Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
“ T hat was delicious,” Mack said as he pushed away from the table. “Best spaghetti I’ve had in years.”
“You must have liked it—you ate two bowls full,” Max said, slurping a noodle into his mouth.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Lorna said. “The sauce was my grandmother’s recipe.”
“Well, give her my compliments,” he said.
A look of sadness washed over her face. “I wish I could, but we lost her right after I got pregnant with Izzy. I’m sad she never got to meet her great granddaughter. But she adored Max.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Mack said, ruffling the boy’s hair. “Were you close to her?”
“Oh yeah. Leni and I both were. She was an amazing woman. She’s the one who gave me the building for the coffee shop. It used to be a little flower shop that she and my grandpa ran, then she rented it out to a real estate agency after he died, and she couldn’t manage it on her own anymore. I had told her my ideas of opening a coffee shop someday, and she left me the building and a little money to get it up and running.”
“That was quite a gift.”
“You have no idea.” She wet a napkin in her water and wiped spaghetti sauce from Izzy’s cheeks. “Starting that shop saved me. It gave me something positive to focus on after Lyle left, and a way to support myself and my family. We’d moved in with my mom and she helped with the kids while I worked around the clock ordering inventory, researching how to run a business, scouring thrift stores for tables and chairs, and painting and decorating the shop.”
“You did an amazing job.”
“Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. I’m really proud of it and what I’ve accomplished, basically all on my own. I worked really hard to stretch every dollar my grandmother left me, and I applied for and received a couple of small business grants. I also consciously try hard to be innovative and to help other women as well. Like, the majority of my baked goods are made by a couple of single moms, one does the pies and pastries and the other does the sandwiches and egg bites. I sell them on a consignment basis, so I can offer food, but don’t have to pay for groceries or keep inventory or do any baking.”
“That’s really clever. I was just telling Max earlier how smart you are.” Mack liked listening to her share about her accomplishments and really liked the pride he saw as she pushed her shoulders back when she told him about helping other women in the community. “I find smart to be super sexy.”
She barked out a laugh as her cheeks glowed pink. “Yeah, that’s what I usually hear when I start babbling about baked goods, paint colors, and small business grants.”
“If you’re trying to seduce me with your business skills acumen…” He offered her one of his rakish grins. “It’s working.”
She laughed again, and he loved that he was bringing that happiness to her face.
“What does ‘sexy’ mean?” Max asked as he worked to wrangle one of his last noodles onto his fork.
Mack glanced at Lorna, who was trying to hold back a grin. “Um, well, it just means something like nice looking and well put-together.”
The boy nodded in understanding. “Yeah, like my new pirate ship. It’s super sexy.”
“Yep. Sure is, bud.” He chuckled as Lorna’s phone buzzed on the counter behind them. “Saved by the bell,” he whispered as she stood to grab it.
“It’s one of my employees,” she said before tapping the screen to answer it. “Hello, this is Lorna.” She pressed her finger in her opposite ear and moved into the front room to be able to hear better.
Mack cleared the table as she talked, rinsing the plates and silverware in the sink before stacking them in the dishwasher. He was impressed that Max got up to help him, and he had the boy wrap the remaining bread in foil and show him where to find a dish for the leftover spaghetti.
He could tell the phone call wasn’t a good one just by the comments Lorna was making and the concerned furrow in her brow. He’d just finished washing the last pan when she came back into the kitchen.
“Everything okay?” he asked as he wrung out the washcloth to wipe off the table.
“Not really,” she said, frowning as she shoved her phone into her pocket. “One of my employees was playing hockey with her brothers this morning and broke her arm. The doctor told her she can’t work for at least the next week.”
“Oh, dang.”
“Dang is right. I could normally manage this by asking Leni to pitch in, but since she’s lounging on a beach somewhere in Hawaii right now, I’m in trouble.” She took the washcloth from him and cleaned off the table, scrubbing at a spot of dried spaghetti sauce.
“I can help.”
Her head popped up as she gaped at him. “You? That’s sweet, but have you ever worked in a coffee shop before? Do you know how to make a caramel macchiato or a java Frappuccino?”
