Chapter 11: The Kitchen

Tilda's POV

"It isn't the dust," I said.

Alexander stood at the bottom of my father's new step with his hands in his coat pockets.

"No?"

"It was never the dust."

He came up the three steps slowly.

The porch light was on his face. He looked as tired as I felt, and he did not look away from me once.

"One rule," I said. "Nothing about the firm in this house. Not tonight."

"Agreed."

"Not a word about Braden."

"Tilda." He stopped one step below me, so our eyes were level.

"I came here to hear you say it. That's all I've got on my mind."

I took his coat by the lapels and pulled him over the threshold.

The door shut behind us. He had me against it before the latch clicked.

His mouth was warm and certain.

He kissed me slowly at first, and then not slowly at all.

I got my hands into his hair.

He made a low sound in his chest, and that sound went straight through me.

"Kitchen," I said against his mouth. "The light's on. I can't make it up the stairs."

He laughed and lifted me by the backs of my thighs.

I wrapped my legs around his waist.

He carried me down the hall and set me on the counter beside the sink.

My father's coffee mugs sat in their rack next to my head.

"Sorry, Dad," I whispered.

"If you stop now, I'll hurt you," I told Alexander.

His grin was brief and wicked.

Then he opened the flannel shirt, one button at a time, and the grin went away.

I wore nothing under it but a pair of cotton shorts.

"God, Tilda," he said, very quietly.

Nobody had ever looked at me like that.

Not in three years at a desk, and not in seven months with a man who told me what I felt.

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