Best Served Cold

And penguins mate for life.

I smiled, reaching my hand up to touch the side of his face. His skin was warm and soft—his stubble dark and rough, tickling the inside of my palm.

Our eyes met.

“You know what? I’m pretty sure you’re my penguin, too, Chase.”

EPILOGUE – RAELYNN

ONE YEAR LATER

I was a genius.

I didn’t want to hear anyone tell me anything different.

For three months I’d been plotting the revenge I never got to have, and I knew I’d nailed it.

No, it wasn’t a prank. It wasn’t a whoopie cushion or anything else amusing like that—it was the one thing we’d argued about ever since me and Chase had decided to live together.

A pet.

He’d refused while we were in his apartment, but after a crazy summer of success at Best Served Cold, plus him opening up Fortune & Aarons with my grandpa, we’d had enough money to rent a house instead of an apartment.

Which meant we had room for a kitten.

The very animal he claimed he was petrified of.

Which, of course, was horseshit. Who the fuck was scared of kittens?

I knew that in twenty-four hours, the tiny black and white kitten in the little cardboard box in my hands would have him eating out of her teeny tiny paws.

Because he was a big old freaking softie.

He had to be to handle me. I wasn’t exactly a softie myself.

Case in point: for his birthday, I’d adopted him an otter at a zoo as a joke, and I swear, it was his favorite present.

It was also one of the hottest things about him, but I digress.

I still owed him revenge, and this was going to be it.

Well, it’d look like it. Really, it was me winning, because I wanted a kitten more than anything, and after Sophie’s sister’s cat got knocked up, I’d demanded one before the little mites were even born.

At that point, I’d just been a drama queen and thus had begun my begging to Chase for one.

I don’t know why he never thought I’d get one. It was a small price to pay for having the spare bedroom filled with extra birdhouses.

Apparently, tourists liked birdhouses, especially when my mom was done painting them.

Yep. She’d stayed. The divorce was almost final, and while Dad and I had talked a few times, that was one relationship I didn’t think I’d be able to fix. He was happy with his new life in Michigan with his much younger girlfriend.

I was just glad Mom had made him have the snip years ago.

So Mom had gone into business with Grandpa and Chase. Some of the houses went into the store to be sold either as they were or the buyer could pick the paint, and the rest went straight to her. My old bedroom was now her art studio, and she had any number of houses in various stages of paint.

It was something that worked for everyone.

And Grandma now had both paint and sawdust to complain about, but the store got Grandpa out of the house at least twice a week, so she wasn’t complaining about it quite as much anymore.

Mostly.

I pushed open the front door. “Chase?”

He appeared on the stairs, totally naked save for a small black towel wrapped around his waist. Water dripped down over his abs, and I had to blink a few times before I could focus.

“Hello.” He grinned, a lopsided, cocky little one that was stupidly hot. “What’s in the box?”

“This,” I said. “Is my revenge.”

He reached the bottom of the stairs, one eyebrow quirked in amusement. “Your revenge?”

“Yep. I told it was a dish best served cold, and here it is. Super cold.”

“Babe, it’s frozen at this point.”

“Excellent. I’m good at frozen things.” I smirked.

The kitten let out a tiny noise.

He stepped back. “Is that box alive?”

“Yes,” I drawled. “The box is a living, breathing thing. That’s the revenge.”

“What’s inside it?”

I grinned.

“Raelynn.”

I put the box down on the floor, opened it, and scooped out the tiny, eight-week-old kitten.

He jerked back with his finger pointed out. “That’s a kitten.”

“She is. And isn’t she cute?” I snuggled her into my chest. “Look at her. That little white sock and her eye patch. I die.” I made cooey noises as she tried to scramble up onto my shoulder.

“That’s a kitten.”

“It is a kitten.”

“I don’t like kittens.”

“What isn’t there to like? She’s tiny. She’s cute. She’s soft. She’s basically everything I’m not.”

He held up a finger. “You’re cute. Mostly.”

I rolled my eyes and set her back in the box, leaving the top of it open. “Well, I need to use the bathroom and get changed, so can you keep an eye on her for a second? I also need to get her things out of the car.”

“I—I—”

I ran upstairs, fighting back a giggle until I shut myself in the bathroom. I didn’t need to go at all, and I had a sneaking suspicion he’d be okay if he just, shock horror, touched her.