Chapter 20
Ellyn
My heart flutters a little when I open the door to find Joel standing on my front porch. He’s dressed in a pair of dark blue jeans that show off just enough of the shape of his muscular thighs, and a green and blue plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
I do my best not to stare at the veins in his arms. I never thought I had a thing for muscular men, but Joel has me rethinking a lot about my attraction to the opposite sex lately.
Despite his handsome appearance and my fluttering heart, I poke out my lips and narrow my gaze at him.
“I could’ve walked over,” I tell him. “You didn’t have to escort me.”
His eyebrows draw in and down. “This is a date,” he insists. “Do I look like the type of man who would allow his date to walk around alone?”
I take my time to look him up and down as if inspecting him for an answer to the question he posed.
My eyes meet his again when a guttural groan penetrates the pause of silence.
“This is just the start of our date, darlin’.” His tone is all warning. “You cannot look at me like that at the beginning of our date. Especially if you expect me to keep my hands to myself.”
I raise an eyebrow at the same time I step out onto the porch, closing my front door behind me.
“Now why would I have such an expectation?”
Again, my heart lights up at the way he tosses his head back to laugh.
I love you.
The three words remain on the tip of my tongue. I just barely hold them in … I can’t say them yet. Even with coming to the realization a week ago, and having seen Joel every day since then, I haven’t spoken those words to him or anyone else.
As silly as it sounds, it feels like as soon as I say them the feeling will disappear. I hold them in because I don’t want this sentiment to go anywhere.
“I hope you like lamb,” he says as we walk arm-in-arm toward his house.
“I told you, there isn’t anything I don’t eat.”
“Except for pudding.”
I nod. “Pudding is a no.”
“What is it about pudding you don’t like again?”
We arrive at his front door, and I pause to allow him to open the door before entering.
“When I was twelve, I had to have my appendix taken out,” I tell him while stepping into his home.
“I had some complications. Nothing too serious after a while, but I couldn’t eat much. Pudding was high on the list. My mother fed me pudding night and day while I was in the hospital.”
It was so long ago at this point, but the aversion to pudding of any kind that I developed during that time has stayed with me.
“The thought of putting it in my mouth turns my stomach.”
Lowering his head, Joel starts chuckling.
I replay what I’ve just said in my head. I press my lips together to keep from laughing at the same time I swat at his arm.
“You perverted old man. You know what I was talking about!”
That only makes him laugh louder, which, in turn, makes me burst into a fit of laughter.
“You said it, not me,” he says, wiping his eyes.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
This little back and forth feels so natural and easy, I don’t even notice when Joel comes close enough to wrap an arm around my waist, pulling me into his arms.
“Nasty old man, huh?” His voice is deep and guttural.
“I believe I used the word ‘perverted’,” I correct while my eyes fall to his lips.
His response to that is to pull me into a kiss, silencing the both of us. My nipples instantly harden underneath my silk blouse.
Joel kisses me until my thoughts become one fuzzy, electricity charged spark that flows through my body, lighting everything in its wake on fire.
Slowly, he pulls back, but leans his forehead against mine with his arms wrapped around my waist.
“There’s a lot more where that came from.”
“Promise?”
His eyes spark with interest.
“Dinner,” he suddenly says, as if reminding himself. He releases me but takes my hand in his. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re trying to do.”
“What would that be exactly?” I ask while he holds out one of his high back, wooden dining room chairs for me.
“Trying to distract me from the purpose of tonight’s date. Dinner followed by holiday decorating. You’re trying to make me forget about the decorating part. Did Old Man Clemmons put you up to it?”
My lips twitch. “Why exactly would he put me up to anything?” I ask of one of our neighbors.
“’Cause he’s a sore loser, that’s why! He’s come in second to me every year of this Christmas competition and he’s bitter about it. But no chance in the state of Texas he’s gonna best me this year.”
I can’t help but to cover my mouth with my hand and laugh at his foolishness. The seriousness in his tone is what does it for me.
“This looks amazing,” I say sometime later at the dinner table.
