Gimme Some Sugar Page 21

“So if there’s any way you might be able to help me out with your expertise, I’d be really grateful,” Carly finished, sweeping a hand toward the rows of vegetables in various stages of readiness. Catherine regarded her for a long minute, her kind, blue eyes dancing as she shifted her gaze to Jackson.

  “Well. When you said you were full of surprises, I suppose you really meant it.” She slipped a basket from a shelf in the shed and passed it to Carly, gesturing to the garden with a reverent smile. “Come on, sweetheart. The best way to learn about planting a garden is to get your hands on it, so we’ll start there.”

  Catherine looped her arm through Carly’s, and Carly caught the tail-end of the look she exchanged with Jackson over her shoulder. “There’s some leftover tuna casserole in the fridge if you’re hungry. Help yourself.” Catherine’s smile covered her face from ear to ear, making her look more like a schoolgirl than the mother of a grown man.

  “Carly and I are going to be a while.”

  “Okay, seriously? That was the most incredible day I’ve had since . . . God, I don’t even know when!” Carly clutched the stack of notebook pages she’d scribbled over the course of the evening to her chest, turning to look at Jackson from the passenger seat of his truck. “Your mother is one of the most amazing women I’ve ever met.”

  Jackson chuckled, a smooth, rich sound that snuck through the dark cab of the truck to melt Carly’s insides with its sexy warmth. “I think the feeling’s mutual. She was just as excited about planning a garden at La Dolce Vita as you, and that’s really saying something.” He nudged Carly with an elbow, and the contact made her insides squeeze with delicious tightness.

  “Well, there are no guarantees the execs will bite, but this will go a long way toward presenting a strong plan. I think we really have a shot at this.” Carly straightened the copious notes she’d taken as her conversation with Catherine had drifted from the garden to the farmhouse table inside the kitchen. Two hours, a pitcher of sweet tea, and eight pages of chicken scratch later, Carly had more than enough down on paper to serve as a springboard, and not all of it had come from Catherine.

  “Thanks for calling Luke to get those contracting estimates. I wouldn’t have known the first thing to ask about a project like this.” She tipped her head at Jackson, squinting through the velvety darkness to make out the chiseled line of his jaw.

  “I was only on the phone with him for half an hour. No big deal.” Jackson’s shoulders hitched into a nonchalant shrug, as if the phone call had been effortless. In reality, he’d taken two pages of notes himself.

  “It would’ve taken me twice as long, at least,” she insisted. “I owe you big time.”

  Carly leaned back in her seat, cool night air rushing through the open windows. The last traces of purple bled through the sky at the tree line, and the first hint of starlight began to scatter and blink to life overhead. She drew in a deep, contented breath, letting it swirl around in her lungs.

  Her stomach made a sound vaguely akin to that of a charging rhinoceros.

  “Whoa! Hungry much?” Jackson laughed, brows lifted.

  She had no choice but to admit it—she was starving. “Sorry. With everything going on, I guess we didn’t eat.”

  Jackson rubbed his free palm over his midsection. “Speak for yourself. You should’ve had some tuna casserole.”

  Carly’s stomach gurgled again, and she pressed her hand to her side in an effort to shut it up. Hello, body betrayal! God, couldn’t her organs at least be graceful about it? “I know, and your mom offered twice. I was just too excited to eat.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I could eat enough for the two of us.” Her stomach jerked against her ribs in a bid for obvious agreement.

  “Holy crap, I’d better feed you stat, then.” A funny look crossed his features, but she couldn’t make it out in the dark. “You up for something a little unconventional?”

  They were in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains, for God’s sake. Most people up here considered Mexican food unconventional. “I’ve had just about everything you can think of, remember? I mean, I’m up for basically anything right now, but I don’t think you’re going to have much luck if you want to surprise me.”

  Even in the near-dark, the irony on his face was plain. “Oh, I think I might.”

  When they pulled up to a quiet, two-story apartment building ten minutes later, Carly stood 100 percent corrected.

