not telling him, knowing it was only going to get worse the longer it went on, yet she only dropped her shoes under her chair and watched him walk back to the fridge to heat up leftovers in an anything but 1950s microwave. As he worked, he kept up friendly chitchat she barely heard and couldn’t focus on because all she could see was herself at that inescapable moment tomorrow morning when the repair was done, and he waited expectantly for her to pay him. What was she going to do? Hand him her card and run for the car? On this ankle? He’d catch her before she went more than two yards.
She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t a dishonest person at heart. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d told an outright lie.
“Hello,” he sang from the kitchen, startling Georgia back to herself. Her face burned hot, realizing she’d completely missed his question.
“I’m sorry?”
“I asked if you wanted a salad with this.”
God, he was so nice. Why couldn’t he have been an asshole? It would be so much easier to screw him over if only he’d been a jerk.
“I’m really not very hungry,” she hedged.
“Okay.” He looked at both plates, then nodded. “In that case, we’ll make it a small salad. Greens are important. Kitchens this teal have enough flaws without skimping on the vegetables.” He fished a small bag of ready-mix salad from the fridge and put a little on each plate, then brought both to the table, along with oil and vinegar for dressing.
“Here you go.” He provided her with a napkin and silverware, and on his final trip back from the kitchen, set two glasses of ice water in front of each plate before sitting down at the head of the oval table beside her. “Bon appétit.”
For leftovers, the lasagna was good, very good—tender, not gummy or overcooked, seasoned to perfection without being too strong on the garlic. It was meaty and hearty, and right from the first bite, her mouth watered, and her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten a real meal since breakfast that morning, and a couple Slim Jims through the day weren’t exactly known to keep anyone satisfied for long.
“Wow, this is good,” she said, hunching over her plate and digging in.
Grinning, her dinner companion nodded. “Thank you. Mama tried to teach me lots of things, but for everything that didn’t take, there’s at least one that did. Fortunately, this is one that did.”
“I can’t cook to save my life,” Georgia said, around another bite of lasagna.
“Well, if you’d gone to college with the same three roommates I did, you’d have learned.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
Chuckling, he wiped his mouth and hands, then ponied up to the challenge with a ready story.
“Back in college, I moved in with three idiots. We decided all chores, including cooking, would go on a rotation. First night, idiot number one made spaghetti with ketchup instead of tomato sauce and cooked the noodles for so long, they devolved into a glue-like paste. Second night, idiot number two baked four pizzas he bought for a buck and burned them all. Took me three days to get the charcoal out of my teeth. Third night, we had peanut butter sandwiches made from the peanut butter the guy had stolen from the faculty lounge.”
She laughed. God, he was so nice.
“Then came my turn, and also being an idiot, I took the chore seriously and made my mama’s famous tacos, which are at least as good as her lasagna. At which point, we all decided we’d rather eat my cooking than continue in that culinary trend. Got me out of doing every other chore in the house. All I had to do was cook, so I took what I knew and expanded on it. We all gained thirty pounds by the end of the semester, and I discovered I actually enjoyed cooking. So much so, I took a culinary course. Cross my heart, I could have been a chef.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because, as well as I knew my way around the kitchen, I knew my way around a car even better.”
“Did you graduate?” she asked, finishing the last bite of lasagna.
“Master’s in Business Administration with a heavy emphasis on accounting, communication, customer service, and marketing. How about you?”
She beamed. “The same, only without the cars.”
He smiled. “Would you like some more lasagna?”
“Am I robbing your belly, your wife’s belly, or your kids’ bellies if I say yes?”
“I’m single.” Smile broadening, he pushed back