It takes me a surprisingly small amount of time to respond.
“Sure. I’ll come.”
“Fantastic. Let’s go,” he responds, jumping up from the couch with a spryness I can only dream of.
“Now?”
Mack laughs. “Yes, now.”
“Oh.”
“What? You need time to prepare or something?”
“No, I just didn’t realize when you asked that you meant now.”
Mack grins so big, the tops of his cheeks touch his bottom eyelashes. “Well, since today’s already half gone, and half of Sunday will be taken by the drive back, we only have two days to enjoy the sun and fun of this beach condo. Which means, there’s no use in wasting any more time, you know?”
“Yeah,” I agree. “That definitely makes sense.”
“How long will it take you to get your swimsuit on?”
“Two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
“Ah, yes, right. A little bit longer than one shake of a lamb’s tail, then.”
I smile. I can’t help it. “Exactly.”
“All right, let’s do it, Katy Cat.”
I nod. “Give me five minutes, and I’ll be ready to go.”
I just hope I can get my mind off the tight, tanned look of his gluteus maximus before my beach afternoon with Mack Houston begins.
6
Mack
The red sauce bubbles as I stir through it with a wooden spoon, and the aroma of garlic bread emanates from the oven. The only thing I can see, however, is the image of Katy Dayton in the shower.
It makes sense since she’s in there once again, but the need to stop myself from being such a dirty bastard runs rampant. She’s beautiful—more beautiful than I ever dreamed of—but she’s so much more than that at the same time.
She’s smart and funny, and given the chance to relax, she’s even tolerant of me. I’m still trying to get over the fact that she sat on the beach for hours upon hours, entertaining herself with a book and a big bottle of lemonade as I surfed and swam and occasionally dropped my wet body down onto the towel next to her. She was friendly and welcoming, and she didn’t refer to me as a dog or an ass or an animal of any kind even one time.
It was a surprisingly fantastic afternoon. One that’s given me hope that I can overcome the challenge that is making Katy Dayton realize she should like me. As much as I secretly like her.
After we got back from our day at the beach, I figured the least I could do for her genuine embrace of the truce we formed was cook her dinner. So, while I gave Katy space to shower off the sand, I ran to the market up the street and picked up a few supplies.
Blinking frantically out of my haze as she walks through the door to the kitchen with a towel wrapped around her hair, I crack the door of the oven to take a look at the garlic bread and shut off the burner to the pasta.
She freezes when she sees the spread on the stove, and her eyes come to mine. “You’re cooking dinner?”
“Just call me Betty Crocker.” I sheathe my hands with the oven mitts on the counter and waggle my eyebrows with a grin before pulling the bread from the oven and setting it on the waiting hot pads on the corner.
Katy laughs, and the line of her quirky, cute smile makes my chest throb. God, how have I managed to pretend my crush on her wasn’t this big for so long?
“Wow. Thank you,” she remarks, her voice a soft caress.
“You’re welcome. I hope you like spaghetti.”
“Are you kidding? I love it. I would marry it if a union with food was legal.”
“Is a union with food illegal? Or is it just the kind of thing no one’s actually tried?”
“One-way ticket to Gitmo, I think.”
I laugh. “Most likely.”
Quick and efficiently, I drop the pasta into the colander to drain it and then mix it back in the sauce pan to bring it together. It smells of tomatoes and basil and oregano, and my stomach growls audibly in response.
“I’ll get the plates, silverware, and hot sauce,” Katy offers, pulling the towel off her head and folding it precisely.
“Hot sauce?” I question, scrunching up my eyebrows. “I’m sorry, but what?”
“You don’t put hot sauce on your spaghetti?”
“Uh, no.” A soft chuckle vibrates through my chest. “I’m afraid not.”
“Man, you’re seriously missing out. Hot sauce goes on everything, and it does it beautifully.”
“Everything?”
“Everything,” she emphasizes. “But hey, it’s okay if you have a less-sophisticated palate. I won’t judge.”
“Is that your way of calling me a food Neanderthal, Ms. Dayton?”
“Definitely not,” she disagrees. “If I were going to make a caveman-style reference to your personality, you’d know it in no uncertain terms.”
“Good to hear.”
She grabs the plates from the cabinet and a couple of forks from the drawer and takes them over to the table to set our spots. And a bottle of Frank’s Hot Sauce is placed right in the center, like it’s a floral centerpiece for a dinner.
Apparently, Katy Dayton takes her love of hot sauce seriously.
“I think we’re just about ready to eat,” I announce as I put the spaghetti into a dish and the garlic bread into a basket.
And just as I follow in her footsteps toward the table, she smiles up at me from her seat. A brilliant, megawatt kind of smile that makes my heart do weird, flip-floppy things inside my chest.
“This smells delicious,” she says as I scoop a helping of spaghetti onto her plate. “Thank you for doing this, Mack.”
“It was my pleasure, Katy Cat.”
“Ugh.” She groans, but then, a soft, almost-whisperlike giggle escapes her throat. “You gotta stop with that awful nickname.”
I wink. “Never.”
“Well…I guess that only leaves me with one choice,” she answers, and I quirk a questioning brow in her direction.
“And what’s that?”
“Come up with an equally awful nickname for you.” She winks at me. An adorable, slightly awkward wink of her right eye. “Tit for tat, ya know?”
“I give you free rein to do your worst, Katy Cat,” I answer playfully and sit down in the chair across from hers.
“Okay,” she responds, and a mischievous grin crests the corners of her mouth as she picks up her fork from the table. “Shall we dig in, Mack-N-Cheese?”
“Mack-N-Cheese?” I bark out a laugh. “That’s your worst?”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m just getting started, Big Mack.”
And then, she giggles again. A real, girlish peal of laughter that leaves her pretty little lips like a song and urges a smile to damn near lift my cheeks to my ears.
“So, are all my nicknames going to be food-based?”
“I’m not sure yet, but it’s highly likely, Mack-aroon.”
I can’t not laugh at the last one.
Damn, Katy Dayton sure is something.
Once you peel away her prim-and-proper and always-professional layers, her center is soft and gooey and fucking fun.