Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
FRANKIE
The soup trembles in the ladle as I scoop it out into the mismatched array of containers that I’ve laid out on the counter. It feels good to know there’ll be a whole load of ready-made, healthy food for Grandpa once I’ve left.
What doesn’t feel so good is knowing Miller is just on the other side of that wall standing under the water I can hear running. And why doesn’t it feel good? Because it’s not right that I can’t stop myself from imagining him all naked and soapy.
There’s no room in my mind for naked and soapy thoughts. One hundred percent of my brain cells need to be engrossed in getting long-term ongoing donations that will keep this place going and mean we don’t have to sell.
So what the hell is wrong with me? What on earth possessed my mouth to ask Miller if he wanted to stay for dinner?
Well, apart from the fact that he’s interesting and amusing company. And not exactly unpleasant to look at.
And I couldn’t very well just leave him to fend for himself for dinner when he was so massively helpful with the hay bales.
Man alive, I swear that watching Miller’s thighs and arms power him up and over that fence, then toss the bales over into the back of the truck, made me feel like the universe had singled me out for a very special show.
But an interesting glimmer into his life emerged—he climbed at a gym in Boston, which means he had a regular place he went to, which means he had a pretty settled life before he decided to go on the road looking for a new place to live.
So what would have prompted him to leave?
Is he running away from something? Or am I overthinking this? Probably.
The gushing water on the other side of the wall comes to an abrupt halt.
He must be toweling himself off now.
Stop it, Frances Maria Channing. Stop it.
My brain’s use of my full name gives me goose bumps. No one’s called me that since Grandma. When I was a kid it meant I was in trouble. Later, it was because she was feigning outrage over a story I was telling her about college shenanigans.
And I remember, crystal clear, the final time she said it. I was standing at this very stove scrambling some eggs for her breakfast when she said, “Frances Maria Channing, no granddaughter of mine would ever dream of scrambling eggs without a glug of half-and-half in them.”
My scrambled eggs have been graced with a glug of half-and-half ever since.
Sometimes these memories tighten my throat. But, as time goes on, they more often bring a smile.
“Well, that feels a million times better.” Miller emerges from the bathroom, a cloud of steam billowing out behind him, making him look like a god emerging from…wherever it is gods emerge from.
He’s now wearing the designer jeans he had on when he first showed up here.
Since his singed new boxers are still drying on the shelf, he’s either rewearing his preshower undies (which I’d imagine he’s not, because he seems to be fastidious about personal hygiene) or else there’s nothing between…um…him…and that snug denim.
Is it the steam from the soup that’s making me hot?
His top half is dressed in one of the plain white T-shirts we picked up at the Tractor Trunk. And he can’t have fully dried himself off because it clings to his pecs in a couple of damp spots.
He pushes his hands through his glossy wet hair, leaving tracks in it, and gives me a sparkling smile.
Soup spills from the ladle, misses the container I was aiming for and slops onto the counter. “Shit.”
“Let me,” he says, putting his neatly folded pile of dirty clothes on a chair and heading my way.
He rips a couple of sheets of paper towel from the roll and, standing as close to me as possible without actually touching me, mops up the spill between the grid of open containers.
My pulse immediately responds to his proximity, to the heat radiating from him, to the knowledge that if I leaned just a little my arm would brush against the powerful bicep peeking out from his sleeve, to the scent of my lavender-and-vanilla body wash on him that sends my eyes drifting shut before I catch myself.
“Thanks,” I say, as he scrunches up the soup-soaked paper towel and tosses it into the trash. “I’ll leave these out to cool, and you and I can have the rest.”
I go to open the cabinet to get bowls but reel my arm back in when I realize that would mean reaching right across him, and my mind immediately runs a scenario where he’d rest his hand on the small of my back to steady me and tell me not to worry, he’ll get them, like he’s always done in the ten years we’ve been cooking together.
My mind is ridiculous.
“Could you grab a couple of bowls from that cabinet, please?” I ask, while stomping on the parts of my head that are foolishly dreaming up fantasy future life scenarios with a man I barely know and will never see again after I return to Chicago two months from now.
“Sure,” he says casually, completely unaware that my head has just married us off and has us in this routine a decade from now.
