Honesty was the best option here. Lauren would appreciate it, and there wouldn’t be any unmet expectations later on. “No.”
“I’m going to need you to change that to a yes. You’re a semi-smart guy. You can do it.”
“I promised to work for you, not cook and clean.”
“Come on, it would help me out a ton if you’d make a simple supper for us. I have a lot of work this evening, and you could take the rest of the night off.”
Zach tightened his grip on the crowbar. He owed her, and he’d promised to work for her. Why did it feel like he’d sold his rights away? “Fine. I’ll give it a try.”
Lauren squinted her beautiful eyes at him. “I’m not loving that confidence, but I’ll accept it. Please assemble spaghetti for us tonight. You can use my computer to find a recipe. You’ll find all the ingredients in the kitchen. I’m not going to hold your hand. Does that seem fair? I buy the ingredients, and you do the preparing.”
Zach blinked a few times. He’d completely underestimated her. Again.
“Did I just become a house husband?” he asked low, careful not to be overheard if Asa and Dawson came back in.
Lauren pressed a delicate finger to her plump lips. “Shh. It’ll be our little secret.”
Zach inhaled a deep breath, completely captivated. Lauren Vincent knew how to get what she wanted, and she didn’t hesitate to go after it. She spouted rainbows and butterflies like the sky opened for her whenever she walked outside, and her tenacity was becoming his favorite thing.
“I’m good at keeping secrets,” Zach whispered.
Lauren’s smile faltered slightly, but she righted it within half a second. “I’m sure you are.”
9
Lauren
Lauren parked her trusty old Honda Civic beside the house. The headlights cast a long, bright light over the tree in the backyard hanging ominously over the house, and she let her forehead rest against the steering wheel. That was one thing Zach wasn’t going to be able to do, and it was going to wipe out her savings to either have it removed or repair the damage when it fell through the roof.
The entire day had been a whirlwind. After spending the last twelve hours training a new employee and trying to stay ahead of the next disaster, she wanted nothing more than to crawl under the soft covers of her bed and sleep for the rest of the week.
She raised her head and lifted her chin. At least she had spaghetti waiting. The muffin she’d swallowed at noon was long gone, and her stomach audibly protested.
Twenty minutes. That’s how long it would take toeat a meal at the same table with Zach before they could go their separate ways, and she could breathe again. She could do anything for twenty minutes.
Grabbing her purse and the plastic bags from the front seat, she trudged to the porch. The front door was unlocked, and she set the bags on the couch. She was halfway through pulling the scrunchie out of her hair when the smell hit her. Not the spicy scent of tomato sauce and meat, but something burning.
She took four lumbering strides toward the kitchen where Zach fanned a smoking pot on the stovetop with a dish towel.
“What happened?” she asked as she pulled two potholders out of a drawer and reached for the handles of the billowing pot.
“What does it look like? I burned it!” Zach shouted right beside her.
She pulled the pot away from the hot burner and snatched the dish towel from Zach, draping it over the smoke.
Resting her hands on her hips, she let out a quick burst of air and turned to Zach. “Easy peasy. Crisis averted.”
His brows scrunched together as he glared at her. “I almost burned the house down, and you think that was nothing?”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far.” She pushed a wayward lock of hair behind her ear. “You made some puffs of smoke in a pot. Calm down.”
He propped his big hand on the edge of thecounter and kept staring at her with a look that had probably intimidated plenty of grown men, but after the day she’d had, it was tough to muster any care for something like a ruined pot.
In fact, it was exactly what she should have expected. Charred dinner was the icing on her mud pie of a day.
A chuckle crept up her throat, and she swallowed it, almost choking on the sound.
“What are you doing?” Zach asked, low and slow as if studying her every move.
