Chapter 7
Sausages!The chosen ingredient for the second round of this silly contest was sausages!
“I swear,” Fen muttered as she plunked three onions down atop her cutting board. “That woman’s got a terrible sense of humor.”
From across the counter, where he was cutting butter into a heap of flour, Brodie rumbled. “What’s so funny about sausages?”
“Naught! ‘Tis the point! She thinks they’re funny.” Fen scowled in irritation, while reaching for her good knife. “Stupid sausages.”
Without looking up, he asked, “Is it the sausages ye’re angry at?”
Hadn’t he been listening?
“Nay, ‘tis Eppie! She chose them on purpose for this round!”
He paused, then began wiping his palms against one another, brushing the flour from them into his half-formed pastry dough. “On purpose for what?”
Fen blew out a breath of frustration, then gestured with her knife. “Och, keep up, Brodie! Sausages? Cucumbers? What’s next, something else long and phallic?”
His brows rose slightly. “Phallic?”
“Ye ken, like a phallus?”
“I ken what phallic means, lass.” He reached for the sausages on the platter between them. “Ye think these are phallic?”
“Brodie McClure.” She propped the knife-holding hand on her hip in exasperation. “I think, if ye hunted from one end of the Highlands to the other, ye might find someone who doesnae consider sausages to be phallic, but they’d be under the age of ten and also living in a nunnery.”
Instead of answering, he hummed and lifted a thick, dark sausage. Without looking at her, he shifted until the thing was held upright in front of him on the counter. Then, still gazing intently at it, pretending curiosity, he loosely wrapped his other hand around it and began to stroke it up and down.
Fen stifled a giggle.
Instead of stopping, Brodie increased his pace, his palm flying up and down the sausage, his expression intense. Then, as her giggles escaped, he slowly—so slowly—rolled his eyes back in his head, as if overcome by pleasure.
That did it; Fen burst into laughter. Great, heaving gasps of laughter, which had her bending over her cutting board.
Unfortunately, that brought her nose into close proximity of her sliced onions, and when she inhaled deeply, she felt the burn along the inside of her nose and eyelids. But she couldn’t stop laughing, and now she was crying, thanks to the onions, and basically turning into one great big, sloppy mess.
By the time she got a hold of her laughter and began to wipe at her tears—and mucus—Brodie was back to impassively kneading his pastry. In fact, when she finally pushed herself upright once more, he quirked a brow at her, as if to ask if she were all right…as if he hadn’t been the one to put her into such a state.
So she stuck her tongue out at him as she washed her hands. “Ye have a sense of humor, Brodie, even if ye never show it to aught else.”
“I dinnae ken what ye’re speaking of, lass. I was just massaging my sausage. Everyone kens it tastes better if ye massage it first.”
She snorted and swept her cut onions into a cooking pan. Then she reached for the peppers and began to chop them, a little surprised to find herself still smiling.
When Eppie had announced today’s ingredient, Fen had been irritated, aye, yet pleased, because if it was one thing she knew she could make, it was fried sausage with onions and peppers.
And mayhap some apples? The sweet tartness of the apples would go well with the sausage. She’d chop the sausage into bite-sized chunks so the juices they released would cook the vegetables. And if she added the apples at the end of the simple dish, they’d still be crisp and—
“Are ye really irritated at the sausages, lass?”
At Brodie’s question, she realized she’d been lost in her thoughts for the time it took her to slice all but one of the peppers. “What?” she asked, glancing up at him.
“Ye were muttering about the sausages afore yer…unfortunate fit.”
Fit? Is that what he called her laughing at his naughty gestures?
Nay, ye ninny, he’s thinking about the tears from the onions.