“Actually, I’m usually a savory fan, but pancakes are my weakness.”
The fact stores itself in my memory, burrowing next to automaton, lasagna, and the way her eyes light up when she finds something amusing.
Hadley opens the small tub of maple syrup tucked in beside her pancakes and drizzles it across the short stack of pancakes. I watch every movement as though I’m studying tape, trying to read her as well as I do a defense.
When she pauses, I realize we don’t have silverware. I push my chair back to fish two from the drawer. Hadley’s lips are pressed together, eyes still curious as she accepts one of them. “I didn’t dip them in anything,” I tell her. “I swear. No pranks this morning.”
She nods. “I know, but I might have.”
I raise a brow as I hold her gaze. She folds first, looking away as she silently laughs. She takes a bite of pancake and her eyes round and she leans forward as she moans a soft and erotic sound that has my blood heating and my cock hardening.
“Oh my god. These are amazing.” She takes a second bite and releases another quiet moan.
I want to hear it again. I want to be here every fucking time she eats. I want to be the cause of that sound.
I take a pull from my coffee and stare at my sandwich. I need her to talk. I need benign words that won’t have me leaping across this table and clearing it with one arm and laying her across it.
“What was the prank on your brother-in-law?”
Hadley swallows her bite and shakes her head. “Why?”
“Why won’t you tell me?”
“How do you have three sisters and still ask that question? Women are meant to have their secrets.”
“Are you as close to your brother as you are to your sister?” I ask.
She nods.
“That’s all you’re going to tell me?”
“Are we sharing?”
“You know one of my sisters. It seems only fair I learn a little about you.”
“You met Lanie.”
I scoff. “You’ve lived with my sister for a year. I met yours over a video chat for ten seconds.”
Hadley grins. “My brother and sister are a year and a half apart, and I’m nine years younger than my brother, but my parents started a company when my mom was pregnant with me, and so my parents needed my brother and sister to help out and babysit me. We never really had the option to be anything but close.” She takes another bite of her pancakes. “What about you? How much older and younger are your other two sisters?”
“Alena is the oldest. She’s two years older than me, and then Bree is four years younger than me, three years younger than Katie.”
“Are the four of you close?”
I shrug. “At times.”
Her blue eyes stare at me, working to read between the vagueness of my reply. “Do you miss Chicago?”
I shake my head, my mouth full of breakfast sandwich. Hadley takes a drink of coffee, waiting for me to swallow before asking, “Not at all?”
“Not at all.”
She stares at me, waiting for an explanation or details. “Do you miss Vegas?” I ask, instead.
Hadley nods. “I miss the energy.”
“Why’d you come to Camden?”