Page 62 of Sweet Ruin

Her in only the apron, nothing else, bending over these stainless steel countertops in front of me.

Her with sugar on her lips and frosting smeared between her thighs.

Her sinking down on⁠—

“You can sit,” she says without bothering to glance at me. “There’s a stool around here somewhere.”

“I’m fine standing,” I say gruffly.

If I sit, my erection will give me away in a fucking second. Better to stand up here on the other side of this cart, out of the worst of the light.

As she moves around the kitchen, grabbing things and dropping them into a huge silver bowl, I ponder my next move.

Normally, this part is simple. A man owes me, so I go to him in the dead of night. He either pays or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, Niko handles the follow-up. I’ve done it a thousand times. Hell, I did it tonight.

But this version of things is unscripted. Delilah didn’t borrow anything. Her husband did that for her, badly. And the building I’ve wanted for twenty years is under my shoes right now, with its owner standing three feet away in an apron, arguing with a refrigerator.

I could tell her the truth tonight about who I am and what I’m here for.

I won’t.

I could take the deed in three weeks.

I still might.

But for the time being, I could simply settle into the ease of this woman’s company and beauty, and give her what no one else has given her in a long time, if ever:

Space to be herself.

“How long has this place been yours?” I ask.

She’s got her head in the display case, hauling out trays. “Are you asking that question for business or for pleasure?”

“It’s only pleasure with you, Delilah.”

“There you go with the lines again.” She plunks a tray on the steel table between us. It contains an entire family of broken gingerbread men that have all met violent ends. Arms missing, heads caved in, legs snapped off at the knee. “Almost three years. Two Christmases in this building, one in a rented kitchen in Bay Ridge before that.”

“You bought it?”

“Sure did. Everybody told me to lease. Lease is smarter, it’s flexible, blah blah. Fuck that. I didn’t want flexible. I wanted a deed with my name on it and nobody else’s.”

“All by yourself? Nobody helped you?”

“My dad offered.” She pulls the tray closer and starts sorting the good gingerbread from the irreparably ruined. “He was sick already, knew his time was limited. He wrote out a check and slid it across the kitchen table. But I gave it back.”

I look down at her with curiosity. “Why?”

“Because money from my family comes with a string attached, and more often than not, that string ends up tied around my neck.” She shrugs like it means nothing to her, although anyone with functioning eyes can see the scar tissue built up around that old emotional wound. “I could’ve said yes. But then one day, Vivian would have decided she wanted something, and it would’ve gone right back to her. That’s how it’s always gone in my house.”

She sounds perfectly pleasant, but she’s very careful to keep her face turned down away from me.

“These are mostly trash,” she says in an obvious bid to change the subject. “Half of them are burnt to shit. Let me see what else I can scrounge up.”

“You don’t have to feed me,” I remind her.

“Who said this has anything to do with you?” she snorts. “I’m feeding me. You’re just lucky enough to get the leftovers.”

She fires up a burner, wipes the table down with one pass of a rag, sets a plate in front of me, sets a fork beside the plate, and turns away again.