe—she could have convinced the woman who raised her that it was a mercy not to make Griff eat the boxed corn bread that he’d been planning to cook in a sheet pan, but it wasn’t likely. Meemaw knew what was what, which meant it was a damn good thing it was just Kinsey and Griff out on his balcony big enough that the studio apartment she’d looked at could fit on it, pretending to look for the Big Dipper when there was no way with all of Harbor City’s lights that they would have spotted a meteor on its way down to earth.
“I think that’s it,” he said, stepping behind her and coming up close while pointing at absolutely nothing in the sky.
It wasn’t an accident that the move put them exactly in the same position they’d been in on that elevator. Sure, she’d expected Griff to catch on to her game within five minutes of her sashaying through his front door—and he had, she was convinced of it—but he hadn’t even sorta acknowledged it until now. She’d thought he’d been lucky not to play into her hand. However, feeling the press of him against her back, the almost casual touch of his fingers resting ever-so-frustratingly lightly against her hips, and the tease of his hot breath against her ear made her realize it had actually been her who’d rubbed the leprechaun’s gold.
“And that has to be Venus,” he said.
That whisper-soft touch of his sent a shiver down her spine, and her eyes fluttered closed. “That’s Jupiter.”
The big, sexy jerk face chuckled against her sensitive skin. She didn’t have to guess why. At this time of year, they’d only be able to spot Venus in the morning if they were upstate, where a person could spot the stars because light pollution was minimal. Of course he’d know that. Jupiter at night. Venus in the morning, second only to the moon in brightness.