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“I’m sorry. It’s about the shittiest thing ever, isn’t it?” He kept his gaze on her and while her first instinct was to play off her grief, she did as he asked and stayed true to herself.
“Yes. I often wonder if maybe I wouldn’t have made so many bad choices had she lived.” Mickie cringed. “Wow, sorry. That was way too much info for a baking lesson.”
Thankfully, he seemed to understand how difficult it was for her to discuss personal issues, so he saved her by asking her to hand him the pie plate.
He worked in silence, rolling out the dough, then expertly pressing it into the pie plate. Surprisingly enough, she found an odd comfort in the quiet. Before their little clearing of the air, she’d have been analyzing every second ticking by wondering what negative thoughts he was having about her. Then to fill the discomfort of the lack of words, she’d have blathered on until she drove him bonkers. Now, she felt confident he wasn’t cursing her out in his brooding brain, so she was able to enjoy watching the man’s strong hands mold the crust into her brand-new pie pan.
Once he the crust looking as he wanted, he dumped in the pie weights she almost didn’t buy. “So, did you actually use a recipe?” he asked after sliding the crust into her preheated oven to blind bake—whatever the heck that meant.
“Um, kind of?” she said, cheeks heating. “I followed one I found online to make the crust, which I threw out because it fell apart. The apples I figured would be simple enough without a recipe. Chop them up, add sugar, cook them in a pan. Right?”
His lips twitched. The man sucked at hiding his amusement over her failed kitchen experiment.
“Just say it. What?” She folded her arms across her flour-dusted T-shirt. The move plumped her breasts, showing the tiniest hint of cleavage at the V of the neck. Was she mistaken or did his gaze shift to that peek of bare skin before coming back to her face?
And if so, why did the thought of him looking at her in a sexual way have her knees weakening? This man was not for her in any way.
“You don’t cook the apples first. They just go in the oven raw.”
Her mouth fell open. “Shut up. You’re messing with me.”
He was laughing now. Full-blown belly laughs that had her scowling. “Dead serious,” he managed between guffaws.
“Hey!” She used her fingertips to gather up some flour from the counter then flicked it his way. “It’s not nice to make fun of people—oh!” She slapped a hand over her mouth two seconds too late to stop the giggle from bubbling out.
The flour hit its mark. As in bullseye, all over Keith’s face.
He coughed once, sending a cloud of white wafting her way.
She giggled again behind her hand, even as her insides tremored in uncertainty over how he’d react.
After three seconds of shock on his part and trepidation on hers, he tilted his head. “So that’s how you’re gonna play this?” he asked as he took a step forward. Then another.
Her heart rate kicked up. He had the look of a hunter and she had the urge to spread her arms and let him catch her.
“Uh, well, I um…”
His hand went to the counter, gathering up way more flour than she had, and suddenly she felt like a little rabbit in the sights of a hungry panther.
“Now wait a minute,” she said as she lifted her hands and took a step back. “We don’t need to make this ugly. Let’s just call a truce.”
“A truce?” he said, still advancing on her with a fist full of flour.
“Yes, a truce. See, I spent a lot of time on my hair this morning.”
Lies of course, which he knew by his snort. So much for men being oblivious. Guess even the manliest of them knew a sloppy top knot meant they spent one point five seconds grooming.
“Oh yea, I can see that.” He stopped walking about two feet from her. “Well, I’d hate to mess up your hard work.”
Huh, maybe she had fooled him. With a sigh of relief, she dropped her arms, and his grin instantly grew evil. He tossed the flour up at her from his side, coating her in a shower of chalky power.
“You bastard,” she said, though the words barely made it out of her mouth because she was coughing and laughing so hard, tears streamed down her cheeks. “You fight dirty!” She lunged for the counter at the same time he did.
They spent the next few minutes laughing and making a gigantic mess of themselves and her kitchen. It’d take hours to clean, but it was the most fun she’d had in ages. Lighthearted, without thought of how she’d appear to the outside world. She didn’t have to take pictures and post them on Instagram for the public to praise or judge. For the first time in longer than she could remember, she enjoyed a moment for its simplicity and frivolity.
