12. Jonah
There were, Jonah had decided, way worse ways to ride out the end of the world than alone in a snug brick house with Pepper Broussard and two enormous dogs named Roux and Gumbo—apparently, her father could not be stopped when it came to naming things after food.
Jonah’s favorite creature named for food, however, was Pepper…who’d welcomed him in from the rain, scooped Atlas into loving arms, and helped him set up the portable playpen that would do double duty as a crib.
The rambling ranch sat on a huge piece of land about a half an hour north of Northwest Florida State College, low and solid and a long way from anything a hurricane could pick up and throw.
With the rightful owner off at the campus shelter, they had the whole stormy night ahead and Jonah was not mad about that.
The tour complete, his bag stored on the twin bed in a distant room, she announced it was time to clean out the fridge because the power would go off.
“No generator?” he asked, accepting a can of soda from her.
“Two in the garage. Do you have any idea how to make one run? Dad filled them up with gas and said it was easy.” She made a face. “Actually, he said a child could do it. Think Atlas knows?”
He laughed. “I’m still a kid at heart. I’ll figure it out. Now?”
“Not in this rain.” She opened the fridge and started pulling out veggies, eggs, milk, and butter. “If it goes out, it’ll be overnight. Wait until the storm passes and it’s daylight. We have candles. Games. A little bourbon if we get bored.”
“A candlelit night of shots and games with you?” He scoffed. “Sounds awful.”
She smiled at him, with warmth in her brown eyes and a slight blush under those reckless lashes. “Atlas is in the house.”
He glanced at the baby sleeping in the den, with two big dogs snoozing just inches from the playpen, like a couple of palace guards. “So are Roux and Gumbo. Do they bite?”
She choked. “They will lick you to death if you lay a hand on me.”
“Heard,” he said, ignoring the zing the comment sent through him. “Can I make you an omelet? Frittata? Breakfast for dinner is my specialty.”
She looked at him, the ingredients, then back. “I’d like to cook for you.”
The announcement surprised and delighted him, so he gave a little bow and settled in on a stool at the Formica-covered peninsula where he could admire the cook and still see Atlas.
She cracked eggs in a bowl with the brisk one-handed snap of a person raised in kitchens, while the Weather Channel murmured at them from the den and the wind howled, making the ancient roof creak enough to cause low-key concern.
“Are you sure we’re safe?” he asked, looking around at the house.
“If things get precarious, we’ll move into my room,” she said. “It only has one window, and faces north, so it’s not vulnerable. Norman is still a cat three, which—at least to a woman born and raised in New Orleans—isn’t that bad. Plus, the track is sending it east. Poor Panama City.”
He watched her dice some peppers, which she did well, but not like her father. “You sure you don’t want me to help?” he asked.
“Do my knife skills hurt you?” she asked. “Because I’ve been slicing veggies since before you could spell omelet.”
“I still can’t spell omelet,” he confessed. “I mean, look at it. Two T’s? One? An extra E or not? Nobody knows. It’s a lawless word.”
She chuckled. “You can grate the cheese. Grater is in that drawer. Here’s the cheddar and Jack. We’re using both.”
He popped off the chair, enormously more comfortable in the kitchen than observing. They worked together easily, moving around the space, only bumping into each other once and Jonah might have let that happen.
From here, he could see the TV over the fireplace in the den, where a man in a Weather Channel-branded rain poncho stood on a beach somewhere, the slicker blowing straight out, the rain blurring the shot, and the reporter bracing against the wind as he screamed the latest on the storm surge.
The long red swirl of Norman sat in the corner of the screen churning slowly toward the panhandle like it had all the time in the world.
It was a stark reminder that there was a hurricane out there, an actual named storm bearing down on the coast where most of his family was in an Airbnb somewhere called Rock Hill, except for the old grannies, who were currently at a biker bar.
They’d all checked in on the Summer House group chat, but everyone felt a bit far-flung.
By rights, he should have been a knot of nerves but…nerves just evaporated when he glanced at Pepper’s face in the warm kitchen light. Against all reason and weather, he was happy.
“You’re staring,” she said, not looking up.
“I’m supervising.”
“And you’ve grated enough cheddar for a family of nine.”
“Atlas is a big eater,” he cracked.
“Atlas is asleep and on formula.”
“He’s aspirational. Maybe tonight should be his first taste of cheese.”
She shot him a look. “Then you handle the diapers, pal.”
