He shouted with laughter. “Probably exactly what you’d expect a man to be thinking just then, Andie-girl.”

She scowled at his back. “I’m serious.”

“Me too.” He switched to the other skillet, turning the zucchini slices for their stir-fry. “I was halfway through my first glory hallelujah when I realized you were crying, and that pretty much cured me of the idea that the kissing had anything to do with me.”

Of course it’d had to do with him. She’d been lonely, and his house was the only place she’d thought to go. She sat back, the wooden chair creaking. But then, she hadn’t really hung out with other men since she’d been kidnapped. If her dad weren’t so overprotective and the ranch were overrun with eligible bachelors, maybe she would have been kissing them instead.

Her throat clamped closed at the idea. Strange mouths, strange men. She’d take her empty house a thousand times over that. Of course, they wouldn’t be strange if she spent as much time with them as she did with LJ. But which of the men in town would she even ask out? She knew all of them, and she wouldn’t want to share the tiny space of her kitchen with a single one of them.

“C’mere,” LJ said, cocking his head to beckon her over since both his hands were occupied.

Andra’s heart crashed up into her ribs. She pulled the jacket off her lap and set it aside with shaking hands. The few steps across the kitchen to his side might as well have been miles, and for the first time in weeks, she felt how intimate it was to be alone with him in this house. Her gaze jumped from his relaxed face to his hands, busy with the skillet and spatula, trying to guess his intent.

Maybe he would turn and kiss her, as confident as he always was. When she’d kissed him, it had been fast and hard, her thoughts whirling, so she hadn’t had time to catalog all the things she’d been wondering about ever since. His lips looked sensual, soft. She wanted to know if they’d feel different if she were gentle, exploring his shape instead of crushing him to her. What it would be like to have his chest touching hers.

She swallowed. She never would have had the courage to kiss him the first time if she’d had this much time to think it over.

“The thing with cooking vegetables,” LJ said, “is that they’re all different. They all have a temperature that will ruin them, and right below is the sweet spot, only enough heat to get a perfect caramelization.”