“How’s Rafe doing?”
“What?”
As Rose followed him down the wide aisle in the grocery store, Lucas heard her sigh heavily. “Your brother? Rafe? Didn’t he get married a few months ago?”
“Oh. Yeah. He did.” Lucas frowned at the seemingly endless selection of products. He’d spent most of his life avoiding grocery stores. When he needed food in a hurry, he stopped in at a deli or something. He hadn’t been raised around a kitchen and, as a King, if he wanted someone cooking in his house, he could hire a damn chef. So why learn?
Now, he felt like a stranger in a strange land. The brilliant fluorescent lighting gave him a headache. There was a screaming child a few aisles over and an old woman had just crashed her cart into his and then had the guts to blame him. Seriously, men just didn’t belong in grocery stores.
He was actually starting to rethink his whole plan. He hadn’t really considered at the beginning just what all this would entail. And his interest in cooking was about as low as it could get. Then he reminded himself sternly that getting back at Dave would be worth all the hassles he was going through at the moment. Nobody betrayed a King and walked away.
Nobody.
“And?” Rose prompted. “How’s he doing?”
“Rafe?” He dragged his mind back to the conversation. “He’s good. Seems happy enough.”
“What a touching testimony for marriage,” she mused and reached over to pick up a box of bread crumbs.
“Bread crumbs aren’t on the list,” Lucas said, checking just to make sure.
“I know, but it’s good to have them in the house. They come in handy in all kinds of ways. These are the best,” she said, handing him the blue box. “Low in sodium and carbs, plus they’re crispier than ordinary bread crumbs.”
“Crispier is better. Right.” If he did inadvertently learn how to cook during this process, he promised himself, he’d hire somebody to shop for him.
“So, you don’t like Rafe’s wife?”
He blinked at her. “Where did that come from? Of course I like her.”
“Well, you don’t seem thrilled that he got married,” she said with a shrug. “So I assumed you didn’t like his wife.”
“So if I didn’t like Christmas that would mean I hated somebody else’s present?” What was it with women? A man makes a simple statement and they take it and run in the exact opposite direction.
“You don’t like Christmas?” she countered.
“I didn’t say that.” Shaking his head, he continued down the baking aisle. “Have you ever heard the word logic?”
“I don’t know,” she said on a laugh. “I may have heard a vague reference at some point. Sounds like Latin.”
“Naturally,” he muttered, ignoring her smile, because frankly he didn’t like the buzz of interest he felt lighting up his insides. He had a plan here, and he wasn’t about to be distracted from it. Yes, he was going to seduce her. But that didn’t mean he was going to do something stupid like come to care for her.
Keeping his voice lighter than the tension filling him would ordinarily warrant, he said, “I like Katie fine. She’s way too good for Rafe, if you ask me.”
“So it’s just marriage in general you’re against?”
“Pretty much.” He stopped dead, and she crashed into him.
“Sorry.”
He ignored the increased buzzing in his blood and told himself to get a grip on the situation. To get his mind off what his body was clamoring for, he scanned the shelves of spices and was instantly irritated. “How can there be so many?”
“Ah,” she said with an understanding grin, “life outside the narrow confines of garlic, salt and pepper.”
He frowned. “Nothing wrong with salt and pepper. It’s basic. Classic.”
“Boring.”
“Fine,” he said. Anything to get out of here that much sooner. “What do we need? I mean, what do I need?”
“It’s all there on the list,” she urged and stood by, deliberately letting him find his way through the spice racks.
He squinted at labels and hissed at the elevated prices of some of the more esoteric spices. Who knew this stuff was so expensive? Thoughts rolled through his mind even as he continued to read labels. The Kings should look into this. If they could set up suppliers, they could move into the spice industry and really take it over. King Spice, he thought with a half smile. It could work.
Now here was where he felt comfortable, Lucas thought. Planning, focusing on business and growing the ever-expanding King empire. Get him the hell out of a grocery store and there was nothing that could stop him once his mind was set on something. He slid a glance in Rose’s direction. Her big blue eyes were fixed on him, a quiet smile tugging at her lips. Even in this hideous lighting, her skin was like porcelain and the long ponytail she habitually wore spilled across one shoulder, her thick blond hair a tempting mass of waves and loose curls.
She was enough to make any red-blooded male take a long, second look. Hell, he’d looked plenty himself when he had first met her. But Dave had practically wrapped her up in barbed wire and posted a No Trespassing sign over her head. So Lucas had kept his distance out of respect for his friend.
That respect was long dead, though, and soon he’d have this luscious-looking woman right where he wanted her. In his bed. Under him.
Until then, he’d just focus on the task at hand, he told himself, as he shifted his gaze back to the damned racks of spices.
Rose couldn’t seem to tear her gaze off of Lucas. His black leather jacket was open to reveal the plain white T-shirt beneath. Black jeans clung to his long, muscular legs and he was wearing the same scuffed boots she had noticed the day before. What was it, she wondered, about a gorgeous man in jeans and cowboy boots? Was it instinctive? Did it pull at something primal in a woman?
Or was it simply that Lucas King would look too good in absolutely anything? Sadly, she thought, the latter was probably closer to the truth.
“I don’t see peppercorns,” he muttered, “and why can’t I just use ground-up pepper? Why do I have to grind it myself? Haven’t we come further than that as a society?”
“Funny,” she said and reached out to tap one fingernail against the peppercorns. Right in front of him. Somehow, she found that thought comforting. Lucas was so … formidable, that finding out he was like other men in the can’t-find-something-directly-in-front-of-him way made him seem … not ordinary by any means. But more touchable.
Not that she was thinking about touching him. All right, she was. But what woman wouldn’t when she was standing right beside Lucas King? Still, if there was one thing Rose had learned in the last year or so, it was that she didn’t want anything to do with another alpha male.
Lucas picked up the bottle of peppercorns, tossed it into the cart then consulted his list again. “Kosher salt? I’m not Jewish. You know that, right?”
Was he trying to be charming, she wondered, or was it just part of who he was? And if he was trying, why? Three years ago, when they first met, he had never made a move on her. And back then, she would definitely have been interested.
“Kosher salt is pure,” she said, still studying him,
trying to figure him out. “No chemicals. It’s better for you.”
“Fine.”
“So why do you hate marriage?” she asked, returning to their earlier conversation.
“Didn’t