“Can I tempt you to join me?”
Her teeth sink into her bottom lip.
“Sorry, you’re on your own this time.” With a wink, she turns away and starts pulling things from one of the bags she carried in.
The temptation to walk back to her and demand she comes with me is high, but after a few seconds of watching her, I turn toward the bedroom and have a very quick, very cold shower.
“Holy shit, do I live here?” I ask when I walk back into my living area.
Harlow has set up the table. It’s covered in a cloth and has candles flickering in the center.
As I look around the rest of the room, I find candles on every surface.
She stands in the middle of everything she’s done, looking unsure of herself.
“D-do you like it?”
I focus on her as she nervously plays with one of the curls around her shoulders.
I open my mouth to tell her yes, but I find something else coming out. “This place hasn’t felt like a home since the day I picked up the keys. But suddenly, everything feels right.”
“Yeah?” she asks, a wide smile spreading across her lips.
“It’s incredible. Thank you.”
Closing the space between us, I slide my hand into her hair and lower my lips to hers.
She just opens up for me when the buzzer I didn’t know I had on the oven starts ringing and breaks our moment.
“I need to get our dinner,” she mutters against my lips when I refuse to let her go.
“We don’t need dinner. I can eat you instead.” Her cheeks brighten with my words. I fucking love making her blush.
“As tempting as that is, I’m starved.”
Releasing her, I watch as she effortlessly moves about in my kitchen.
“Here,” she says, sliding a bottle of beer my way, proving that she knows I’m watching her.
“Do you realise that you’re the first person to cook in this kitchen?”
“I’d hardly call reheating something I made earlier cooking.”
“It’s more than I’ve done.”
“How long have you been here exactly?”
“About two and a half months.”
“And you’ve not cooked anything?”
“Guilty.”
“How are you still alive?”
Walking over, I wrap my arms around her waist as she plates up the dinner. “I’m not sure you’ve ever heard of them, but there are these things called restaurants,” I whisper in her ear.
She laughs, moving out of my hold and carrying our plates over to the makeshift table.
I watch her sitting opposite me as she takes a sip of her own drink before lifting her knife and fork to dig in.
“What are you waiting for? It’s going to get cold.”
“Thank you for this.” Dropping a mouthful of her food into my mouth, I can’t help groaning in delight.
“It’s nothing. I had fun making it all this afternoon. It’s nice having someone beside Bailey to cook for.”
I can’t help but laugh at the mention of her best friend. “What?”
“Nothing, just thinking how different you two are.”
Harlow shrugs. “I told you.”
“How did you meet?” I ask, desperate to know more about her.
Her face drops immediately as she casts her eyes to the corner of the room.
“I-it’s okay, you don’t need to tell me.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s just weird talking about my life back then.” She thinks for a moment, chewing on a little more of her dinner. “I was fourteen, almost fifteen, when I moved into their house.” My brows draw together, not putting two and two together straight away. “I’d been in some awful foster and group homes up until that point. Living through those after losing my family hadn’t turned me into the nicest of teenagers. But Bailey’s parents never once gave up on me, no matter what drama I brought their way. And Bailey and I struck up an unlikely friendship that’s lasted us all this time.”
“Oh wow. I thought you were going to say you met at college or something.”
“It wasn’t quite that simple. Bailey has been through… a lot with me, and just like her parents, she stuck by my side the whole time. I owe her a lot.”
“Are you saying I need to be nicer to her?”
“What? Never. She’s a pain in the ass and deserves your banter.”
I laugh. “Good to know. So you’re still close to her parents then?”
“Yeah, quite close. My uncle died in service when I was almost eighteen and my aunt came back from where they were posted. I moved in with her. I couldn’t pass up the chance to be with the only family I had left.”
“Jesus, Harlow.”
She shrugs like it’s nothing. “It is what it is. If it weren’t for Bailey and my aunt, I don’t think I’d be here now.”
My chin drops at her admission. “If it helps at all, I’m really fucking glad you are.”
She looks up at me, her large, dark eyes staring into mine, making my heart beat a little faster in my chest. She might have been the last thing I expected—wanted—to find, but already, I can’t imagine her not being in my life.
“So what about you? What about your family?”
“My mum and sisters live in London,” I say, rattling off the easy stuff without second thought. “My sisters are both at university. Mum’s just come back from Germany. She was living with my dad. But he…” I trail off. There are only a couple of people who know about this, and those in this country who know thankfully didn’t need me to tell them, they found out through the family gossip. “He was cheating on her. He left and she was forced out of married quarters and sent home. Only, she didn’t have a home because my dad was everything.”
“Oh shit. Corey, I’m so sorry.”
“We all thought it would be fine. Dad’s been in the army all his life and worked his way up the ranks; he should have had a decent amount of money behind him. Mum sure seemed to think he did. Turned out a younger woman wasn’t the only thing he was hiding, because
