“Now, add in the onion, celery, bell pepper, and garlic we prepared while the beans were soaking,” he instructs, and when I’m finished, he tells me to use the same motion I did to brown the meat to now sauté the veggies until the onions are translucent, which takes another five minutes. “Perfect. Now, add one teaspoon of dried thyme… half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper… a teaspoon of salt… and one teaspoon of black pepper.” He pauses between each ingredient, allowing me time to measure everything out with my handy little spoons. “And then we’ll just stir that up for about thirty seconds to get the veggies nice and coated in our concoction we’ve created here.”
“I didn’t realize we’d actually like… cook inside the pot. I thought it was more like a crockpot, where you just toss everything inside and forget about it for a few hours,” I admit, looking up at him as I stir. “But I have to say, it smells amazing, and it hasn’t been hard at all.”
“I think we both know that’s a lie,” he says quietly through gritted teeth, his lips not moving as he smiles back at me, and I have to clamp my teeth around my lips to keep from bursting into laughter. “Now…” He claps his hands, glancing down into the pot. “We’re going to add in a fourth of a cup of chicken broth, and then use your wooden spoon to scrape up all the brown from the bottom of the pot. That’s the good stuff, where we get a ton of the flavor. Also, we have to make sure we scrape everything off the bottom of the Instant Pot. They call it deglazing, and we need to do it before starting the pressure cooking.”
“What’ll happen if we don’t deglaze it?” I ask, because that’s just who I am as a person.
“It’ll give us a burn message and won’t work,” he replies simply.
“Fair enough.” This time, I do mess up a little, the liquid sloshing a bit as I try to do what he said. But he cleans up the little drops with a paper towel, his big body folding around mine so I don’t have to stop what I’m doing. It takes everything in me not to press myself against him, an overwhelming urge to be as close to him as possible filling me up.
It confuses the hell out of me.
I haven’t been in a relationship since I was twenty-three, almost a decade ago. With the way things ended with my ex, I’ve had zero aspiration to get close to a man, only for him to break my heart when he finds out I can’t give him everything out of life men instinctively desire. Max and I had been together three years, engaged and two months away from our wedding date, when the doctor delivered his heartbreaking news. He left me a month later. With barely enough time to contact everyone to let them know the wedding was off so they could cancel all their travel arrangements. I’d never been more embarrassed and hurt in my entire life, and I swore to myself I’d never let that happen again, essentially swearing off any and all relationships with the opposite sex.
I haven’t had a single problem with this deal with myself in the last eight years. So why, all of a sudden, am I wanting to rub up against Curtis like a cat in heat? Why do I want to nuzzle into his tall frame that makes me feel so extra small and feminine? Why do I want to curl up together and see just how many TV shows we’re both obsessed with? And why in the world does a sense of loss take over my chest when I think about him leaving once we’re done cooking?
I immediately regret him choosing something that would cook so quickly.
His deep voice snaps me out of my thoughts. “Next, we’re going to add the rest of the four cups of broth the recipe called for, two large bay leaves, the beans we quick-soaked, and the ham hock.” As I add the first three ingredients, he removes one of the ham hocks from the packaging, setting it delicately into the pot once I’ve stirred everything together. “Now, we get to set the pot and forget about it for forty-five minutes to an hour. Select Pressure Cook mode, set the timer for thirty minutes, and press Start. The rest of the time will be fooor…?”
“Natural Pressure Release?” I guess.
And he gives me a wide grin. “Exactly. See? I knew you’d get the hang of this. No more microwave meals for you, sugar.”
I roll my eyes but can’t help my genuine smile at his praise.
Chapter 6
Curtis
HER SMILES ARE addictive. I’m beginning to crave them the way I used to crave admiration and praise in the cooking community. That’s not to say I don’t still enjoy all the attention I get for my abilities as a chef; I don’t think anything could feel better than being wanted above all others for an important benefit dinner. I mean, how cool is it to think “Man, these people think my food is so bad ass they believe it’s worth a thousand dollars a plate to bring in charitable donations for a good cause.”