Page 23 of Not That Ridiculous

“What?”

“I’m trying out those fancy names they give dogs. Like cockapoo. Or goldendoodle. I’m thinking he’s a Mountain Huskland. That sounds badass. You should tell people he’s a Mountain Huskland.”

I stared down at Phil. “If that’s not a specimen of canine badassery, I don’t know what is.”

Phil continued to expose himself shamelessly. I could tell from the way he was eyeing Kevin up that he was about three seconds away from army-crawling onto Kevin’s lap.

Kevin gave him a little drumroll of belly pats, which delighted Phil, then pushed up to his feet. “I love him,” he announced. “Now let’s have a latte.”

I was thrilled that he loved my dog, but I still wasn’t going to make him a latte.

“Ugh, Kevin. No.”

“Come on. It’ll be alattefun.” He looked far too pleased with himself for the pun.

“One more joke like that and not only will I eject you from my house, I’ll ban you from the coffee shop for life.”

“You will not.” Kevin kicked up his chin and sent me a mischievous, sly look that I found ridiculously charming. He turned on his heel and headed down the hall.

“All right, all right.” I hurried after him, putting on a burst of speed. “I’ll make you a latte, but I can’t do it here. I need the proper equipment. Espresso machine, steam wand, milk jug and all that. All I have in the kitchen is a Nespresso pod machine.”

I managed to get the hideous lie out without choking on it, but it was a wasted effort. Kevin wasn’t buying.

“Bollocks. Bet you anything you’ve got another little coffee shop going on back—oh.Charlie. Your kitchen’s shit.”

“Yes, thank you, I am aware.” I muscled past and did my best to body him out the door and back into the hall. When that failed, I braced my hands on his stomach and pushed.

It was like trying to move a rock.

He cupped my elbows and steered me backwards into the room. “This is not what I expected at all. Where are your cabinet doors?”

I pointed at the corner where I’d stacked them mostly out of sight behind the small three-tiered vegetable trolley. “A couple of them came off.”

“A couple?” He walked over to stare down at the plain wooden doors. “There are seven here. No, eight. Why haven’t you put them back up?”

“I haven’t got around to it yet.”

“How long have they been like this?”

“Does it matter?” At his outraged glare, I shrugged and said, “I don’t know. A while.”

I kept it vague. I wasn’t about to tell him the cabinet doors fell off a couple of weeks after I moved in, around the same time the boiler conked out and I had to get the plumber in to break up the enormous fatberg blocking the drain out the back.

In other words, my kitchen situation had been sub-optimal for going on two years, and I thought it might make Kevin explode if he knew that.

He moved the trolley out of the way, poked through the doors and hauled one out, holding it up and running a critical eye over it. “Hmm.” He leaned it back against the stack, replaced the trolley, and stalked over to the nearest cabinet. He flipped the cup hinges clinging to the box back and forth a bit, said, “Hmm,” again, then went and stuck his head in all of my open cabinets, one by one.

“This is easy enough to fix,” he said. “Where’s your screwdriver?”

Chilling in the garage in a box of random crap, probably. “I don’t need you to fix them.”

Kevin looked put out. “It won’t take a minute. I might have to go to B&Q and get some new hinges because these ones are shit and a couple are rusting, but it won’t take long.”

“No,” I said, appalled. “I’m not asking you to do that.”

“I want to do it.”

“No, but thank you.” I’d taken advantage of his sweet nature more than enough for one day. On top of that, if I let him strap on a tool belt and do competent things with screws and screwdrivers while narrowing his eyes in that focused way he had, I’d never be able to get the ghost of him out of my kitchen.

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