left.” She offers the spoon to me, and I open my mouth and taste the deliciousness of that sauce.
My eyes close, and I let out a deep groan. “That tastes incredible.”
“Because I’ve engaged your senses.” I open my eyes to find she’s watching me. “Now dig in before it gets cold. Cold food is not a sense I want you to experience.”
I can’t hide my grin as she joins me with her plate, and I pass her a glass of wine. I attempt to make small talk as we eat, but it’s nearly impossible when you’re tasting the best steak of your life. By the end, I’m debating whether to lick my damn plate. It’s that good.
“You can bake and cook. It’s too bad you never want to get married because you really would make someone an excellent wife.”
She rolls her eyes. “Every woman’s dream come true, right? To cook for her man. What more could she want out of life?”
A sheepish look masks my features. “Alright, I get it. You hate men.”
“I do not hate men,” she corrects, looking affronted. “I just hate the expectation that since my career is a traditionally feminine activity, it must mean I want to be a wife and mother. There’s a lot more to life than that.”
“Like?” I prod, my curiosity piqued over all things Norah.
She turns to face me, her blue eyes alight with determination. “For me, it’s obviously my business. It takes up a lot of my time, and I love it, so why would I let a relationship distract me?”
“Completely agree.”
“And if my dream to live in another country comes to fruition someday, having kids will make that exceedingly more complicated.”
“I hear you there,” I reply with a cringe. “Lynsey’s life with Julianna is practically unrecognizable to what her life was before. But surprisingly, she’s still managed to open a practice with her husband.”
Norah nods thoughtfully. “Some women can do it all. And maybe with the right partner, it could work, but good luck finding that. I’ve had a few boyfriends, and none of them could get over the baker’s hours.”
“Baker’s hours?”
“When I first opened the bakery, my croinut batches took three days to make. It was brutal. I was up at two every morning to get them going so they’d be ready for the morning crowds. Try being intimate when your alarm clock goes off at one a.m. I was in bed by six for most of my twenties.”
I inwardly cringe because her waking time is about the time that I’m getting ready to score. And her bedtime is when I’m usually working out and getting primed for the night. Her twenties sounded miserable.
“When did you ever let loose and have fun, Norah?”
She expels a bitter laugh. “Baking is fun. And it got hella more fun when I perfected the twenty-minute croinut and got to sleep normal hours again.”
I level her with a look because while yes, her “take a number, twenty-minute dough to dish” routine is a huge part of what makes her franchise so marketable, her “fun” she’s talking about is still all about work. “Whatever you say.”
“I’m serious. Baking is fun. And cooking is fun.” She stands and grabs both of our plates, but I rest my hand on top of hers to stop her in her tracks.
“You cooked. I clean.”
She shakes her head stiffly. “I’m particular about my dishes.”
My brow furrows. Jesus, this girl is worse off than I thought. I rise to my feet, towering over her meager five-foot-five frame and grab onto her shoulders. “Sit.”
I gently press her back into her seat and grab our plates off the counter. I set about rinsing the dishes, which don’t consist of much. The girl cooks clean. Every dish she used except her saucepan and whisk is already loaded into the dishwasher.
She winces when I bend over to load the plates. “Just…make sure they’re all facing to the left. When you face them toward each other, the water doesn’t get up between them.”
“Norah…do you do drugs?”
Her eyes widen. “No.”
“You should start,” I reply and load the dishes, ignoring her tiny murmurs of displeasure. I start the dishwasher so she can’t go back and redo what I’ve done. “Now, let’s go over these rules of yours before you have a nervous breakdown over the fact that I barely rinsed the plates before I loaded them.”
She rolls her eyes and slips off her stool to grab a yellow legal pad and a Sharpie out of a drawer next