I did, too, and wondered if she thought I was a complete dumbass for having a chef-level kitchen when I couldn’t cook for shit.
“My brother-in-law had it redone for me before I moved here,” I explained. “He went a little overboard on the kitchen because he loves to cook. I guess he assumed everyone does, because he didn’t hesitate even a second to make this into a place that a chef would love.”
“Well, I mean, you may not use the twenty-thousand-dollar range, but at least it looks pretty.”
I choked on my own spit. “I’m sorry, what?”
She pointed at the stove. “That’s a Viking range. Seven burner. I actually priced them last year when mine went out, and that’s my dream oven. But I just can’t justify spending that much on an oven that I could do the same exact thing on one that’s half that price.”
“Aesthetics?” I shrugged. “My sister had a lot to do with what was chosen. Apollo did all the contracting out and labor, but my sister chose pretty much every appliance and piece of furniture in this place.”
“You didn’t want to help?” she wondered.
My stomach tightened again.
I didn’t want to lie to her.
But telling her the truth was never going to happen, no matter how much she was beginning to mean to me.
“What are you thinking you want?” I asked. “Because I have six eggs, some toast. Potatoes…and that’s about it.”
“Do you have heavy cream?”
I blinked. “No.”
She sidled up to me where I was at the fridge and said, “Are those my groceries?”
I nodded. “Cody came out with a box of the stuff that was going to go bad in your fridge. But I can’t tell you what’s in there besides the chicken on top.”
She bent into the fridge and practically shoved her head between the top of the fridge and the box.
“Good news, I have heavy cream.” She came back out with it. “As long as you have self-rising flour.”
I frowned. “I have flour…I think. Everything that’s in my pantry is something my sister stocked. It’s all the basics, but I couldn’t tell you the difference between self-rising flour and regular flour…”
She snickered and pushed past me, giving me a whiff of my body wash wafting off of her.
Her hair was up high in a bun with small tendrils escaping the confines of the rubber band in her hair.
“Isn’t that going to be a bitch to get out of your hair?” I asked her, eyeing the rubber band with skepticism.
“Probably,” she admitted. “But I’m not a big fan of my hair touching my neck. Hence, putting it up.”
I walked to the kitchen drawer while she went into the walk-in pantry and searched through the junk drawer for the package of hair ties that Dru had left behind the last time that she was here.
I came up with one and turned to see her walking to the counter with her hands full.
“Okay, we can make two things now that I’m seeing all the ingredients you have.” She set her bounty down carefully. “One thing will take me two and a half hours to make, because the dough has to rise. The other will take me forty minutes max.”
“What takes two and a half hours?” I wondered, flabbergasted that anyone would take that long to make anything, whether it was good or not.
“Cinnamon rolls,” she answered, her eyes gleaming.
“Oh.” I licked my lips as the thought of having a homemade cinnamon roll sank into my soul. “I like cinnamon rolls.”
I hadn’t had a good cinnamon roll since I was a kid, and that was when I thought “good” was a McDonald’s pull-apart one that probably wouldn’t mold if I left it out for two years.
“The other option is biscuits,” she added. “They’re not as good, but still really great on their own.”
