Chapter 16
Sixteen
Holly brought Bean back to their living unit and fed him.
All that sunbathing had exhausted the pup, who climbed up on the couch and collapsed there.
Holly sat beside him and tentatively petted him.
She wasn’t sure if he wanted to be pet. Her parents’ dog was very clear when he wanted attention and even more so when he didn’t.
Bean was a mystery. He never approached her unless he wanted something, like a walk, or food, and he still gave her the most judgmental side-eye whenever she entered a room he was in.
But maybe he was waiting for something from her. After that revelatory conversation with Mish, Holly looked at Bean a little differently. The dog lay on the couch in a loose ball, gazing up at her as if to say, what, lady?
He was an older boy. While mostly black and tan with a white, speckled belly, the white hairs that sprinkled over his face were so abundant, she couldn’t tell what his face must have looked like when he was a puppy.
If he’d spent his whole life, until now, with one person, and that person was gone, perhaps he felt abandoned.
Or worse, perhaps he knew his human was dead and was grieving.
Charles had died in this unit, and poor little Bean had likely been here when that happened.
Maybe if she talked to him, he’d hear the sincerity in her voice and trust her a little.
“Hey, Bean.” She let her fingers slide behind his long, velvety ears to scratch the spot he seemed to like when getting affection from others.
“I’m sorry Charles is gone. It must be hard for you.
I’m going to take care of you, though. You’re going to be okay.
” She sounded beyond ridiculous. Holly thanked the stars Luv was busy elsewhere in the hotel.
She’d be hearing digs about this for days.
“You’re very cute. And you’re a good boy. ”
Bean lifted his head. And burped.
“Nice,” she said dryly. But she kept on, shifting up his collar to scratch his neck.
“What’s this, now?” Her fingers encountered a small silver ball the size of a marble dangling from the collar.
She’d felt it before, but not taken the time to look at it.
Charles must have added the charm to Bean’s collar.
It seemed to Holly like an ornament for a dog who was loved.
Her eyes burned, thinking about the bond her grandfather must have had with this dog. “Good boy,” she said again.
Bean kept his dark brown gaze locked on her. He shifted his little body slightly closer to her. Close enough to rest his chin on her thigh. It was a step. A very positive step. “Thank you, buddy,” she whispered, and pet him a little bit more.
When Holly walked into the lounge, she was feeling good.
Positive things had happened in the past handful of days, and she was starting to feel at home in this place.
This was on her list for today. After relieving Cody of his cooking duties, she and Luv had spent multiple days scrubbing the kitchen and everything in it until the surfaces gleamed.
The grimy counters were clean, the dishes washed and put away, the stoves polished to a mirror shine.
Today, Holly wanted to see if she could actually bake something.
If she could, perhaps, create a small menu. Offer a meal or two for travelers when they came. It would give them a reason to spend a few more nits before continuing on their journey. Every bit of income helped. And hopefully, Harry would be happy with the addition of some positive reviews.
Also, she had come to despise hot porridge. Even with berries.
Upon hearing Holly’s plans, Luv had reminded Holly of the old cookbook from Charles’ storage crate. She believed it belonged to Holly’s great-grandmother.
After she retrieved it, she found the book to be so old she was afraid to touch it.
She placed it on the counter and turned the pages with care, afraid of tearing the paper.
On each page were recipes with photographs in faded ink.
It was clearly older than her great-grandmother, making it a valuable relic from a time long before the outpost existed.
She vowed to scan the contents and transfer them to a d-pad for safekeeping. The book was too precious to risk damaging with daily use.
Holly did not know how to cook or bake. Her living unit on Nova didn’t have a kitchen and it was rare to find a home on Earth with one, when a good NuProd could generate most any recipe with the perfection of a skilled chef.
Restaurants still existed, of course. In fact, to sample chefs’ new creations was a treasured experience, and the wait lists at some restaurants could span years.
She’d like to purchase a new, modern NuProd for the lounge, but until more important repairs were checked off the list, and the station had the nits to spare, she’d manage with what she had.
Ah—a recipe for blueberry muffins. Simple enough, she thought.
Holly gathered her ingredients and arranged them on the counter. Her problem was, most everything had to be substituted. They didn’t have eggs here, as there were no chickens. So, she pulled out a liquid protein substitute.
Flour. Well, okay, but not the kind ground from wheat. This was a basic carbohydrate powder. Down the list she went, substituting this for that. Even the measuring utensils in the kitchen used a different unit of measurement. So, she estimated.
Three-quarters cup of sugar. What, exactly, was a “cup?” Earth had moved to a galactic standard of measurement almost a century earlier. Unsure, she pulled a teacup from the shelf and added what looked right.
She mixed the dry ingredients together in a bowl, then added the wet ones.
So far, so good. Holly stirred vigorously, ignoring the fact that none of it was actually, well, mixing.
The oils stayed separated, the sweetener tablets would not dissolve, and the leavening powder she’d used in place of baking powder had turned everything orange.
Still, she folded in the blueberries, knowing that at least that part was right.
She greased a muffin tin, filled each cup to the brim, and slid the whole thing into the oven.
