“I do.” And I really, really did.
Marco showed me into the guest room that we were supposed to use. The room was luxurious but impersonal—like we were staying in a hotel. Which I guessed was the point. I preferred his nerded-out room to this one. It made me think about all the time we’d spent together, where he’d teased me for my obsessions, and he’d shared them all along.
I put my suitcase on the bed, and then I screwed up enough courage to ask him. “Why do you hide that part of yourself? All the fanboy stuff you used to love?”
He shrugged. “My dad thought it was a waste of time and that I needed to focus on other things.”
“You should enjoy what you enjoy, Marco,” I said, echoing the time he’d told me the same thing. “Especially with me.”
It was dark, so I might have been mistaken, but I thought there was a heated, intense look in his eyes. He swallowed hard and then said, “Come on. It’s cold up here.”
I went back downstairs with him, and along the way, I thought of how he’d apologized for bursting my bubble with regards to Craig.
Only he hadn’t. If anything, I was realizing that the Craig bubble had been burst a while ago.
Bubble was an apt term for my feelings for Craig, because they were very much like soap bubbles at the top of a mixture. Light, frothy, able to blow away with the slightest breeze. But with Marco? It was like a match striking flint—instant, combustible, roaring to life inside me with a burning hunger that I didn’t know how to respond to. A ravaging fire with an unlimited fuel source.
One could float away without even being missed, while the other would consume me, making sure I would never be the same again.
Me coming to Vermont had nothing to do with Craig at all.
I had come here for Marco, and Marco alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
We had paused the movie and gone into the kitchen to find something to eat because my stomach would not stop rumbling.
“Why do women like Kylo Ren so much?” he asked.
“Because we have eyeballs. I mean, obviously there’s more to it than that. He’s the Byronic hero, the morally gray character who redeems himself out of love. Women like a man who is willing to burn down the world and change himself to be with her.”
There was a picture of a boat on the wall with Ken and Tracie standing in front of it. I asked, “Is this your family’s boat?”
“Yacht,” Marco corrected me as he went into the pantry.
“Is there a difference?”
“Yes.” His voice was muffled. “That’s the Tracie.” He came back out of the pantry, hands empty. “I told my dad that if he wanted to name it after my stepmom, he should call it the Cirrhosis of the River, but he didn’t see the humor.”
“Again you’ve failed to gather,” I told him, pointing at his hands.
“The stove is gas, so it should work. I’m just not sure what you would want to eat. The staff haven’t had a chance to stock the pantry yet.”
“Poor little rich boy. Doesn’t even know how to cook because you have a staff to do it for you.”
“I don’t have a staff at my place,” he said defensively.
“No, there you have food delivery apps. Hang on.” I went into the pantry to see what I could find. All my ideas weren’t going to work because they required something like butter or milk, and given that the power was out, I didn’t think it was a good idea to rely on food in the fridge.
“Do you think I can’t cook?” he asked, leaning against the counter with his arms folded across his broad chest.
I grabbed a couple of cans of chicken noodle soup and brought them out. “If I had to guess, no. Let me teach you the basics. This is a stove. This is the knob you use to turn the stove on.”
“I know how to turn things on,” he said in a low voice that had me quivering. “Want me to show you?”
Yes, please, my body begged. His words made me feel like I was standing in a massive thunderstorm and being hit by every bolt of lightning at once.
“What?” I finally squeaked out.
“Did you want me to show you that I know how to cook?” he asked in a semi-serious tone accented by his teasing lilt. “My Sicilian ancestors would be insulted by your implication.” He knew exactly what he’d just done to me, that innuendo of his that had nearly made me spontaneously combust.
“Okay,” I said, still not quite sure what had just happened. He went into the pantry and started gathering up ingredients. I sat down at the counter to watch him work and to try to calm down.
But watching him cut, dice, open cans, gather spices, and put everything together in a big pot did not help. Because this was all too attractive.
“What did you just say?” he asked, and I realized I must have muttered something under my breath.
I also was not quick enough to censor myself. “I said there’s something attractive about a man who knows his way around the kitchen.”
He turned his head to grin over his shoulder at me. “And the kitchen’s not even my best room.”
I told my lady parts that it would be inappropriate to ask for a demonstration in his best room. Why did he flirt with me like that automatically, even when we were alone? I supposed it might be like method acting, where if you stayed in character all the time, it was easier to slip into the part when necessary.
“Tell me about Comic Con and the Nerd Who Was,” I said. I needed the distraction. So while he finished up making us dinner, he shared stories with me about his past that was filled with the most delightful nerdery.
It was like stumbling across his bedroom had broken down a wall that he’d put up, and I liked seeing this side of him.
He’d made a soup with egg noodles. “Creamy chicken noodle soup without the chicken,” he told me as he handed me a bowl. “Do you want to go eat this in the living room?”
“Sure.” I followed after him, trying to be very careful and not spill because I knew Tracie would send me a bill and I couldn’t afford to break so much as a candlestick in this place.
When we settled in, I got my first bite. “Wow! This is really good!” I told him.
“You don’t have to sound quite so surprised. Did you want to watch the end of your movie?”
“Not really. The ending should be tried at The Hague. I need Lucasfilm to undo it and make a sequel. A cartoon, a novel, another actual movie, I don’t care as long as they bring Ben back.”
“Maybe I can make a call,” he said with a wink.
My heart forgot how to beat. “Do you know someone there?”
“No, but my dad does. And as the heir apparent, maybe I could sway him a little.”
If Marco got me Ben Solo back, I would marry him tomorrow. His connections reminded me again how different our lives were. “Are you going to inherit this house?”
“I hope so. My mom loved it here.”
I was seeing the appeal myself. “You’re part of this whole dynasty thing, which I do not get. The only things I’m inheriting are that barely functioning TV and Feather Locklear, who I’m pretty sure is going to outlive us all.”
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he said as he placed his empty bowl on the coffee table. “Sometimes I don’t know where my father’s demands end and where my dreams begin.”