Chapter 4
This time, when I let him in, I didn’t stop and watch him strip down. I very normally made my way into the kitchen to flip the bacon. See how much better I performed with a little advanced preparation?
The meat was ready to be turned, though I didn’t think I had over-cooked it yet. I quickly flipped each strip, then held my hand over the heat of the pancake pan and found it hot. I wiped the pan down with a pat of butter, letting it sizzle and melt. Then I got a pot out and measured some water inside and put it on to boil for the syrup.
“Smells good.”
I swallowed as I felt his body move in next to mine. I glanced over at him. He had showered. His dark hair was wet and disheveled. He wasn’t wearing a cowboy hat and already seemed more approachable. Not quite as tall. More like just some average hot guy and not every woman’s cowboy fantasy. He was wearing the same light jeans as before but had pulled on a simple gray t-shirt. Why didn’t I shower first and then invite him over? It was late enough that thirty minutes wouldn’t have made much of a difference. This dinner could have waited a half hour.
“Can I help?” He motioned toward the pancake batter.
I nodded. “Sure, thanks.” I handed him a large spoon and watched him ladle out scoops of batter onto the hot pan, while telling myself that the thick, brown sludge exiting his spoon was totally normal. They were half gluten-free, half whole-wheat pancakes. That was a thing, right? It would be fine. They were just so...brown. And heavy.
“Is your room alright?”
“Yeah. Shower was good. The bed has a nice bounce to it.”
I bit my lip but could not keep the embarrassed grin from exploding across my face. I elbowed his arm but could not look at him. “Shut up.”
He laughed softly and I studied him out of the corner of my eye. I don’t know why him standing next to me in socks while he casually wielded a spatula cooking pancakes in my grandma’s kitchen was so attractive to me at that moment, but it was.
“So…” he began, while we stood next to each other in potential awkwardness. “How long are you visiting for?”
“I just got here yesterday for a week. It had been too long. I’m glad I did too, I think my grandpa’s getting sick. Grandma thinks his cough is settling into his lungs.”
He made a sympathetic face. “It looks like I’ll probably be here for a day or two. I’m happy to earn my keep.”
A day or two? The windows rattled, and I was once again reminded of where I was. Wyoming. In an epic snowstorm. I swallowed.
“Where does your family live now?” he asked, checking the bottom of a pancake, before leaving it cooking, apparently deciding it wasn’t done enough. Did he mean for his arm to brush up against mine?
I added two cups of sugar to the now boiling water. My beautiful younger sister would freak out if I told her who I was making pancakes with. I was already looking forward to that lunch date conversation.
“My parents are still in Bozeman. My dad’s almost ready to retire from law. Julia’s married and lives in Billings near me. I love having her so close. She and her husband, Brandon, have two kids and I’m, of course, the favorite aunt and all that.”
“So she must have gotten over her love for me all those years ago, then? Sad. I wasn’t even invited to the wedding.”
“It would have been too hard for her to see you. To know she was settling.”
He breathed out a laugh. “Poor Julia.”
He checked a pancake and flipped it over. A loud and hard thud shook the lightweight teflon pan and caused us both to study the newly flipped pancake, curiously.
“Did you fill this batter with rocks or something?”
“Um…now seems like the time to confess that I couldn’t find a recipe to use, so I kind of had to wing it.”
He flipped another pancake over, the pan nearly toppling under the dense weight. He flipped the other two pancakes with the same result. We stared at our food in silence. He cracked first—bending forward, a wheezy laugh breaking free. I joined him a moment later, bringing both hands up to cover my face, shoulders shaking.
“I’m so sorry,” I breathed, trying to rein in my laughter. “My grandma only has gluten-free recipes, and I didn’t want to follow any of those.”
“So what did you do?”
“Um. Well, I had it mostly made before I realized I had used gluten-free flour. And it was still really runny, so I found some fresh ground wheat flour and added it to the batter. It didn’t taste too bad when I tried it. But it definitely got thicker and heavier the longer it sat here.”
A smile broke across Dusty’s face and it was not at all unpleasant. “So, you used gluten-free flour and wheat flour? Together?”
I bit my lip. “Um...it’s possible that’s exactly what I did.” Awesome. It was my job to feed him and I already screwed up the easiest meal known to man. “I’m so sorry. I’m sure we have some cereal around here if it’s bad.”
He shrugged, turning back toward the stove, taking the pancakes off the burner one by one. “I’m not picky. Anything drenched in syrup can’t be that bad.”
“Well, you seem like the type to eat it and suffer in silence. Then I’ll feel terrible. Let me just grab you some cereal.” I reached for the pan of flat rocks, but he waved me away.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m a bachelor. I promise I’ve eaten worse things than anything you could make. Besides...I kind of want to be the first person in history to eat a gluten-free whole wheat pancake.”
I covered my face with my hands, trying to block my laughter—and his. “I’m sorry! I saw I had used gluten-free flour and panicked.”
“It’s all good. I’m excited to try it.”
“Your confidence may be your downfall.”
