“I don’t trust anything that needs constant access to a treadmill, and my mom always felt that any resident of her house should be capable of flushing a toilet.”
I briefly imagined Isaac’s mom—a very elegant, very A-list actress—cleaning gerbil pellets out of a cage. Yeah. Gerbils probably hadn’t been a thing in Chez Kelly.
“I’ve been wanting to train Mr.Tumnus to use the human toilet,” I said. “But he’s not really motivated by what I want... or anything that’s not food.”
“Brooklyn’s mom had a Pekingese and she gave it only Evian. The thing is like nineteen now. There’s bottled water in the fridge. Your demon cat is not dying in my house from tap water poisoning. If he haunts this place, I’ll have to sell it, and I’ve only just settled in.”
I gasped. “YoulikeMr.Tumnus.”
He shooed me toward the fridge before returning to his mixing bowl and carton of eggs. “Take it back, Palmer.”
I opened his refrigerator with ahmph. It was at least three times the size of the yellow Smeg I had at home thanks to an estate sale I hit up a few years ago. The shelves were spotless and bare except for a second carton of eggs, milk, a bag of cheese, Cholula, and some very pretty glass bottles of glacier water. And a few bunches of kale, deep green and ruffled.
I took a bottle of water and poured some into the water bowl. Mr.Tumnus could get used to this. “I see you’re an egg man.”
“I didn’t even ask,” he said as he whisked a little milk into his eggs. “Are you okay with scrambled eggs?”
“Ironically, it’s the only thing I know how to make,” I confessed.
He paused and looked up at me. “Really? This might be all we eat while you’re here, because me too. My nanny taught me how. She said every man should know how to serve up scrambled eggs.”
I leaned across the kitchen island and watched as he poured the eggs into a hot frying pan. “My nanny taught me too.”
“Wait, you had a nanny?” he asked.
“Um, that’s what I called my grandma,” I blurted as I stood straight up. It was a lie. Not because I wanted to lie to Isaac, but because I was so used to not quite sharing the full truth... to just about anyone except Bee really.
“Oh, well, that’s charming.” He poked around with his spatula and began the serious business of scrambling the eggs. “Sit,” he commanded.
My chest warmed. I liked his bossy tone a little too much. And when he’d been bossy last night, shoving me against the door and pushing his hand up my dress—
Nope. Was not going to get horned up by a man wielding a spatula. Not before noon, at least.
Obediently, I pulled out a high-backed cushioned chair from the other side of the island and sat down.
“I know what I’m doing in Christmas Notch,” he said. “But what are you doing here, Sunny?”
I’d managed to avoid thinking too much about it with the wedding and all the events leading up to it, but now that Bee and Nolan were off on their honeymoon and wedding guests were officially leaving town, it was time for me to face reality. Tits up and all that.
“So I did a thing,” I said.
“This should be good.” He served up the eggs on two plates before dousing his in hot sauce.
I stole the bottle and did the same to mine before taking too big of a bite. But oh man, I was starting to feel a little queasy from my frequent visits to the open bar last night and this was hitting the spot. Isaac’s nanny was right. Scrambled eggs were a life skill and Isaac had mastered it.
“I accidentally sold a script to the Hope Channel,” I said with my mouth still full. “I didn’t fully mean to, but I did, and now I’m here in Christmas Notch for the next two months, hunting for inspiration and hoping I can figure out how to format a screenplay by then.”
“You were going to spend two whole months in that dank-ass motel?”
“It was charming in its own way,” I protested.
He gave me a look that told me there would be consequences if I continued to defend that place.
But maybe the consequences would be fun . . .
No!No more Isaac fun for me. That was a one-night-only kind of thing.
Well,two nights onlyif you counted ourlastone-night stand.
