Page 12 of Back in the Saddle

I stopped speaking when he started sniffing.

He then asked me, “You don’t have the bird in the oven yet?”

“The YouTube video said it only takes an hour,” I informed him.

“An hour to cook a turkey?” he asked, like I said it took an hour for Beyoncé to prepare to hit the stage.

“Yes,” I answered.

“It takes longer than that to roast a chicken.”

“Sorry, my man, you missed the turnoff to the Barefoot Contessa’s house on your way here. Just go east for about thirty-five hours and veer north somewhere along the line. Eventually, you should hit Long Island. Be sure to tell Ina and Jeffrey I said, ‘hey.’”

He smirked.

It was as hot as everything he did, so I felt that smirk in very private parts of me.

What did I do to deserve this?

Really, tell me.

“The Barefoot Contessa?” he asked.

What could I say?

I was into cooking shows, and hers was the best (according to me).

I just didn’t cook.

“Turner, what are you doing here?” I demanded to know.

“You’re alone on Thanksgiving, I’m alone on Thanksgiving. So we’re having Thanksgiving together.”

We were?

Hold on.

Rewind.

“How did you know I was alone on Thanksgiving?”

He stopped pulling stuff out of the bags to lock eyes with me. “You’re not at Scott and Louise’s with Luna and Raye and that crowd. You’re not with Harlow and her family. And your family is a disaster.”

Hold on part two.

I barely knew him.

Yes, my family was a disaster. One might even say we were a disaster of epic proportions.

But he didn’t get to call them that.

“You don’t know anything about my family,” I said sharply.

He went back to pulling stuff out of the bags, saying, “Clue in, Wylde.”

I moved to the counter opposite him (my pad was one bedroom, it started with a living room that fed into an open kitchen, the two spaces delineated by a bar, then there was a short hall with a laundry closet to one side, a bathroom to the other, and it ended in the bedroom).

I put my hands on the counter and asked, “Clue in to what?”

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