Chapter 36

36

O n the phone with Luke, she'd been wearing her Lilo & Stitch– themed Primark pajamas. Sol had gotten the tip about their fabulous sleeping sets from Killing Eve 's resident fashionista Villanelle. But with Luke on his way to her place, she decided to change into something that still gave the illusion of casualness and homely comfort but was more sophisticated and appropriate for a visitor.

She opted for a pair of high-waisted, wide-legged, cropped faded blue jeans that she'd gotten in Paris recently and a black fitted hoodie that hit at her waist. She was deciding whether to don a pair of Arizona Birkenstock sandals or her furry pale-pink slippers when she heard the doorbell and ended up running barefoot downstairs.

Nina Simone was singing "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" through her home-theater audio system when Sol opened the front door. Her heartbeat picked up speed when she saw Luke standing there. He wore his signature dark jeans with an equally dark T-shirt and a midnight-blue bomber jacket. A loose wave of hair fell over his forehead, and Sol thought he had to have staged such hot tousledness before buzzing the door. It couldn't be fortuity. No one was that casually gorgeous.

"No Greg Knight look tonight?" she asked. She probably sounded relieved by his sexy appearance. Had he changed clothes before heading to her place?

"Two days across the pond, and you forget how to be Mediterranean?" he quipped with his best, most smoldering smirk.

"Perdón." She breathed deeply to compose herself. "Hola."

She kissed him on both cheeks with an ease she'd learned from her upbringing in a very physical country, even if his closeness—and his lavender- and hickory-tinged smell—was melting her insides.

"Ciao, bella," he replied in turn, walking in and making Sol feel even more unsure about the whole thing. What had she been thinking exactly when she'd invited him over? Since when did she get visitors of any kind that late at night?

"Let me take my boots off," he said, sitting on the wooden storage bench that graced the tiny entryway. "Should I also take my socks off and match you?" he added, eyeing her bare feet on the wooden floors.

"Better not," she said, not missing one single detail as he unlaced his rugged classic boots.

"Why?" he asked, lifting his eyes from his shoes and catching Sol's attentive gaze on him.

"I have a thing with naked feet and ankles," she said bluntly, trying not to blush excessively.

"Not into it?" he asked, returning his attention to his shoes.

"Opposite," she whispered more than said.

But he heard her and returned his eyes to hers with a wicked smile. He took his socks off and rolled up his jeans almost provocatively so that his ankles would be visible.

"Unrelenting flirt," she said, ushering him inside. She would not look around the vicinity of his feet under any circumstance. Unless he was some sort of very tall hobbit with the hairiest of feet and the thickest of ankles, she'd be doomed.

"I liked your Barcelona place, but this is impressive," he said, looking at Sol's minimalist selection of mid-century modern furniture in the professionally interior-designed living room. "I've always liked this street."

"Oh, I fell in love with the street too and then ended up in this cramped old house," she said. She'd tried salvaging some of the furnishings from her California home, but most of the pieces were too big for the London space. Plus, Sol had quit trying to negotiate property rights to a few of her former belongings with her most recent ex-husband.

"Cramped old house?" Luke asked her, sounding perplexed. She recalled he'd talked about renting a tiny, overpriced studio. Sometimes she was totally clueless.

"You should have seen my place in Santa Monica," she said, trying to justify herself. She swallowed, grasping the fact that she appeared to have exactly no wits left about her that night. It wasn't because she was nervous. She was frantic.

"I doubt you had a Georgian cottage from the 1830s in Santa Monica," he said, a tad defensive. And that touchiness, paired with the fact that he'd stopped being a consummate seducer for the first time since he'd arrived, allowed Sol to regain a bit of lucidity.

"I most certainly didn't," she conceded. "Let me show you the skylight above the kitchen/dining room."

They crossed the arched opening that separated the living from the dining area and that had been the closest to an open-space concept Sol had managed to get from the regulation-abiding architect who'd led the renovation of the house.

Next to the almost all-white, modern, and completely remodeled kitchen was a long, six-person wooden table surrounded by four chairs and a bench against the wall. The roof over the table had been replaced by a skylight that provided the room with lots of natural light during the day. It was one of Sol's favorite places in the house.

If one of the upstairs rooms hadn't been devoted to her home office, where she kept all her favorite novels, dictionaries, manuals, and tea-table books, she'd probably work out of her kitchen even more than she already did.

"I'm not in the habit of making tea and having people over at almost 1 a.m.," Sol told Luke, putting the kettle to boil on the stove.

"I'm not in the habit of going to people's places to have tea at almost one at night either." He helped her reach a couple of cups stored on a tall shelf.

"Somehow I don't believe you," she told him, looking him in the eyes and grabbing the cups from his hands carefully so as not to touch him.

"That's only because you weren't actually talking about tea, and you decided to typecast me." His smolder was hard at work.

"As?" she asked.

He thought she looked a bit more at ease than when he'd first arrived, but she was still not her usual confident self.

"Someone who has lots of—I guess let's continue with the tea euphemism…"

"… lots of tea with different people, yes." Sol finished his sentence. "I did typecast you. Am I right, though?"

"Not sure if I want to reveal that yet." He smiled, aware of how seductive he could be.

They held each other's gaze for a few seconds—longer, perhaps—daring the other to say something first, to do something first. The kettle whistled then, taking them away from the intense staring competition. Sol went to the stove to pour the hot water from the kettle into a teapot. He followed her movements. He didn't want to ogle at her, at her body, but caught himself already doing it.

She took the teapot to the dining table. Luke helped with a plate of nuts and segments of oranges that she'd prepared before he got there. He was certain there wasn't a single biscuit to be had in that whole house. He'd been misguided when she invited him for tea.

She set the cups on opposite sides of the long, wide table, filled them with tea, and sat in front of one of them, signaling Luke to take the place across from her. But he grabbed his cup and sat at the head of the table, closest to her and at a ninety-degree angle.

"If you don't mind," he told her in a purr, his lips near her ear, their arms practically touching, "I'd rather sit here."