Saved by the Fireman

Author:Allie Pleiter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Crash. The moment came to a loud halt when a dish clattered to the floor. Mo had, at some point, leaped up onto the countertop in an effort to get at the melted ice cream and had succeeded in knocking over the cobbler dish. The cat screeched and bolted back into the dark of the living room. They both looked down to see white cream and purple cobbler splattered all over the floor and Charlotte’s light-colored pants.

Charlotte didn’t know whether to thank Mo or to kick the furry, meddling feline to the curb. The moment—whatever it was—was gone, replaced with a sticky mess and the casualty of one of her favorite pairs of pants.

Jesse had already grabbed a towel from the counter and was picking the pieces of the plate off the floor, muttering unkind things about cats. She stared at him, wanting to blink and shake her head, needing to know what had just happened and whether or not she should regret it.

It had been a spectacular kiss. The kind that made her sensibilities go white like an old-fashioned flashbulb, the kind that ought to be the first kiss between soul mates. Only now that the bubble had popped, she could name half a dozen reasons why Jesse Sykes was not the mate of her soul. And as for Jesse himself, if the kiss had affected him the way it had her, it no longer showed.

“See, not too hard to clean up.” Jesse slid the broken china into the wastebasket and tossed the purple-blotched towel into the sink. “I don’t think you can say the same for those pants.” He turned to her, an “oh well” smile in his eyes, as if it had been a simple kitchen mishap. “There’s enough dessert to start over.”

“I don’t think we ought to.” She knew she didn’t sound at all convinced. She wasn’t—confused was closer to accurate.

His disappointment was so appealing. “Really? My cobbler’s even better than my Brussels sprouts.”

Charlotte leaned against the cabinets. “Jesse...”

He leaned up against the same cabinets, inches from her. “Hey, it’s okay.” He shrugged. “But it was a really nice kiss.”

She shut her eyes for a moment, slipping her hand up to press it to her own lips while she launched a prayer up to heaven for the right words. “I know there’s something...here.” She opened her eyes again, wanting to make him understand. “The meal, the kiss—you know how to sweep a woman off her feet. It’s just that...” How could she make him understand when she wasn’t even sure what she wanted at the moment herself?

He put a hand to his chest as if wounded. “I feed you fettuccine Alfredo and you shoot me down? Ouch.” His words were harsh but his eyes held that teasing glint she found most irresistible about him.

“I need to take it a whole lot slower than this.” That much was true. She still hadn’t figured out if, in the space of one meal, Jesse Sykes had truly disintegrated her conviction not to get involved with men in his line of work.

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