  “Is this . . . do you live here?” She blinked as Jackson opened the passenger door for her and waited for her to jump down to the night-cooled pavement.

  “Yup. It’s nothing fancy. As a matter of fact, since I wasn’t really expecting to do this, I’m really kind of just hoping it’s passably clean. But this is home.” Jackson led her to the neatly landscaped courtyard and up a flight of covered outdoor steps.

  Carly blinked, still not quite registering his intent. “So did you need to come and grab something before we go eat?”

  Jackson stopped short, flipping his keys. The metal on metal jingle played against the cup of his palm, and he glanced at her, thoughtful. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about what you said last week. About how you always cook but nobody feeds you.” He paused on the threshold, eyes dark blue and steady on her face, and something nameless and frighteningly good broke free to spread out in her chest.

  “I’d like to change that. Right now!”

  Carly’s wide-eyed surprise never failed to take a potshot at Jackson’s gut, and right now was no exception.

  “You . . . you want to cook something for me?”

  Christ, it only topped the list of things he wanted to do to her. The urge to put his mouth on hers and not stop kissing her until they’d both had their fill screamed through him, just as it had for much of the evening. But something dared him to override it, to listen to that voice in his head that told him to feed her, even though it didn’t make any sense. He closed the space between them with only a few inches to spare, skimming a palm up her forearm before letting it rest on the angle of her shoulder.

  “Well, that all depends. Do you want to let me?”

  The heat of their bodies so close together colored her cheeks with a flush that swept down the column of her neck, and it took every last ounce of control Jackson had to keep his mind on feeding her. But then she nodded, and it steadied his resolve. He slid his key into the lock, saying one last prayer that there wasn’t a legion of dust bunnies standing sentry on the other side.

  Carly followed him through his apartment, which was mercifully clean enough, taking it in with a curious glance. “So what’s on the menu?”

  Good freaking question. Jackson’s culinary skills were limited to mac and cheese from a box and the occasional spaghetti with frozen meatballs, neither of which was bound to impress her in the least. “I’m a man of intrigue, remember?” He did a mental tally of the items in his fridge and gave an inward groan.

  Feed her.

  Oh, sure. He had to possess a little dictator for an inner voice, and a useless one at that. Feed her what?

  Carly’s lush mouth tilted into a smile that rendered Jackson’s legs useless. “Is that code for ‘I don’t know yet’?”

  Of course she’d frickin’ figure him out. “It’s actually code for ‘I haven’t decided yet.’”

  “We could order something if you want. Or I could just take a look in the pantry and throw something together. I really don’t mind.” She moved through his postage stamp of a kitchen as if on auto-pilot, but Jackson caught her midstep on her way to the narrow pantry door. He pressed her body against the counter with one hand on either side of her curvy hips, loosely trapping her in place.

  “I know you’re used to being bossy in the kitchen. But we’re not on your turf this time.” All of a sudden, his lack of confidence in his culinary skills faded to black. He couldn’t resist the magnetic heat of her, drawing him closer, and he dipped his mouth to the curve of her neck. “So are you going to let me do this for you, or not?”<
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  The keening sigh that crossed her lips made him want to take his inner voice and lock it in the closet, but when Carly nodded, he forced himself to take a step back.

  “Yes,” she whispered, looking up at him through shadowy lashes.

  “Okay.” Jackson pulled in a breath to steel himself, knowing that his dick was about to be righteously indignant about his brain’s decision to cook first and kiss later. He was going to have to wing his way through the kitchen, no easy task in front of a professional chef.

  Right. Time to rely on distraction. At least until he could figure out something passable to make. “We’re going to do this my way, which means no cheating. No helping of any kind. In fact,” Jackson murmured, reaching down to take her hands in his. “No watching, either. Not until it’s time to eat.”

  “You’re kicking me out of the kitchen entirely?” The fire in her stare told Jackson to tread carefully, but he refused to back down.

  “No. I’m creating a food experience. You’re the one who said you need to rely on all your senses. If you don’t see what I’m doing, you’ll have to use everything else that much more.” He led her around to the narrow breakfast bar where he ate all his meals, cupping his palm beneath the wooden ladder back of one of the bar stools resting there.

