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“Everything’s fine,” she assured him. “It’s absolutely fine. You go. Finish getting ready for work. I’ll clean up.” Chris paused and put a hand on her shoulder. She put her own hand on top of his. “Do what you’re told for once,” she admonished with a slight smile.
He squeezed her shoulder in thanks and left her to clean the kitchen. When he emerged from the bedroom, fully dressed, Hayley was hanging up the kitchen towel. “We need to go to the store,” she told him. “I need to get some things to make ribs for Tex’s barbeque on Sunday.”
He nodded, pocketed his cell phone, and picked up his keys. “I’ll have to stay a little late,” he told her, “because I got such a late start. But I’ll pick you up around six.”
“Have a good day at work,” she told him, but Chris couldn’t bring himself to let the matter of last night drop.
“Hayley-”
She waved his words away and stepped up to him. She pressed her tiny frame against his and he wrapped his arms around her.
“You’re a good man, Chris. That’s why I’m still here.”
He closed his eyes. Wanted to believe it. “Sometimes I’m not sure,” he admitted quietly.
“I’m sure enough for the both of us.”
Chapter 15
Hayley spent all day Saturday cooking the ribs, using both ovens. She allowed Chris to be her taste tester since only he knew how her barbecue stacked up to the Texan’s. Chris declared it hands down the winner, but admitted to possible bias on his part. They packed up a picnic basket with enough ribs to feed half of the Dakotas and set off for Tex’s place.
For a man with a Texas drawl and who looked more at home in a biker bar than almost anyone else Hayley had ever met, Tex’s house was quite a surprise. A one-story, large ranch almost at the edge of town in a well-manicured subdivision. His kitchen gleamed with stainless steel appliances, black tile counters and warm hardwood floors.
His living room was decked out in comfortable but stylish matching furniture and a huge flat screen above the fireplace. Hayley hadn’t exactly been expecting milk crates for chairs and hubcaps for dinner plates, but neither was she expecting a house that looked as though it could be photographed for Midwestern Living.
A large group, some regulars from the bar but mostly people she didn’t know, had gathered around in Tex’s fenced-in backyard to judge the cook-off. Hayley held her breath after tasting Tex’s fall-off-the-bone pork ribs and had to admit the man could braise his ass off.
Whether she was a sympathetic newcomer or truthfully a better cook was up for debate, but Milo declared her a culinary angel sent from God to deliver them, and the rest of crowd agreed. If Tex thought she’d won merely because she was new and cute, he kept it to himself, losing gracefully and supplying the crowd with a huge batch of peach cobbler to make up for his perceived shortcomings.
Hayley admitted the dessert was as good as anything she could make herself and busied herself gathering up dirty dishes and empty serving bowls and taking them to the kitchen. She wasn’t quite comfortable in the large crowd of mostly strangers. At the sink, she heard a voice from behind her.
“Still disappointed you ain’t my type,” Tex said.
“You said that before,” Hayley called over her shoulder. “What’s your type? And how do you know I’m not?”
“You got too much sass. See, honey, there’s two types of sass. Regular sass….and bedroom sass. Now, I like regular sass. But-” A sharp crack sounded and Hayley spun around to see Tex holding a wooden spoon that he’d apparently used to swat the heel of his palm. He was grinning. “I don’t tolerate bedroom sass.” Hayley held her breath as he casually replaced the spoon in the holder. “Hard as hell to find a good woman with a lot of one and none of the other.”
Hayley’s heart raced. “You…beat them?”
Tex frowned. “Hell no, Slick. Do I seem like the kind of guy who beats on women? Or needs to? No, Slick. I don’t beat them. I discipline them. No permanent marks, no blood. Just discipline. For our mutual pleasure.”
Hayley nervously wiped her wet hands on her jeans. “Mutual pleasure? They…like it?”
“They like that they don’t like it.”
“That…makes no sense.”
He grinned. “Which is why you’re not my type.”
Hayley considered this and swallowed hard. “Does…I mean, Chris…doesn’t…”
Tex shook his head and Hayley let go of the breath she was holding. “Nope,” Tex said. “Not even a little, far as I know. He likes a lot of bedroom sass and not so much regular sass.”
Hayley frowned. “What does that mean?”
Chris’s voice caught their attention from the open doorway. “Means I’m used to giving orders and having them followed. But not in the bedroom. I got my fill of ‘Yes, Sir/No, Sir’ in the service. And “Master,” he rolled his eyes, “is on a level I can’t even being to deal with.”
