Nova peered at him and tried to feel like his humble comments were warranted, but she knew he was underselling himself.
Typical Adrian.
Before she could respond, someone shouted from what seemed like miles away—
“Adrian! Dinner’s done!”
Nova tensed, surveying their jungle sanctuary.
She had forgotten, completely forgotten they were indoors at all, and not in the overgrown ruins of a long-dead city.
They were at his house. His mansion. The one he shared with the Dread Warden and Captain Chromium.
And his dads were here.
Adrian, too, seemed momentarily shaken. “Right,” he said, closing the sketchbook over the pencil. “Are you hungry?”
Her lips parted. Suddenly her breaths were coming in short, uncomfortable bursts.
Dinner. An everyday family dinner.
With them.
Shutting her mouth again, she forced herself to nod. “Yeah. Actually, I’m famished.”
“Me too.” Adrian stood and offered a hand, which she pretended not to notice as she pulled herself up using the crumbled stone wall. She wasn’t ready to touch him again. She didn’t want to know how much she would enjoy it.
By the time she turned back, his hand had slipped into his pocket. In addition to the long-sleeved tee, he had changed out of his jeans into gray sweatpants, and there was something so intimate and relaxed about it that she almost found him even more handsome this way.
And he was handsome.
She’d noticed it before. A million different times, it seemed. The high cut of his cheekbones. The full lips that so easily gave way to that subtle smile. Even the glasses, thickly framing his dark eyes, added an air of ease and sensitivity to his features that made her mouth run dry when she stopped to think about it.
She was beginning to think she might really be in trouble.
She followed Adrian through the lush foliage and drooping vines. He pushed aside the leaves of some prehistoric-looking plant, and there was a plain wooden door set into a plain white wall.
Nova glanced back one time, wishing she had taken the time to admire the statue, and the star—what she was beginning to think of as her star—before she crossed over the door’s threshold and returned to reality.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
NOVA FOLLOWED ADRIAN out of the basement and back up the narrow staircase, her mind churning as she tried to determine the likelihood of this being a trap.
Not much, she thought. She had been asleep for an entire night and day, and as uncomfortable as that made her, she had to admit that nothing had happened. She had not been attacked or captured.
And yet, her hackles wouldn’t lower, not completely. There was always a chance. A chance that Winston had finally revealed Nova’s identity, or that some incriminating evidence had been dredged up on her while she slept. Twenty-four hours was more than enough time for something to go wrong.
Adrian nudged open the door at the top of the stairs and Nova braced herself as she stepped into the imposing foyer again. The mansion, though, seemed as quiet and orderly as before.
She followed Adrian into a formal dining room, with wainscoting on the walls and a crystal chandelier dangling over a cherry wood table, which was large enough to seat twelve or more. Rather than being set with fine china and silver cutlery, the table was littered with newspapers, many still wrapped in rubber bands, and piles of junk mail, and two issues of Heroes Today magazine.
Adrian nudged his way through another door and the sounds of life engulfed Nova. Dishes clinking. A fan whirring. The steady beat of a knife against a cutting board.
The moment she stepped into the open-concept kitchen, her eyes darted not to the two men who were cooking, but to the large arched windows surrounding a casual breakfast nook, and a door that might have led to an exit … or maybe a pantry. To the block of kitchen knives on the granite countertop, and the cast-iron skillet simmering on the stove, and the row of bar stools that would shatter against Captain Chromium, but might be able to stun the Dread Warden if swung with sufficient force.
Once she had mapped out all possible exits and deduced enough potential weapons that she could feel confident she wasn’t powerless, not even here, she dared to greet her hosts.
Hugh Everhart extended a hand toward her, the other clutching a wooden spoon. “Nova, it was a nice surprise to hear you’d be joining us.”
She held her breath as she shook his hand, wondering first if her power would work against the invincible Captain Chromium.
Wondering second at what point Adrian had come up to inform his dads he had a guest. Was that before or after she had unofficially stayed the night?
Hugh gestured toward the bar, where Simon Westwood was chopping carrots into thin sticks.
“It’s just about done,” said Hugh, “but feel free to grab a snack while you wait.”
Simon nudged a plate in her direction, loaded with cherry tomatoes and strips of raw bell pepper. Nova’s attention, however, went to the massive chef’s knife in his hand. Then she took in his blue-checkered apron, which was so opposite of anything she’d ever imagined the Dread Warden would wear that for a moment she thought she might be dreaming. This was what dreams were like, right? Ridiculous and absurd and utterly implausible?
When she thought of these two superheroes, she always pictured them in the midst of a battle, usually one in which she was discovering some clever way to kill them both at once. Never had she pictured them at home, doing something as mundane as cooking dinner together.
“Adrian,” said Hugh, dumping the carrots onto the tray, “could you run down and grab another can of tomatoes from the pantry?”
“Sure,” said Adrian. Picking up a carrot stick, he crunched it in half as he pushed himself away from the bar. He shot Nova a quick, encouraging smile before he disappeared back through the door.
“The pantry is at the far end of the hall,” Simon said, arranging the vegetables on the plate. It took Nova a moment to realize he was talking to her. “Kind of a pain when you forget something halfway through a recipe. We keep meaning to clean out the broom closet”—he jutted his chin toward a narrow closed door—“and convert it into the new pantry, but somehow it always gets filled back up with superhero stuff.”
Nova’s thoughts were racing so fast she could barely understand him. Pantry? Canned tomatoes?
She tried to relax her shoulders. To even her breathing. To admit to herself that an attack was not imminent.
But she took a subtle side step to be closer to the block of knives, anyway. Just in case.
“I’m afraid this meal isn’t going to be up to our usual standards, at least for when we have a special guest,” said Hugh. He was standing over the stove, stirring a bubbling red sauce. “But it’s been a long day for us both, and we weren’t expecting to come home to company.” He looked sideways at Nova, his eyes twinkling almost mischievously.
“I wasn’t expecting to be served a homemade meal at all,” Nova said, her attention skipping from the tomato sauce to the colander of steaming spaghetti noodles in the sink to a skillet full of cooked ground beef.
“I hope you like Italian,” said Hugh. “You’re not vegetarian, are you?”
She shook her head and watched as he scraped the meat into the sauce.
“I love Italian food,” she said, trying to match their unprecedented normalcy. “My dad was Italian, and my mom used to cook pasta for us all the time because he liked it so much. It was never her specialty, though. Not as good as her lumpia.”