  “Twist a girl’s words, why don’t you.” Carly made a face at him as he turned the chair to face away from the kitchen. In spite of her grousing, she climbed up to sit on the stool with her back to the counter. “At least tell me what you’re going to make.”

  “Please. If I was going to tell you, I’d let you watch.”

  He had to admit, there was something incredibly sexy about distracting her this way. Falling into the old habit of teasing her felt twice as good with a seductive edge, but not even that was good enough to deter him from the task at hand now. He’d promised to feed her. Even if the best he could come up with was the can of Manwich sitting in the back of his pantry, Jackson was going to throw everything he had into making it an experience.

  He turned to face her, stepping in close enough to sense her breath hitch beneath the white cotton riding the swell of her breasts.

  “And no peeking, either. If I think you’re cheating, I’ll be tempted to blindfold you.”

  With that, he brushed his lips over hers in the barest of tastes before turning to walk away.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “You’re not going to give me any hints at all?”

  Jackson couldn’t tell if Carly sounded more miffed than curious, but neither one made him want to tell her what he was up to. Not that he really knew. He sauntered through the kitchen, which amounted to three good steps, and propped the pantry door open.

  “Nope.” He whistled good-naturedly, trying to cover up the distinct possibility he was in over his head. Come on, he thought. He might not be a gourmet, but he wasn’t a total dolt, either. What would he want to eat if he were sitting in that chair?

  . . . I like to use ingredients that keep things uncomplicated . . . Carly’s words from the night they’d spent in the bungalow threaded through his mind, and the idea slammed into him with all the subtlety of a three-hundred pound wrestler. If honest flavors, evocative smells, and warm presentation were on Carly’s wish-list, Jackson was about to make her the meal of a lifetime.

  Either that, or she’d laugh him out of his own kitchen. But it was better than nothing, and at this point, he needed something. He reached into the belly of the pantry, unearthing a sparse handful of things. Man, he hoped this didn’t backfire.

  Carly cleared her throat, a soft thrum of rich tones that threatened to undo him from across the room. “How about a small hint? Just one ingredient.”

  “You don’t like to play by the rules, do you?” It was easier to rebuff her now that he had a plan, and he moved to the counter a few steps behind her to untwist the plastic bag in his hands.

  “It’s not cheating if I ask and you tell me,” she said, turning her stubborn chin so he could see her in profile.

  Jackson was next to her in the span of a breath, the bag left on the counter, forgotten. “I’m not going to tell you. Now behave, or I won’t be able to finish and you won’t eat.”

  He curved his mouth into a smile, hovering just over the shell of her ear. She smelled like wildflowers and faded sunshine, but he resisted the urge to taste her skin before going back to the kitchen. One taste wasn’t going to be nearly enough, and he already wanted to bury himself inside her as it was.

  “I can’t just sit still.” Carly’s protest trembled on her lips, but not with fear. Desire, provocative and pure, folded around her words, and Jackson traced the steadfast line of her jaw with one finger.

  “You forget, I’m a contractor. I don’t exactly have a four-course meal up my sleeve, so this isn’t going to take very long.”

  Despite the protest from just about every one of his parts, Jackson returned to the kitchen and pulled two thick slices of white bread from the bag on the counter. He dropped them into the open-mouthed slats of the toaster and lowered the lever with slow pressure to try to mask the sound.

  She stilled, a lone ribbon of dark hair cascading from the loose knot on her crown. “I like simple, remember?”

  Jackson thought of his plan and chuckled. “Good.”

  Carly sat up straight, ear cocked toward the kitchen, and it occurred to him that she really was using her other senses to try to figure him out. The refrigerator huffed as he opened it, a near-noiseless breath of cold air filtering out to greet him, and a few more ingredients joined the pile on the counter. The efficient snap of the toaster was a dead giveaway—one he couldn’t avoid, unfortunately—as was the warm, yeasty smell emanating through the kitchen a minute later.

