Page 118 of Tiger's Curse
“Okay. Umm, which one of these jars is peanut butter?”
He pointed to a group of condiments. He’d separated all the bottles, placing the ones labeled in English to one side and keeping everything else near him.
Bemused, I approached him. “You can’t read English, can you?”
He scowled. “No. I can read about fifteen other languages and speak about thirty, but I can’t figure out what these bottles are.”
I smirked at him. “If you smelled it, you’d probably figure it out, Tiger Nose.”
He looked up, grinned, then set down both bottles, walked over to me, and kissed me right on the mouth.
“See? That’s why I need to have you around. I need a smart girlfriend.”
He went back to his sandwich and started opening bottles and smelling them.
I sputtered, “Ren! I amnotyour girlfriend!”
He just grinned at me in response, located the peanut butter, and made me the thickest peanut butter sandwich I’d ever seen. I took one bite and couldn’t open my mouth. “Weenn, hobouutssomme mlkk uff datte?”
He laughed. “What?”
“Ilkk, illlkk!” I mimed drinking something.
“Oh, milk! Okay, hold on a sec.”
He had to open every cupboard in the kitchen to locate a cup, and, naturally, they were in the last cupboard he chose. He poured me a frothy glass, and I drained half of it immediately to clear the sticky peanut butter out of my mouth. Pulling the slices of bread apart, I chose the one with the least amount of peanut butter, folded it in half, and ate that instead.
Ren sat down across from me with the biggest, strangest looking sandwich on the planet and dug in. I blinked at it and laughed. “You’re eating a Dagwood.”
“What’s a Dagwood?”
“A giant sandwich named after a comic strip character.”
He grunted and took another big bite. I decided it was a good time to talk when he couldn’t talk back.
“Umm, Ren? We have something important we need to discuss. Meet me on the veranda at sundown, okay?”
He froze with his sandwich halfway to his mouth. “A secret rendezvous? On the veranda? At sundown?” He arched an eyebrow at me. “Why, Kelsey, are you trying to seduce me?”
“Hardly,” I dryly muttered.
He laughed, “Well, I’m all yours. But be gentle with me tonight, fair maiden. I’m new at this whole being human business.”
Exasperated, I threw out, “I amnotyour fair maiden.”
He ignored my comment and went back to devouring his lunch. He also took the other half of my discarded peanut butter sandwich and ate that too, commenting, “Hey! This stuff’s pretty good.”
Finished, I walked over to the kitchen island and began clearing away Ren’s mess. When he was done eating, he stood to help me. We worked well together. It was almost like we knew what the other person was going to do before he or she did it. The kitchen was spotless in no time. Ren took off his apron and threw it into the laundry basket. Then, he came up behind me while I was putting away some glasses and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me up against him.
He smelled my hair, kissed my neck, and murmured softly in my ear, “Mmm, definitely peaches and cream, but with a hint of spice. I’ll go be a tiger for a while and take a nap, and then I can save all my hours for you this evening.”
I grimaced. He was probably expecting a make-out session, and I was planning to break up with him. He wanted to spend time with a girlfriend, and my intention was to explain to him how we weren’t meant to be together. Not that we were ever officially together. Still, it felt like a break up.
Why does this have to be so hard?
Ren rocked me and whispered, “‘How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night, Like soft music to attending ears.’”
I turned around in his arms, shocked. “How did you remember that? That’sRomeo and Juliet!”
