Double Helix by Nancy Werlin

Author:Nancy Werlin
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2011-12-17T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

IT FELT MORE than a little strange to sit idle and watch Dr. Wyatt cook. He refused outright to let Kayla or me help. Instead, he gave us coffee and sat us on the other side of the kitchen island from the stove, and I watched in surprise as he calmly managed three pans with order and efficiency. In no time, a neat platter of French toast, a pile of perfectly crisp bacon, and a shallow bowl of scrambled eggs were ready to be placed on the table on the sunporch, where croissants, grapes and blackberries, china place settings, linen napkins, and more coffee awaited.

“I’m impressed,” I said to Dr. Wyatt as I pulled out a chair for Kayla. She brushed against me for a millisecond as she moved to sit, and I caught the fresh light scent of her shampoo. I again felt filled with amazement at her beauty, and with gratification at her clear interest in me. In fact, when she’d greeted me earlier, she’d displayed a demure downcast to her eyes—coupled with a sudden flashing glance upward—that made me feel ready to forget everything else in the world but her. We’d be alone later. I looked down at the top of her head, at the sweet jut of her cheekbone, the curve of her bare downy shoulder in her summer dress. I could kiss her if I wanted, later. I suddenly knew that, knew it with complete certainty. She’d like it; she even expected it. I could touch her and—

I grabbed my own seat and sat.

Dr. Wyatt was seated, too, and had already reached for the eggs. “What, Eli, you didn’t think I could use a stove? Set a table? Expected we’d be ordering bagels from the place around the corner?”

“Well . . . you did mention the other day that you had a cook,” I said. My brain was racing ahead on the other track, however. Kayla was going to be a sophomore in college. She - wouldn’t be a virgin like Viv had been . . . and I wasn’t one now, either, for that matter. It would be totally different—no strings, no emotional entanglements. And the way Kayla had moved in her body when she played tennis . . . I’d been lying to myself, all at once I knew that. Pretending I hadn’t been thinking about this all along, from the second I saw Kayla. Maybe breaking up with Viv had nothing to do with her prying and snooping, her emotional demands, nothing to do with HD. Maybe it was all just normal hormones . . . time to move on, to experiment . . . why be tied down when you were only eighteen? Viv was far too intense anyway.

“Eli? French toast?”

“Oh—yes, sure.” I managed to accept the platter that Dr. Wyatt passed to me. He was continuing the conversation like a civilized person. I tried hard to tune in again.

“The truth is I’m limited to cooking breakfast things,” he said. “But only from choice.

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