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“Okay. You’re enlisted. I’m making corn salad and I’m trying—” she stopped, because Zach had made a face. “You got a problem already?”
“No. No. I mean, I’m not a huge fan of corn, unless it’s popped, but I’m not the only one here.”
“Wait until you’ve had my corn salad to decide how you feel about corn. It’s spicy and delicious. But that’s the hang-up I’m having now. I wasn’t expecting a house full of people, I wasn’t expecting to cook at all since we worked so late, and I can’t figure out what else to make for all you guys. I’ve sorta got a Mexican theme happening.”
He came over and peered into the fridge with her. With him standing so close, she got a keen sense of his size. She wasn’t short, maybe a little taller than average, but his head was all the way above her. His body heat enveloped her. His scent as well. He’d been on the road all day; under the tang of the sour apple soap they kept in the half bath, he smelled of gasoline, road dirt, and fresh air. With a subtle hint of Michelob.
Maybe only a woman who’d lived around bikers her whole life would find that aroma sexy, but she happened to be such a woman.
“How much do you trust me?” Zach asked.
Considering where her mind had just wandered off to, Lyra nearly flinched. But she saved herself and managed what she hoped was a saucy smirk. “I just met you, so, you know ... not at all.”
He laughed. “Fair enough. But I see some stuff in there I could work with, if you don’t mind, and I’d kinda like to surprise you.”
“I don’t need to trust you for that. It’s your head if they don’t like it. So go for it.”
“Excellent.” He rubbed his hands together. “What’s your spice rack like?”
With a proud grin, enjoying herself about a thousand times more than when she’d been in here alone muttering about having to feed all these strangers, Lyra opened the cupboard beside the range. She stepped back and did a game-show model flourish to let him see that all four shelves were packed solid with herbs and spices. Each shelf was neatly organized according to size, flavor signature, and alphabet. Each shelf had a graduated organizing gizmo like tiny plastic steps, so each row was slightly higher than the one before it. If there was a dried spice or herb Lyra didn’t have, she’d be surprised. There was even a teensy container of pure saffron. Her cooking talent was only average, but her organizing skills were elite.
“Holy shit,” he said. “Yeah, I can work with that.”
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~oOo~
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What he’d made wasa ... frittata? Something like that. Egg and polenta based, with cheese, veggies and peppers, and the last of the bacon crumbles folded in. In her mind, that was a breakfast dish and it would never have occurred to her for tonight, and the polenta didn’t really address the ‘too much corn’ concern, but she had to admit that it covered the bases for this meal nicely: filling, lots of flavor, and plenty big enough for all those feral men to come back for seconds. Plus, the polenta almost made it like a bread thing, which was the feature she’d been looking for.
She’d pointed out that polenta was corn-based, and he grinned and said it was the kernels he didn’t care for. Cornmeal and popcorn were okay in his book.
He’d let her taste his concoction, and it was really good.
Even better than all that? When he’d added the cheese, he’d said, with the cutest little grin she’d ever seen in her life, “Next step is to fold in the cheese.”
She’d jumped in with the next line of that hilarious scene, and they’d done the whole bit together, him playing David and her doing Moira, both of them laughing their asses off. She’d have to watch that scene again to makeabsolutelysure, but she was pretty sure they’d gotten every word right, with intonation.
Not only was he hot and fit, not only could he cook, not only was he a fan ofThe Golden Compass. He also knewSchitt’s Creekwell enough to reenact a scene?
Okay, this guy was cute as hell.
Now they were sitting on the patio, their table packed with bikers, all of them shoveling food into their mouths as quickly as they could fill their forks. A chorus of appreciative grunts served as thanks. Zach, sitting across the table and down from her, caught her eye a few times, and they shared a grin.
The dinner talk was pretty typical for any time her father and brother got together in a group with other likeminded guys: bikes. Models, engines, modifications, good roads for riding, good places to stop at. Places to avoid. Sturgis was coming up in a few weeks. None of the men shoveling Lyra’s corn salad, Zach’s ... frittata, or Pop’s steak into their mouths were going to South Dakota this year, but they’d all gone at some point, it seemed, and they all had opinions and stories.
Once or twice, somebody said something Lyra could tell she didn’t have the context for, and each time that happened, the table took an awkward beat. That meant the comment had brushed up against something she wasn’t meant to know about. Her specifically. She was the only woman at the table, the only one who didn’t ride—not because she didn’t want to but because her father believed women should ride only as passengers—and it was obvious that all the men knew something she didn’t.
Well,thatwas a situation she was extremely used to.
As the meal wound down and she fielded appreciative words from all the men—and Zach took some lighthearted shit for his contribution to the meal—Lyra started to clear the table, and Zach and his brother, Jay ... or JJ ... or both, started to help her. But her dad caught her arm gently and held her back from taking a load to the kitchen.
“Set the dishes aside for now. Reed and I’ll get ‘em tonight.”
Lyra gaped. “Huh?”
Her father did not do dishes. With the exception of improvements and repairs, he considered all work done inside a house to be women’s work.
