He saw me through the glass, gaze drifting from my face to my toes then back up, and I watched as his eyes warmed, his expression relaxed, and he smiled. That smile had me freezing in place because it was huge and unapologetic . . . or maybe that wasn’t quite the right word, because it was more like that grin lit up his face, removed any walls and barriers, and gave me a peek at something soft and vulnerable underneath.
And clearly, I was delusional if I thought I could read that much from a quirk of the lips.
Either way, I stood staring at him for far too long because he, still smiling, pointed to the door.
“Oh,” I murmured, shaking my head slightly and reaching for the knob.
Doh. It would help to actually let the man whom I invited for dinner into my house. I flipped the lock and tugged open the door.
“Hi.”
As far as greetings went, it wasn’t the most original, but it tended to get the job done.
“Hi,” he murmured.
Good. We were on the same level.
Inwardly snorting, I invited him in, taking the little potted Christmas tree he extended.
“I thought that since you’d just moved into the area, you might not have had time to decorate . . .” His words trailed off as he spun to take in my living room, which had been absolutely plastered with Christmas décor.
I like Christmas, okay?
Well, scratch that. I love Christmas, and when I’d moved out of the house Frank and I had bought—thankfully also the reason we’d put off our wedding for a year since our entire wedding fund had turned into house fund—I’d taken all of our Christmas stuff.
And because I loved the holiday, I had a lot.
Three artificial trees.
Twelve nutcrackers in various sizes.
Glittery wreaths and ribbons and festive tea towels. Pine-scented candles, strands of cranberries and popcorn, and—
Oh crap. It looked like my house had vomited up St. Nick. Which might be fine for someone I knew, someone who understood that my crazy extended to strictly this holiday and that I did not, in fact, have a shrine to all things Father Christmas in my bedroom.
But for this beautiful man, who was gorgeous enough to be gracing the silver screen, who was as sexy as a young Denzel Washington, and who definitely had that hint of his badassness from The Equalizer, me vomiting up St. Nick was less cool.
I bit my lip when he glanced back, eyes wide. “I don’t think you need that—” he began and reached as though to take it back.
“No!” I said, clutching it to my chest. “No take-backs.”
That smile again.
A curl of heat slid through my stomach, traipsing north and making my nipples bead against the cotton of my bra, but also maneuvering south, coiling between my thighs and dampening the material there.
“No take-backs?” he asked.
“Uh-uh,” I muttered, still hugging the tree and neatly side-stepping him, just to make sure he didn’t attempt to wrestle the tiny conifer from my grasp.
I had the perfect spot on my mantle, and I moved that way, shifting a couple of the nutcrackers to one side, straightening the festive fabric I’d draped there, and then settling the adorable little tree there.
Smiling, I touched one of the tiny gold globes that hung from a branch.
“I don’t think I’ve heard anyone use the term take-back since high school,” he said quietly, coming to my side, though his eyes were on my mantle. “Also, not sure if I should be worried by the sheer volume of nutcrackers you own, darlin’.”
I turned to face him. “What’s your name?”
Amusement in his deep brown eyes. “Brent.”
“Brent what?”
“Collins.” A beat. “And you’re Iris what?”
“Hannigan.”
Another smile. “So we’ve got Brent Collins and Iris Hannigan in a house where Christmas exploded, and Iris possesses a shit-ton of nutcrackers that she can use to keep me in check if I get out of line.”
I snorted. “They’re purely for decorative purposes.”
His eyes drifted down and back up. “That pretty little apron purely decorative, too?”
Him mentioning my apron had me gasping and sprinting for the kitchen as I remembered. “My pie!”
I loved baking and cooking and actually had a commercial kitchen just a couple of blocks away. It was part of the reason I’d moved into this neighborhood, part of the reason I’d put a full year’s rent down on this cottage when I’d seen it. Even if the house hadn’t been adorable and the commercial kitchen being rented from the same real estate company, being able to use my half of the proceeds from the sale of the house Frank and I had owned for something positive had been a major selling point. Being able to bake in a space that wasn’t my own kitchen was another, especially when my contract with the local supermarkets for the last four years had recently expanded, as well as my online sales growing almost faster than I could keep up with.
What I didn’t do was burn stuff.
Until today.
My face fell when I pulled out the cookie sheet with the tray of mini pies I’d baked.
Four because I loved pie.
Mini because I figured with only the two of us, we wouldn’t be able to eat four entire pecan, cherry, pumpkin, and chocolate custard pies.
Four that had now become one.
Because only the chocolate was chilling in the fridge. The pecan, the cherry, and the pumpkin were . . . charcoal.
Not over-caramelized. Not golden brown on the edges.
Charcoal.
I stared at the once-pretty pies, the handcrafted crust, the lovely wreath decorations I’d cut out and strategically placed on the pumpkin, the Christmas tree on the pecan, the dancing gingerbread men on the cherry . . .
All charcoal.
Stupidly, my eyes stung.
It was only food, only dinner for a man I’d just met, only—
The cookie sheet and pot holder disappeared from my hand, was plunked onto the counter. Before I could protest to put it on a trivet, I found myself tugged toward the sink, and my fingers shoved under a stream of cool water.
I hadn’t even realized they were stinging until the cold soothed the hurt.
But then the hurt was gone, and then the hurt ceased to exist. Because Brent was very close. His scent surrounded me, the masculine spice warming me from the inside out. I found myself taking a deep inhale, pulling the smell into my lungs, wanting to etch it on my soul so I could drop back into this moment any time I wanted.
Or perhaps, slightly less painfully, I could attempt to bottle it.
Both thoughts were impossible.
Both thoughts gave evidence for why I had lost my mind . . . and my filter.
“How in the world is it fair that you’re so beautiful?” I blurted, staring up at the strong lines of his jaw and nose, the warm amber of his eyes. He was sporting a little stubble today, and I wanted to run my palm over it, feel the roughness catch my skin.
I was so caught up in the scent of him, in imagining my hands on his face and body, that it took my mind a moment to catch up with my words.
My eyes flicked to his face, saw his expression was unfathomable.
Probably looking for a quick exit. Frank had always tended to disappear when I went off on one of my tangents. And my tangents hadn’t been anything like me wanting to etch someone’s scent on my soul or blurting out how beautiful someone was—though Brent was definitely in the gorgeous A-list celebrity bent. They’d been more along the lines of should I risk adding a dash of nutmeg to my apple pie recipe or is that too far out there?