What? Her mouth fell open. Was he kidding her? But before she could come back with some retort, he came into her apartment and was following the smoke signals and noise to her kitchen.
When her gaze dropped to his jeans-clad butt that could sell millions of pairs of pants if someone would stick an ad up on a Times Square billboard, Sarah blamed the noise for interfering with her brain waves. No way would she have otherwise visually ogled the man’s bottom, lit-up-billboard-worthy or not.
Within seconds, he’d pulled over a chair and climbed onto it. Looking like some sexy god up on his perch, he reset her smoke alarm.
Despite how much he annoyed her, the silence had her wanting to wrap her arms around him in gratitude.
“Bless you!” she praised. “That thing was driving me crazy.”
Turning, he stepped down from the chair and carried it back to where he’d grabbed it from. “No problem.”
“How did you know?”
Facing her, hands on his narrow hips, he grinned. “Told you. I succumbed to the sound of your mating call.”
She shook her head. Maybe in denial of his claim. Maybe in denial of memories of those hips wrapped in a towel and nothing more. Maybe in denial of the fact that for the first time in her life she was an ogler. She didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Mating call. As if.
“I didn’t lure you here,” she choked out of her dry mouth. Seriously, her vocal cords felt like they’d been put through a dehydration machine.
His amusement apparent, he cocked a brow. “Really? You expect me to believe your smoke alarm accidentally set itself off on the same day you learned I’m a firefighter?”
It did sound fairly incredible.
“Admit it,” he continued, his eyes dancing with mischief. “You wanted to see me and issued an invitation you knew I wouldn’t refuse.”
“I...” She grimaced. He made a good point. One that made any argument she issued lack credibility, even though she hadn’t intentionally set off her smoke alarm. Neither had she wanted to see him.
Quite the opposite.
She’d seen him too much that day already.
Seen and liked. Even the dirty, worn-out endearing hospital version. Unfortunately.
Wincing, he took in the smoke still escaping from her toaster oven. “You didn’t have to really set fire to anything, Sarah. A simple knock on my door and a verbal invitation would have done.” He shrugged. “Or, if you wanted something more dramatic, a match next to that sensitive baby there would have had it screaming for me.”
“I didn’t...” She paused, flustered by his teasing, by how her heart pounded that he was there, inside her apartment, talking directly to her, that he was using the teasing flirty tone as he had at the hospital.
“Need rescuing?” He finished her sentence for her. He walked over to the toaster oven, opened the door, grimaced at the burned mess inside. “Sure you did. In more ways than one. What was that?”
“Toast.”
His eyes widened. “That was toast?”
At his question, something inside Sarah snapped.
“Yes, it was. Toast. Toast that was going to be my dinner, because I was hungry and tired and... Don’t you judge me...you...you...” She searched for a derogatory name, sure there were thousands just on the tip of her tongue. Unfortunately, none sprang forth.
That’s when the day’s events took their toll and she did something totally out of character.
She watered up and fought tears.
Uh-uh. No way.
She was not going to cry in front of him.
Not now. Not ever.
She was not going to cry period.
She did not cry and most certainly if she ever did it wouldn’t be over burnt toast.
“Sarah?” His tone was no longer teasing, but showed concern. “Are you okay?”
Embarrassed, exhausted, ready to call it a night, she took a deep breath. “I’m tired and hungry and my dinner is chunks of charcoal and you annoy me. No big deal.”
He eyed her way too closely for comfort.
“You were really going to have toast for dinner?” he asked, ignoring the rest of her comment.
“I was going to spread hummus on it,” she defended. She’d showered, thrown on the baggy sweats, and had planned to eat a quick bite and crash. She did the same thing quite frequently on the days she worked the emergency room and got held up beyond her normal twelve-hour shift.
His nose curled again. “Hummus and toast. No, thank you.”
“For your information, I like hummus and toast.”
He didn’t look convinced. “Your hummus and toast must be better than any I’ve ever had.”
“It’s good. Stick around and you can taste for yourself.” Sarah heard herself say the words, but had no clue where they came from. Not in a million years would she invite her neighbor who started his days with a different woman every day of the week to stay for dinner.
Good grief. What would he think?
He had come to turn off her alarm, so she couldn’t really retract her invitation, could she? Not without seeming ungrateful and rude.
“Tempting,” he ventured, not sounding anything of the sort. “But I have a better offer.”
Of course he did. Women probably lined up to cook gourmet meals for him. And she’d heard first-hand that morning what else they offered.
“Why don’t you come to my place and let me cook for you?”
Surprised, she opened her mouth to refuse, but he continued speaking before she could.
“Before you say no, the food is already in the oven, the wine is chilled, and I have a view that’s even more amazing than yours.”
He’d noticed her view? He had food in the oven? Why did he have wine chilling?
Then it hit her.
“I pulled you away from company, didn’t I?”
He frowned. “No. Why would you think that?”
Because his apartment door was like a model runway exit, always with some beautiful woman walking through it.
But his look said he’d been alone.
“You’re cooking for just yourself?”
“I
