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When she rapidly swallows, I race for the door, snatch up the bucket Ark left there, and then bolt back to her bed with only half a second to spare.
“Mo-Mommy,” Tillie cries through a hiccup when the brutal heaves surging through her body spring tears into her eyes. She hates being sick almost as much as she hates when I am right. “I shouldn’t have eaten so much cake.”
“You’re okay, sweetheart. Mommy is right here.” I gesture for her to scoot over before joining her on her bed, completely forgetting that I have an unexpected visitor waiting for me in my kitchen.
Desperate to take Tillie’s focus off the mess in the bucket, I ask, “What will John think when he finds out you went and got yourself a new crush?”
“I think he’ll be okay,” she replies through a yawn. “Because I don’t want Ark to be my boyfriend…” Her eyes express the words she’s too afraid to speak.
I want him to be yours.
6
MARA
By the time I have Tillie settled, the bucket is half-full, and my neck is kinked. I sling my legs off a bed too small for two, stretch out, and then release a big breath. Signs of the fatigue headache that threatened to surface half the day are nowhere near as bad now. They’ve almost entirely vanished, which is surprising considering the unusual smell in the air.
My body is weird. It can handle inhaling chemically laced cleaning products all day, but something as simple as too much basil on a croissant instigates a migraine.
When I take a whiff of the peculiar scent, my brows stitch. It’s not a smell I’ve sampled before. It isn’t sweet like the slosh in the bottom of the bucket, more pungent like burning hair or…green beans?
My heart leaps when the fire alarm sounds half a second later.
Tillie is so heavily asleep that my launch off her bed doesn’t wake her. She snuggles deeper into her pillow as I race in the direction from which the rancid scent is coming.
I’m taken aback for the second time in under a minute when my entrance into the kitchen doesn’t bring me face-to-face with an unmanageable inferno.
A six-foot-three hunk with his sleeves rolled to his elbows and his brows furled, though—there’s one of them.
Ark’s eyes shoot to mine when my shadow falls over the saucepan blooming enough smoke to warrant multiple windows and a door being opened. Guilt is hardening his features. It’s barely seen through his embarrassment, though.
“I was trying to make Tillie some soup.” He grimaces while taking in the product, which is burned to the bottom of the pot. “It’s been a while since I’ve cooked. I only remembered thatafterI started cooking.”
I almost laugh at the sheer disgust on his face that he is incapable of heating a can of premade soup, but the tea towel he’s using to fan smoke out the open kitchen window catching fire stops me.
The setting of my ancient oven is too high.
Flames are licking the edges of the saucepan instead of heating its base.
Ark tugs the tea towel away from the stovetop when he notices the flames. “Shit. I swear I am trying to help.”
“In the sink,” I shout when his flap almost causes the curtains to set alight. “Put it in the sink.”
He hooks the tea towel into the sink like his business shirt is a pitcher’s jersey as I tug up the faucet. I blast the flames with bitterly cold water before shifting my focus to the cause of its incineration.
With the apron part of my uniform, I lift the saucepan from the stovetop and carefully edge it toward the sink. My penny-pinching heart feels sick when I water down the meal he was preparing, but no amount of wishful thinking will alter the facts. The soup isn’t salvageable.
When I say that to Ark, he looks at the charred remains of what he had hoped would be supper before returning his eyes to me. His expression is mortified. I’d feel bad if it matched his verbal response.
The laughter barreling out of him can only convey one thing.
Utter joy.
His chuckles are loud and wholeheartedly addictive. Before I can consider the lunacy of our exchange, similarly boisterous giggles bubble up my chest. They’re not as noisy as Ark’s or as thunderous, but the weight they lift off my shoulders can’t be denied.
The unease knotting my stomach loosens with every throaty gargle, and within minutes, it is replaced with lust.
I’m not the only one noticing the shift in temperament. Friction sizzles half a second before Ark shifts on his feet to face me.