Sugarlips (Beefcakes Book 2) by Katana Collins (best love novels of all time TXT) 📗

kid… and that’s what you’re eating.” For all of a second, his green eyes flashed with admiration and a hint of something I couldn’t quite read.

I jerked my finger up, pointing in his face. “But you have to promise me that after breakfast, you’re not going to rush back over to Beefcakes for the rest of the day!”

Liam rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

“I mean it.” I held out my pinky to him. “Promise me.”

“Ah, yes. The infallible contract that is the pinky promise.” Despite his objections he hooked his pinky into mine. “Fine. I won’t go back today. But then you’re also taking me to dinner tonight. Because I cannot sit around all day and all night with nothing to do.”

I arched a brow in his direction. “We’ve seen each other constantly for months. It’s our first day off in God knows how long and you want to spend it with me?”

“Yeah,” he said, voice soft. “I do.”

My stomach jumped. Damn him. “Fine. Dinner tonight. Just go shower. You’re getting buttercream all over my kitchen.”

He launched up the stairs and within a few minutes, I heard the shower running. The patter of water and pipes was quickly drowned out by the sizzle of bacon and eggs in my frying pan.

My body sang, coming alive at the thought of him up in my bathroom. Naked. Soap and suds gliding over those tanned muscles.

Once the eggs were cooked, I moved the cast iron skillet to the oven to keep the food warm and filled two mugs with coffee. I’m just going to leave it outside of the bathroom for him. That’s all. I lifted both mugs into my hands and glided down the hallway.

A loud knock at the door jerked me from my thoughts as I got halfway down the hall. Now who the hell was here? My parents knew that this was my one day off, and there was no way my dad or mom would bother me. And Tanja wasn’t ever up before nine, unless she had an audition.

I changed direction and padded my way over to the front door, coffee cups still in hand as I pulled the curtain back with my elbow.

A gasp strangled in my throat, and as I jerked myself away from the window, a bit of piping hot coffee sloshed over the side of the mug, burning my thumb.

I hissed, not sure which was worse—the burning pain of my thumb or of seeing Dan standing on my doorstep, wearing that stupid brown suit I had picked out for him last year at Brooks Brothers.

Could I hide? What were the chances he saw me?

“Chloe, open up. I know you’re in there.”

Dammit. With a deep breath, I balanced the two cups of coffee in one hand, and opened the door, twisting my mouth into some semblance of a smile.

“That happy to see me, huh?” he said, his voice dry and emotionless. That was Dan for you. I slid a quick glance at my face reflected back to me in the hallway mirror and quickly dropped the ruse. My “smile,” if you could call it that, was basically a sneer. Not that he didn’t deserve it.

I observed my ex closely, taking inventory of his thick, dark brown hair that was trimmed neatly and fell in a straight line to his collar. Well-groomed, clean, and tidy. Handsome… but not the kind of guy you wanted to tear the necktie off and ravage.

Basically, my libido gave a lazy yawn.

“What do you want, Dan?” I glared at him. Since we were dropping the pretenses, I had no need to keep pretending I was anything but annoyed to see him here at our—or rather, my house.

He rolled his dark brown eyes as I glared harder and pointed out the obvious. “It’s 8:00 a.m. … a bit early for a house call, wouldn’t you say?”

His shoulders slumped with a sigh and damn if he didn’t look defeated. “I have an early filling at the office and wanted to come by for my chair.”

My brows quirked. “You’re going to take your chair now?” I glanced behind him to see if he’d brought anyone to help, but it was just Dan. “Alone?”

The chair was not only heavy, but also awkward to lift, especially with only one person. I should know… I tried to heave that thing out of my house the day after I took a knife to it. Unsuccessfully. But after a few days, I’d grown to enjoy the presence of it, sitting there in the center of my room like a defaced statue; a warning to men everywhere what can happen to their precious leather massage chair if you fuck with Chloe Dyker.

“I got it in the house alone,” he said.

I snorted. “Hardly. You needed my help getting it in and out of your truck.”

“Your help? Chloe…” He chuckled and shook his head. “If I remember, you’d just had a manicure and the most you did was help me hoist it off the truck bed and balance it on the dolly.”

“Well once it’s on the dolly, you don’t actually need help, do you?”

Another sigh. Dan sighed a lot, I noticed—at least he did when he was around me. Liam didn’t sigh like that. Not in a way that suggested I was exhausting.

Dan tugged the metal dolly into view from where it was leaning on my stoop. “Don’t worry. I brought reinforcements.”

I stepped to the side, allowing him to enter, and shut the door behind him. “It’s right where you left it.”

He paused as we walked through the kitchen and his brows creased in the center of his face. “Are you cooking?”

“Yep,” I said, popping the ‘P’ at the end of the word, and set the coffees onto the counter. “Birds in a nest.”

“It doesn’t smell burnt,” he said, shock written across his face.

I could have been insulted, but it was no great secret that I sucked at cooking. “Yeah, yeah. Chloe Dyker learned to fry an egg.” I waved a dismissive hand through the