Deal Makers (Dealing with Love 3)

I hand two bags over. “I tend to go a little overboard. I usually wind up making twice as much as I need.”

“I don’t think anyone will complain. We have five fridges and we love leftovers. Especially when the food is cooked by a beautiful woman.”

Todd winks and gives me an oh-so-obvious once over. He’s a good-looking guy. Probably around six feet, mid-thirties, with brown hair, olive skin, amber eyes, and he’s definitely in shape. In a nutshell, he’s exactly my type. Under normal circumstances, I’d go out with him in a heartbeat. But alas, normal circumstances these are not. I can’t even think about dating someone until I get this marriage thing taken care of. Plus there’s the whole issue about not being able to get the blonde-haired giant off my mind.

I wonder how much Drew told his station buddies about me. We agreed to keep the marriage thing on the DL but based on how this guy’s flirting with me, I can’t imagine Drew’s attempted to stake any sort of claim. Now I have to ask myself why that bothers me.

Todd jerks his head toward the big garage. “Come on in through the bay. The kitchen is right inside.”

We weave through another firetruck and a white HAZMAT vehicle before stepping through a door. Just as Todd said, there’s a large industrial kitchen off to the side of a big open room. A half dozen recliners sit on the left with a huge TV posted to the wall, showing a Mariners game. There’s an oversized island in the middle so I head over there to set the bag down.

“Hey, Summers! Look what I found!” Todd announces.

Five chairs turn around at once. Drew jumps up the second we make eye contact and crosses the room in a few long strides. He looks like he’s about to wrap me in a hug but seems to change his mind at the last second. Damn, he looks good in his work clothes. His navy blue t-shirt stretches across his broad chest and tapers down to his trim waist. It’s tucked into a pair of matching pants so the fact that this man has very little body fat is quite obvious. I really want to ask him to do a little twirl so I can check out the back, but I think that might be pushing it.

“Hi,” he says.

I bite my lip, imagining what he looks like wearing his protective gear. “Hi.”

Drew turns around to face the other men in the room. Yep, just as good in the back. “Guys, this is Charlee Harris. Charlee, that’s Warren, Connor, Grant, and Jason.” He points to each man as he makes introductions from left to right.

A chorus of “Hey, Charlee!” and “nice to meet you” goes around so I offer a little wave in response.

Todd goes back outside, saying he needs to finish washing the rig, and the other four turn back to their game.

Drew pulls the tray of lasagna out of a bag. “What can I do to help?”

I suddenly feel hyperaware of our audience, so I do what I know best and put my imaginary chef hat on. “If you can preheat the oven to 375°, that’d be great.”

He pushes the buttons to set the temperature. “Done. What else?”

“Um...” I unzip the third bag. “Can you put this in the fridge? Also, do you have a cutting board and some knives? I need to make the dressing for the salad.”

Drew digs through a lower cabinet, producing a large cutting board and sets a knife block next to it. After placing the salad bowl in the fridge, he starts peeking under the foil of each dish that I have set out. “What’d you bring?”

I point to each dish. “Lasagna, eggplant parm, and manicotti.”

I’m pretty sure his stomach just growled. “This looks amazing. Thank you for doing this. You really didn’t have to go through all the trouble.”

I wave him off. “It’s no trouble. I like doing it; you know that.”

Drew leans against the counter and watches as I get the ingredients together for the dressing. As I’m about to slice open a lemon, he places his hand over my forearm and whispers, “You look incredible, Charlee.”

I can feel myself blushing like a shy little schoolgirl. Which is odd, because if you haven’t figured it o

ut already, there’s not a shy bone in my body. What the hell is this man doing to me?

I open my mouth to thank him but the oven beeps, causing me to change course. “The lasagna and manicotti can go in together for one hour. I already precooked the eggplant so I’ll just need to warm that up during the last twenty minutes or so. The garlic bread goes in during the last ten minutes.”

Drew nods and places both dishes in the oven, setting the timer for an hour. “So we don’t need to do anything for the next forty minutes?”

I nod to the cutting board. “I still need to make the vinaigrette but other than that, no.”

“So what I’m hearing, is that you have about thirty minutes. Do you want a tour of the station? We can talk while we’re doing that.”

Talk. Right. The whole reason I’m here is so we can go over the annulment stuff. “Um, yeah that works.”

“Guys, I’m taking Charlee for a tour. We’ll be back in a bit.”