Katie looked at Cam, who rolled to his feet. “Thanks,” he said to Annie. “Good to know where we stand.”
Annie sighed and lost her attitude. “I’m sorry. I think you two are a colossally bad idea, but Stone told me I had to stay out of it. I didn’t know you were going to be here. She’s the only girl here and I need a girl night. And you…” She divided a look between them. “You two need a cooling-off period.” She shoved a brownie in Cam’s hand, then pushed him over the threshold and shut the door in his face. “There. I thought he’d never leave.”
Katie let out a breath and reached for the entire plate of brownies. So close. She’d been so close.
Chapter 10
By the crack of dawn, Annie was back in her kitchen making a boatload of sandwiches for Cam’s day trip to Diamond Ridge. She had her hands full of sliced sharp cheddar and fresh honey-baked ham when Nick stormed into the kitchen.
He yanked off his ski cap and slapped it down to the counter. He had the most god-awful hat hair, hadn’t shaved in at least two days, and his shirt was wrinkled. He looked ridiculously gruff and frustrated and disheveled, and just laying her eyes on him had butterflies executing summersaults in her belly. “What’s your problem?” she asked with as much disinterest as she could mutter.
“You. You’re my problem.”
Her belly flopped again, unpleasantly this time. He’d been her high-school sweetheart. Her college fling. The man of her dreams. They’d married young, and things had been great. And then they hadn’t, but it’d happened so gradually she hadn’t noticed until it’d been too late. She’d gotten lazy and had let things drift. And then she’d compounded the error by getting stupid on top of lazy, and she’d quit him.
And now he was quitting her.
All her fault, and she’d deal with that. Was trying to deal with that. “Well, soon enough I won’t be your problem at all. As soon as you sign the damn papers.”
He swore roughly beneath his breath. “Not what I meant, Annie.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“About what you said, about this me not seeing you shit.” He hesitated and looked at her the way he used to, with bewildered affection in the mix now. “I was thinking.”
“Yeah?”
“Is it something I could fix?”
Her heart actually skipped a beat and she dropped eye contact, busying herself with washing her hands. She’d been waiting and waiting for him to ask that question, and he never had-until now. “You’re a pilot and a mechanic. You fix stuff for a living. Theoretically, you’d be a cinch at fixing anything.”
“Goddammit, Annie. I need a direct answer.”
She went to work making coffee. “Yes,” she said after a minute, “I think you can fix it.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “Does that statement come with directions?”
She met his gaze. “I want you to know how to fix it.”
He let out a long breath. “I really hate that answer.”
“You know what I hate, Nick?” She set down the coffeepot rather than throw it at his head. “I hate the way you talk to me as if you don’t already know every single thing about me, the way I know everything about you, down to the fact that you’re probably wearing stupid boxers right this minute just because I can’t stand them.”
“I’m not-” He broke off, pulled out the waistband of his jeans to look, then sighed. “Okay, I am, but only cuz it’s laundry day.”
She shook her head and pointed to his. “I also hate the way you forget to comb your hair after you wash it and it falls over your eyes.” She rolled her eyes when he tried to pat it down. “I hate the way you can read my mind when I don’t want you to and not when I do want you to.” At that, the fight went out of her and she leaned back against the counter. “And I really hate that even with all that, I still don’t hate you. That I want you to fight for me.” Her throat burned, and defeated, she tossed up her hands. “I just want you to see me, Nick.”
“Ah, Annie.” His voice was soft and slightly gruff as his frustrated demeanor drained. “I see you every single day.”
“Then show it.” She so desperately needed that. “I need you to show it, Nick.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face while she stood there staring at him, yearning, aching. “I’ll try,” he said.
“That’d be really great.” She cleared her tight throat. “In return, I think it’s only fair that you give me something to work on. For you. To please you.”
She had the pleasure of surprising him; then an unmistakable wicked gleam came into his eyes and she had to laugh. “You’d actually want me that way?” she asked. “In bed? When we’re scarcely talking?”
“Hell yeah.”
Men. “How about outside the bedroom, Nick?”
“Anywhere,” he said fervently.
And she had to laugh. “I meant how about me pleasing you while not having sex?”
“Oh. Well…” He gave the question some thought, which was one thing she’d always loved about him. There was no subterfuge with Nick, no guessing at hidden meaning. If he was mad, she knew it. If he was happy, she knew it. No games.
“Maybe I want you to see me too,” he finally said.
She was still staring at him when Cam came into the kitchen. Annie had done her best to leave him out of this thing with her marriage as much as possible because dissension between her and Nick had always bothered him, and after all these years and in spite of the fact that he was a foot taller than her, he was still hers, a little, hurting kid who’d been given up by both his parents and needed protecting. Still protecting him, she managed a smile in his direction. “How was the brownie?”