Page 81 of Stirring Up Love
“Okay, now you’re just baiting me.”
She wasn’t, but his cute, affronted expression was a nice bonus. He opened cupboards and produced two mismatched pans. Set them on the stove and stood back, hands on his hips. “Now, how to light this.”
She leaned back onto her palms, elbows locked. “There’s probably a spell book somewhere.”
“Or a match works.” He lit the burner and shook the match. “Care to take over? You’re the one with the MacGyver skills.”
She shook her head. “I’m having fun watching tonight.”
He looked at her over his shoulder with a wide grin. “Oh yeah?”
“Do you work hard to have such a dirty mind, or does it come naturally?” she asked, because teasing him was too much fun.
And it was also fun to watch him. He was unexpectedly precise in the kitchen. The opposite of his usual sprawling sloppiness. He rinsed and chopped the entire contents of the vegetable crisper, sautéing the veggies in a pan of butter along with an onion.
“What are you doing with that?” she asked when he did a totally bro-ish fist pump over a tub of cornmeal. She would check the pantry for canned corn, maybe make muffins or fry up some corn cakes and top them with a tomato jam. But he’d already used tomatoes in the ratatouille.
“Polenta.” Finn shook some cornmeal into the boiling pot of water and milk.
Eh, not her favorite. The texture was hard to nail. “I’m not usually a fan.”
“Noted.” He smirked over his shoulder, and she got the feeling he relished proving her wrong. Another thing they had in common.
“This is like a private viewing ofChopped.” Simone swung her heels, relaxed for the first time in what felt like forever.
“Does that mean I’m being judged?”
“Obviously.” She grinned. “But the good news is, there won’t be a bottleneck at the ice cream machine. It’s all yours.”
“Phew.” Finn wiped his brow exaggeratedly before shaking some processed parmesan into the polenta.
“You’re actually using that?” In her experience, chefs were finicky creatures who tended to think processed ingredients were below their pay grade. Her pastry-chef sister loved to rant about the scourge of cinnamon rolls that came in a tube.
“Why not? It’s here. It’s cheese.” His mouth twisted. “Almost.”
She pointed at him in triumph. “And there it is. You snobby, classically trained cooks can’t help yourselves.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘chefs.’” He grinned, then opened the oven and pulled out the sheet tray with a towel, his easy capability sexier than a striptease.
On his next trip to the fridge, he took out a jar of olives and twisted off the top, bicep flexing. Hello, muscles.
He offered her the jar. “First course.”
Fishing out an olive, she said, “Hard to believe you’d never cooked until Bella asked you to fill in. You make it look effortless.”
Finn froze, then set the olives next to her. “It wasn’t my first time in a kitchen. A professional one, yes. But when I was eleven, I got taken away from my aunt for the last time. She was ...” He turned away and went back to the cutting board. “Well, anyway, I’d been there a year,but it didn’t work out. For the first time, I got put in a home with no other kids. A couple hoping to adopt.”
After taking slices of bread out of a bag, he cut them into triangles. “They were big on family dinners, which until then I thought were just a sitcom myth.”
He dropped half a stick of butter into a pan and lit another burner. “At first I was scared my manners wouldn’t live up to their expectations—my aunt was always on me for elbows on the table and crap like that. But they didn’t seem to care. We just talked and ate. And the food was good. So good.” There was a smile in his voice, though he kept his back to her.
Simone thought back to her dinners with Gran and Pops, the ones they still hosted Friday nights and Sunday afternoons. Of the imperfect perfection of sitting down with family and sharing a meal.
“The husband”—she noticed he didn’t use the word “dad”—“he prided himself on cooking these elaborate meals. And he didn’t kick me out of the kitchen or tell me I was in the way. I was too scared to ask to help, but I loved watching him. Afterward, we’d gather around the table and share the meal. Decompress. It was the closest thing to home I’d ever experienced.”
He pulled open the oven and slid in the tray of buttered bread.
“So he taught you to cook?”