He places the bowls with their 1970s brown square pattern on the counter space between the array of soup containers and the pot on the stove. “I happened to notice there was some open wine in the fridge. Would you like me to pour you a glass? Just in the interests of it not going bad, I mean.”
“Sounds good.” I attempt to get a grip on my trembling soup ladle. “You can have one too if you like. Just in the interests of it not going bad. Glasses are in the cabinet along from the bowls.”
And while he takes care of that, I dish up the soup, slice the herbed ciabatta from Kneads Must into hefty chunks, shove the pile of papers in the middle of the table to one side, and lay out the food along with butter from the local farm shop.
“You could charge a fortune for a meal like this in the city.” Miller places a glass of wine in front of each of us and takes the seat across from me.
“God, yes. In Chicago, this would be classed as farm-to-table and that immediately ratchets up the already exorbitant price by another fifty percent.”
“Cheers.” Miller holds up his glass.
I clink mine against it as I sit and take a sip, the cool tart liquid somehow instantly relaxing me. Or is it Miller’s easygoing demeanor that’s doing that?
“Are you missing it?” He takes a chunk of bread from the thick wooden cutting board and puts it on his side plate. “Chicago, I mean.”
“Haven’t had a lot of chance to think about it.” It’s partially true. I haven’t thought about the city at all. The only thing I’ve worried about is if being here is jeopardizing my career prospects. “Haven’t been here even a week yet, and I’ve been run ragged the whole time.”
“Well, then I’m happy you now have some help.” His smile says that he means it.
“Yeah, your timing could not have been better.”
He shifts a little uncomfortably and butters his bread. “This place means a lot to you, huh?”
I blow on a spoonful of soup. “Impossible for it not to when I spent so much time here as a kid.”
“You never did tell me where you’re actually from.”
“New Jersey.” I rip a chunk of bread in half. “My parents would drop me off for the summer when I was younger. Then, as soon as I was old enough to get the train myself, I did that.”
“How does someone come to start a donkey sanctuary?” Miller takes a slurp of his soup, then gasps and sticks out his tongue, wafting air over it with his hand.
“Too hot?” I ask.
The sight of his tongue is definitely too hot for the parts of my body that are reacting to it in ways I do not need them to be reacting to him.
He nods.
I tap his glass. “That’s cold.”
Thankfully he puts his tongue back in his mouth and takes a sip of wine to chill the burn.
“They were left some money,” I explain. “Grandpa used to manage a farm for an elderly couple who had a ton of land and no idea what to do with it. Grandma and Grandpa lived in a little house on the property. Grandpa ran the farm and Grandma helped in the house and the kitchen and with admin and generally everything to do with running the couple’s house and life. ”
“Whoa, that sounds like a big job. A real job.” And that sounds like the tone of a man who’s spent so much of his life shuffling assets online that he doesn’t know what it’s like to do physical work.
“I think it was. Anyway, when the couple passed away within three weeks of each other, they left a stack of money to Grandma and Grandpa, as long as they took the four donkeys. Once they’d bought this place and settled in, word got around that they were donkey people.
And they could never say no to an abandonment or abuse case. ”
“Wow, that’s pretty special.” Miller seems genuinely taken aback by their altruism. “This soup is amazing, by the way.”
“Thank you. They eventually registered as a nonprofit. And since then, dozens of donkeys have been through this place, then been adopted and gone on to live long and happy lives in their new forever homes.”
“So,” Miller picks up his bread, “if this place is a nonprofit, does that mean the board has a say in whether you sell to one of those developers and dissolve the sanctuary?”
Now, there’s a question only a businessperson would ask.
“The board has only ever been me, Grandpa, Mrs. Bentley—who was a very active volunteer until she broke her hip a few years ago and something went wrong that’s meant she’s had to use a walker ever since—and a guy who was mayor for a long time. But he passed away a while ago.”
“Are those the offers?” Miller points at the papers on top of the pile I’d shoved to the end of the table.
“Yup.” I chase a cube of potato around my soup.
“So you are considering selling, then?” he asks. “I mean, I know you said you wouldn’t. I just wondered—”
“Not even remotely. People like that disgust me.”
“People like what?”
“People like that Skinner guy. He’s been bombarding Grandpa with calls and emails for months, and showed up a few times. What a total sleaze bucket.”
Miller chuckles at the term.