“Did I eat you for dessert?”
She didn’t know what she’d expected him to say. “Oh, how romantic”? That wasn’t Spencer. She knew it, and the disappointment still sliced through her like a blade.
“I don’t know.” She forced herself to shrug. “I woke up.”
“Do you want that? Us to go out?Outout, not to Kink. On a date.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “To somewhere other than The Daily Bread?”
His voice had caught, stumbling a bit on the worddate. As much as her heart stumbled. “If I said yes?”
“We could run into someone.”
“We didn’t run into anyone at the deli. But yeah, I guess we could. We could also run into them at Kink, since everyone in town seems to hang out there.”
“I never went there that much, for that reason. But now I can’t seem to stay away.” He cupped her hip. “I’ll be damned if you go there without me.”
Possessiveness he had down. But she needed more than that. “I go there because of you. Because of us. These past couple nights were an aberration. I’m a one-man woman, Spencer.”
His throat jerked as he swallowed. “I don’t know how to proceed here. We work together.”
“There’s no rule people can’t fraternize at the store. And if there is, you might want to tell Marcia and Tony, since I half expect to find them doing it on the front counter anytime now.”
He winced. “There’s no rule. But there was a situation. With me. Years ago.”
“Yeah, and you keep dancing around it. You freaked out about my jokes the other night but you won’t tell me what happened so I can—”
“So you can what?”
“Why won’t you just tell me?”
“Because it doesn’t affect us. She’s the past. But yeah, I’m wary. I have every reason to be.”
She tried—and failed—to ignore the rush of jealousy at the faceless woman who’d been with him first. “What if I said I want to know? That I deserve to know why you’re holding back on me?”
He clenched his jaw. “Then I’d say we have a problem.”