That Makes Two of Us novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: House Rules

I closed my fist around the ring before he could read it.

"Okay," Colton said quietly. "Keep it."

He kissed my knuckles, one at a time, and let the chain slip out of his fingers.

"You keep your secrets," he said. "I'm not going to go through your drawers."

I had never been so grateful or so ashamed in my life.

He fell asleep first, with one heavy arm across my waist.

I lay awake counting the cracks in my own ceiling.

At six, I woke up alone.

At 6:10 I smelled smoke.

I came downstairs in his dress shirt and found Colton Thayne, chairman of Thayne Harbor Holdings, standing at my stove in his undershirt and slacks.

A black pan was smoking in front of him.

"It was eggs," he said.

"It was."

"I don't cook."

"I can tell."

I turned off the burner, opened the back door and waved a dish towel at the smoke detector until it quit.

He watched me with his hands in his pockets.

"You look good in my shirt," he said.

"You look good burning my kitchen."

"I'll buy you a new pan."

"You'll buy me a new stove."

"Done."

He said it so seriously that I started to laugh, and he did too.

It was the kind of laugh that makes a room feel warmer.

I leaned against the counter and ate toast out of his hand while he told me about the pan he'd once melted in his grandfather's boathouse.

"He used to say I had two left hands," Colton said. "Said I'd never get a woman to marry me."

"He was wrong."

"He knew he was wrong. He'd already arranged it."

He caught himself, and the laugh went out of his face.

"His last week," he said. "I called him from Singapore. He was lucid, which was rare. He said, 'I took care of the rest, Colt. You'll see.'"

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