CHAPTER EIGHT #2
The air between Jagger and I seemed to grow increasingly awkward the longer we both stood there in the kitchen. I hated small talk, but the quiet was worse. “So you abandoned the puzzle?” I asked, just as a roar of laughter from the drunkards in the sitting room flitted into the kitchen.
“Just taking a break,” he said, lifting up the cutting board and scraping the onions into the pot, while also blinking a bunch behind his glasses.
“There you are, you little suckers,” Lenora said, yanking out a bag of frozen dinner rolls. “I knew I stuffed you back here.” They landed on the island next to the soup pot with a thunk . “Hopefully they’re not freezer burned too badly.”
“I’m sure they’re fine,” I said. “Otherwise, we can always make pan-fried bread dough in a skillet on the woodstove. I’ve done that before.”
Lenora’s head tipped to the side. “You might have to show me how to do that, dear.”
After we finished adding the stewed tomatoes and seasonings to the pot, Jagger and his muscles carried the heavy pot out to the living room and set it on the woodstove.
“We’re cooking like they did in the Wild West, huh?” said Bernie with a chuckle as he took a sip from his beer bottle, letting out a satisfied, “Ah.”
“I think they cooked over a campfire under the stars, with scorpions crawling through their bedrolls,” Jagger said, opening up the woodstove to check on it and adding another piece of firewood.
Bernie’s laughter quickly turned into a hacking cough which prompted Effie to whale on his back like he was choking on a chicken bone.
“While we wait for the chili,” Lenora said, sneaking up behind us, “here are some mixed nuts, pretzels, and some of my canned homemade pickles—bread and butter, and dill.” She set the tray of hors d’oeuvres on the coffee table, and immediately, the tipsy guests all leaned forward to grab various bites.
“Gonna be a bit before the chili is ready,” Jagger said, standing up to his full height and giving me a curious look. For some stupid reason, I was right behind him. Me being there was entirely unnecessary, and when he turned around to the way he was now, we were practically chest to chest.
I cleared my throat and took a giant step back. “Right.”
“Might as well get back to the puzzle,” he murmured, still giving me that bewildered, but also amused look as he stepped around me.
It wasn’t my face that was hot now, it was my entire body.
Hot from embarrassment, hot from the reoccurring images of him shirtless and swinging an axe, and hot from just how hot I was for this jerk.
This was the makings of an absolute disaster.
Maybe Effie and Bernie would let me crash on their floor tonight. It might be safer than sharing a room again with my sexy bearded enemy.
Jagger sat back down at his seat at the table with the puzzle pieces spread out in front of him and jerked his chin at me. “You coming, Elsa?”
With a huff and burning cheeks, I reclaimed my seat on his right. “Why do you keep calling me Elsa?”
His lips twitched beneath his beard. What would it feel like to have that beard against my cheek? Against my skin?
Snap out of it!
“It’s mean, and I should stop,” he said. “It’s because Elsa is the Ice Queen. And, well … up until this so-called truce of ours, you’ve been pretty damned frosty toward me. However, I … I’m sorry.”
I sat there in quiet contemplation for a moment, mulling over not only his insult, but his apology.
There were certainly worse names to be called, and I’d given him plenty of reasons to use them in reference to me.
Frozen was a good movie, and in the end, Elsa turned out to be good.
The longer I thought about it, the more I didn’t hate the nickname. The more I actually kind of liked it.
My mouth twisted as I scanned the puzzle pieces. “I don’t … hate the nickname. I have been, as you put it, rather ‘frosty’ toward you. It’s fitting.” Hedging a glance upward at him while still staring down at the puzzle pieces, I caught him smiling.
“Can I ask you a personal question … Elsa ?”
“You can ask any question you’d like, doesn’t mean I have to answer it.”
He snorted. “Where’s Marco’s dad?”
Jagger certainly wasn’t the first person to ask me that question, and he definitely wouldn’t be the last. Very few people knew the long version of this story. In fact, I could count the number of those people on one hand—and one of those people was dead.
“You don’t have to say, if it’s too hard,” he quickly added. “I just … nobody really knows how four cousins—all single moms—ended up inheriting Dolores’s vineyard. Everyone knows what happened to my brothers—losing their wives in that car accident. But are you all widows too?”
“I’m a widow,” I said softly, glancing into the sitting room when an outburst of laughter rattled the chandelier overhead. “So is Naomi. Gabrielle and Danica are divorced.” There was a lot more to Gabrielle and Danica’s husbands and just why they were divorced, but those weren’t my stories to tell.
“I’m sorry,” he said gently, and I suddenly found his hand on mine, his eyes soft and beseeching behind his glasses.
Clearing my throat, I carefully moved my hand out from beneath his like I was certain I found two puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly—and his hand on mine wasn’t making my belly-dwelling butterflies get all excited. “Thanks. It’s been a few years now—seven, actually.”
His brows climbed toward his hairline. “Is that why … was I going to be … Ohhhh, this is making more sense now.”
“What is?” I snapped, instantly regretting my tone.
“Was I your first date after you lost him?”
Technically, yes. My head bob confirmed it.
He nodded too. “That makes sense now. You weren’t ready to get back in the saddle.
And definitely not with a stallion like me.
” His quick flash of a smile and salacious brow bob was absolutely meant to disarm me, but all it did was charm me.
And irritate me. Because he was right, and I hated that he was.
He would have been my first date since Josiah died, and seeing Jagger in that café made me realize that I wasn’t ready to date, or at the very least, date someone as intimidatingly good-looking as he was.
I absolutely would not let him know that was the truth though. No way, no how. I was sober and planned to stay that way. It was the only way I could keep my wits and the truth about me.
“Have you dated anyone since?” he asked, reaching right in front of my chest to grab a puzzle piece that matched with the one in his hand.
I studied the puzzle pieces, doing my best to subtly calm my nerves and my unexpectedly raging heart rate.
“No,” I finally said, after a long, awkward pause.
“I haven’t dated anybody.” I was too nervous to glance up at Jagger.
Instead, like a coward, I stood up. “I need to check on the chili.” I blurted out, my throat scratchy. “Tea?”
“Uh, sure. Thanks.”
I nodded once, then I was out of there, leaving him sitting with the puzzle pieces, a puzzled look on his very symmetrical, very ruggedly handsome face.