“I don’t even know what a caramel macchiato is. But I worked in plenty of fast-food joints when I was in high school, so I know how to run a register and bus tables and serve food. I could do all that while you make the fancy coffee-java-caramel-whatever-the-heck bougie beverages you sell.”
“Mack, I appreciate the offer, but you’ve only been home for one day and you’ve already helped me out so much. Thanks for cleaning the kitchen, by the way. You didn’t have to do that.”
“It was no big deal,” he told her. “And the least I could do after you made that great meal.”
Her shoulders sank as she stared at him. “It is a big deal. I was married for five years, and I can’t remember one time that my husband even carried his plate to the sink, let alone put it in the dishwasher or ever washed a pan.”
“Then he wasn’t a very good husband,” Mack mumbled, not quite under his breath.
“No, he was not,” she agreed. “So, I learned to get pretty adept at handling things on my own. And I’m not very good at asking for help.”
“You’re not asking. I’m offering. And that’s what friends do. They help each other when they’re in trouble.” Speaking of helping, he just remembered telling Ford that morning that he could count on him to help at the ranch.
He’d just have to find a way to manage both.
Because Lorna needed him, and something in him, something that was part protective, part compassionate, and partly because he was so enamored with this woman, was compelled to do whatever he could to help her.
She stared at him, holding him in the gaze of her gorgeous gray-blue eyes, which reminded him of the summer sky, then blinked her long eyelashes and let out a relenting sigh. “Fine. You can help me. But just until I find someone else. And the shop opens early, so you would have to be there by seven.”
He grinned. “Yes, chef.” Izzy raised her hands and grunted to be released from her highchair, and he unbuckled the safety belt and lifted her into his arms. “And speaking of work, we’d better get back to our pirate ship.”
Max raced ahead of them into the family room.
“Thank you,” Lorna said quietly, nudging her shoulder into his. “I already made you something to say thank you for last night. It was kind of a surprise, but now I’m going to have to think of another way to thank you for helping me at the shop.”
He narrowed his eyes, noticing how close she was still standing to him. “First of all, I love surprises. But you’ve got me more intrigued by this offer of another way to thank me. Not that you have to thank me, but what did you have in mind?”
And by any chance did it involve her wrapping those luscious legs around his waist?
Oh no. Settle down there, stallion .
Being friends didn’t usually involve the kind of things he was imagining. Although she had been kind of flirty tonight, so maybe she might consider being friends… with benefits .
The teasing grin on her lips told him she knew exactly what he was thinking. “How about we just focus on the surprise?” She went into the kitchen and brought back a plastic tub with a blue lid. “I made these for you this morning.”
Mack shifted the baby on his hip so he could open the lid, and the delicious scents of peanut butter and chocolate wafted up to him. “You made me cookies?”
“Yeah, I saw that Reese’s wrapper in your truck, so I figured you must like peanut butter and chocolate, so these are basically chocolate chip cookies with peanut butter chips mixed in as well.”
“Wow. I don’t know what to say. No one’s ever made cookies just for me before.” He gingerly lifted one out and stared at it. “Damn, I’m trying not to get choked up over a simple baked good, but this means a lot.”
“I’m glad,” she whispered, smiling up at him. And danged if her eyes weren’t a little teary.
He stuffed the cookie in his mouth, partly because it smelled so good, and partly to keep him from telling her he’d just fallen in love with her. He groaned at the mouthwatering flavors of vanilla, peanut butter, and chocolate. The cookie was just the right mix of chewy and crunchy, and he reached for a second one. “These are amazing.”
“Yeah?” She smiled up at him, but still a question hung in her eyes. “You really like them?”
“Hell yes, I do.” He grinned around another bite. “They kind of remind me of you. A little salty, a little sweet, kind of gooey on the inside, and just looking at them, I know they’re gonna taste delicious.”
She laughed. “You have quite the mouth on you.” Her gaze dropped to his lips and a rush of heat surged through him.
He leaned close to her neck, close enough for the scent of her to surround him and make his head a little dizzy. “Just say the word, and it could be on you.”
Her eyes widened, and pink flared her cheeks as a naughty grin teased the corners of her lips.
She’s considering it. Score one for the cowboy.
