“Nope. I got put into the system. I was a layaway foster kid. A few families put a deposit on me, but none of them ever made the final payment, so to speak. They were nice, with a couple of exceptions. Just never clicked enough with any of them to do the whole ‘forever family’ thing.”

She refrained from telling him about her defective Velcro theory.

“Do you need help?” he asked suddenly. “I noticed yesterday that you have issues with delegating. Rather, you delegate the easier tasks and take on the harder ones for yourself.”

“Well, maybe you also noticed yesterday that sometimes it’s easier for me to do things myself because I’m better at them.”

He let out a short, sharp laugh. “Well, yes, but doing everything yourself isn’t really sustainable, is it? Please. Delegate.”

She stopped stirring the quinoa. “Come chop this cucumber. Dice it so it’s in cubes. Don’t cut your fingers.”

He stood next to her and fumbled with the knife a bit before getting into a chopping rhythm. “What’s layaway?”

She stopped with her fork over a thigh that needed to be flipped.

“Are you some kind of trust fund baby who got his allowance cut off?” She’d asked the question because she was curious, but the contempt in her voice sizzled like the meat in the pan. He was probably the kind of guy who paid cash up front and thought Sallie Mae was a country singer.

There was a pause in his chopping. “Something like that.”

He wasn’t going to elaborate. Well good. She didn’t feel like elaborating anymore either. Ledi flipped the pieces of chicken and pulled out a small cast-iron pan to make the sauce. “Chop the sage next,” was all she said. “And then juice the lemons.”

Jamal’s bicep brushed against hers as they worked quietly. The fresh, green smell of sage mixed with the scent of the meaty carmelization of the chicken. Someone drove by with the latest everpresent pop anthem playing at full blast, but they prepared their meal in silence.

The pigeon cooed outside the window and stepped closer to the glass, and Ledi thought of a study she’d read that described how well the birds remembered human faces. They were more observant than people gave them credit for. She wondered what she and Jamal looked like to it. Paired-off humans who chose to cook dinner together each night, and to share other parts of their lives, too?

It’s just a free meal. And the pigeon isn’t thinking about jack except how to get in on the quinoa action.

“My parents expect a lot from me,” Jamal said. Apparently, he was one of those people who found chopping meditative. “They pin their every hope for the future onto me, so they also want to decide everything for me, down to how I do my job and who I marry. But at least I have parents, so I shouldn’t complain.”

Ledi dropped the sage leaves into the citrus butter, then removed the pan from the heat. “We can stop talking about parents and the lack thereof now,” she said as she poured the sauce over the chicken.

She didn’t look at him as he moved around behind her. She focused on taking up a small bit of quinoa, blowing on it, testing its give between her teeth.

When she finally turned around, he stood next to the table, hands in his pockets. On each of Mrs. Garcia’s bleach-stained plastic place mats sat a perfect dinner setting. The silverware wasn’t as fancy, but he’d apparently retained some of what she’d taught him at the Institute. He’d even folded some paper towels in the elaborate way she’d shown him. She shouldn’t have cared, but it was the look in his eye that got her. She’d been in his position, standing beside a set table hoping that somehow that small gesture made her foster parents happy, showed them how useful she could be . . .

Ledi gave a grunt of approval and turned back to the food. She knew he’d expected a different reaction from the way she caught his shoulders slump from the corner of her eye. He couldn’t know that the coarse sound had been the result of whatever strange reaction was happening in her chest, and happening because of him. Fluttering and fizzing and fluffiness: all kinds of f words.

Feelings. Good ones, that couldn’t be solely attributed to the high of getting a free meal.

She moved away from the stove as he stepped back into the kitchen. The cooking area was bigger than her measly Pullman, but suddenly much too small for the two of them.

When she looked up at him, his gaze was on her face in general, and specifically homed in on her mouth. And then his eyes lifted to hers and the fluttering and fizzing spread from her chest to a portion of her anatomy that she was fairly certain wasn’t part of the respiratory and circulatory systems. She’d have to double-check her anatomy books, because the pulse between her legs felt as strong as a heartbeat and as natural as breathing.

Men had looked at Ledi with lust in their eyes before. The way Jamal looked at her was something entirely new to her. No, that wasn’t true. She’d seen it before. It was the look on Charming’s face when Sleeping Beauty’s eyes fluttered open. The expression of awe that Eric sported when he woke to find Ariel cradling him on the beach. It was the look that she thought only existed in Disney cartoons because it seemed so highly improbable that anyone would ever look at her that way.

And yet, there he was, gaze sparking with mischief and want, corners of his mouth turned up in a hopeful smile. She considered giving him whatever a smile like that would cost her, but she knew all too well how things would turn out.