Page 36 of Reckless (Adventures in Love 3)
“I know him, Blake, and I are going a little stir crazy having so much time on our hands, so I don’t think any of us will complain about having something to do,” he says easily as he grabs a bottle of beer from the fridge and opens it before he walks to the oven. My mouth waters as he grabs a pot holder and pulls out a loaf of french bread, which is open faced and buttery golden brown, and a dish that looks like pasta with cheese baked on top.
“Do you want me to help with anything?”
“Nope, just sit there and relax.” He gets down plates, prepares both of them, and brings them over to where I’m sitting before he goes to the fridge and grabs a bag of salad and a couple of different types of dressing.
“What do you guys do in the off-season when you’re not taking guests out on retreats?” I ask him, taking a sip of wine.
“Repair shit that needs to be fixed, work on stuff around the lodge, and take guys out on hunting trips. We keep pretty busy, but we’re around a lot more, so between the three of us and Everly running the office, there’s not much to do.”
“Hence your willingness to help with getting the store ready.” I smile at him.
“We would all find a way to get that done for you girls even if we were in the middle of the summer rush,” he tells me, and my belly dips.
“This smells delicious. Thank you for cooking for me.” I take a fork from him before he comes to take a seat next to me.
“Dig in, but save room for dessert; I picked up vanilla ice cream and an apple pie from the Amish market.”
“Would you be pissed if I skipped dinner and just had dessert?” I ask, and he chuckles.
“No, but you don’t want to miss out on the pasta. It’s a favorite of my nephews’, who hate almost everything,” he tells me as I pick up a forkful of pasta soaked with red sauce and covered with melted cheese. I feel him watch me as I take a bite, and I barely hold back a moan of approval. “Good?”
“Better than good,” I answer after I swallow. “Who taught you to cook?” I take a sip of wine, then turn to focus on him as I eat.
“My sister.” His face softens. “Our dad worked three jobs, so she pretty much raised me, taught me how to cook, clean, do laundry, and work hard.”
“Those are all good things to learn.”
“Yeah.” He picks up his beer.
“So you two are close?”
“Very, she’s more like a mom to me than a sister.”
“Is she much older than you?”
“She’s ten years older than me, so even though I wasn’t her kid, she took me on like I was. It sucked for her because she didn’t have much of a childhood, since she spent most of it raising me, picking me up from school, helping me with homework, cooking me dinner, then working when she was old enough to get a job.”
“That must have been hard on her.”
“If you ask her if it was, she’d tell you no, but I know it must have been difficult to miss out on hanging with friends and going to things like prom or school dances because she was forced to raise her kid brother and grow up before she should have.”
“You were lucky to have her.”
“I was.”
“And now she’s in Seattle?”
“Yep, she moved there as soon as I graduated high school and joined the military. She waited until I was off doing my thing before she went to school to do hair, and now she owns a fancy salon, her husband works for a radio station, and the two of them spend all their free time trying to control Wyatt and Carter, my nephews, who are now six.”
“I love that.”
“Me too,” he says as I take the last bite of food from my plate.
“So can you cook?”
“I should lie and say yes to try and impress you, but I feel like that might end up biting me in the ass if you ever ask me to cook something,” I say, listening to him laugh as I take another sip of wine. “The truth is I can’t cook; my mom tried to teach me, but I was always more interested in reading than hanging out in the kitchen with her and Cybil.”
“You can make a mean cup of whatever the fuck it was that you made me the other day.”
“That I can do,” I agree.
“That said, you can’t fucking dance,” he says, and I laugh, tossing my head back. When I lower my chin, I find him watching me with a soft look; then his hand slides around the side of my neck and his fingers spear into my hair so that he can use his hold to drag me closer. His warm breath whispers across my skin, and my eyes slide closed as he kisses my jaw, the edge of my mouth, then nibbles on my bottom lip.
