“No wonder you hate this place.”
Ty sighed as he rattled through the spice jars, picking certain ones up seemingly at random and sniffing them, then shrugging and replacing them or adding them to the pot. “Not all of it. I like the kitchen—my mom and I used to cook together. And the games room. She started working on it when the cancer came back so she’d have a cheerful place to rest and look at the garden, even if she didn’t have the energy to weed it herself. We spent a lot of time there. But when the house is empty, it just makes me think of all the nights I was here alone with my dad when my mom was in the hospital for treatment.”
Finally Ollie saw what he was getting at. Should he wait to make sure he was right? It seemed like Ty was having a hard time askingfor what he wanted. Ollie didn’t want to make the wrong assumption and come across as entitled, or like he was trying to take advantage.
Ty didn’t return to the island. His shoulders were pulled in as he stirred the pasta sauce, which now smelled better than any Italian restaurant Ollie had ever been to.
When fifteen seconds had gone by, Ollie tapped his fingers against the counter. “This morning I drove by a place I was thinking about renting, and it was literally on fire.”
“Jesus.” Ty barked out a laugh and finally turned around. His cheeks were pink from the heat of the stove, and the faraway expression was gone, replaced by something rueful and amused. “Thanks for the opening. You want to move in?”
A sane person would say no. But a sane person wouldn’t have wandered into Ty’s house that first morning and made him breakfast, and a sane person would not get to partake in whatever glory was going to come out of this kitchen in another forty minutes or so. Ty was already cleared to be around children, and he’d trained as a paramedic. So if Theo had an allergic reaction or Ollie put his fist through a wall, they were in good hands.
Ollie cleared his throat. “Let me just talk to my kid.”
Chapter 6
TY TRIEDnot to overthink things while Ollie went to the games room to talk to Theo. Instead he focused on the sauce. It needed another five minutes, maybe, before the tomatoes broke down to his satisfaction and started to get sweet. Meanwhile, he washed and chopped the fresh basil, took the sausage off the heat, and shredded the cheese.
Theo would want to move in, right? He loved the house when he first got here. Ty would give him the fancy globe he liked so much. Hell, he could have the games room for his bedroom if he wanted… as long as he was willing to let Ty play pinball after school.
Okay, no, he couldn’t sleep in the games room.
But this was a perfect solution, he told himself as he spooned the sausage into the sauce. Ollie and Theo would have a place to live, and Ty wouldn’t have to be alone. Hell, if Theo had enough toys to scatter around, it wouldn’t look anything like the place where Ty had grown up.
He’d drained the pasta and mixed it and the sauce into the casserole dish along with the cheese by the time Ollie returned to the kitchen.
And honestly, now was not the time for Ty to have second thoughts, but he maybe should have considered the fact that Ollie was the kind of man who could look edible in a security guard uniform.
Oops.
Ollie slid back into his seat at the island. “I have conditions.”
Ty forgot he ever had a single reservation. He slid the dish into the oven and picked up his wineglass again. “Hit me.”
“I haven’t had a roommate in a while. I want to make sure we’re on the same page.”
Ty rummaged in the junk drawer until he produced a pen and a pad of paper. He wroteGround Rulesat the top.
Ollie snorted. “I didn’t mean literally, but sure, that works. Okay,so rent—”
Oh God, this was going to suck.
He cut himself off midword at the sight of whatever Ty’s face was doing. “Wow, that bad?”
Ty groaned and put down the pen so he could scrub his face. “No. Maybe? Let’s call the issue of rent ‘logistically complicated.’”
When he pulled his hands away from his eyes, Ollie had his brows raised.
“I am living in an income tax nightmare,” Ty explained, “and I don’t want to make it worse.” His dad had died, and Ty was probably going to have to file his income taxes at least twice if not three or four times.
He should’ve let the hate group take the money.
“Ah.” Ollie considered this for a moment. “Utilities?”
“Fifty-fifty,” Ty offered.
“Done.” Ty wrote it down. “House and yardwork? Do we want to share meals? I’m not much of a cook, but I don’t mind it.”
