Talking. Sitting and talking and waiting, and the only thing that made the days tolerable was the fact that Nick had hardly left his side. They’d skirted the issue, as if she was as unprepared to acknowledge the insanity of it as he was. But not discussing it didn’t change it.
Instinct had taken over, and they were along for the ride.
They ended up at his house on the second night, and Derek dragged Nick out of bed in the morning before the phone could ring and shatter the illusion that the world held just the two of them. “Coffee,” he said, pushing a steaming mug into her hand. “Drink it and don’t be grumpy. I need my sous-chef on top of her game.”
“I’m not a morning person.” She gulped the coffee. “Are you a morning person? This could pose a problem.”
“I never used to be.” He moved across the kitchen and retrieved his battered old cookbook from the cupboard above the stove. “Something about the heightened senses I have now. The damn birds wake me up. You can hear them a half mile away.”
Nick yawned and slid onto a barstool by the counter. “I’ve never known anything else, I guess. It doesn’t bother me.”
“Maybe someday I’ll get used to it.” He carried the book to the island and set it down in front of her. “This is something very special. Don’t tell Kat I’m letting you look at it, because she’s not allowed to touch it thanks to page fourteen.”
Nick arched an eyebrow and flipped to the page. “What the hell?”
The dark text was illegible, obscured by smeared ink and formulas scrawled in bright purple, but Derek knew the recipe underneath by heart. Hot chocolate, the rich, decadent kind his mother had made when someone needed cheering up.
He ran a finger along the edge of the crinkled page and smiled. “I was already away at college, and Kat was living with my parents for a few months while her mom had one of her episodes. She must have been about twelve and, with me gone, my mom was looking for someone else to cook with, I guess.”
“And Kat had a problem with the…” she laughed and peered down at the page, “…hot chocolate recipe?”
“Uh-huh. She decided to try the recipe for herself one day…after she made some adjustments to the proportions. Apparently was better at math than cooking. The way I hear it something blew up and from then on bonding was restricted to talking about books.”
“How exactly does one make chocolate explode?”
“Got me.” He flipped a few pages, looking for another familiar recipe. “She splattered milk and chocolate all over the kitchen, and my mom grounded her for writing in the sacred book.”
She trailed her fingers over the inside edge of the cover. “This was your mother’s?”
“My grandmother’s first. They added to it, altered it, glued in new pages and glued over things they didn’t like.” He found the waffle recipe and flipped the book around so she could read it. “Best waffles ever made, right there.”
“The ones you made the other morning?” Her smile was predatory. “Those were fabulous.”
“Damn right they were.” He had the recipe memorized, so he didn’t look before moving to the cupboards to start pulling down ingredients. “Now you’re going to make them.”
She snorted. “Did you forget the part where I can’t cook? I suck at it.”
“So you’ll try again.” He tossed the flour onto the counter. “You can do it, baby. I’ve got faith.”
“So did Mrs. Kelly. She spent fifteen years trying to teach me.”
“I’ll just have to try creative incentives.”
“Sounds dirty.”
“Probably because it is.” Though if he didn’t stop thinking about it, they’d skip breakfast again.
There had been something incredibly satisfying, something primal, about having her in his bed. If he hadn’t pulled her out of it, they might have ended up spending the morning naked and groping each other like horny college kids.
Derek gathered the sugar and baking powder and turned, and his heart kicked up into his throat when she smiled at him over the rim of her coffee cup. Sweet, a little goofy, and so very, very Nick. It wasn’t the wolf who wanted to sweep her off the stool and hold her close.
So maybe it wasn’t all instinct.
Maybe she heard the way his heart skipped, or maybe his expression revealed his thoughts. Either way, a soft look came into her eyes, and her smile gentled. “Thank you, Derek. For being here, and being you.”
He cleared his throat and dropped the ingredients onto the counter. “The supernatural world makes dating an adventure, huh? At least I’m not having to chase you all over the country like Jackson and Mac.”
“No, you’re just having to abandon your life in order to keep me sane.”
“Not really.” Though maybe he shouldn’t tell her how little of a life he’d had to abandon. “I was supposed to be on vacation already, remember?”
“Exactly.” She toyed with a dry measuring cup. “This can’t be very restful.”
“Restful’s overrated.” Derek grinned and shoved the flour toward her. “You can apologize until you’re blue in the face, but I’m still making you cook. Cowgirl up, Peyton.”
“All right.” Nick rose and studied the ingredients he’d already laid out. “Just remember, though, that you asked for it.”
The first batch tasted like baking soda, and the second was so runny they couldn’t even cook them. Derek thought she might have had it with the third batch, but the celebratory kiss turned into dirty, celebratory sex against the counter, and they forgot to unplug the waffle iron this time.
By the time they actually got breakfast on the table, it was nearly ten in the morning and the kitchen looked like Kat had performed one of her doomed high school science experiments in it. Derek ignored it and drenched the waffles in maple syrup, then handed the bottle to Nick. “Told you so.”
She’d already torn off a corner of her waffle for a taste test. “Mmm, nowhere near as good as yours, but not bad.”
“Just takes practice. So what’s your plan for today? Didn’t Jackson say he’d take you out to visit your sister?”
“This afternoon. He has to come back to the city anyway, and he said he’d drop by and we could follow him out there.”
We. Instinctive pleasure was more satisfying than the damn waffles. “Good. Anything we should take?”
She shook her head as she reached for her coffee. “I don’t think so. They should be pretty well stocked on everything.”
Except hope, but he couldn’t pick a bag of that up at the corner market. If Derek was climbing out of his skin half the time, he couldn’t imagine what life was like for Aaron, trapped in a tiny house with a pregnant lover and a death sentence over his head.
It put a damper on his enjoyment of the waffles. “Any news from New York? Or Alec?”
“Not yet. It looks like Enrica bought the story about me needing time to think about—about Luciano’s proposal.”
His fingers tightened, but he didn’t shatter the coffee mug in a blind, instinctive rage. Progress. “That’s good right?”
“It bought us some time, and we need it, if only to make them believe I’m getting desperate enough to walk away from all the power they crave.” Her hand slid over his. “What matters now is what happens next.”
He liked the feel of her skin on his, the soft, casual brush of her fingers. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles, inhaling the scent that was slowly becoming as familiar as his own. “Then eat up, Nicky. We’ve got places to be.”
Chapter 8
The night was unusually warm and damp, humidity gathering on his skin like a blanket. Derek leaned against the tailgate of his truck and scrolled through his cell phone’s directory looking for Andrew’s home number. Nick had disappeared out the back door with Jackson a few minutes ago for what looked to be a potentially tense conversation, and every instinct in his body screamed at him to follow her. To protect her.