“Should I take him home?” he asks, his voice unstrained, as though holding a two hundred pound ruminant in his arms isn’t a hardship. “Or would City Hall be better?”
I swallow roughly, the warmth I felt upon first seeing him rushing in again. Who knew a man lifting a goat could be such a turn on. This must be why some people have farmer fetishes.Oh, shit. Do I have a farmer fetish now?
“Uh, home?” I shake my head to clear it. One problem at a time. Right now, getting Winston away from this sauce needs to take priority. I can investigate my thoughts on farmers later. “Take him to his dad. Do you know where Impeckable Auto is? That’s where he spends most of his day. Get him out of here before he gets into the sauce or I’ll have hell to pay with his dad. It’s almost shearing time, and I doubt he’ll be happy to have Winston’s angora soaked in red sauce and smelling like garlic.”
He nods. “Yep. I’ll bring him there now.”
The man takes off at a slow jog and I can’t stop myself from sneaking a peek at his backside, my curiosity about what his butt looks like in those little shorts suddenly all-consuming. It’s as spectacular as you’d expect based on the rest of him. What I don’t expect to see, though, is the tattoo across his lower back.
He has a tramp stamp? Who is this guy?
Even after getting Mr.Landon cleaned up and sending Winston on his way with the shirtless idiot who’d caused all the commotion, I’m still not out of the woods. With two of the four pots of sauce out of commission, we’re dangerously close to not having enough to make it through the evening.
As soon as Mr. Landon and the giant viking left, and after I’d scraped up most of the mess, I came into the restaurant to start the new batches of sauce. Somehow, Thayer managed to sneak past me during the commotion and get the stove fixed before I noticed he’d even been here. So here I am standing at the stove, dotted with blobs of sauce from head to toe, instead of upstairs showering off the mess.
“This is why we should prepare some sauce in advance and keep it in the freezer.” Chloe works at the prep station next to me, getting all the fresh vegetables chopped for tonight’s pizza orders. “I know you want to do everything fresh every day, but a little back up sauce would have saved us this trouble. Heating it up takes less time than simmering it for hours.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumble, stirring a handful of spices into the sauce, the aroma of tomatoes, garlic, and onions thick in the air. “But it’s better when it’s fresh.”
“I’m not saying it isn’t. I’m just saying that if it comes down to frozen sauce, or no sauce, I’m picking frozen sauce every time.”
She’s right. Of course she is. But I grew up in a kitchen where if your sauce wasn’t fresh, then it wasn’t sauce. My mom routinely went out in the predawn light to pick fresh tomatoes, onions, and garlic from her garden, often starting her sauce forthe evening meal before breakfast was even a thought. I can only imagine what she would think if she knew I was freezing sauce? Nothing good, I can guarantee you that. It makes me feel icky thinking about it. But I have to remember that restaurants differ from home kitchens, and sometimes, as long as I make it from scratch myself before I freeze it, frozen sauce is okay. But only in when it’s an emergency.
And when a shirtless giant spills your sauce all over the sidewalk and innocent passersby? Yeah, I’d say that counts as an emergency.
Stupid viking giant. Where did he come from, anyway? And why was I focused on the rippling of his back muscles as he carried Winston back to his owner?
Okay, that’s a lie. I wasn’t so focused on his muscles that I didn’t notice his lower back tattoo.
Now, I’ve never been a fan of tramp stamp tattoos, especially since all the examples I’ve seen have been butterflies, or poorly executed tribal art, but this one was special. I have never seen a lower back tattoo like it.
“Did you see that guy who carried off the mayor?” I ask Chloe. “You came out as he was walking off.”
Chloe nods, putting the last of the prepped vegetables into the cooler. “I saw him. Isn’t it a little cold out to be wearing nothing but tiny running shorts? It looked like he was wearing a bathing suit. I don’t understand how he can be out like that and not freeze. I’ve got thermal underwear on under these overalls and cardigan, plus I’m inside in a hot kitchen, and I’m still cold.”
I snort a laugh. They were very short shorts. They remind me of something they’d wear in old aerobics videos from the eighties. The ones where the men all dressed in tiny shorts and muscle shirts, and the women in dressed in leotards and tights. How could that be comfortable to run in? I’d prefer to be a little more covered up during a run. Not that you’d catch me runningto begin with. Running is a little too athletic for me. I like my exercise to be slow and steady, like walking. Or standing on my feet for up to fourteen hours a day while I run my restaurant.
“Okay, but did you notice his back? Tell me that wasn’t a rubber duck I saw tattooed right above his waistband.”
Chloe chuckles, nodding vigorously. “It was. Wearing little shorts and gloves.” She tilts her head. “You haven’t met Nick yet?”
I shake my head, still laughing. “I haven’t had the pleasure. You know how rarely I leave this place.” I gesture to the surrounding restaurant. Chloe is the only employee who has keys to the restaurant, so if I need to be somewhere, then she’s here taking care of business. She’s fully aware of how little time I have to myself. “So, who is he?”
“Tina, if you’d read your Nosey Pecker, you’d already know this.”
I give her a quick side-eye and turn back to my sauce.
The Nosey Pecker is Tuft Swallow’s answer to a gossip rag. The information in it is suspect at best, and I avoid it whenever possible. I can’t understand why a town full of mostly intelligent people would look to an anonymously written newsletter for all the latest information, especially when we have the Tit Peepers group of elderly bird watchers ready and willing to spread all the gossip you could ever want.
Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if one of Tit Peepers was also behind the Nosey Pecker. That would make so much sense.
“Okay, okay. I’ll stop bugging you about it,” Chloe says with a laugh, even though we both know she’ll do no such thing. As soon as something else happens in this town, she’ll be after me about reading that damn Nosey Pecker. “That’s Nick D’Onofrio. He opened up that new gym down at the other end of the street. You know,Put Up Your Ducks MMA? He hired me to paint a weird duck mural on a wall there. You should go checkit out. And not just for the mural. That man is single-handedly responsible for the increased availability of sexy man-meat in Tuft Swallow by at least sixty percent.”
“Sixty? He’s a big guy, but I wouldn’t give him that much credit.” Big guy is an understatement. The man is enormous.
Chloe shakes her head. “No, not because of him. It’s because of his gym. He’s running a fight academy. Young professional fighters move here to train with him. I’ve dated three of them already. You know, you could probably find someone toserviceyou over there.” She waggles her eyebrows. “Lots of eligible men. And they’re all in excellent shape since all they do is work out. All that exercise leads to incredible stamina.”
A flush of heat runs through me at the thought of that large Nick fellow taking up space in my apartment, or my bed, but I shut that line of thinking down quickly. It’s ridiculous. He’s attractive and his body will feature in my future fantasies, but that’s where I have to draw the line.
