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Grant had refused to leave the bedroom while she’d used the toilet—after he’d disallowed her walking and had carried her there himself. No man had attempted it before and Melinda wasn’t quite sure how she felt about it.
Curious, she thought, sipping again. Curiouser and curiouser.
On the plus side, while trapped in the bathroom with her audience of one, Melinda had put on fresh underwear. It might’ve been cold and damp from its bath in the sink, but it was cleaner than a pair of two-day-old airplane knickers. Then she slipped into Paul’s bulky but blessedly dry long underwear, plus his shirt, pants, socks, and jacket.
Grant had returned her to the couch and scrounged up some salves and anti-inflammatories for her. She’d fallen asleep, he’d sliced and diced a few trees, and she’d awoken again to find a cup of tea on the table, no less. He helped her get situated before disappearing again, and now she was alone and ruminating.
Grant’s good-versus-evil balance was tipping in his favor. Wasn’t that interesting? Fool her three times and she’d make out with a liar in front of a fire. If she didn’t have such a crushing headache, she’d give herself a significant facepalm. Melinda clinked down her mug and adjusted the makeshift heating pad.
Cold air shocked the room as Grant slipped through the door with an armful of logs.
“What’s your blog about, again?” he asked, booting the door closed. “And by that I mean, how’d you know how to rig a heating pad out of a pillowcase and a bag of rice? Are you a MacGyver groupie?” He crossed to the fireplace and deposited the latest bundle of wood on the hearth, then stacked it piece by piece in the rack.
Melinda laughed lightly. “Well, hello to you, too. Are you suggesting I call my column MelGyver?”
“Hold up, is it a column or a blog?” Grant asked over his shoulder.
“It’s both,” she said. “I started with a blog, A Wing and A Prayer Kitchen, and a couple years later Mile High Home Magazine contacted me and asked me to morph it into a monthly column for them. So I did, and now I do both. I try stuff in my kitchen all week long, then I blog about the funniest disasters or the unexpected success stories. Once a month I write an article that describes the most interesting experiment. I write pieces for larger publications, but that’s less consistent.”
Grant turned to face her. His eyes found her mouth and she felt a surge of warmth.
“What makes the cut?” He brushed wood chips from the tops of his knees.
“Well...I love the accidents, the awkward stuff.” Melinda twisted her mug in her hands. “I love the real moments of cooking where you mess up a recipe and end up with three cups of chives that were supposed to be the garnish but only three tablespoons of broccoli for your side dish. And you have to figure out what to do before the guests arrive. I like to highlight my own mistakes to show people that cooking is about the feeling you get when you’re in the kitchen just as much as it’s about the finished product. And I want people to feel alive...and confident, even if they screwed up.” She laughed. “Which is not to say that if you’ve used salt instead of sugar you shouldn’t throw it out because anything like that will be vile.”
“And the homemade heating pad?” He gestured with a piece of kindling at the object in question slung around her shoulders.
“Well, I read a lot of home-ec websites and mommy blogs. There are some badass women out there getting it done, and I’m not afraid to learn from them. I read one about a lady who sewed rice inside fabric and microwaved it, and voilà, a heating pad was born. So here we are with fifty pounds of emergency rice but no sewing machine, a wood stove but no microwave, and we need a cloth receptacle. My choices are a sock—no, thank you—or a pillowcase. Easy.” She peeled the knotted pillowcase away from her shoulders and made to pass it to him.
“Would you put this back on the stove for a minute?” She smiled at him.
“Happy to.” He laid the pillowcase into the roasting dish he’d placed on the stovetop. “Want your ice pack again?”
Melinda grimaced and flexed her head from side to side, exploring the stiffness in her neck.
“Yes, please. And for the record, the irony of having to use an ice pack in the middle of a snowstorm is insulting.” She winced. Grant passed her the ice pack that of course Paul had in the closet of wonders, and she laid it atop her bruised head. “How’s it look?”
His laugh rumbled low in his chest.
“Becoming.” His smile slipped and the pain tightened his eyes. “Dammit, Melinda, I’m so sor—”
“No chance, Mountain Man, this wasn’t your fault,” she interrupted, surprised at her own sincerity. “You told me the stakes and I chose not to listen. Maybe I’ll learn my lesson.” She sank back and let the couch support her.
His eyes narrowed and she knew he wanted to say more, but all he said was “Want more drugs?”
“No but yes.” She half-smiled. “I don’t want the inflammation to get ahead of me. You don’t want to piss off the brain, right?”
“Yeah, I think I’ve done that enough for one trip.” He walked into the kitchen. Melinda heard him crack open a cabinet door and take out the bottle of pills. She heard the rattle as he released the lid and the shiver of tablets as he shook some into his palm. She closed her eyes, heard the lid snap again, the bottle slide into the cabinet, the cabinet thump closed.
What was the food parallel for a life-and-death nightmare?
Too easy. Soufflé.
~
Grant’s stomach, jaw, and heart ached. Every time he caught sight of Melinda’s features pinched with pain, the face she made when she thought he wasn’t looking, his gut clenched. He handed her two tablets and a glass of water and watched her swallow them down.
“Got enough food in your belly to take those?” He grabbed the warmed rice-filled pillowcase.
