Chapter Twenty-Nine
We slept in the next morning, cuddling for an hour before the idea of getting up was even floated.
Then, while I was showering, Soyer had Jules and the other house pawns as he called them take the table and chairs back, and when I wandered downstairs in my bathrobe, my hair still damp, I found him in the kitchen wearing long rubber gloves and scrubbing every surface, the dishwasher running again.
On our table, he had his laptop out and playing holiday music. He’d also set out a thermos and my coffee mug.
“Do you want me to help?” I asked, pushing up the sleeves of my robe.
He turned. “I want you to sit down and decide what we want for breakfast. I’ll take a break then.”
I chuckled as he went back to scrubbing. “You get so territorial about your kitchen, Soyer.”
“That’s not a bad thing.”
“Is it a baker thing? Is that what you learned when you learned to be a baker?” I sat down at the table and reached for the thermos, then stopped. “Uh…”
He turned, smiled brightly. “Look at you.” He put his sponge aside and pulled the gloves off with that satisfying rubber noise, then walked over to me and poured me my coffee. “There you go, my heart.”
“Thank you, Soyer.”
“You’re very welcome, Amory,” he said, and those words alone made me blush. He sat and crossed his legs. “And it’s not a baker thing. Not entirely. I simply like my kitchen just so.”
I took a sip of my coffee. His eyes brightened as if he approved. “But you meant it? About us making holiday cookies together?”
He inspected his nails. “What did I say?”
“To ask you very nicely. So, please? Please, Soyer? I want to get a tree cookie cutter. Oh, and we can get those candy pearls, right? And I’ll take some to the diner so we can share. Please, Soyer.”
He sighed. “Of course. We’ll do that. We’ll make an extra batch so you can give them away to…people.”
“I’ll give them away for smiles and thank-yous, which is what you take for letting you pour me my coffee. I’m taking a leaf out of your book.”
He raised both brows. “My heart, I mostly made a point of enforcing that yesterday so I’d have a chance to get my hands on you. I didn’t do it so you’d be nice to other people.”
I shrugged. “Well, that’s what I took from it. I think you definitely have a point about letting others do stuff for you so they can feel good about doing something nice. Giving away a few cookies is going to make me feel good.”
He crossed his arms. “Fuck. I shouldn’t let you leave the house. You definitely shouldn’t be nice to others, Amory. Be nice to me.”
I grinned at him over my coffee cup. “I am nice to you. Or do you mean you want me to help you clean the kitchen like a nice fiancé?” I pretended to size up the kitchen island.
Actually, Vico and Chef had left everything pretty clean the previous day, not that I was going to say that to Soyer, who I knew could be very particular about the smallest things.
“We’re ending this conversation now. You’re just making me horny, talking like that, and I don’t think you’re ready to deal with my libido right now.” He stood. “What do you want for breakfast? Roasted pumpkin?”
“Sounds good.”
As he went to the kitchen and opened the fridge to put together two plates, I thought about him and his libido. Soyer warmed up the food in the microwave, and while it was running, he brought over the cutlery but stopped to run his fingers through my damp hair.
“Why do you have your thinking face on, hmm?”
I looked up at him. “Did you want to have sex after breakfast?”
He snorted. “Don’t ask me that. I thought we could do something fun today, something you’d enjoy. A shopping marathon, maybe.”
“To buy you a second pair of red underwear?”
His nostrils flared. “Careful. And no, I’m not in need of more colorful underwear. Shopping is just a suggestion. You tell me what you want to do.”
I knew. I knew exactly what I wanted, and my eyes flicked to the couch, which had been moved back to its original place, along with Oboe, who sat on the backrest.
Soyer nodded. “Lake Eureka it is.”
“Mind reader.”
“Hardly.” The microwave dinged. “Good thing you picked a savory breakfast. I can buy you candy again.”
That sounded like a pretty good idea, actually.
We’d taken Soyer’s car, not a cab, and I was pretty excited by the time we got there.
“Whoa, looks like it’s going to be really crowded today.”
“Oh, do you think so?” Instead of going right where the other cars went, to the regular parking lot, he went straight. We passed a No Entry sign, and in short order, we arrived at a closed gate.
“Uh, I think we have to turn around.”
“You think so?”
Soyer’s tone of voice—slightly amused and secretly pleased—made me look at him instead of all the other cars that were going to the regular lot behind us.
“What did you do?”
