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“Do I mind taking you downstairs to the pantry where you’ll find ingredients to cook me dinner? No.” Laughing, I padded barefoot to the front door where my keys were. “The door’s locked so I’ll have to let you in.”
“Just to be certain, you have milk and butter upstairs, right? Dishes to cook in?”
“I have a fully stocked kitchen, thank you very much.”
“We’ll agree to disagree on that.”
Rude.
I unlocked the access door to the kitchen and turned on the light. “I said I have a fully stocked kitchen. I didn’t say it was the one in my apartment.”
“Touché.”
“You can take whatever dishes from down here you want. Pantry’s here.” I opened the pantry door and turned on that light, too, stepping inside. There was just about enough room for us both to move in here.
“Holy shit. This is amazing.” Maverick ran his eyes over the floor-to-ceiling spice rack that held every spice and herb I could name and a bunch I couldn’t. “Do you really use all these in cooking?”
“Most,” I admitted, scanning them myself. “You’d be surprised how well things go together. Sometimes even a basic cake or bread loaf needs a little something and a pinch of this and that works. Of course I never write those down, so that’s between my oven and God at that point.”
He laughed. “I mean it. I’m never leaving.”
“Excellent. Then let’s get married. I’ll keep you in cakes, you keep me in homemade dinners, and everyone will stop trying to set me up with random guys who could be serial killers.”
“Done.” He winked at me, reaching for a spice bottle. He set it on a half-empty shelf and continued looking. Within minutes, Maverick had stolen himself a little stash that he quickly spirted out of the pantry.
Shaking my head, I shut off the light and turned to follow him, but I wasn’t paying attention. I walked right into him with a scream, and he grabbed my upper arms to steady me.
“Whoa,” he said softly. “Why are you screaming?”
“I didn’t know you were there.” A nervous laugh bubbled inside me, and I looked up.
His blue eyes were exceptionally bright in the dimness of the pantry, and as he smiled, his entire face lit up. “You got any whipping cream? And parmesan?”
He was still touching my arms.
Butterflies exploded in my belly, and I had to swallow down an awkward squeak that threatened to escape my lips. Maybe this was a bad idea after all. “In the big fridge. I got a delivery today.”
“Hey, that worked out better than I’d hoped.” He winked again and finally released me, and I slowly let out a breath.
Yep.
This was definitely a bad idea.
***
I could add one more thing to the list of things I knew about Maverick Donovan: he really wasn’t kidding when he said he was a good cook.
I wasn’t even sure what he’d made, but it was one of the best things I’d ever put in my mouth. It’d be so long since I’d had homemade food that I could barely believe it’d come from him and had been made in my kitchen.
“That was amazing,” I breathed. “Holy crap.”
He grinned. “That good?”
“I can’t tell you the last time I had homecooked food. Neither me or my roommate in Vegas could cook and my parents never stay in one place long enough to really do anything. At least they haven’t for a while.”
“Do your parents live in White Peak?”
“Technically speaking,” I answered slowly. “They have a house here, but they’re never really here long enough to say they ‘live’ here. Last I knew they were in the Caribbean.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You don’t know where they are?”
“They’re nomads.” I lifted my feet onto the sofa and propped my head up on the back of the sofa. “As soon as I left for college, they bought an RV and got the hell out of town. They come back every now and then, usually around Christmas, and honestly I’m pretty sure that’s just so they can say they were here.”
“Does it bother you or your brother?”
“Not really. We’re used to it. I think it affected Josh more than it did me, since I went to college in Las Vegas, and he went straight into work.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a builder. He’s annoyingly intelligent, but school was never really his thing.”
“I feel that. I didn’t go to college either.” Maverick shrugged. “I kind of accidentally fell into writing when my sister adopted an eight-year-old girl. She was really shy, but she loved books and telling stories. I was one of the only people other than my sister and her husband that she’d talk to, but both of them are about as creative as rockslide. Abby asked me to write down one of her stories, and as I did, I realized I really loved it. My sister told me to write my own damn book, so I did, and the rest is history.”
