Chapter 14 #2
I set up everything in the kitchen and get to work.
It’s an HGTV dream kitchen: double ovens, a six-burner stove, marble countertops, and undercounter lighting.
If there were more than one pot, I might be giddy and cook all night.
Wide windows overlook a redwood deck and small lawn, and I flash back to Beau’s life in happier times.
I bet they hosted dinner parties and served signature cocktails while their genius friends discussed string theory.
I get to work on dinner, using the Dutch oven and camping gear Beau found in his garage.
It’s not ideal, but it’ll do. I have the ingredients almost prepped when Beau finds me.
He’s freshly showered in worn Levi’s, frayed at the hem, and a white Henley.
He steps into the kitchen and studies me, puzzled. “What are you doing?”
“Making new memories, Professor. Come on in.” He walks over, his bare feet shuffling across the wood floor, and leans his hip against the counter. I pour two glasses of prosecco in the flutes and push one toward him. He pulls back.
“This seems a little sacrilegious.” Aha. Definitely wedding flutes.
I shrug. “Objects only have the power you give them. But this is your object. Your memory, your choice.”
He takes a deep breath and picks up the flute. “To making new memories with old friends.”
I clink my glass to his. “And saying fuck you to manipulative ex-wives.”
He laughs and tilts his head to take a sip. “What are you making?”
“A simple version of cassoulet.”
He raises his brows. “You cook?”
“I’m thirty-four years old and live alone. Of course I cook.”
“Huh.” He takes another sip from the flute.
“I cook, I read. Your opinion of me is really growing today, Beauregard.” He stares back at me with a bemused expression.
“I figured I’d try a fancy dish in a pricey pot in a model kitchen before I go home to my electric range with only two functioning burners.
” Something about cooking calms me. As a kid, I would shadow Lani in the kitchen, following her liberal instructions—a pinch of this, a dab of that—learning to cook by taste and feel.
Some of my earliest memories include sitting on a stool in a tiny yellow kitchen while my mom baked.
“You know,” Beau says, “cassoulet began as a peasant dish. They would throw in whatever they had, which is why it has so many meats and flavors.”
I pause before adding the bacon and sausage back into the pot and shake my head while I stir. Leave it to Beau to narrate the history of food while I do all the cooking. Useless academic.
“Did you finish your inventory?” I ask.
He nods. “She left the bed, so there’s that.”
“More happy memories?” I tease.
He doesn’t acknowledge me, and my joke backfires, because the idea spurs a canvas of images across my mind—starring Beau’s bare chest, biceps, and broad shoulders. With a cameo by the cheek dimple and his pouty mouth.
Two hours later, we spread a quilt out on the dining room floor and have a picnic using Tiffany champagne flutes, aluminum camping bowls, and plastic utensils.
“This is delicious,” Beau says after his third helping.
“It’s not authentic. The real dish takes three days. But—”
“This is an impressive counterfeit. And it beats fast food and gas station snacks.”
“Amen.” I hold up my glass for another toast.
“You can take the bed. I have an air mattress I’ll use in the guest room,” Beau says.
“No way. I’m not sleeping on your bed full of happy memories.”
“Ophelia,” he growls. He makes that deep, grumbling sound so often it’s begun to appear in my dreams. Now, I get goose bumps whenever he does it.
“I’m perfectly capable of sleeping on the floor, thank you. I might have to sleep off my food coma right here.” I lay back on the quilt like a starfish. “You can find me here in the morning.”
“Thanks for all of this, Phe. I was dreading coming home,” Beau says.
“You helped me dig through my debris. I can help you collect your breadcrumbs. We’re friends again, remember?”
His lips tilt in a small smile, and he reaches across the blanket to grab my hand.
The heat of his focus and the sensation of his palm in mine ignite a simmer low in my gut.
I hold his stare but can’t read his expression or comprehend the confusing feelings I must be broadcasting—affection, fondness, desire.
Tension resonates between us like a taut thread, until he breaks eye contact and moves so quickly, I don’t have time to react. He hoists me up in one clean move as if I weigh nothing, throwing me over his shoulder as he stands.
“Beau, what the hell?” I scream, trying to keep the thrill out of my voice as he walks to the back of the house. My heart is racing, and I’m holding my breath and praying he hasn’t had too much prosecco to carry me competently.
“You’re not sleeping on the floor,” he says. “And I’m too tired to argue with you.”
Unfortunately, he keeps his hands off all incriminating body parts, but I feel his forearm banded around the back of my thighs like a tease, and I have a clear shot of his tight ass as I hang over his shoulder.
“Put me down,” I cry, but he’s already swinging the door open to his bedroom.
He tosses me on the bed like a sack of potatoes, and I swallow a scream. I’m panting as he hovers at the foot of the bed, and for a fleeting moment, I imagine him kneeling on the mattress, nudging my legs apart, and climbing on top of me.
But he backs away, watching me, his expression inscrutable. “Good night, Phe,” he says softly. “Thanks for dinner.”
He closes the door with a gentle click, and I collapse against his two-million-thread-count duvet. That was the hottest moment of my life, even though Beau didn’t even intend it to be.
It’s official—I have a problem. And it’s tall, dark, and grumpy.