They both laughed, the sound louder than the goon on TV, and the banter didn’t stop while they stir-fried the veggies, mixed the omelets, and slid them onto plates like a team of short-order cooks.
They ate on the den sofa with folding tables because it really did feel wrong not to “watch the storm” on TV, as she put it. Apparently, it was something that a person who grew up in the path of hurricanes always did.
Being from Atlanta by way of California, he had no clue, so he went with the flow. Atlas slept on under the dogs’ watchful eyes, arms flung up over his head in the boneless surrender of a baby who had decided the freight train outside was as good as the white noise machine he favored.
“You killed it,” he said after one bite of omelet perfection. “I have a whole culinary degree in progress and you didn’t even go to school for it and you just—do this.”
“Thanks. Remember, I grew up in restaurant kitchens. I was peeling shrimp at nine. It’s not a gift, it’s a childhood.
” She nudged a pepper around her plate. “My dad would put me on a stool at the pass and I’d watch the whole service like it was a movie.
Other kids had cartoons. I had the Saturday rush. ”
“Honestly? That sounds kind of wonderful.”
“It was. And it wasn’t. He was always there and never there, if that makes sense.
Behind the line. Right in front of me and a hundred miles away.
” She said it lightly, which was one of her tells.
She always sounded airy about things that, in truth, weren’t light at all.
“I got very good at loving someone across a kitchen.”
“And your mom?”
“I think I told you they split up when I was young. I had two homes, two sets of clothes and toys, two separate lives.”
He studied her, curious about, well, everything.
He wanted to bombard her with personal questions, but tried not to.
But he was still trying to suss out why her father had quite clearly warned him to stay away from his daughter.
He didn’t ask, but guessed that she still hadn’t told Marcel that Jonah was her nanny client or that he was spending the storm here.
She’d have to eventually…he hoped. This couldn’t be all there was with a woman he shared such natural and real chemistry with. Could it?
The wind hit the house with a long, flat shove, howling and rattling some windows. Again, the rafters moaned, and the lights dipped, flickered, then came back.
The man on TV said “landfall” in four hours.
Pepper pushed up, getting her plate. “I don’t think anything is going to happen,” she said, looking at Atlas.
“But I’d like him out of harm’s way,” Jonah finished, standing, too. “Let’s clean up and move him to your room.”
As the storm intensified and they determined they were in a “band” of wind and rain, Atlas woke and started to cry. All the intimacy of the moment shifted into action mode as he transferred the Pack ’n Play to her room, and gathered the dogs in there, too.
Pepper’s bedroom was small and warm and unmistakably hers. The rest of the ranch was tidy and a tad masculine, but this room was slightly disorderly, wildly colorful, and all things feminine.
One wall featured black and white photographs of a ballet dancer’s feet in various step formations, and another had a wall unit that was mostly shelves displaying oodles of trophies, awards, and a dozen photographs of Pepper from childhood to recent days in dance costumes.
A pair of ballet slippers hung by their ribbons from a hook next to a dance bag that he knew well by now, and a stack of paperbacks nearly toppled on the nightstand.
She was right about the window. It was large, and the sky was dark out there, but he could tell it faced the opposite direction of the storm, which was coming up over the Gulf from the south.
He set the playpen in the corner while Pepper changed Atlas’s diaper and got a bottle, the sounds of her sweet voice cooing at his son doing all the things to Jonah’s gut.
She came back in with baby and bottle, followed by the dogs. With her skilled and natural touch, she climbed onto the double bed, the only place to sit in the room.
“Come on.” She tapped the space next to her as she leaned back against the headboard and got the baby into position to drink. “We give you permission to not stand there and gawk.”
“How could I not?”
She frowned into a surprised look. “Why?”
Because she was beautiful? Because the moment was domestic and comforting and profoundly meaningful in a way he could never describe?
“You’re just so good with him,” he said instead. “You’re a natural, you know?”
She looked down at Atlas, stroking his cheek with her finger, but didn’t respond.
With a sigh of surrender, Jonah joined them.
They sat on top of the quilt, shoulder to shoulder, listening to the storm in a full roar outside. It didn’t seem quite as ominous in here, with no creaking roof or rattling windows.
Jonah let his eyes shutter kind of like Atlas’s were, comfort pressing down on him.
“Tell me something,” he murmured, leaning ever so slightly into her.
“That’s a big category.”