“I know, but I appreciate you letting me stay. It would have been a cold night in my truck.”
My eyes fell to his lips for a second. They flew up just as fast, but he saw it. Why was he as cool as a cucumber while I was a neurotic rodent? I even had the dark eyes and crazy hair to prove it. I stepped out into the blustery wind before turning back. “It’s not a problem. Glad to have you. Have a good night.”
I threw a wave and beelined it toward the safety of the house, mentally flogging myself for every word I’d spoken in the past two minutes.
* * *
Have a good night.
Have a good night.
I had thought those were safe words. Out of all the words I had spewed, those words were the most normal, right?
Wrong.
It was 9 pm. He was stranded here. There was not a stitch of food for him to eat in that room. I doubt he carried much with him in his truck. I fed him cocoa but hadn’t even thought that he might not have eaten dinner. There was nowhere along the Wyoming highway that would have been open with the upcoming storm. I had eaten dinner at 4 pm with my elderly roommates and evenmystomach was interested in more food. IT WAS MY JOB TO FEED HIM. But I had basically told him we were done for the night.
If he was the man he seemed, he would never come begging for food. I had to offer it. Which meant I would have to gobackoutside and invite himbackinto the house. I hurled myself, face forward onto the couch, banging my forehead against the armrest for good measure.
This was all Dusty’s fault. Why would he be out on the roads with the storm warning? If I had only had some idea he would be coming, I could have prepared my mind for a hot cowboy man guest. But instead, I get blindsided by a grown-up, sexy, Josh Duhamel face with a football player’s body and doe eyes...and cows...and wanting to stay the night.
It was discombobulating.
Also, what was I going to make for dinner? As a strong, independent working woman, I couldn’t care less what he thought of my cooking. I imagined my grandma tinkering at the stovetop making her famous fried chicken and mashed potatoes for her guests. Which honestly sounded divine, but a bit too 1950’s for my taste…and skill level. BUT as an available woman, very much attracted to a man she was inviting to dinner, who may or may not have been on less than three dates in the past two years, I wanted him to like my cooking. The only problem was, I didn’t cook. At all. I was single. Who was I going to cook for? I was a great heater-upper of take-out and the frozen food section of the grocery store. I also loved salads and fresh produce. I got along just fine. But I did have my nieces and nephews stay over at my house on occasion and had been known to whip up some mean pancakes and syrup.
I raced to my grandparents’ freezer and thankfully found it stocked full of frozen bacon. I snagged a package and started thawing it out in the microwave while I fumbled around the kitchen, heart-pounding, trying desperately to recall my pancake recipe that was so good. I flipped through a few of my grandma’s cookbooks but didn’t see anything that remotely resembled my recipe. With my grandpa off of gluten, Grandma must have gotten rid of all her delicious cookbooks rife with wheat. I had no access to the internet to look up a recipe and wasn’t about to go crazy with the one pancake recipe I found from Grandma’s stash, some sort of buckwheat hotcake something or other. And there was no way I was going back up to my grandma’s room to check in on her. She would demand I put together some five-course meal completely beyond my skill level and force me to put on some makeup. Which to be honest…wouldn’t hurt, but he had already seen me as I was and it would be too embarrassing to justify lipstick and blush at this point.
I sighed. I thought about French toast, but having never been around gluten-free food, the bread in my grandma’s freezer terrified me. Surely pancakes couldn’t be hard. Saddle up your bonnet, Lucy May. Time to get homemade.
After twenty minutes or so of puttering around in the kitchen, adding eggs and oil and milk, I reached for the flour container in the cupboard by the stove. I started with a cup and dumped it in, giving everything a good mix. It still felt too runny. As I picked up the cup to dump more flour in, something on the container caught my eye.
Written on a piece of masking tape curled up at the edges, in faded black ink were the words ‘gluten-free flour.’
“Shoot.” I dropped the cup inside the flour as if it might burn me. I wasn’t sure why I felt such a rush to provide this meal to a man who had no idea it was coming, but the hour kept getting later and I didn’t want to look like a fool asking him over for dinner at midnight. My grandma was low on eggs and with the storm coming, I hated to waste the ingredients I’d already used. Shuffling toward her baking cupboard again, I prayed she had some regular flour to make this all okay. I scooted the white and brown sugar canisters out of my way and, lo and behold, a faded plastic ice cream container with a blue lid and handle pushed to the back held the words, ‘fresh ground flour.’
That sounded promising.
Opening the lid, I dumped another cup inside my pancake batter, stirred it up, and added a few dashes of salt, baking powder and baking soda to the mixture.
At last, I had something that resembled pancake batter, although perhaps a bit thicker than normal. Okay, it was very thick. Sludge thick. Maybe a whole cup of extra flour was overkill. The taste wasn’t too bad, though. Hopefully, slathered in syrup it could pass for a decent pancake. Bacon was sizzling on the stove, and I had another pan warming up for the pancakes. The only thing left to do was gain an ounce of courage. I was about to stuff myself back into my coat and boots when I remembered I could call his room from my grandparents’ landline. I rushed into my grandpa’s office and found the sheet of phone numbers laminated and pinned up on a cork board near his phone. Before I could lose my nerve, I dialed the number for his room and forced myself not to hang up.
“Hello?”
“Hey. It’s me. Lucy.”
“Lucy who?” I heard the smile in his voice, which made my face break out into a ridiculous grin.
“Better be careful, this is the Lucy that’s about to offer you food.”
“Is this the Lucy that’s kind of short? Really pretty? I’m listening.”
My heart took off like a freight train as elation bubbled up inside of me. How long had it been since a man had flirted with me? He wasn’t even in the same room and my skin felt all blotchy and hot and bothered.
“I…um.” More awkward pause while all thoughts in my head vanished. He just called me pretty and, at the moment, I looked like Sasquatch’s twin sister.
He chuckled, quiet and deep, easing me out of my head. “What were you thinking for food?”
“I’ve got bacon cooking and I'm about to put some pancakes on.”
