question. The obvious one was, “Why are you flirting with me?” but that wasn’t exactly a confident way to begin a discussion. A dozen more whirled through her head—Are you going to kiss me? Do you know how sexy your accent is? Why couldn’t you sleep? Oh God, you’re not in the room with the squeaky box spring, are you? When are you going to kiss me?—but when she opened her mouth, she heard herself asking, “What’s your favorite color?”
Clearly, she was beyond help.
But Rhys simply snorted, a good-natured sound. “Don’t have one. You?”
“Sky blue,” she said automatically, and then stopped. “What do you mean, you don’t have one? Everyone has one.”
“Everyone picks one so they can answer that question,” he argued, and she heard shuffling as he lowered himself to the ground. “Sit. We may be here for a bit.”
She did, feeling her way past the broom and brushing her hand against something that felt like a stiffened string mop. Shuddering, she settled onto the concrete beside him, aware of the warm length of his thigh. “You really don’t like one color over another?”
“I like green apples, and ripe pumpkins, and a nice, bloody, purple piece of filet mignon,” he said after a minute.
“Okay, what’s your favorite food?”
“No such thing,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll eat almost anything if it’s prepared just so.”
“You’re not making this easy,” she said with a frown. “Come on, what’s…what’s the meal you’d want if you were on death row? Your last meal.”
“Why? What have you heard?”
She slapped his thigh gently. “Come on. Play along.”
“All right then.” He grabbed her hand before she could pull it away and twined his fingers with hers. “Kobe beef, a bottle of fifteen-year-old Laphroaig, and a dark chocolate torte. You?”
“I’m not going to death row,” she said with a laugh. “What’s Laphroaig?”
“Single malt scotch, love. Best on the planet.”
“So you intend to go out drunk and sick to your stomach?”
“I don’t intend to ‘go out’ at all,” he protested. “And you said play along—it’s your turn.”
The feel of his thumb tracing circles on the back of her hand was hypnotic. She did her best to ignore it, and said, “Okay. Um, mashed potatoes, turkey, and apple pie.”
His snort this time was incredulous. “Blimey, love, I need to teach you how to eat. There’s more to life than plain potatoes, yeah?”
Food snob. “Well, I like them,” she answered. “New question. What’s your favorite…” She trailed off, thinking. “I know. What’s your favorite swear word?”
“I don’t think you’d want to hear it.”
“Try me.”
“You’ll blush.”
“I don’t…blush,” she said weakly, feeling her cheeks flaming already.
“You don’t blush, and I’m the king of England,” he laughed. “My turn. Why wouldn’t you go out for dinner with me tonight?”
She sighed. The man was nothing if not persistent.
“The sous chef quit this afternoon,” she said lightly. “And Josef was still in a temper about the whole thing. I can’t cook, but I can run interference. Or try to.”
“Well, why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded, letting go of her hand.
Bewildered, she said, “That I can’t cook?”
“No, that you were short a sous chef.” She could feel him shaking his head in disgust. “I could have stepped in, you know.”
“Rhys, you’re a guest,” she protested. “My guest. I know this place is a little…well, eccentric, but usually we don’t require guests to make their own drinks and fix their own meals. I mean, we do have some standards.”
“Brilliant,” he said dryly. “I’ll keep that in mind if something falls on my head.”
“Hey!”
“Something to think about, love.” She heard rustling, and then he was closer, his arm winding around her shoulders. “If your uncle is determined to run you out of this place, you’ve got to be on top of your game, yeah?”
“I don’t think I have a game,” she said wearily, but she didn’t shrug his arm away. The weight of it was a comfort in the dark, as much as a temptation. It was horrifying to admit how easy it would be—and how good it would feel—to crawl into Rhys’s lap and forget everything but what they could do in seven minutes. Or seventy. “Maybe you can teach me.”
He squeezed her shoulders gently. “Don’t worry, love. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Bloody hell, I’ve got to get out of this sodding closet,” Rhys grumbled sometime later, pounding on the door for the third time in as many minutes. “Does your custodial staff keep banker’s hours? Where is everyone?”
Still curled on the floor, Olivia answered sleepily, “It’s probably not even four yet.”
“Are you mad? We’ve been in here for days,” he protested, rubbing the side of his hand, sore from pounding.
“Rhys, are you…are you claustrophobic?”
If only. It would have been much more pleasant, if not exactly more manly, to pass out from terror than admit to Olivia why he needed out, and now.
“Certainly not,” he said with authority, shifting his position against the stubbornly stuck door. Bloody hell, if he didn’t take a piss soon, he was going to explode. “But this isn’t my idea of a brilliant way to spend the night, you know.”
“You’re the one who let the door shut,” she pointed out with a yawn.
Oh, sure, it was a perfect time to cast blame. “You’re the one who didn’t mention that I shouldn’t!”
“Well, I didn’t think you were going to follow me into the broom closet.”
“Yeah, my fault completely,” he said dryly. At least arguing was a distraction.
“A baby was born in here, you know,” Olivia said suddenly. “In the forties. An unmarried maid was trying to work as long as she could, and the baby came early. She named her Callie, too.”
He blinked, momentarily confused. “And this has what to do with me locking us in the broom closet?”
Silence. “Nothing,” she said finally, and the embarrassment in her tone produced a stab of guilt. “Just something I thought you might find interesting. I guess you don’t want to hear about the Balinese sword swallowers who were here in the early sixties.”
He laughed out loud at that. “You are quite a surprise, Olivia Callender.”
She was, too. A bit more every minute. It was a miracle that she’d let him kiss her neck earlier, for starters. He was moving fast, especially for someone like Olivia, and he knew it. But a tiger didn’t change his stripes, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to try.
He was honest, at least. It was part of the reason he liked food, in fact. Food didn’t lie. An apple was an apple, however you sliced it.
The thing was he thought Olivia was, too. After the women he’d encountered in L.A., especially, she was a breath of fresh air.
He hadn’t expected it, the women. Sure, there’d always been some, food groupies for Christ’s sweet sake, at the restaurants in London. But L.A. was a whole new kettle