dinner tonight.” She wrinkled her nose when she said it.
Val tried not to let her disappointment show. “Oh? Does he have something special planned?”
“No. He says I’m taking advantage of you. He says he is perfectly capable of feeding me,” she said, probably quoting him verbatim.
Val barely resisted the urge to smile. “I’m sure he is.”
“That’s what you think,” Annie said with obvious disgust. “His idea of food is a frozen dinner he’s nuked beyond recognition. He went shopping the other day and came home with five different versions of macaroni and cheese and six different versions of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. They all taste like burned rubber when he’s done.”
It was hardly news that Slade couldn’t cook. He’d admitted as much himself. Val just hadn’t realized precisely how bad he was.
Fortunately, she could offer a solution. She loved to cook, though she rarely had an opportunity when Laurie was on the road and going from hotel to hotel. Even here Val never had a chance to spend time in the kitchen. Laurie enjoyed showing off her domestic skills for her new husband, and Val was always invited along. Even when she begged off, it was only to eat in town or have a sandwich in her room.
She considered the best way to handle this. She doubted Slade would respond to any hints she offered about teaching him to cook, but Annie was likely to be a more than willing student. She was clearly sick to death of frozen dinners.
“I could help out,” she suggested carefully.
Annie’s expression brightened. “Would you? I mean, Daddy would probably say no,” she said, echoing Val’s own assessment. “But maybe he wouldn’t have to find out about it. Not at first, anyway.”
“We can’t lie to your father,” Val objected, though probably not as strenuously as she should have.
“It wouldn’t be lying. Not really,” Annie insisted. “You could just come over in the afternoon and give me cooking lessons. By the time he gets home, dinner will be on the table. He won’t know I didn’t do it all myself.”
“Honey, I think he’ll suspect that something’s going on. It’s not like you can suddenly start fixing perfect pot roast overnight.”
“I’ll buy a cookbook and tell him I’m learning a new recipe every day. If you can read, you can cook, right? Once he tastes something that actually has real flavor to it, he won’t complain,” Annie said persuasively. “Please.”
Val debated the wisdom of allowing Annie to deceive her father, of actually being a party to that deception. She weighed that against the old adage that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach.
“We’ll try it tomorrow and see how it goes,” she said finally. “If your father gets the least bit suspicious, you tell him the truth. You do not lie to him. Understood?”
Annie nodded eagerly. “Can we really do pot roast? Grandma made awesome pot roast. I really miss it.”
“I’ll pick up the ingredients in town in the morning. I’ll meet you at your house at two. Okay?”
“Perfect. Daddy never gets home before five-thirty or six. Is that long enough?”
“Perfect,” Val agreed. Whether he knew it or not, Slade was about to be treated to the way his life could be if he’d just wake up and allow her into it.
* * *
Slade smelled the aroma of pot roast wafting from his house before he got within ten feet of it. His mouth watered. His suspicions kicked in, right along with a stirring of anticipation he didn’t like one bit.
But when he walked inside, he found Annie at the stove lifting the lid on a huge pot. Half expecting to find Val, he was torn between disappointment and relief. She’d been avoiding him lately and he hadn’t been nearly as grateful as he should have been. For a minute when he’d sniffed that pot roast, he’d been hoping that she was the one responsible. Maybe the housekeeper at White Pines had sent it down.
“What’s that?” he asked, venturing close.
“Pot roast,” Annie said proudly. “Doesn’t it smell awesome?”
His gaze narrowed. “Who made it?”
“I did.” She gestured toward a book that lay open on the counter. “It wasn’t so hard. I just followed the directions.”
He stepped up to the stove and peered into the pot. A roast indeed had been cooked to perfection. It was surrounded by carrots, onions and little potatoes, all perfectly done and seasoned with herbs.
“You did this?”
She nodded. “Are you hungry?”
“Starved,” he admitted, deciding he’d pursue the issue of Annie’s