“Hey, baby. Did you have a good day?”
Burying my face in his chest, I inhaled the scent of his shower gel and just him—with thankfully no hint of the overbearing man deodorant my brothers used to use—trying to commit it to memory. Call me a pessimist, but nothing was guaranteed to work out the way we wanted it to, so memories like this could be important in the future.
“Yeah, it was like most of my days, seriously unusual.”
The laugh that huffed out of him shook my head slightly, but at least he didn’t try and lie or sound shocked. Instead, he wrapped my ponytail around his hand and murmured into my hair, “It makes life an adventure, right? Better to be unusual than mundane.”
True story, but my ‘normal’ days were also an adventure, sadly. It was the luck of the Townsend draw.
“At this point, it’s all the same,” I snickered, enjoying feeling the rumble of laughter in his chest against the side of my face.
“Dinner’s almost done if you want to go in and get settled?”
Someone cooking for me? Wait. “What kind of cook are you?”
Leaning slightly away from me, he waited until I was looking up at him to ask, “What do you mean, what kind of cook am I?”
I thought it was a straightforward question, but okay. “Are you one of those people who can’t cook for shit, but you do it anyway, and I’m going to have to lie about how good the food is? Are you a mediocre cook who either hits or misses? Or are you a great one, and I’m going to finally be able to eat food made in my own kitchen?”
His eyes widened at the last question. “You don’t eat food made in your kitchen?”
“Frozen stuff that I can put in the toaster? Yes. Pop-Tarts? Yes. Toaster waffles? Yes. Stuff that I’ve cooked? I’ve made that mistake three times and ended up with food poisoning, so no.”
His surprise was almost good for my ego—almost. “You can’t cook? I thought you could do everything.”
“Uh, that’s a fat negative. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that if I’m starving and have to eat something I’ve made, that it’s going to be either uncooked spaghetti noodles or overcooked ones that are fused together in a big gelatinous clump.”
“That might be okay with sauce from a jar…” he said, but the grimace on his face said it all.
Again, that would be a big fat negative.
“Um, no. One, I hate sauce from a jar. It’s either too sweet or tastes like shit. Two, the last time I made it, I put the jar in the microwave to heat it up—”
“Did the glass break?”
“Not exactly. I unscrewed the lid and then left it resting on top of the jar.”
His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, and then finally, he asked, “Aren’t the lids usually metal?”
Nodding, I told him about the time I’d almost made my microwave explode… two days after I’d moved into my house.
“So, what do you eat your spaghetti with, then?”
“A small lump of butter, some salt, and some grated cheese.”
Judging by his grimace, this didn’t sound appealing to him. If that was the case, he hadn’t lived. It might be hit or miss with how well I cooked the pasta, but that shit tasted good if I cooked it right.
“Well, I’m a good cook. I used to do it for Dale and me after Mom died. Chantal never took an interest in it, and I hated living on takeout, so I used to watch cooking shows on television so I could learn how to make stuff for him.”
Aside from the grimace when he mentioned her name, he looked happy at this memory, so I hid an enraged reaction I wanted to give because she was such a fucking c-word that she couldn’t even cook for her step kids. Then again, she was a pedophile, so why would she want to cook for them, too.
Not wanting to ruin the mood, I asked as we walked toward his front door, “What did you make me tonight?”
“One of my favorites—crawfish boil with crab in it.”
Swallowing the saliva that’d filled my mouth at the memory of the one I’d had when I’d visited my friend in Louisiana two years ago, I waited for him to close the door as I dropped my bags on his couch.
Parker’s house was old fashioned, and it suited him perfectly. It was neat, organized and the dark brown sofa screamed ‘man with yummy cologne’ at me. Any woman who says she can’t imagine that was lying. Some men wore sweet cologne, some of them wear that musky shit that sticks to the back of your throat. Men like Parker wore a light manly cologne that made you picture dark leather and rawr, and that’s what the couch did, too.