Dusty grabbed a plate off the open shelves in the kitchen and covered it with paper towels before taking the bacon out of the pan and onto the plate. I took the water/sugar mixture off the burner and added maple flavoring.
“Homemade syrup, huh? Just like your grandma’s?”
I smiled shyly. “I’m hoping the syrup will mask the taste of whatever we just put on our plates.”
“How are your parents?” I asked while passing him a plate. We both filled them up with leaden pancakes and bacon. I couldn’t help smiling as he completely drenched his pancakes with syrup. I motioned him toward the table and we sat next to each other, me at the head and him to my left. I shifted slightly so my legs would not brush up against his.
“Good. They still live in Eugene. My dad hires himself out doing tractor work for whoever needs it. It keeps him busy. My mom still does hair in town. I have one little sister in college and one about to graduate high school.”
I only remembered meeting his parents a couple of times as a kid, but they had always been warm and friendly. I had never met his sisters. As a kid, he had just shown up on the ranch and I didn’t question it. Now, as an adult, it was a puzzle piece as to why he was there at all.
“How did you come to be working on Grandpa’s farm in the summers as a kid? You were so young, and it wasn’t like your parents were just down the road.”
He took a bite of his bacon. “This is the part of my history that’s a bit deplorable.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Suddenly, I’m very interested.”
He laughed. “When you live in a small town, you make friends with whoever is available. The kids I made friends with weren’t the best influence and we were always getting into trouble. When my mom caught us all smoking out back behind the house one day, she immediately called Susan and asked about me living on their ranch for part of the summer. At that point, my dad still worked in construction, so he didn’t have anything at home to keep me busy. And I was only twelve, so too young to get a job in town.”
“How did your mom know my grandma?”
“They were neighbors growing up. Susan had been like a second mother to my mom and they kept in close contact.”
“And how is your smoking career now? Did my grandpa’s ranch cure you?”
“Short-lived. I was choking on the smoke too much the first time to get a good feel for it.”
I laughed and took a bite of bacon. If nothing else on this plate worked out, bacon dipped in maple syrup was the stuff of dreams.
I noticed that Dusty had only eaten the bacon so far as well.
Motioning to his plate, I asked, “What’s the matter? Are you chicken?”
“I plan to fill up on bacon first in case the pancake thing goes south.” He looked at my plate. “Or maybe I should make a new plan…until the chef tries her own food, I’m off the hook.”
I smiled and took another bite of bacon. “I think I like the first plan.”
We stared at each other for a long moment until his foot brushed against mine under the table. “So about that kiss.”
My eyes widened while my heart rate spiked. “What?”
He bit his lip, keeping a smile at bay. “When we were kids. Why’d you do it?”
“Oh, that.” I stirred the syrup on my plate with my fork.
The smile grew to a grin. “What did you think I meant?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
My heart was beating in my chest as I took a drink of water. Goodness, the man could flirt like it was his career and here I was—the rookie, part-time hire. Severely out of practice. I wasn’t sure I had ever been in practice.
He finished off the bacon on his plate and eyed his pancake before glancing back up at me. “Alright, I’ll let you off the hook about the kiss, for now, but only if you eat a bite at the same time as me. If I choke, I want you to go down with me.”
“Shouldn’t I take a bite after you, so I can help you in case you choke?” I countered.
He looked interested. “Mouth to mouth?”
Heat bloomed in my chest as I fought off an embarrassed laugh. “For choking, I think I’m supposed to shove you, stomach first, into the back of a chair.”
“Yikes. Alright then, we both do it on three.”
When I looked like I might refuse, he added, “Or you have to explain the kiss.”
I picked up my fork, matching his stare with an even one of my own.
“On three,” he said as we both readied our forks with a bite. Honestly, that part took longer than it should have. What was in gluten-free and wheat flour that made it so dense? The wheat flour had definitely been coarse ground, so it had felt grainier when I added it to the batter. Or perhaps it was me not having a recipe that was the real culprit. “One, two…three.”
I remember watching a commercial on TV at my grandma’s house, years and years ago, where a dog was given a big spoonful of peanut butter. The camera zoomed in on the dog’s face while he moved his mouth back and forth, chewing. He kept chewing for the entire thirty-second TV spot, his eyes never changing expression, never quite able to get the peanut butter down his throat. Our experience with un-measured, spur of the moment, dense and gritty gluten-free whole wheat pancakes was similar.
I ran to get milk from the fridge, pouring us both a big glass which we drained in seconds. When the pancake sludge had finally escaped my throat I looked at him staring at his plate.
“It’s kind of like one of those protein bars. A couple of bites and it will fill you for hours.” He took another big bite, chewing with a purpose.
I could feel the pink splotches overtaking my skin and moved to take his plate. “You don’t want that.”
His warm hand covered mine, staying me. “I like it.”
Breathing out a laugh, I said, “No you don’t.”
“I like it so much I’m going for bite number three.”
“I think you’ve been on the road too long, cowboy.”
His hand was still on mine, the weight of it burning a hole everywhere it touched. He looked at me for a few moments before smiling softly and releasing it from under his.
Then he took another bite.