‘Guess.’ He flashed her a grin. Was he flirting? It certainly seemed like it. A better question would be why was he flirting? And why couldn’t he tear his eyes away from her pretty pink lips?
Kitty stared at him, her eyes narrowed. Her silent scrutiny was pain and pleasure in equal measure. ‘Hmm, an amateur would immediately choose salty. After all, men like savoury things, and you come across as very manly…’
He held his breath as she continued.
‘But even though you’re very bristly on the outside, I’d swear that somewhere deep within there’s a little boy with a very sweet tooth.’
He swallowed hard. ‘Have you been talking to my mother?’
She bit her lip, and it sent a shock straight to his gut. ‘No,’ she said, still rolling the plump pinkness between her teeth. ‘Should I?’
‘Oh no, not unless you want to hear stories about how I always used to wet the bed, and that my first words were cookie and sugar.’
Finally, Kitty smiled, and it felt as though he’d won a big victory. ‘Your mum sounds like a very interesting lady.’
‘Oh yeah, that she is.’
He could feel the blood rushing through his veins, his pulse audible in his ears. Had he really thought she was self-obsessed? Nearly every word that came out of her mouth was about somebody else: his mom, Jonas, Annie. He remembered her kindness earlier that evening when she’d decorated the hallway and dug out the old holiday DVDs his mom had stashed in the family room. Kitty was both sweet and sexy, a dangerous combination that made him want to know everything about her.
An hour later they carried the snacks up to his mom’s bedroom, where Jonas had already taken residence on the easy chair next to her bed. His legs were curled beneath him, and he was sucking at the tip of his thumb, in that familiar way he did.
Adam laid the bowls on the table beside his mom’s bed. ‘We’ve brought snacks,’ he told her.
His mom coughed loudly. ‘Who’s we?’
Adam flushed, realising nobody had bothered introducing Kitty to his mother. For some reason that bothered him, much more than it probably should. For a girl who only walked into his life a few days earlie
r, she’d made a big impression.
‘Mom, this is Kitty. She’s Jonas’s nanny.’ The explanation fell far short of what he wanted to say. He couldn’t think of another way to describe her, though.
‘Come here.’ Mary Klein’s words seemed more of a command than anything else. Kitty stepped forward, placing her hands in Mary’s outstretched ones. He watched as his mother squeezed them, her grasp still surprisingly strong in spite of her condition. ‘Jonas has told me a lot about you,’ he heard her whisper. ‘Thank you for taking such good care of him.’
His father and Annie joined them, carrying eggnog for the adults and a chocolate milk for Jonas. Adam cued up the movie, while Annie and his father made themselves at home on the small velvet couch in the corner of the room. With Jonas on the easy chair, that only left the floor, and Kitty sat down cross-legged at the left-hand side of the bed, placing her bowl of popcorn down on the plush floor before taking a sip of her drink. He switched the lights low, with only the glow of his mom’s machines casting any illumination in the room until the TV came to life.
‘You hogging the snacks?’ he whispered, sitting down on the floor next to her. Unlike Kitty, sitting cross-legged wasn’t a natural position for Adam. Instead he stretched his long legs in front of him, taking up much more floor space than she did. Without asking, he grabbed a handful of her popcorn, putting the salty sweet kernels into his mouth. She huffed indignantly and he tried not to grin.
‘Get your own popcorn, you snack thief,’ she whispered, batting his hand away when he went in for more. On his second attempt, she grabbed hold of his hand, and he automatically found himself circling his fingers around hers. Like the rest of their bodies, his hand dominated hers, and he watched with fascination as she tried without success to escape his grasp. There was something about the way her palm fitted so perfectly within his that meant he couldn’t tear his eyes away.
Then the opening credits began and she used his distraction to pull away from his hold, swatting him softly on the wrist when he tried to grab her again. It was strange, but there was an emptiness in him, as if he’d already gotten used to the feeling of her hand. He wanted it back, that sweet feeling of contentment, of her soft, warm skin against his.
Like a teenage boy, he started to plot, working out how best he could maintain contact between them. Between the cloak of darkness, and the fact they were on the floor out of everybody’s view, it was as though they were the only two people in the room.
Each time she reached for more popcorn, Adam did the same, using the opportunity to brush his hands against hers. Sometimes he’d grab the handful she was going for, forcing a sigh of aggravation from her lips that made him want to kiss them hard and long.
He was like a kid pulling braids. Annoying her seemed the only thing he could do, and if he was being honest, he was enjoying it immensely. So when she finally picked up the bowl and moved it to her other side, far away from his grasp, he happily used the opportunity to snake his arm around her waist and dip his hand into the bowl.
‘What are you doing?’ Her soft voice was a rush of warmth against his ear. He hadn’t realised they were quite so close.
‘I’m hungry,’ he whispered back, unable to keep the smile from his face. ‘You can’t waft all that goodness in front of me and then take it away.’
‘Get your own snack.’
‘I like yours better.’ He took another few kernels, using the opportunity to brush his hand against her back, causing her to shiver in a way that made him want more.
‘You’re so annoying.’ Kitty dug her elbow into his waist. But she didn’t sound annoyed at all. Instead she sounded a little breathless, and when he looked at her face, illuminated by the flickering screen, he could see her eyes were wide and her lips plump. If only there were more light he’d have sworn her cheeks were flushed, too.
She had no business being so goddamned pretty, but he was glad she was. Silhouetted against the opening scene of the movie, he could see her thick eyelashes flutter as she blinked, and the way her lips opened slightly when she breathed in. He felt the urge to touch them, to trace a finger along the swollen skin, to watch her eyes widen as he pushed a thumb into her mouth.