Page 8 of Gideon
I wanted to snap back with a sarcastic remark about how no it wasn’t me; it was cleaning fairies, but I held my tongue.
“Yes, I took your advice. I hope it’s to your liking.” I wanted to vomit at the saccharine sweetness I spoke with.
“It looks good!” he praised, nodding his head as he looked around the room, his hands firmly on his hips. “Real good. And it smells good, too. I love spaghetti. It’s my favorite. Did you know? I feel like you women always have the secret intel on things like that. Always knowing what your men like and don’t like.”
I wanted to roll my eyes, but I held back.
“Something like that,” I shrugged, setting his plate on the table before making my own.
Before I could even sit down to eat, he was already scarfing down forkfuls of spaghetti, making happy noises of contentment. This time, Ididroll my eyes. He couldn’t see me, anyway.
“This is delicious,” he praised, his mouth full of food. Neanderthal.
“I’m glad you like it,” I smiled at him, sitting down opposite of him and picking at my own food. “Was it a productive day on the boat?”
“It was. I got a lot done.”
“Are the renovations almost finished?” I asked.
“Not really. There are still about a million things I would like to do to her before she’s fully seaworthy. It looks like you had a productive day, too,” he smiled back at me. He was nice like this, when he was being kind and not being a stubborn ass.
“Well, someone needed to get this place in order,” I said lightly, laughing the comment off. His fork paused halfway to his lips as he looked at me.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he snarked. Crap. I had meant the comment as a cute, funny way to break the tension. I guess I didn’t land the way I had hoped.
“I was only teasing,” I explained quietly, setting my fork down. I didn’t want to piss him off, but it felt like every time I spoke, I did just that. “Really, I meant nothing by it,” I tried to reason, but the look on his face told me he wasn’t buying it.
“If you don’t like the place, just say so,” he scoffed.
“I do! It’s a nice place. Small and quaint, really,” I tried to smooth over. I schooled my features, pushing myself to not fight with the man. I did not need a Temple pissed off at me.
“I’m tired. I think I’ll head up to bed,” he grunted, leaving his half finished plate there on the table, apparently for me to clean up. “That is, if you’ll let me sleep in my own bed tonight.” That sarcastic quip had my hands clenching in anger.
Don’t rise to his bait. Don’t do it.
“Of course you can sleep in your own bed, Gideon. I’m sorry about last night. I was overwhelmed and —”
“Whatever. Goodnight, Naomi,” he bit out, stalking up the stairs and leaving me to sit in the kitchen alone.
What the hell?
I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. If I smarted off the way I wanted to, he got pissed. If I played nice, pretending to be the perfect little wife, he also got pissed. Maybe he was just a cranky man, like my father.
I shook my head in frustration, standing and clearing off the table I had only just set. I wasn’t going to finish my food, anyway. My appetite had vanished, just as his kindness had.
The more time I spent with Gideon Temple, the less I knew.
This was not going to be an easy feat.
But I had yet to back down from a challenge.
CHAPTER3
GIDEON
She was impossible. Impossible to talk to. Impossible to figure out. And impossible to understand. It should have been simple. I had a plan, but she had to go and turn the whole thing tits up from minute one. From the moment she had engaged during the damn consummation ceremony, I had become flustered, not knowing how to respond or what to do. I didn’t like how that felt. Plans were just something I always had figured out. I was not some fly by the seat of my pants kind of guy, not with things like this. I decided and took action. But with Naomi, it had been all backwards and indecisive from the start.
It knocked me off of my axis and had me feeling more off kilter than I ever had in my entire life. She wasn’t what I had expected. Which, I suppose, I should have expected. None of my brothers’ new wives had been what they had expected, either. Each of them had been a surprise, a welcome one in the end. So why should Naomi be any different?
