Page 58 of The Affair
“Yeah, that would be great,” I answered, trying to downplay my enthusiasm.
“Great!” he echoed me, a slight grin tugging at his jawline. “Well then, I think we can move on to the good news.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, I answered, “Good. I could use some of that. That journal is a doozy—”
He held out his hands, stopping me. “Nope, none of that yet. Good news, remember?”
“Right. What do you have for me?”
He smiled, rising from his seat. “Remember when you went on and on yesterday about your nana’s oatmeal raisin cookies?”
My head tilted to the side, my expression amused. “I don’t think I exactly went on and on about it.”
His grin widened. “Oh, you did,” he argued. “It was quite the affirmation of love. I didn’t know someone could be that smitten with a cookie.”
Rolling my eyes, I said, “Anyway, and?”
“And …” he said, drawing out the suspense as he reached toward his back pocket, pulling out a folded piece of paper. I couldn’t tell what it was, but he began to mischievously wave it in front of me. “I just so happened to get a recipe from your aunt yesterday, and I thought maybe, if you’re feeling up to it, we could test it out?”
“Wait, what? How?” My mind was spinning again, but this time, it had nothing to do with the flu. “She had the recipe? How? I thought it was lost! And you called my aunt?”
I was putting Sawyer to shame with all these questions.
“I called her while you were sleeping. I might have stolen your phone for a moment or two to grab the number.”
I thought he was waiting for me to get mad, but honestly, I was still so focused on the cookie recipe that he could have told me he’d broken into my underwear drawer to get the phone number, and I probably wouldn’t have flinched.
He continued explaining, “I was reading your nana’s journal entries last night and couldn’t stop thinking about those recipes. I mean, she does mention those cookies a time or two, you know?”
I smiled fondly. “Yeah.”
“So, I got to thinking, maybe you weren’t the only one in the family with a hankering.”
“Did you just say the wordhankering?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “It’s a real word.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think it is.”
“Anyway,” he went on, mimicking my use of the word just moments earlier, “I called her and asked, and wouldn’t you know? She missed the cookies just like you. But unlike you, she’s actually been trying to replicate them all these years, and she believes she’s pretty damn close. So, you want to make them or what?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I went with the first thing that came to mind. “Yes.”
“Great,” he said before adding, “But I hope you know that since you’re still recovering from the flu, most of this will actually done by me while you sit your ass in that chair over there.”
Folding my arms across my chest, I made a pout with my lips—something that didn’t seem to faze him in the least because his arm stretched toward the chair. “No one wants influenza in their cookies, darling. Sorry.”
A little flutter danced through my belly.Had he meant to call me that? Looking back, he neither acknowledged nor showed any signs he even realized he’d said it.
So, I guessed neither would I.
But it wouldn’t stop me from thinking about it over and over again.
* * *
I had knownSawyer was a good cook. That amazing meal he’d made and brought to the store had proven it, and I’d spent a good amount of time dreaming of it while I subsisted on leftovers.
Based on this knowledge of said cooking skills, I figured he’d be a whiz in the kitchen—one of those guys who could making dicing a carrot somehow look erotic.
