Zeke knew he was staring. He did homebuilding and remodels for a living. He had never had someone tell him that they didn’t care about the layout of their kitchen or what their appliances looked like.
“I am not putting a dorm fridge into that kitchen,” he told her.
“Why not?”
“Because that’s ridiculous. You’re a grown woman with an enormous kitchen. You will have a full-sized fridge. Actually,” he said, interrupting himself. “I’m getting you an extra full-size.”
“This is a matter of ego and pride for you?”
“Damn right.”
“I don’t even need a whole house. I could just live in an apartment.”
“Well, you bought that house and I’m going to fucking remodel the hell out of it, so too bad.”
She tipped her head, a slow smile spreading her lips. “You’re hot when you get all riled up.”
“You’re not getting a dorm fridge even if you act all sexy,” he told her.
“I’m certain I could convince you to put a dorm fridge in that kitchen if I had your cock in my mouth.”
Heat grabbed him in the gut and he coughed. “Stop it.”
“This is really important to you, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m damned good at what I do. And while it’s your house and I want to make you happy, I also can’t stand the idea of someone not making that old house magnificent when they have the time, money, and contractor to do it.”
She just studied him.
“And since you don’t care anyway, why don’t you just keep your sweet ass out of my way, say, ‘yes, sir’ when I tell you something, and be sure you pay your invoices on time?”
She smiled again. “Very hot.”
“I mean it.” He wasn’t teasing her now. Though hearing ‘yes, sir’ from her in another context would be very welcome also.
“I know. I think that’s why it’s hot. It’s not just the bossy stuff, but you’re actually really into this.”
“I am.”
He would paint a bedroom neon orange. He would put a fireman’s pole from the upstairs bedroom to the kitchen. He would turn a bathroom into a spa for a dog. He’d actually done all of those things. But because the owner had cared. It had mattered to them. It had been part of making the house their home.
But he’d be damned if he’d let some woman put a dorm fridge and nothing else in that awesome kitchen just because she didn’t give a shit about anything else.
“Okay. Then you’re in charge,” she told him.
Thank God.
“What do you keep in your fridge?” he asked.
“Milk for my cereal and yogurt.”
He paused, but she clearly wasn’t kidding.
Fine. He didn’t have much in his fridge either. Who was he to judge?
“Do you need an icemaker? A freezer for ice cream, frozen pizza, frozen waffles?”
She shook her head. “Nope, I’m good. I mean I assume that there will be room for ice in the freezer because they don’t really make refrigerators without freezers, do they?”
He didn’t think so. But he wouldn’t really know. “I know a lot more about added bells and whistles rather than any kind of stripped-down version. I put a fridge in a kitchen two weeks ago that tells the weather and news of the day and keeps track of grocery lists electronically.”
Her eyes widened. “See, that’s another reason why buying cereal, milk, yogurt, bread, and peanut butter is the best way to live. I don’t even have to keep a list.”
“That’s all you eat?”
“Well at night, I have this vegetable powdered drink thing. But only because I should be eating vegetables and I don’t like to buy them.”
“You don’t like vegetables?”
“It’s more that they go bad. I forget that I have them or forget what I planned to do with them and they get rotten.”
Again, he couldn’t really judge. He didn’t think he’d ever had a fresh vegetable in his refrigerator. But that didn’t mean he didn’t eat them. He ate them at his grandmother’s all the time.
“Vegetable powdered drink mix?”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. Though it’s not as good as it should be. Still, it’s a way to get the equivalent of three vegetables for the day. And it doesn’t go rotten.”
She’d said bread so he asked, “And you eat sandwiches?”
He couldn’t explain why, but he was fascinated by all of this.
“Of course.”
“So do you like turkey or ham or roast beef or what?” He suddenly really wanted to know what kind of sandwiches this woman ate. But why? He wasn’t sure he even knew what his cousin Kennedy’s favorite sandwich was and he spent nearly every day of his life with her. And Jill was a little odd. And some of her oddities were kind of annoying.
Just put a fridge in your fucking kitchen, woman.
“Peanut butter and jelly,” Jill said.
“Just peanut butter and jelly?”
“Oh jelly. I would need to put that in my fridge. Maybe I do need to make a list.”
Zeke felt the corner of his mouth curling up. There was something about this woman that was just so…different.
He didn’t get a lot of different in his life. His family was a bunch of crazy, quirky characters and they certainly all had their own personalities, but underlying it all was a commonality because of how they’d grown up and lived together all their lives.
The women who had come into his cousins’ lives—Tori and Juliet and Paige—had brought a breath of fresh air to the bayou. They were all from other places and had come to Autre for various reasons, but had fallen in love with the Landry boys as well as the town and the rest of the family and had stayed.
Maddie, Kennedy, and Charlie, the other girls in the family by marriage or blood, had all spent time on the bayou growing up so they’d fit right in with the Landry craziness.
Jill was turning out to be one of those breaths of fresh air. And damn if Zeke didn’t want to breathe deeply.
“So you only eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? No other kind?” he asked.
“Peanut butter and jelly don’t go bad.”
Right. Back to that. So she tended to buy food that didn’t have strict expiration dates.
“But milk and yogurt both go bad,” he pointed out.
He wasn’t sure how they’d even gotten on this topic and why he felt compelled to keep talking about it.
“They do, but I eat them every day, so they’re habits and I’m much less likely to let them go bad,” Jill said.
“Do you forget a lot of things?”
“A startling amount, actually.”
He gave a soft laugh. He really liked her ability to be self-deprecating.
“Do you need a keeper, Jill?”
She didn’t even blink. “You have no idea.”
He opened his mouth to say something flirtatious about how he’d like to take care of her, but hesitated. He wasn’t really a guy who took care of other people. He got taken care of. He wasn’t exactly forgetful. Then again, he also never had a zucchini in his crisper drawer in the fridge. For all he knew he would forget it was there and let it go bad. He did love a good turkey sandwich, but he always ate them at his grandma’s or his mom’s house. How long did turkey stay good in the refrigerator? He didn’t even know.