Chapter Seven
“We’re having carrots for breakfast?”
Rance had walked back into the kitchen half an hour later, and he stopped at the kitchen island. A bunch of carrots and an onion sat beside a cutting board with a wicked-looking knife beside it.
“Not for breakfast,” she responded, moving from the sink to open the oven. With kitchen mitts, she reached in and withdrew the pan covered in foil, setting it on top of the stove.
“Breakfast has been kept warm in here.” She unwrapped and then set a plate with crisp bacon, scrambled eggs, and two slices of buttered toast on the breakfast bar.
“I heard the shower shut off and then tried to time it to still be warm enough when you came in here. It should still have some warmth. So, sit down and eat.”
“What about you?”
“I already had mine and now I’m working on the roast that I’m making for a late lunch, since the morning is on its way toward midday. It will be good for leftovers later, also. That is what I need to chop the carrots, onions, and peel the rest of the potatoes to complete that meal.”
Rance began to eat as he watched her return to the sink and peel the potatoes. It was not something he could have imagined her doing just a couple days ago. “Thanks for the breakfast.”
“You are welcome. I’m afraid I only felt safe with scrambled eggs. I have tried the over-easy type but that’s a crash and burn situation for me.”
“Scrambled is always good. And the bacon is nice and crispy…just the way I like it.”
“Me, too. Limp bacon is a waste of a good pig.”
The smile came back and he matched it. “I do know how to slice carrots and onions. I can make that contribution to our meal. If Your Honor agrees to allow me to approach it.”
“As long as you agree to not shed any blood on our dinner components. Your sister shared with me some of your earlier cooking attempts. While she was trying to teach you to fend for yourself when you headed to college.”
“I really need to have a discussion with my sisters…both of them. They delight in sharing stories. I should share some of the ones I have about them.” He stood and walked to stand beside her at the double sink, washing off his empty plate and placing it in the dishwasher with others waiting for a full load.
Rolling up his sleeves to the elbows, he moved to the island to begin the task at hand.
“Hold on,” she said, “you have to be properly attired to be my sous chef.” She picked up an apron that had been folded and was waiting at the end of the counter.
He had noted she had a bright yellow one tied around her waist with strawberries scattered over it when he had arrived in the kitchen.
The one she had for him was dark blue with big white daisies on it and it had to go over his head and tied around the waist.
“I see the smirk,” he pointed out. “Is this necessary?”
“It is if you wish to help.”
He picked up the knife but before he could begin on the carrots, which had been washed and prepared for their fate, she removed the knife from his hand.
“We don’t want to hack them up or cut huge chunks… We need them to look like this.” She demonstrated on one carrot. They were uniform and almost perfect rounds in small sizes. She then demonstrated with an onion, cutting it into diced pieces. “There you go.”
“I will do my best.”
She returned to slicing potatoes, and he had his back to her as he concentrated on the task before him.
“So how did your phone call go? I take it that since you haven’t tossed me into your jeep and called in a helicopter in a race to get rid of me, that it’s not good news today?”
Neither of them stopped their preparations due to the question.
“I don’t think I would be tossing you anyplace. I think at the sound of that chopper overhead, you would be waving it down and on board before I leave the deck. But you are correct, no news. There are a lot of people working around the clock.”
“Sorry. You’re still stuck babysitting.”
“It’s not babysitting.”
“But it’s not the drama of a car chase or hunting down vicious drug criminals, solving bank robberies or any of the macho things you marshals prefer. I have had a few of those cases before my bench, so I do have an idea that babysitting is the bottom rung.”
“It is all part of the elements of putting criminals behind bars and upholding the…the laws…that…” She turned to look at him.
“Is there something wrong?” She stepped over to his workspace, and she bit back an urge to laugh outright. Something told her it would not be a welcome response to the problem he was having.
“Everything is just fine.”
