Chapter 26
?
Manipulator, yes. Incompetent…no.
Mirabelle
“I thought four ovens was superfluous,” Damion murmurs from where he’s lingering by the kitchen table as I sweep from one side of the kitchen to the other. “I was wrong.”
“Are you going to make yourself useful, or are you going to keep staring at my ovens?”
His lips quirk. “Your ovens.” Pushing off the kitchen table, he unfolds his arms and says, “What do you need me to do?”
I shove a recipe card into his hands. “Make this.”
“Mac and cheese?”
“It’s Thanksgiving. You have to have mac and cheese. Specifically, this mac and cheese.”
He nods, scanning the front of the card, then the back. “Understood.”
Blowing out a breath, I pause in my frantic mixing together five different kinds of dessert breads to make sure Damion isn’t inept in the kitchen and about to become the bane of my existence via weaponized incompetence.
After all, the only thing I’ve known him to make thus far has been box pancakes.
I find him at the fridge, with the dairy drawer open.
Right. I should tell him.
“You need—”
He lifts the block, not the shreds, of cheddar out and looks at me.
I blink.
He blinks.
His head tilts. “The anti-caking agents in shredded create a less recipe-friendly experience. This melts and tastes better. Which I am going to assume is why you’ve gotten it.”
Breath escapes me. Voice reedy, I say, “Um. Yeah. I was just… Yeah.”
Eyeing me once he’s gathered the ingredients he needs for the recipe, he nudges the fridge closed with his hip and heads to the other side of the island, where he systematically sets everything up.
I reach into my apron pocket for my notebook and am frantically scribbling a pro in it when his hand falls against my waist. My back hitting his chest, I squeak and look up.
His thumb moves against me as he focuses on retrieving a casserole dish from a cabinet above my head. “’Scuse me, precious,” he murmurs, attention snapping down and finding my open pro and con book. A smile toys with his lips. “Whatcha writing there?”
“N-none of your business.”
“Hm.” He curls his body down, lips hovering in front of mine as his eyes bore into me. Before I have a chance to protest, he taps a kiss to my nose and returns to his spot at the island.
Feeling as though the heat from all four ovens has combined within me, I get back to work. Until I can’t take the silence anymore.
I blurt, “What is your friend Forrest like?”
“Annoying.”
As I pop my breads into an oven, I say, “What?”
“Forrest is incurably annoying.” Brow furrowed, Damion shreds the block of cheese. “He’s…obnoxious. Seems outgoing; isn’t.”
“Oh. That’s…oddly similar to Fawn.”
“They’re either going to fall in love, or hate each other.”
I laugh, because never once has Fawn shown an inkling of interest in falling in love. She makes hating people look like an artform. It always shocks me when I realize how deeply she just cannot stand human beings, while she also for some reason seems fond of me.
“What’s so funny?” Damion asks.
“I just can’t picture Fawn in love. She’s too unpredictable for me to begin to imagine what it would look like.”
“That makes sense. The second full conversation I had with her, she was taking the screen out of my office window, knocking on it, then climbing through it once I unlocked it.”
I stop, short, and turn, fully. “I’m sorry. What?”
Damion’s gaze lifts. “Did I not mention that?”
“No, you did not mention that. And, for the record, neither did she!”
“It’s why I went outside that night before Halloween when I gave you the Amare dress. I figured maybe you were the same kind of crazy and would consider escaping out the window as a logical course of action.” His lips quirk. “And I was right.”
I can’t even argue. He was right. “What in the world did she want that she thought she’d climb through a billionaire’s office window to get it?”
He puts one hundred percent of his attention into measuring the sour cream. “She wanted to ask me how in love with you I was.”
My eyes bug. “How in… When was this?”
“The night we met by the pool when I was coming to ask what specifically about me you hated.”
It seems there’s a lot Fawn hasn’t told me about that night.
“She really cares about you.”
“I know that.”
“I’m glad. You seem to struggle with accepting that people might really like you.”
I fold my arms. “Fawn’s different.”
“Because she’s crazy?”
My mouth opens to object, but… “Well, yes.”
He nods, like he understands. “It’s easy to feel normal around people who are nuts. Some people are so unabashedly them, it’s contagious. That’s Forrest for me.”
“I thought he was just your personal assistant or something.”
“He’s my best friend and someone I occasionally pay to utilize his unique skills on my behalf.”
“Unique skills?” I ask.
“He is the most ADHD person I have ever met. I need a contract in twenty-four hours? Give him a Red Bull. Some event needs planning all of a sudden? Pass the CBD. I need all ten thousand of my emails organized? No problem, that’s, like, half an afternoon.
A new apartment building needs designed?
What else was Sims made for? When I tell you that man is on crack… I only hope I’m exaggerating.”
“He sounds terrifying.”
“That’s why I like him so much.”
“So…what exactly is his job?”
“I have no idea.”
“You don’t know?”
Damion shrugs. “I’ve asked. He’s pretty discreet about it, whatever it is.
Once, he told me he saves baby squids from being turned into calamari.
Another time, he said he exclusively weaves rugs by hand out of human hair.
I ask every so often, just to see what he’ll say, but absolutely no answer has been believable thus far. ”
This guy sounds like he tortures people in his basement for a living… “What an enigma…” I murmur.
Damion exhales a laugh. “You know, I think I replied like that once. He very casually shook his head, placed a hand on my shoulder, and said, ‘No, I’m not. You’re thinking of Emmett.’”
“Emmett? Who’s Emmett?”
“Precisely.”
Pressing my lips together, I hedge, “Does your friend need mental health assistance?”
“All the good ones usually do.”
That I don’t think I can argue with, either.
So I don’t even try to.