Page 9 of At Last

3.

Caitlin

“Duke? What are you doing here?” I ask the sexy biker at my front door.

He holds up bags of groceries in each hand for me to see. “You need to eat.” Then he pushes his way through the door, moving me aside with his large frame, in the process.

His boots clomp against the hardwood flooring as he makes his way to the kitchen. Like he’s been in my house a hundred times, though today is his first visit.

I blink at an empty doorway, unsure of what is happening at the moment. Then once I get my wits about me, turn to follow him. When I reach the kitchen, he’s pulling items from the plastic bags. Some he leaves on the counter and others, he opens cupboards to look for places to put the boxed or canned goods.

“I have a pantry.” I point to the door next to the utility room. “All my cans and boxes go there.”

With a full armload, he walks to the pantry. It occurs to me he won’t be able to open the door, and so I jog to reach the handle before he drops boxes all over the floor.

The thing about Duke, when he looks at me, it’s as if he’s accessing the innermost recesses of my mind and heart. Even for the briefest look, which he gives me now. It’s as unnerving as it is exhilarating. What does he see when he looks at me?

How do I measure up with the women in his past—and why do I care about the women in his past? They’re none of my business.

Though he is here, isn’t he?

No one is forcing him to be. But what does he want? Whyishe here?

Duke shuts the pantry and slips out of his cut, that’s what Elise told me the vest he wears with the big patch indicating he’s a member of the Brimstone Lords is called. He slips it off his shoulders to drape over the back of one of my high-backed, wooden kitchen chairs. Then he walks to the sink to wash his hands.

Turning back to me, he grunts out, “Pan.”

Again, it takes my brain a second to kickstart, but I go to the pots and pans cupboard under the counter next to the oven and pull a cast iron skillet with a lid out for him.

“Might as well pull a pot, too. Big one,” he says.

I watch in bewilderment as the man works at the counter, this time ripping open a box of cornbread mix.

While he’s busy I move to the dishwasher to pull the measuring cups from the clean dishes and grab him the carton of eggs from the fridge.

Duke pours the oil into the measuring cup and cracks one of the eggs into the oil, whisking them together with a fork, then he pours the mixture into the skillet. The man works comfortably in my kitchen. I can’t wrap my head around this personality one-eighty he’s spinning. For almost a year I’ve seen him grumble, grunt and bark orders at his MC brothers. I’ve seen him accept touches from the women who hang about the clubhouse and even the starts to some pretty bawdy activities with them.

He uses my electric can opener to open a can of cream corn and dumps it into the skillet before giving the whole thing a mix. Though he hadn’t preheated the oven. I help with that because it gives me something else to focus on, even for a moment.

Sure I’d thought he was sexy before. Commanding and always charismatic in the way he holds himself and takes charge of any given situation, at least any given situation I’d been around to witness. I guess that’s why he’s their president.

What am I supposed to do with this new information? That he can be sweet and kind, and now domestic? I’d wanted to sleep with him before. But the man he’s showed me yesterday, and now today, that’s not the kind of man you simply sleep with. That’s the kind of man you lose your heart to. The kind you give of yourself completely. He’s a paradox of the greatest order. Who would have thought?

While we wait for the red light on the oven to turn off he opens a package of ground beef and dumps it in the pot. It hits me, the cans on the counter, the meat in the pan, he’s making chili for us. Chili. I love chili.

My stupid heart fills with warmth for the enormous biker filling my kitchen.

Emotion clogs my throat, but I swallow it back without calling attention to it. “Can I get you a beer?”

On a nod, he uses a spatula to mix the beef. “Two,” he says.

He opens the oven to place the cornbread inside while I pull three beers and put the eggs away.

Duke twists the cap off the first Guinness. He takes a long drink, then twists the cap off the second Irish stout and pours it into the pot with the meat. It fizzes, perfuming the whole kitchen with a deliciously meaty-yeasty smell. Duke and chili, it’s a heady combination.

Mid-dinner preparation, he pauses to flick on the old radio secured beneath the top cupboard next to the refrigerator, where Ann Wilson from Heart belts out some amazing high notes about a magic man. I’d never understood the lyrics before. That is, I’d understood the meanings behind them, just not the emotion. Now, in the kitchen with my very own magic man, I understand completely. That’s after only a few kisses shared between us.

My belly pangs, and not from want of food. To distract myself from these understandable, yet wonton thoughts, I start to open the cans.

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