Her mouth watered. Both at the sight of the handsome man in his T-shirt and low-hanging shorts and the sizzling bacon he prepared. He wore his glasses, and she found them mind-blowingly attractive. In that Clark-Kent-I-want-to-rip-them-off-your-face-and-reveal-Superman-sort-of-way.
“Good morning.” His deep, velvety voice wrapped around her, making her tingle. “You want some breakfast? Coffee?”
“I’m not usually a big breakfast eater…” That was an understatement. She usually didn’t have time to eat breakfast. Slug back a few cups of coffee and deal with a rumbling stomach until lunch. And normally it was a late lunch where she shoved a sandwich down her throat at her desk in about twenty minutes time. “But that bacon looks delicious.”
He smiled at her, and her heart fluttered. “It melts in your mouth. What about some coffee? I have creamer too.”
“You think of everything,” she marveled as she went to the coffee maker. An empty cup sat in wait for her, and she poured the coffee, then added a few drops of vanilla creamer to lightly sweeten it.
“Like I said last night, I come here a lot during the summer so I like to keep stuff stashed here. We all do. It just makes the visits easier.” He pushed the bacon around with a spatula, shot a quick glance in her direction. “You don’t mind me being here do you? I can bail if you want after I finish breakfast. I don’t want to intrude. I mean, for all I know you might’ve invited someone else up here to spend the weekend with…”
Was he fishing for information? It sounded like he was fishing. And she really didn’t mind. “No, this was a weekend just for me. All by my little lonesome.”
He was silent for a moment before he finally spoke. “Right. So I should leave. I really don’t want to interfere with your plans.” He continued to push the bacon around with the spatula, then scooped it up and set it on a plate lined with a paper towel. “I’ll clean up, don’t worry and then I’ll be out of here.”
“No.” She spoke before she even thought, catching herself unaware, catching him unaware. His head jerked toward her, eyes narrowed, mouth firmed into a straight line. So, so serious, his expression was, reminding her of when he was a teen. Always looking as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Talk about needing to ease some tension. Maybe they could both scr
atch each other’s itch.
Ack, her train of thought was downright shocking her this morning.
“You don’t have to leave,” she said finally after she found her voice. “You can stay. I don’t have a problem with it. It’ll be like old times. We can catch up, hang out, whatever. What do you think?”
He smiled, and its appearance softened his serious expression of just a moment ago. She much preferred the smiling, handsome Tyler to the serious one. “If it’s like old times then I need to run off and pretend I didn’t want to hang out with you.”
“What do you mean, pretend?” Unable to help herself she went to the other side of the stove and snatched a piece of bacon from the plate, biting off half of it. Chewing, she closed her eyes, a little moan escaped her at the delicious salty, crunchy taste. When was the last time she had bacon? God, it was good.
A stifled strangled sound came from Tyler, and her lids snapped open. He was watching her, his expression now tortured. His cheeks turned a ruddy color, and he glanced away, seemingly embarrassed. “I never felt comfortable around you when we were kids.”
She frowned, finished off the bacon. She could eat ten more pieces of it at least. If he continued to cook like this she was going to gain ten pounds in two days. “You didn’t? Why not?”
“No, I didn’t.” He shook his head, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. “I can’t believe I’m confessing this but I had a major crush on you.”
“You did?” The words whooshed out of her on a single breath, making her chest hurt and she gaped at him. He’d had a crush on her? No way.
“Yeah, I did.” He smiled ruefully, ran his hand along his stubble-covered jaw. The sight of it made him look even more rugged and sexy if that was possible. “I had a major thing for you. But you never noticed me.”
“I did too. I mean, it’s not like I purposely ignored you or whatever. I just thought you were super shy. I thought maybe you didn’t even like me. All of us. I mean, I know my younger brother and sister were a pain in the ass so that’s why I thought you always took off. Since you’re an only child and not used to dealing with rotten siblings.” She was rambling, she could tell, but he’d blown her away with his confession. She didn’t know how to take it. Did he still have a crush on her?
Because she was quickly developing a major crush on him.
Crap, I sound like I’m sixteen years old again.
“It had nothing to do with your brother and sister.”
“So it was all me.” That made her feel kind of lame. That she had driven him away and made him spend a huge chunk of his summer isolated and all by himself.
“No, it was all because of me. Because I didn’t know how to deal with the crush I had on you when I should’ve just told you. At the very least, I should’ve spent time with you and gotten to know you better.” He shrugged those impossibly wide shoulders. “Live and learn right?”
She watched as he resumed his breakfast preparations. Pulling out a clean pan, then grabbing a few eggs from the fridge. He cracked them with quiet precision into a small bowl he’d pulled from the cupboard, then scrambled them with a few quick flicks of his wrist and a fork.
“I had no clue you had a crush on me,” she said, her voice low, shock coursing through her at the thought. God, she really had been clueless as a teen.
“You were beautiful.” He turned away from the stove to face her, his intense gaze locked on her face. “You are beautiful. Even more than you were when we were younger.”
Her heart stuttered to a complete stop. She couldn’t believe he said something so…sweetly earnest. Her skin warmed at his words, the look in his eyes. “I—I don’t know what to say.”