I felt terrible he’d taken it that way, but when I looked up, he winked at me, and I realized he was joking with me. Thank shit for that.
“And to answer your second question, I’m not allergic to anything, so yes, I can eat Mexican food.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said quickly, waving from his head to his butt, given that he was now sitting down next to me. “What I meant was, you look like that, and my brother’s always watching what he eats so he also looks like that. I didn’t think food like this was conducive with…” I gestured again at his torso.
Look, I wasn’t stupid, and I wasn’t going to play that way either. When he’d gotten up off his bike earlier, his white t-shirt—although mud-splattered—was soaked through and transparent. Of course I looked. Remy’d even caught me doing it and had laughed at me. But no woman would have missed the opportunity if she’d been in my shoes, a bit like a man with a big boobed woman in a wet t-shirt would have missed their chance to take a quick glance. Well, maybe one who was happily married might have, but even then, they’d have had to have looked at the woman while they spoke to her and most likely would’ve also noticed the wet t-shirt thing going on before they looked away.
Anyway, back to Marcus and food. I ate like the good Italian-Malaysian woman I was. I enjoyed food—so long as it was good food—and I worked hard on writing and composing music which wasn’t a carb-burning career. Thanks to good genes, my metabolism burned off calories and fat at a decent rate, but I knew to get a body like Marcus’s, you had to work out. I also knew from my brother, Dan, that you had to follow a specific meal plan when you were doing that, and I vaguely remembered Mexican not being on the approved list.
Handing me a plate and nodding at the food to indicate I should put some on it, Marcus waited as he explained. “Babe, I work with horses all day. I also have to help make sure the ranch is okay and secure, both of which burn calories and involve lifting heavy shit. Yes, I work out when I have the time and energy to do it, but it’s been years since I focused on doing it.”
I dropped the fork I was picking jalapenos out of a jar with. “You’re telling me your job makes you look like that?” When he nodded, I huffed out a breath and glared at a candle. “Well, shit.”
I knew he was laughing next to me, but I was busy working out if I could spare time from the contracts I was working on just now to get a part-time job here. Sadly, it was unlikely, unless I never wanted to sleep. Fuck my life.
“I’d love to know what’s going through your head right now, Addy,” he snickered, finally using the nickname friends and family called me. “You look like you’re going to throw your fork at something.”
I snorted. “Like I could. I work with instruments and music, not horses. I’d probably only miss, or it’d fall to the ground six feet away from where I was aiming. I mean, look at you, then look at me. Horses and ranching”—I pointed to him then back at myself—“music and instruments. Ugh, life sucks sometimes.”
Marcus threw his head back and burst out laughing, almost dropping his plate. “They’re totally different jobs, baby, and you look perfect to me.”
“I’m just saying, my job probably burns about point-zero-two calories a day, yours burns about twenty-two-thousand calories. I was just thinking about whether I had the time to work here even a couple of hours a day so I could at least throw a fork across a room, but shit’s so busy, I can’t do that. I’m going to have to run around the house while I write or talk to people on the phone, then I’ll lift instruments and pretend they’re weights.”
Marcus covered his face with his hands as he laughed even harder, and deciding he needed some time to see how serious I was, I went back to putting food on my plate. Did that count as exercise? I mean, I was lifting, wasn’t I?
“Are any of the instruments heavy?”
Biting into my taco, I chewed while I went through my instruments and decided on what would be the most promising ones. “Nonna has a tuba and a double bass that aren’t light, and I’ve got a cello. Oh, she’s also got a harp, but she uses it for her ivy, so I can’t use that.”
“Your grandma uses a harp for her ivy?” he wheezed, sounding like he was really struggling.
“Oh,” I cried, “I know. I’ve got an amp for my electric guitar and bass. It weighs a freaking ton!”