Montana Cowboy Daddy (Wyatt Brothers of Montana #3) - Jane Porter Page 0,45
walk me through scrambled eggs today,” she said through gritted teeth, “and then that’s what you get from here on out.”
He smiled at her. Most charmingly. “Will I be pushing my luck to ask for some bacon and sausage?
“I could probably do one or the other. You don’t need both.”
“You’re worried about my cholesterol.”
“I’m worried about the work required to feed you.”
“Perfectly valid. But could I request toast? If it’s not too much trouble? Two slices whole wheat, white, sourdough. Whatever we have with plenty of butter. I like it light brown—”
“Listen Billy, I am not a diner. This is not Erika’s Kitchen. You’re going to get toast, I can’t guarantee it will be the right color, I can’t guarantee it will have the right amount of butter. I can’t even promise you that it will be warm when I serve it, but you will have toast, two eggs—”
“Three?” he interrupted hopefully.
“You eat three eggs every morning?”
He nodded. “And bacon and sausage. Or a nice ham steak.”
“So you personally go through a dozen eggs every four days?”
“Sometimes in three days, depending on what else I’m eating.”
“How many slices of toast each morning?”
“Two, please.” He gave her his sweetest smile.
Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t smile back. “So let’s get this straight. Three eggs, two bacon, and two slices of toast.”
“Or three sausage links and, or, a nice thick ham steak.”
“No pork chops?” she snapped sarcastically.
He heard the sarcasm and liked it. Her fire made him hungry and hard. He wanted her even more. She was smart, beautiful, sassy, sexy. So sexy. Which just made him want to tease her more. “I do like grilled pork chops with eggs, very much. We don’t have any pork chops, do we?”
“No. No, we don’t. Now, how about I scramble the eggs and then you show me how you like them cooked. And no more changing up the order. No more special requests. You get what you get, and don’t throw a fit.”
“You sound just like my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Gosnell.”
“I imagine you were quite demanding as a five-year-old.”
“Tommy was more so.” And then he smiled at her, a slow easy smile. “But I wasn’t an angel.”
“Huh. Shocked.”
He laughed and watched as her beautiful face turned pink.
“You know,” she said tartly, “on second thought, I don’t need you in the kitchen while I cook up your eggs. I can just go to YouTube.”
*
Erika managed to cook eggs and everything else Billy wanted. The bacon was burnt, the eggs were a hard dark yellow on the bottom, and the toast was cold, but it was food and after getting one of the bottles of hot sauce from his refrigerator and liberally dousing his plate, he ate every bite.
After breakfast, Billy told her to get to work, that he had Beck and she wasn’t to worry about a thing. Erika glanced from Billy’s sling to his stiff posture, aware that he could barely move without wincing, and she wanted to question if he could really be left alone with Beck, but she appreciated that he wanted to try.
“I’ll just be in the next room,” she said. “Come get me if you need—”
“I won’t,” he said, cutting her off. “I’ve got this.”
She gave one last look at Beck propped up in his car seat on the coffee table facing his dad and smiled grimly. Beck would probably last ten minutes before he started crying. He didn’t like being left in one position too long, but she didn’t want to be a downer, not when Billy was trying to take on dad duties so that she could work.
In her room, she sat on her bed, laptop out, earbuds in to block out noise, and got down to work, aware that she didn’t have all day. It took a few minutes before she remembered where she was, and what she needed to be doing, and then she was working, brain engaged, fingers flying on the laptop keyboard. It had been so long since she’d made headway, and it felt good to be productive, detached from the domestic worries, and free to just sink back into her writing.
She didn’t know how long she’d been at work when she saw black sweatpants in her peripheral vision. Billy was standing next to the bed and she lifted her head, removed her ear pods.
“I can’t get his diaper back on,” Billy said. “My fault for trying to change him on the couch.”