Read Online Candy Crush by Tami Lund - Free Book Online

smile on their faces when we part ways.”
    “There’s that conceit I’m so fond of.”
Gabriella said, tongue in cheek.
    He leaned in and his breath ruffled her
hair, while her breath caught in her throat. “You know you still
want it,” he whispered.
    She swallowed convulsively. At least if she
did give in to temptation, the expectations were clearly laid out
ahead of time. That was only a small comfort, however, because
Gabriella was pretty confident that giving in to the temptation
that was Brandon Sarantos could easily result in a broken heart, no
matter how gently he let her down.
    It was only six-thirty by the time they
arrived at Brandon’s house. He opened the door and Butter bound
out, her entire body shaking with her enthusiasm at seeing them
again.
    “I take it you don’t leave your dog alone
much?” Brandon asked as they sat on the porch and let Butter
relieve herself on the front lawn.
    “I used to have a full time job, so she was
alone eight or nine hours a day. But she’d act like this whether we
were gone five minutes or five hours.”
    “I guess there’s something to be said for an
enthusiastic welcome every time you came home.”
    They sat in companionable silence for a few
minutes. Gabriella wondered what they would do with the rest of the
evening. Yesterday was easy. It was so late when they got home, and
she’d been so exhausted from driving all day, that they’d gone
straight to bed. Today, they still had the entire evening stretched
out before them.
    “Are you hungry?” Brandon asked after a
while.
    “I could eat,” Gabriella admitted.
    “I have some chicken and vegetables in the
fridge. I could throw together a stir fry.”
    “That sounds great.”
    “Come on, you’re cold.”
    ***
    Gabriella went upstairs to change into more
comfortable, warmer clothes. Brandon walked into the kitchen, and
stopped to turn on the furnace on the way.
    When she padded into the kitchen wearing
pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt, she asked, “Did I just hear the
furnace kick on?”
    Brandon glanced at her and was dismayed to
see that she looked fabulous even in a baggy sweatshirt and pajama
bottoms. He had been half-hoping her version of changing into
something more comfortable involved silk and satin and lace, so it
was disconcerting to find himself attracted to her when she wasn’t
even trying to look good.
    “Yeah. It’ll probably take a minute to warm
up. It’s the first time I’ve turned it on since last spring.”
    “You didn’t have to do that for me,” she
protested.
    He ignored her protest.
    “I can help,” she said, and so he set her to
work cutting vegetables, while he cut up and then sautéed chunks of
chicken breast. He tossed rice and water into the steamer and added
Gabriella’s freshly chopped vegetables to the chicken. While he did
that, Gabriella set the table with plates, forks and napkins.
    “There’s a bottle of chardonnay in the
fridge,” Brandon commented, so Gabriella added two glasses of wine
to her table setting.
    When they sat down and began eating, Brandon
surprised himself by saying, “That was fun.”
    “What, cooking?”
    “Cooking with you. I don’t think I’ve ever
cooked side by side with someone else before, except my mother or
my grandmother. And all they do is bitch at me because I’m not
doing it their way.”
    “We hardly cooked together,” Gabriella
pointed out. “All I did was cut up a few vegetables and set the
table.”
    “Trying to be nice here, and you aren’t
really working with me.”
    Gabriella smiled and said, “Okay, sorry.
Yes, it was fun.” She paused and then asked a question she’d been
curious about all day. “Do you pick up all women the same way?”
    Brandon looked surprised by the question.
“No. It depends on their personality, or their expectations.
Why?”
    “I was just wondering why you are using the
ploy you’ve been using on me.”
    Brandon chuckled. “I don’t know if I’d call
it a ploy just yet. I