She stepped to the cabinet and rummaged through a couple of the drawers. “I saw these earlier,” she said and turned with a matchstick in her fingers. “Put the end of the this between your teeth and breathe through your mouth. It takes the sting out of those onions.”
Rance gave her a look that said he thought she might have lost her mind.
She nodded to him to take it. “Trust me. It sounds strange but my housekeeper swore by it and I tried it. It works. Or you could continue to stand there and have tears streaming down your face.”
“They aren’t tears.” He set her straight on that point. She continued to stand there, waiting.
“I never heard of anything like this,” he said, “but you won’t leave it, I’m sure, until I do it.” He took the match and did as instructed. He went back to chopping the juicy onion. She watched.
The onion was soon completed and put inside a plastic container with a tight lid. And the match went into the trash underneath the island.
“You’re welcome,” she said with a true ‘I told you so’ tone in her voice and a knowing smile since he chose to remain silent…and tear-free. She went back to her own items.
“So, is this housekeeper you mention the one who taught you to cook?”
“Yes. And sometimes I would go into the kitchen when I couldn’t sleep or needed to pour over a point of law in my head in a tough case…
and I found that taking a recipe out of one of her books, and working with it, helped me to figure out what was bothering me.
If I had more time, I would really like to try even more difficult dishes.
The problem is that I tend to cook too much and then I have to find people to eat it.
The clerks in the courthouse enjoy it when I can’t sleep. ”
“I bet they do. Okay so what’s next, Chef?”
He listened and she taught. And all the while, Rance kept adjusting his first impressions of the jurist turned fisherman turned chef. What would be the next revelation?
*
The next two days of her confinement fit into a routine.
Coffee on the deck, breakfast, light lunch, dinner, followed by one of the board or card games.
And there was conversation. And then awaiting the phone calls that always had the same message…
no news was good news. Rance would fish for a while but never out of sight of her.
She would do work at the table on the deck, and she could feel his eyes on her from a stance inside the house.
The fourth day was Sunday. And she was beginning to feel at odds with the routine and no action to change the circumstance.
Something had to change, and it seemed that he had known it also.
Just after the breakfast dishes had been washed and put away and the day loomed ahead, he made an announcement.
“If you don’t have any other plans, we do have that invitation to my sister-in-law’s birthday barbecue. We could go with some rules in place.”
“Are you trying to be a comedian? Stick to being a lawman. I do believe I could fit it into my social calendar. But what rules are you thinking of first?”
“Change your look up a bit…hair, sunglasses, jeans…whatever you can. We’ll be driving through Destiny’s River, and we won’t stop until we get to Primrose. And you will stay on that property…no wandering off like you did yesterday along the riverbank and out of my sight.”
That had not been pleasant as she recalled.
But she had been daydreaming and following the river, and then he had caught up to her and she saw a side of him that was probably best reserved for lawbreakers that he had to track down.
She apologized and the usual Rance Parker came back in place of Marshal Parker.
She wouldn’t want to meet him on a bad day as a lawbreaker.
“I apologized for that, and I will not do it again. But who am I when introduced to your family?”
“My siblings have a lot of experience in and around the law. They know that silence is lifesaving more often than not. My brother and sisters know your story. No one else who is there knows it. They think you’re a special friend who is visiting me.
You leave tomorrow to go back to Dallas where you work for an attorney. That is how we met…short and sweet.”
“We are dating?”
“Why do you sound so incredulous? You work in an attorney’s office…you aren’t the high-flying big judge that you are, so we’re both just normal working people who are dating. Period. They will understand when we break up.”
“Wow. You have a very high opinion of me. I think. Easy for people to see why we couldn’t possibly be taken seriously as a couple. I’m just a rich snob otherwise.” She turned and left him standing bewildered by her reaction. The bedroom door shut with a little more force this time.
*
“We’re so glad you could come.” Tori smiled as she met them on the broad porch of the three-story Victorian house known originally as the Primrose Inn.