“Hmmm.” I tapped my bottom lip. “Is there any reason we can’t have both?”
Because both sounded great.
Her lips quirked up at the edge. “I mean, I guess not.” She looked out the window behind me. “Looks like we’re going to be here a while. No one should be driving in this.”
I looked behind me at the snow that was now being blown directly toward the kitchen window.
“I’ll help,” I offered. “I can measure ingredients with the best of them.”
She giggled. “Let’s do the cinnamon roll dough first,” she suggested. “Then we can do the biscuits and some eggs with bacon.”
I washed my hands because, despite having gloves on earlier, I had still shoveled out a ton of horse shit.
When I was done, I said, “Tell me where you want me.”
A gleam came into her eye that made my heart pick up speed, but she shook her head and put half of the ingredients to the side before saying, “Let’s get started. You can pour everything that I say.”
I expected her to pull up a recipe on her phone, but instead she started to list off everything that she needed measured out.
“You know all this by memory?” I asked as I poured some flour into a measuring cup.
“I know all my recipes by memory,” she said. “I learned to not leave anything in my room that I wanted because Birdee saw no problem going in there and taking it.” She gestured toward a big bowl that I’d pulled out on the counter. “Before you dump that flour in there, I need some really hot water from the sink measured into about eight ounces. Then we need to put the yeast in there.”
“I have yeast?”
She gestured toward a jar. “You sure do.”
“Huh.” I chuckled. “Imagine that.”
“You’ll have to thank your sister for preparing you for a Nor’easter.”
I would.
Maybe I’d send her a picture of my cinnamon roll later with a caption that read: Look what you being an overbearing prepper did for me.
Fourteen
Heat makes things expand. So I don’t have a weight problem. I’m just hot.
—Text from Mable to Cody
Mable
I’d been nervous when I first entered the kitchen.
Now, I was in my element, using Romeo’s state-of-the-art kitchen as my own personal playground.
I was rolling out cinnamon rolls on his huge island with the butcher block countertop.
I had biscuits resting in a cast-iron skillet ready for the oven that was preheating.
And the man that I couldn’t stop staring at was cutting slices of bacon into thick strips that we would be frying up in another cast-iron skillet once I got the biscuits in.
But the best part of all this baking we were doing was watching Romeo, the big badass with a beard and strong, imposing muscles, roll out dough and jump to get me anything and everything I might want.
He’d measured out ingredients, washed up dishes, and ultimately acted like the best assistant chef ever as I did my thing.
And not once had he complained.
