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“Why?”
“Something to do with doneness. I assume it’ll be self-evident. What did you do to your knee?”
Never missed a trick, she thought. “Some jerk in uniform let an asshole get away from him. I used my knee to discourage said asshole from ramming me down the glide. Now he’s crying because his jaw was dislocated, and he has a mild concussion.”
“Knee to jaw. Sensible. How’d he get the concussion?”
“He says it was from the tube of Pepsi I pitched at him, but that’s bogus. I figure he got it when a bunch of cops landed on him.”
“You threw your Pepsi at him.”
“It was handy.”
“Darling Eve.” He picked up her free hand, kissed it. “Ever resourceful.”
“That may be, but I had to waste time on more paperwork. Officer Cullin is going to rue this day.”
“No doubt.”
He poured more champagne, and they drank it in the shade. When she heard the distant rumble of thunder, she lifted her eyebrows, glanced toward the grill. “You may be rained out.”
“There’s time yet. I’ll just turn it up a bit, and put on the steaks.”
Fifteen minutes later, Eve sipped champagne and watched a little burst of flame erupt from one end of the grill. Since it wasn’t the first, she was no longer alarmed by it.
Instead, she watched Roarke fight his new toy, curse it in two languages, and eye it with frustration.
When jabbed, the potatoes proved to be hard as stone inside their blackened skin. The skewered vegetables were burned to a crisp, and had been on fire twice.
The steaks were a sickly gray on one side, and black on the other.
“This isn’t right,” he muttered. “It must be defective.”
He stabbed one of the steaks, lifting it off the grill to scowl at it. “This doesn’t appear to be medium rare.”
When the juice dripping from it sparked another pocket of flame, he tossed it back on the bars.
More fire spurted, and the machine, as it had a number of times before, issued a dour warning:
ACTIVE FIRE IS NEITHER ADVISABLE NOR RECOMMENDED. PLEASE REPROGRAM WITHIN THIRTY SECONDS, OR THIS UNIT WILL GO INTO SAFETY MODE AS EXPLAINED IN THE TUTORIAL, AND SHUT DOWN.
“Bugger it, you bloody bitch, how many times do you need to be reprogrammed?”
Eve took another hit of champagne, and decided not to point out that bitch was inappropriate as the unit’s voice mode was distinctly male.
Men, she’d observed, habitually termed the inanimate objects they cursed by uncomplimentary female names. Hell, she did the same herself.
A couple of lightning bolts popped in the sky, and the thunder rolled closer in one long, menacing growl. Eve felt the first splat of rain in the rising wind.
She walked over to rescue the bottle of champagne while Roarke stared at the grill.
“I’m thinking pizza,” she said and started into the house.
“It’s just a glitch.” Roarke scraped what was left of the food into the unit’s garbage disposal feature. “This isn’t finished,” he grumbled to it, and followed Eve into the house. “I’ll have another look at it tomorrow,” he told her.
“You know . . .” She crossed to the AutoChef, which was, in her opinion, the sensible way to cook. “. . . it’s sort of nice to see that you can screw up like the rest of us mortals. Get all sweaty and frustrated and curse out inanimate objects. Though I’m not convinced that thing outside is inanimate.”
“A factory defect, no doubt.” But he was grinning now. “I’ll see to it tomorrow.”
