Looking at Dax isn’t any easier on my self-control. His T-shirt is wrinkled, and it makes me wonder if he slept in yesterday’s clothes like I did. His eyes have that familiar sparkle back in them as he moved around my kitchen with ease, and for the first time in my life, I have the urge to… hug someone. He looks so warm and comfortable while he stands barefooted in front of me. I want to slide my arms around his waist and press my cheek against his chest. I want to close my eyes and breathe, stand still for a minute, not be dragged in a million different directions, and just let someone take care of me for once.
But that’s not me, that’s not my life, and this is all just too fucking confusing.
“You better start talking before I really do shoot you,” I reiterate, all of this hot guy, Susie Homemaker stuff messing with my head.
Dax sighs, dropping his arm to go back and grab a bowl of cut-up fruit from the counter, walking it over and setting it down next to the bacon. My stomach growls so loudly I’m sure the neighbors can hear it. Dax definitely hears it, and of course it makes him smirk. Lucky for him, he starts talking before I start walking toward the gun safe in my room.
“I’m in your house this morning, because I never left your house last night,” he begins, my mouth dropping open in shock. “You were dead to the world on the floor, so I carried you to bed and tucked you in, figuring I’d have your dad give me a lift back to The Backyard. Made a pit stop in the bathroom, did a quiz from an old magazine to find out if my shoe choices match my sexual appetite, and by the time I came back out to the living room, your dad and brother had already left.”
“And you didn’t think maybe calling an Uber or a taxi was a good idea?” I fire back, pushing away the mental image of Dax carrying me in his arms and carefully removing my flannel shirt and boots without waking me, before I do something stupid like make out with him as a thank you.
I don’t even know why I’m so annoyed. It’s not like Dax is a stranger. I might not know exactly what’s gone on with him the last few years, but I know he’s not a psycho serial killer. It’s not like I woke up chained to my bed and covered in chicken blood while Dax jerked off in the corner of the room, holding a picture of Ralph Macchio in his hand. I woke up to a new kitchen table and a fucking frittata.
I like it. That’s why I’m so annoyed.
“I did call for an Uber. And then I started to head out the front door to wait for it and realized you have a deadbolt that only locks from the inside. There is no way in hell I was going to leave you here alone all night with your front door unlocked,” he explains, pulling out one of the chairs and gesturing for me to sit down. “So, I came back inside, locked the door, cancelled the Uber, and slept on the couch.”
“Did you go through my underwear drawer, watch me while I slept, or do any other pervy things I should know about?”
“Before or after I jerked off in your closet with one of your kitchen towels?” Dax humors me.
“It was in my corner with a picture of the Karate Kid, thank you very much.”
“What?” he chuckles.
“Nothing.” I wave my hand at him and shake my head, wondering why I can never stay mad at this man.
“Will it make you feel better if I make a pervy comment about the fancy lace bra I had to step over out in your hallway last night?”
“No.” I glare at him, pretending like my cheeks aren’t heating in embarrassment.
“All righty then. Any more questions, or can we finally eat now?”
I try really hard to come up with another argument about why he absolutely should not have spent the night at my house, but I can’t. That damn warm and gooey feeling is back, and it won’t go away. The man slept on my old, uncomfortable futon without a pillow or blanket all night, just because he didn’t want to leave me, a former police detective who owns multiple handguns, alone in my unlocked house all night. I should be pissed and indignant that he just assumed I needed a man to take care of me, but my stupid warm and gooey ass just plops right down into the chair he’s still holding out for me to take, because… food.
“I’m always up before the sun to check on the animals anyway, so after I made some calls to The Backyard for updates earlier, I asked Ryan, the employee scheduled for an interview with us later this morning, to run to the store and bring some stuff here,” Dax continues as he starts filling my plate up with food before doing the same with his own plate. “I was just gonna have him stick around until you woke up to do the interview, but one of the alpacas he’s been working with went into labor, so he needed to go back. And before you get all bent out of shape thinking I bought you a kitchen table, it was an extra that’s been down in the basement in storage at the sanctuary. I had Ryan throw it in the back of his truck, because I’m almost forty. I’m too old and too classy to eat frittata on the fucking floor. Now, can we eat, or do you want to continue starving just because you’re mad?”
I’m not a complete idiot, so I quickly swallow two aspirins from the bottle he put on the table for me then dig into my food, giving up on being pissed at him for the time being. When I get my first taste of the frittata, I don’t even remember what I was mad about to begin with. And when Dax grabs a sheet pan s’more, leans over, and forces me to take a bite, I consider asking him to live on my futon forever.
“Where in the hell did you learn to cook like this?” I question around a mouthful of graham cracker, nutty chocolate, and toasted marshmallow, not even a little ashamed I grabbed the s’more out of his hand, another one from the plate, and am currently double-fisting them.
Dax picks up a slice of buttered toast from the pile stacked neatly on a small plate in front of him, taking a bite before answering me.
“I was alone a lot growing up, since my dad worked so much. We had a chef. Her name was Alice, and she was from France,” he says, pausing to stab his fork into a piece of watermelon from the fruit salad and pop it into his mouth. “I never understood a word she said to me most of the time, but she was nice, and she let me hang out in the kitchen with her and do my homework. She taught me how to cook and bake in between my work, and by the time I started high school French, I was fluent.”
We’re quiet for a few minutes while we eat until he speaks again.
“Does it make me sound like a douchebag when I say I had a French chef growing up?”
“Absolutely, 100 percent,” I reply without missing a beat, which makes him laugh.
“And that’s exactly why I don’t want to tell the employees I own The Backyard now. Because I’d also have to tell them my daddy bought it for me,” he mutters, showing the first sign of annoyance since I walked in here with a baseball bat over my shoulder.
Setting my fork down, I finish chewing my food like a lady for once before I talk. “Okay, so maybe he was a shitty father, and he was never there for you, and he sucks at communicating, but he bought you an animal sanctuary. It would have been great if he supported your dreams and did this for you when you were younger, but he didn’t. And you can’t change that. He’s doing it now, and that’s all that matters. For your mental well-being, and for your employees, so they stop peeing themselves every time you speak to them, I think you need to just say thank you, let it go, and move on.”