She looked up at him from below her long eyelashes, a coy smile on her lips. “You do tempt me, Mack Lassiter,” she whispered.
His gaze dropped to her lips.
Speaking of tempting.
She swallowed then pulled her bottom lip under her front teeth, and he almost groaned as hard as he had with the bite of cookie. He knew she would taste just as good.
It was taking everything in him not to cover her mouth with his. Although, the baby on his hip and the container of cookies were impeding him from slipping an arm around her waist and pulling her to him, he was still thinking about how good she felt against him.
“Come on, you guys,” Max called from the family room. “This pirate ship isn’t going to build itself.”
Mack breathed out a laugh, the moment broken, but he was pretty sure he’d still be thinking about her lips and the way her teeth bit into her bottom one when he was trying to fall asleep that night.
Lorna tilted her head. “We’d better get in there.”
“Yup,” he said, then lowered his voice as he leaned closer. “But just so you know, the booty on that pirate ship isn’t the only super sexy one I’m thinking about.”
She laughed out loud, giving her hips a little extra wiggle as she turned and walked toward the family room.
He laughed with her then tried to turn his focus to the remaining Lego’s left on the table. “It seemed like we were making such good process, so why does it feel like there are more pieces here than when we went in for supper?”
“Because there is over a thousand pieces to this thing,” Lorna said. “But I appreciate that you got Max something that would challenge him, instead of assuming he needed something smaller.”
“And if we don’t finish,” Max said, his focus still on the tiny cannon he was piecing together. “You’ll just have to come back over again tomorrow.”
Mack raised an eyebrow at Lorna.
She shrugged. “It’s up to you. I’m fixing tacos.”
He grinned, deciding that he needed to slow down the assembling process to insure they didn’t finish that night. “Another one of my favorite meals.”
Izzy was sitting in his lap again, and she squinched her face together for a moment then gurgled out a happy grin as the source of that smile wafted through the air.
“Oh yuck,” Max said, waving his hand in front of his face. “Izzy pooped.”
“Everybody poops, bud,” Mack responded, unfazed by the baby’s fragrant odor. “And cowboys see a lot of it. Cow poop, pig poop, chicken poop. Just this morning, I was cleaning out piles of horse poop that were bigger than your head.”
Max giggled.
“Did you know that because elephants only digest about forty-five percent of their food, and their poop is mostly made up of fiber, that an Elephant Conservation Center in Thailand created a method for making elephant dung into paper,” Mack told him. “They clean the fibers first then process them and turn them into handmade notebooks. One elephant can poop enough to make over a hundred pages of paper a day.”
“I don’t know if I’d want to write on paper made from poop.” Max scrunched up his forehead as if considering the idea. “It sounds kind of gross.”
“I think it sounds pretty cool that they figured out a way to make something useful from waste,” Mack said. “But if you really want to hear something gross, they also make a really expensive coffee from beans that are collected from the poop of an animal in Asai called a palm civet.”
“Coffee from poop?” Max did the bones-to-jelly move as he slid his body off the sofa and onto the floor. Then he looked up at his mom. “Is that true? Do you have poop coffee at your shop.”
Lorna laughed. “Yes, it’s true. But no, I do not serve that kind of coffee. For one thing, it’s ridiculously expensive, and I’ve heard it’s more of a gimmicky thing, and doesn’t even taste that great. And I’ve also heard that they aren’t very kind to the animals that make it.” She glanced over at Mack. “I’m kind of impressed with your vast knowledge of poo trivia.”
“That’s how I usually win over the ladies,” he said, then couldn’t hold a straight face and busted out a laugh. “Really, I’m just good at remembering weird facts. I could tell you a ton of other things about scat. You just never know when a piece of that kind of odd trivia might come in handy.”
Lorna laughed with him. “Do you get into a lot of conversations where you need to pull out this trove of poop-related trivia?”
He offered her a mischievous grin. “I’m in one right now.” He lifted Izzy up. “You want me to change her?”
Lorna shook her head as she stood and took the baby from him. “No, I’ve got it. But the fact that you offered is noted.”
The sound of the front door opening had Lorna turning her head then the very air in the room changed as a man’s voice called out, “Honey I’m home….”