Joel’s made spiced lamb with shaved carrots and red onions.
“Looks aren’t what matter when it comes to food,” he counters, and then watches me with eagerness in his sparkling hazel eyes.
I taste a forkful of the meal he’s prepared.
I hum a beat of surprise before covering my mouth with my napkin. The sweetness from the chopped dates in the dish along with spices makes a cornucopia of flavor burst in my mouth.
“Now try it with some of the pita.” He nods his head at the plate of pita bread he’s placed at the center of the table.
I do as told, and no surprise, it’s even better with the bread.
Joel gives me a satisfied expression before he takes his first bite of his dinner.
“Where’d you learn to cook so well?” I ask as we eat. “Did you always enjoy cooking?”
He snorts at the preposterousness of the question, apparently.
“Before I got married my best cooking was boiling a couple of hot dogs without leaving them so long that I burned them.”
“No way.”
“That did happen once,” he admits.
My shoulders shake from the laughter I do my best to suppress.
“Don’t hold this against me. I loved my wife, but …” He shakes my head. “Gina couldn’t cook worth a damn.”
My eyebrows almost touch my hairline.
“It’s true. She was a great mother and caretaker, and Lord knows she tried. But … well, let’s just say much was left to be desired. She actually hated it.
“And since I didn’t want all of us to starve, I took it upon myself to learn. Took a few classes in town when Micah was around one. Then I bought a couple of recipe books and took over the task from there.”
I shouldn’t find it as sweet as I do. Joel was just being a partner and good father. Yet, I know many men in my own family who would’ve never taken on such an endeavor.
They were old school and believed a woman and only a woman belonged in the kitchen.
“From the looks of it, you did more than take up the task.”
Yes, tonight’s meal was rather simple by, say, five-star restaurant standards. But this meal took time to prepare and cook. Not to mention it’s delicious and tastes like he poured his heart into preparing it.
“My grandmother used to say you could tell when someone put love into the food they’ve prepared. It just tastes better.” I take another bite of my meal along with a piece of the pita bread.
“I did fall in love with it,” he tells me. “After a while I realized that I wasn’t just chopping vegetables or sprinkling spices onto meat. I was nourishing my family.” He chuckles.
“What?”
His gaze meets mine. “This will sound cheesy as a double stuffed pizza, but I realized it once when I took Gina to one of her doctor’s appointments when she was pregnant with Ace. Micah was a toddler running around, so I went to wrangle him in …”
“And because you didn’t want to miss any appointments,” I add, recognizing what he hasn’t said.
He dips his head. “Yes, after missing out on Micah’s pregnancy and his first few months of life, I didn’t want to miss anything. During the appointment,” he continues, “the doctor measured the baby and checked Gina, then looked over at me and said, ‘You’re feeding them well.’
“I hadn’t thought about it before, but Gina was eating for two … a little, defenseless baby who had to take whatever he was given. That’s the moment it clicked. She needed her strength and so did the baby. The meals I prepared fed them, gave them life in a way.”
He stops, his eyes moving from his plate to me.
Joel looks so damn cute and sexy at the same time with the unhidden vulnerability in his eyes.
“Told you it was cheesy.”
“Not at all.” I reach out my free hand, and he takes it. “It sounds like you understand what it means to be a partner and a damn good father.”
We eat the rest of our meal in a comfortable silence, but our hands remain intertwined all the way up until the moment Joel rises to take our plates into the kitchen.
I remain seated, as he’s just directed. A few minutes later he comes back to the table with a plate of coconut cookies and two mugs of hot chocolate.
“The two don’t go together often but Donna’s Bakery had these fresh when I stopped in this afternoon,” he says while placing the plate of cookies in front of me.
My heart skips a beat as I stare at the cookies. I swear I need to stop getting choked up like this.
“I didn’t add marshmallows to the hot chocolate, but I can if you’d like?” he suggests. “Didn’t know if it would be too sweet for you in one go.”
“This is perfect,” I say, barely able to keep the wobble out of my tone.
And it is. Everything about tonight is perfect.