Page 29 of Puck Me Twice
“Good baby girl,” he murmurs to the bird, who butts her head against his and then takes off. She clips his head with her wing as she flies toward the kitchen sink. A black wooden perch is set in front of the closed window, and she settles there, making herself comfortable.
Sven gestures to the espresso machine in the corner, beside which is a simple coffee pot. “Coffee will be ready soon, or I have a selection of tea if you’d prefer.”
“Coffee is great, thanks.” He has everything out and prepared. “Is there anything I can help with?”
“How do you like your eggs?” he repeats.
“Um…”
“Scrambled? Over easy? Hard boiled? That may take a minute.” He quirks his smile at me, and my stomach flutters.
I’m just hungry. It’s the hangover.
Except my head doesn’t really hurt. I’m a little queasy, sure. Altogether, I don’t feel all that bad.
“Whatever you’re doing is fine.” I perch on a barstool. The oven is on, a timer counting down. “Are you baking something?”
His eyebrows go up. “Yes?”
Most of the professional hockey players I know have someone else around to do the cooking. And baking? Fuck, I’m surprised any of them even know how to turn on the oven.
Sven starts cracking eggs into a clear glass bowl. He gets through three-quarters of the dozen before he starts scrambling. From little pinch bowls, he rains salt and pepper into the bowl, then adds milk and starts scrambling with a whisk.
Like, an actual fucking whisk.
I’m a grown-ass adult, and I’ve been living on my own since I graduated college, and I still don’t have a fucking whisk in my kitchen.
And this asshole? He’s a professional hockey player, and he busts it out? He’s cooking? And baking?
What is this, the freaking Twilight Zone?
The coffee pot chimes, and Sven pauses the whisking to pull down two white porcelain cups from a meticulously organized cabinet.
“So you like to cook?” I ask.
“I have to eat, don’t I?” He looks over his shoulder at me with that half-smile.
“A lot of guys hire it out.”
He shrugs. “I’m not them.”
“No,” I say slowly. “I suppose you’re not.”
He pours a cup of coffee, then walks around the center island and deposits it in front of me.
“I’ve got almond milk and sugar, and there’s flavored creamer in the fridge.”
I blink. “You have flavored coffee creamer?”
That is so not allowed on the elite hockey player diet plan.
“It’s Brigitte’s.”
“Who’s that?” Another bird? Another girlfriend?
No, he said he wasn’t seeing anyone when we hatched this cockamamie plan.
“Rupert’s house sitter,” he says. “She does some work around the place, too.”