The recipe said to bake until golden. She set the temperature to somewhere in the middle and set the timer.
Holly thumbed through the rest of the cookbook while she waited, humming to herself.
She had done it. Her first batch of muffins, from her great-grandmother’s recipe book, no less.
A burning smell tickled her nose.
Holly spun around. Smoke seeped from the oven door, gray tendrils curling toward the ceiling. Odd that it hadn’t triggered the fire alarm.
“No, no, no.” She grabbed a cloth, yanked open the oven, and pulled out the muffin tin.
The muffins were black, with smoke rising from their charred surfaces. They looked like lumps of coal arranged in a grid.
Holly set the tin on the counter and stared at them in dismay.
What had gone wrong? Was the problem that the ingredients couldn’t be substituted after all? Or had she not set the correct temperature? No, that part looked right. She looked down at her powder-covered self, then back at the ruined muffins. Defeat settled into her bones.
If she couldn’t make a simple batch of muffins, how was she going to fix the rest of this station?
The lounge door burst open.
Holly’s head snapped up as Rasker Vipp rushed in, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. His gaze was narrow as he scanned the kitchen. “I smell smoke.” His voice was sharp with alarm. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Holly replied with a weary wave of her hand. “You can go back to your—”
But it was too late; he’d taken in the scene and drawn the correct, but unfortunate, conclusion. Holly, powder-dusted and dejected. The smoking muffin tin on the counter. The charred lumps that should have been baked goods. “Oh, wow,” he cut in. “You tried to bake.”
He began to laugh. It started as a chuckle, low and surprised, but it built quickly into something fuller. He pressed a hand to his chest and laughed in a way that softened his features into boyish amusement.
Holly did not find it amusing. At all. She opened her mouth to tell him so, but then she looked down at herself again. At the muffins that looked like they’d been excavated from a volcano. At the absurdity of the whole situation.
“Yeah.” A chuckle escaped her. Then another. Before she knew it, she was laughing too, the tension draining from her shoulders. “I’m not much of a baker,” she admitted.
“I can see that.” Rasker’s laughter subsided into a grin. “What were you trying to make?”
“Blueberry muffins.” She gestured at the smoking tin. “Maybe I should have kept Cody on.”
“No.” Rasker sobered up instantly. “Letting Cody go was a good decision. Trust me.”
She sent a skeptical glance over the carnage she had wreaked on the kitchen. “You think so?”
“I know so. Cody would have served these burnt muffins anyway.” He sauntered over and peered into the tin with mock seriousness. “And he would have told you they were delicious.”
Holly snorted. “That does sound like him.”
She looked at the recipe book, still open on the counter. “I thought I followed the directions, albeit with some substitutions. I don’t understand what went wrong.”
Rasker moved closer, peering at the faded handwriting. “May I?”
Holly stepped aside. “Be my guest.”
He studied the recipe with a furrowed brow, and shook his head. “I can’t read this.”
“Well, it’s in French,” Holly said. “An Earth language.”
“Hold on. I have a translation reader in my comm,” Rasker muttered, then plucked a small silver dot from his wrist comm.
His device was similar to Holly’s, but more sophisticated.
While hers attached to her ear, his stuck to his temple.
Holly watched as a holographic screen appeared in front of his left eye.
It was reading the French words and translating them into the standard galactic language, which was what they both spoke to each other.
“Fancy comm you have there,” she said, pointing to his eye. “Is that the new Ocuvai model?”
“Yes.” He looked up. “Surprised you don’t have one. They’d be standard on Nova.”
Holly shook her head. “I didn’t want another implant, and all Ocuvai products require them. I already have three enhancements from before I was born. Sol-Arc has been urging me to get one for years, though.”
He raised his brows. “This thing lets me read any language, see details very far away, and make calculations far faster than my mind could do it alone. Not surprising Sol-Arc would want their engineers to get these and question why you wouldn’t.”
“Thanks.” Holly wiped her hands on her apron. With force. “I needed a reminder of my perceived deficiencies.”
His expression softened. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
She reached for the book. “I’ll take that back, thank you.”
“Wait.” He placed a hand above it, but didn’t touch the pages. “Look. I know what went wrong with your muffins. I can help you, if you’ll let me.”
“No, thank you.” Her guards were back up, charged to full power. “I’d rather eat those little black things I just made than spend the next hour hearing about how unqualified I am to exist, let alone run a space station.”
“Fair.” He closed the cookbook with care. “How about we don’t talk about any of that and just talk about baking?”
“Are you capable of such a feat?”
“Yes.” He smiled, flashing white teeth. “I am. And I do not think you’re unqualified to run a space station.” He said that as he surveyed the mess scattered over the counter. “Or exist.”
She went still and took a deep, balancing breath.
This was not working. Not for her and not for Moone’s Landing.
Lashing out at him was accomplishing two things: making it clear that he could get under her skin and causing her blood pressure to rise.
The way she saw it, she could keep sniping with Rasker or stop and try to reason with him.
Only one of those options had even a chance of convincing him that she wasn’t going to sell the station.
“Fine.” Holly was wary, but still determined to make food. “Where did I go wrong?”