It was the A-OK signal. “All fine.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Warning.” She tapped the side of her eye.
“Be on the lookout.” He clasped his wrist.
“Means stay close.” She pulled on her earlobe.
“Means we need to talk.”
There were a dozen-plus signals and neither of them needed reminding. She grabbed both his hands. That didn’t mean anything no matter how much he’d once wished it had. “Are you ready, Zeke Raphael Dmitri Bowen Sherwood?”
He wove their fingers together. “Those are not my middle names.”
She went up on her toes and with his ducked head they were eye to eye. “They are if you want the top bunk.”
He raced her into the cabin and let her win. The bottom bunk was too short, his feet stuck over the end. It was a long way from his Grand Master and the pillow was a flat pancake piece of crap, but with Aurora Rae above him, her sleep-deep breath his lullaby, he’d make a dream of it.
Chapter Four
This had to be a mistake. A real one. Being assigned to the kitchen was Rory’s first moment of quiet frustration since Spencer’s creepy touching last night.
The last-minute mix up over their accommodation that meant she was separated from Zeke was no surprise. It was designed to destabilize them. Nor was the fact that her luggage was searched before it showed up at the cabin she was to share with a roommate called Cadence. The only thing missing were the contraband books she’d declined to hand over and her Ready and Willing Red nail polish.
But when she heard she’d been assigned to the kitchen, she forgot about not having her phone and had a minor freak-out over losing it until she remembered it wasn’t going to be in the back pocket of her jeans again for a long time.
She wasn’t going to be able to call Zeke, message him. Goddamn, how annoying.
She knew absolutely nothing about cooking, could barely boil water, was more likely to injure herself or create a new killer virus than produce something edible. On the work assignment form she’d nominated everything else but working with food. She’d dig trenches, build cabins, work in the laundry, tend the garden or the cattle, same as Zeke. Anything but prepare food that hungry people needed to eat.
“Could this be a mistake?” she’d said to the head chef, a woman called Macy. “I don’t know anything about food preparation. I didn’t check it on my form.”
Macy had groaned a protest and walked away, leaving Rory standing in the industrial-sized dining room wondering if she’d been dismissed until her new roomie Cadence said, “You’d better go after her. Macy doesn’t like tardiness in the kitchen.”
Macy wasn’t going to like a whole lot of things if Rory had to be in her kitchen. “This is a bad idea.”
Cadence shrugged. She was about as keen on having Rory as a housemate as Rory was to find herself living with anyone who wasn’t Zeke. Cadence had masses of gold hair tied in a fancy braid and stunning hazel eyes to go with her perfect clear skin. She had trouble looking Rory in the face. “I was told to bring you here. It’s not up to you to decide, and it would be rude not to listen to Macy.”
It would be a lot ruder if she poisoned someone. Maybe Macy could request a transfer. The woman would hardly want someone who was a culinary compromise hanging around breathing good steamy kitchen air.
“I’ll see you later at home,” Cadence said, eyes still anywhere but on Rory. “You remember where it is? The one with the blue pot on the porch.”
Numbers would’ve been easier, but at Abundance, rows of indistinguishable wooden cabins were identified by odd items left in view: a horseshoe, a windchime made of old cell phones, a single yellow gumboot, half a tractor tire, a festoon of power cords and earbuds, an old desktop monitor with herbs growing in it.
Rory now lived in a cabin with a blue flowerpot housing a malnourished plant, with a roomie around her age who worked in the general store and was probably a spy, or at least an informer, told to watch out for the newcomer.
She had no idea where Zeke lived, but it was bound to be nowhere near the blue flowerpot cabin.
It’d only been half a day since she’d seen him, and she twitched to talk to him. She’d have to damn we
ll find him first. Meanwhile she needed to go plead her case to Macy.
The kitchen was a hot hive of activity. Mostly staffed by women. She stood on the sidelines and watched the military precision of preparing lunch for three seatings of up to a thousand people, the first of which was in an hour at midday. Cadence had told her that another thousand ate packed lunches that were delivered to work sites and still more got their meals from smaller kitchens in the nursery and school.
The proficiency, the level of organization was intimidating. All she’d do here was get in someone’s way.
Zeke would tell her to suck it up, keep her head down and go with the flow. For a player, and a rogue, who could give the impression of being so laid back as to be napping on the job, he was a meticulous con.
She found Macy doing something with a large pot of what looked like soup.