Michelle Celmer - Bedroom Secrets

“Okay, but I’m definitely getting the better end of the deal.”

“And I still get to keep the cleaning job?”

“Absolutely.”

“You’re not going to change your mind in a month and tell me I have to sleep with you?”

That’s the one thing he could offer without a hint of hesitation. “I am not going to ask you to sleep with me.”

She gave him a scrutinizing look. “You promise?”

“Yes, Tina DeLuca, I promise.”

Ty smelled fresh coffee.

He rolled over in bed, peering with one eye at the clock. It wasn’t unlike his mother to pop over unannounced and cook for him, but at seven-thirty in the morning?

He stretched and scratched his chest, wincing as the tender skin smarted under the scrape of his nails, and he remembered the fiasco last night. Then he smelled something cooking, something mouthwateringly wonderful, and realized that it definitely wasn’t his mother in his kitchen.

He sat up, salivary glands tingling in anticipation.

Bacon. It was definitely bacon. And despite the fact that he’d gotten less than six hours of sleep, he was out of bed and heading for the shower in a heartbeat. Within ten minutes he’d showered, shaved and dressed, and was pounding down the stairs to the kitchen.

Tina stood at the stove, poking at something in a frying pan with a wooden spoon. She saw him standing there and flashed him a bright smile. It had been close to one-thirty in the morning when he’d gotten her settled in the one bedroom flat above his garage, but she looked well-rested. Her dark hair was damp and pulled back in some sort of clip thingy, but tendrils hung loose around her face. In jeans, tennis shoes and a pink sweatshirt, she didn’t look a day over seventeen. And cute. She looked damned cute.

He hadn’t broken out in a cold sweat at the sight of her there and his heart rate was steady and normal.

So far so good.

“Good morning,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in. I wanted to get started on breakfast.”

“Works for me,” he said, taking a cup down from the cupboard and pouring himself coffee. “How’s the flat? Are you comfortable?”

She breathed a blissful sigh. “It was heavenly. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in days.”

He stirred creamer into his cup and took a sip. Not too strong, not too weak. She brewed a hell of a pot of coffee. He was really going to like this arrangement.

“There wasn’t much in the fridge so I had to improvise,” she said. “I hope you like omelets.”

“I’ll eat pretty much anything. When you have a mother who cooks like mine, you either starve or develop an iron stomach.”

Her eyebrows rose a notch. “She can’t be that bad.”

“She’s worse than that bad. But she means well.”

She looked as though she didn’t believe him. “I made up a menu for you to approve, and I’ll need some supplies.”

He had figured she would just cook whatever, and he would eat it. He had no idea he would get to choose, or that she would take this so seriously. “I’m sure anything you make will be fine and after work today we can stop at the market and pick up whatever you need.”

“Have a seat, it’s almost ready.”

He watched from the table, practically drooling in anticipation as she rearranged the food on a plate—omelet dripping with melted cheese, strips of crispy bacon, golden fried potatoes. When she placed his plate at the kitchen table and he took his first bite, he felt like the luckiest man alive. “This is fantastic.”

Her smile positively beamed with pride, and he realized just how important it was to her that she’d please him. She had no idea.

When she didn’t join him at the table he asked, “You’re not hungry?”

She shrugged. “I had a little something before you got up. I didn’t want to impose.”

“It’s not an imposition. The only thing worse than my mother’s cooking is eating alone. Just ask my sister. I’m always mooching meals off her and her fiancé.” He gestured to the empty chair across from him. “Cop a squat, keep me company.”

Almost shyly, she lowered herself into the chair, propping her feet on the edge of the seat and tucking her knees under her chin. She was close now, only a few feet away. He caught the faintest scent of soap and shampoo, and felt the slightest quickening of his pulse.

Think of her as a sister, he reminded himself.

“So, Tina DeLuca, tell me about yourself. Where are you from?”

“I grew up in Philly,” she said.

“With your aunt?”

“Yeah, after my mom got sick. When she died two years later, Aunt Louise became my permanent guardian.”

“How did your mom die?”

“She had ALS—Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”

He put his fork down. “I’m sorry.”

He looked truly saddened by it. What saddened Tina the most was that so many memories of her mother had faded over the years until all that was left were vague impressions. “Aunt Louise was really good to me. That’s why, when she had her stroke, I wanted to help take care of her. I was only twelve, but I started cooking and cleaning. When I was seventeen she had her second stroke and needed round-the-clock care. I dropped out of school to stay with her.”

He took a sip of coffee, then picked up his fork and returned to his breakfast with gusto. He ate with the enthusiasm of a man who hadn’t had a decent meal in months. To say she was flattered was a major understatement. She was just glad she could do something nice for him. He’d practically saved her life, giving her a job and a place to stay. She shuddered to think where she would be right now if not for Mae’s kindness and Ty’s good nature.

“Did you ever finish high school?” he asked.

“I never went back, but I got my GED, and I took some on-line college courses in my spare time. For several years the Internet was my only outlet to the outside world. My cousin Ray promised me that when Aunt Louise died, he would give me the house and half of the money. I didn’t do it for the money, though. She did so much for me and my mom, I wanted to give that back to her.”

“But he lied,” Ty said.

She nodded. “Two weeks after she died there was a for sale sign in the window, and he was asking me to be ‘nice’ to him.”

“Sleazy bastard,” he muttered.

“I told him no way, and he told me I didn’t have a choice, I belonged to him, and he was going to take what was rightfully his.”

“Did he…?”

“He tried. But I…stopped him.”

“Stopped him?”

She caught her lip between her teeth. “You’re going to laugh.”

“I swear, I wouldn’t laugh about something like that.”

“I, um, hit him over the head. With a frying pan.”

The corners of Ty’s mouth twitched.

“A cast-iron frying pan,” she added.

He was trying really hard now not to smile.

“He was chasing me around the house, but he’s really fat so I was a lot faster than him. I ran into the kitchen, grabbed the pan off the stove, and when he barged in after me, I clobbered him. The pan made a loud bong against his head and he landed so hard the whole house shook. It was kind of like something out of a Road Runner cartoon.”

The amusement that had been tugging at his lips disappeared. “I guess it does sound funny when you think about it, but I’m sure it wasn’t at the time. You must have been really scared.”

“No, I was more disgusted than anything. I was scared after I hit him. At first I thought he was dead. When I realized he was still breathing, I knew he’d be really mad when he woke up. He’d call the police and they would probably take his side. I stuffed a couple of things in my bag, grabbed what money I had saved and got out of Dodge. I had a couple of leads on my father and figured it was the time to look. But the money went a lot faster than I thought it would. And here I am.”