This Loving Feeling (A Mirror Lake Novel) by Miranda Liasson Page B

dangerous.
    He sighed. “What I meant to say is, it’s a pleasure and a surprise to have you here with us this morning. I also wanted to thank you for coming with me to the ER last night. I . . . appreciated having you there. I owe you for that. You don’t have to make breakfast.” He tugged the bread out of her hands, and she quickly dug back into the bag because her hands were now shaking. “But thanks a lot for the groceries. Stevie needs all the regular meals he can get.”
    Sam wondered again if she should ask what happened. How exactly the hottest singing sensation since Ed Sheeran had wound up packing a kid into his bus at his last pit stop. But Lukas was working on filling the coffee pot and she turned to more practical matters, like finding a bowl to crack the eggs in and a pan to fry up bacon. Lukas surprised her again by cracking an egg with one hand and tossing the shell in the sink.
    “Maybe my sympathy for you is misplaced. Maybe you can fend just fine for yourself.”
    “Honey, I’ve had an entire youth specializing in fending for myself. Cracking eggs is not a problem.”
    No, it wasn’t, but cracking his shell would be much harder. Years ago, he’d offered little about his youth, and it didn’t seem that time had changed that. She traded the bag of coffee for his Pyrex bowl, nodding toward an upper cabinet. “I think the filters are up there.”
    “I need to ask you a favor,” she said suddenly, watching the hard planes of muscle in his back flex as he reached up for the filters.
    “I’m yours for the asking.” There went that wicked grin again. “Seriously. I owe you for all you’ve done for us.”
    “You may not feel that way after I ask.”
    He gave an elegant shrug. More mesmerizing muscle action. “Try me,” he said.
    Oh, yes, she’d love to try him. A million different ways. No! Where were these thoughts coming from? She shook her head to stave them away. “My committee for the theater has botched the entertainment for the benefit, which is just under three weeks away, on June first. The lounge singer they asked can’t come and the only other choice is Victor Irving.” She was pleased when he winced at the name. “I hate to ask but . . .”
    “Consider it done.”
    “Really?” Her heart gave a foolish thump. She was more pleased that he seemed to want to do it for her rather than the fact that she’d just scored a major star for the benefit.
    “Anything for you, babe.”
    “Thank you,” she managed. What remarkable eyes he had, depths of rich brown with a fathomless intensity that made her breathless. His gaze raked slowly over her in a way that started a smolder in the pit of her stomach that spread out to flame her cheeks. And other areas. “I—appreciate it.”
    They whipped up breakfast in companionable silence. He worked efficiently, finishing the eggs, making toast, cutting strawberries, humming some catchy tune she’d never heard before. Probably his latest song. He’d surprised her—he didn’t seem like the type to know his way around a kitchen. Harris certainly played the helpless male around unprepared food, but then, his mom and three sisters had made fending for himself unnecessary.
    She, meanwhile, tried to focus on not burning the bacon in light of the fact that she’d accidentally bumped into him a few times and had come way too close to that snake tattoo that wove its way around his arm. She fought the impulse to trace it . . . with her tongue.
    Oops, he was saying something. She had to stop her mind from wandering. She found him looking at her expectantly. “Wh . . . what did you say?”
    He was holding two plates. “Stevie’s still asleep. Let’s take our plates outside and eat, want to?”
    It shocked her how easy it was to fall back into their old ways together. To pretend to forget the old wounds—not that she hadn’t forgiven, because Sam was a forgiving person, and she’d long ago accepted that they were done—
    Well, it