  “You’re making toast?”

  “There’s no breakfast in your future unless you spend the night,” he teased, hoping to stop her short with the innuendo.

  Bingo. Carly sat up even taller, her spine a beautiful plumb line. “Oh! Well, I was just . . .”

  “Cheating,” Jackson supplied, sliding a knife from the utensil drawer. It wisped quietly across the golden bread as he layered the ingredients with measured precision, tawny and thick on one side, dark and sweet on the other.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled, clearly not. Damn, she was cute when she was irritated.

  He pressed the two pieces of bread together, marrying the parts to create the whole. The creation in front of him was the very definition of simple, but it seemed strangely perfect in its own right, as if he’d been meant to feed her like this all along. He folded a paper towel beneath the plain blue dish, sliding the whole thing toward her on the aging Formica countertop. Leaning forward on his elbows, Jackson propped his body across from hers at the breakfast bar.

  “Don’t be. I’m done.”

  Slowly, Carly turned around, swinging her body to face him. The walls of his apartment seemed to press into his ears as he waited for the plate in front of her to register with her brain.

  “You made me a PB and J?”

  He swallowed. “Yeah. I know it’s not fancy, but . . .”

  “It’s perfect.”

  Carly’s eyes flicked, liquid bronze and reverent, over the plate in front of her before she scooped the toasted, crusty bread up in both hands. “Oh, you buttered the toast. Brilliant.”

  Jackson blinked his eyes once like a camera shutter, committing the unabashedly sensual image of Carly’s face to memory. The lone curl that had fallen from the knot on her head now played across the swoop of her cheekbone, softening her expression even further, and she lifted the sandwich to her bow-shaped mouth. She closed her eyes, mahogany lashes creating shadows on her face, and inhaled deeply.

  “Ohhh, God it smells divine.” Her stomach growled—not a ladylike “ahem,” but an out and out snarl, as if it had teeth. Something about the visceral reaction made Jackson want to lay waste to the flimsy counter between them, and he gripped the edges of the chipped Formica hard enough to make it creak. An apologet
ic blush crept across Carly’s cheeks, but he headed her off before she could say a word.

  “Don’t say it.” The gruff edge to his own words surprised him, but Jackson didn’t relent. “If you’re hungry, eat.”

  When she reluctantly nodded, his inner voice almost passed out with joy.

  Carly opened her mouth and took a huge bite, a fact that would’ve impressed Jackson if he hadn’t been so electrically turned on by the look of sheer joy on her face. The lines of her sun-kissed jaw worked on a delicate, determined hinge, and when she released a faint moan of pleasure, it was all he could do to let her keep eating.

  “This,” she mumbled, covering her mouth with one hand as she finished chewing, “is so good it should be illegal.” Her next bite sent a dribble of grape jelly down the curve of her hand, but Carly either didn’t notice or didn’t care. She ate recklessly, her expression leaving no guesswork as to what was going on in her mind.

  Jackson laughed, the low rumble filling him to the brim. “You’re giving me too much credit.”

  She took another bite, and he watched her, completely mesmerized.

  “Hmm-mmm.” Carly’s protest was more in her eyes than her words, and she shook her head for emphasis. “It’s total comfort food.” She licked the streak of jelly from her hand, and Jackson’s libido went berserk.

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  A streak of want blazed a path from his chest to his gut before heading even further south. There was zero chance he was going to last much longer on this side of the narrow breakfast bar. Jackson forced himself to stop looking at the tiny smudge lingering in the corner of her mouth. Christ, he’d give his left arm to be grape fucking jelly right now.

  Carly snorted, which was probably no easy task with a mouth full of peanut butter. “Like it? I think I want to marry it.” She took another bite, and Jackson promptly burst out laughing. Hell if she hadn’t timed that tension-buster with perfect ease.

  “I should’ve known you’d take your comfort food seriously.” He pulled himself away from her long enough to grab a glass from a nearby cupboard, pausing briefly at the fridge on his way back to the breakfast bar.