He examined his nails. “My fiancé wanted to go to the amusement park on Black fucking Friday. Did you think I’d let you stand in line for any of the attractions?
Did you think I was going to take us to that parking disaster back there with every stressed-out family trying to forgive yesterday’s arguments for the fucking children? ”
“I sense that question might be rhetorical.”
He huffed. “Yes.”
“I suppose Thanksgiving with family might be stressful.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
I looked at him, not sure what to make of his words. He didn’t meet my eyes, didn’t give me a clue.
“I…I didn’t really like it. I mean, that’s not quite right. For a while, my mom’s mom would fly out to visit us. She was really nice, but then, I only met her a few times before she died.”
I almost mentioned my father’s dad. His opinions, which he’d never seen any need to keep quiet, were like my father’s, maybe even harsher. He’d never directly complained about Mom’s cooking, but that didn’t mean what he had said hadn’t been offensive.
Soyer looked my way. “We didn’t have any arguments at all yesterday.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. “You called Vico and Chef uncles.”
“Just for the way they wouldn’t leave. You’d think they’d stick to their own kitchen, but no. Why’d they have to mess with mine? Ah, finally.”
Going by their colorful uniform-style clothes, it was a park attendee who came jogging our way. She opened the gate with a key from a massive keychain and came to Soyer’s window. He let it down.
“Thank you for visiting us today, sir. We have your VIP passes here. Please be sure to always skip the line and show these. It’s mostly for the benefit of the other visitors.
” She handed two passes on lanyards through the window.
This was very reminiscent of the IBT event.
“Just follow the road and park on the right. I’ll take you inside from there. ”
Soyer nodded, and as he started closing the window, I said, “Thanks!” He frowned at me as he accelerated but didn’t say anything. “You got us special passes?”
“Of course I got us special passes.”
“You just want to make me enjoy skipping all those lines.”
“There goes my evil plan. I thought I could at least leave you in the dark until we got to the waffles.”
“We’re not starting this illicit line-skipping at the food stalls, Soyer.”
He looked surprised. I was surprised myself, but I was looking forward to this, and maybe skipping a few lines here and there wasn’t too bad.
Being able to go where we pleased and get on whichever ride we wanted without waiting was a lot of fun. Too much fun. I knew that maybe I should be feeling bad for letting Soyer enable me, but I just couldn’t make myself.
This time around, we’d decided we’d go on the water slide, and on the way there, I spotted the clown who’d made my balloon Oboe. Whether it was the same person, I didn’t know, But I took Soyer’s hand as we were walking along the paths in the somewhat snowy landscape.
“Look, there’s a clown!”
“I can see that.”
“Let’s go and get balloon animals. This time you have to get one too.”
He pointed down another path. “The arcade is that way. How about we skip all that and I get you a stuffy right away?”
“Uh, but…”
He frowned. “If they explode during the ride, the balloon pieces might end up in the environment and not get cleaned up before spring.”
That made a lot of sense, and I should’ve thought about that. “You’re right.” I put on a smile, looking at the clown one last time. “Okay, to the claw machines! What animal do you want?”
“I don’t know. Hey, Amory, what animal would you be if you were an animal?”
“Oh. Hmm. I never thought about that. How do you even decide?”
He gave me a pull to make me follow him toward the arcade. “You look at the evidence. First of all, you’re very beautiful.”
“Stop.” But it was too late, and I was already laughing. “How about if I can get a stuffy, we agree that’s my spirit animal?”
“Sounds good to me.”
“But—” He reeled me in, prompting a stare from a mom of three who’d rolled out all her pinkest and fluffiest outfits to impress.
Soyer caught her eye. He pressed a sweet kiss to my lips.
“This is no way to bargain, my heart.” She grimaced, and Soyer looked directly at her and told her, “Careful, your face might freeze that way.”
That pissed off the woman even more, but by the time she had roused her husband, we were already past them. I looked back at him, and there was no vitriol in his gaze, just discomfort and surrender.
“People will people,” I said.
“Which is why I generally say, fuck them. Now, about your non-applicable bargaining skills—”
“All I want is the same rules for you. I think you got lucky when you got Oboe. Or do you think that’s your spirit animal, a giraffe?”
He raised his eyebrow at me. “I don’t get lucky. Except for you. You are the luckiest thing that ever happened to me. Be that as it may, I’ll accept your challenge.”
I clapped my gloved hands. “Do you have coins?”