Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 117443 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117443 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
She rolled her eyes at his obvious enjoyment of the situation. “Shut up. I said it was a different life. So, I can’t start a ground war and analyze it later with my political science degree, or build a car from rubber bands and an erector set, but I can make you lunch on Sundays. And discuss Early American Poets while you eat it.”
“With your MRS degree.”
She glared at him. “If you don’t mow before 8 am like a normal person.” She stood up, grabbed her empty plate, and stalked off toward the kitchen.
Chris remained at the table for a bit, considering what she’d told him. She’d been bred for this, making lunches, baking cookies, keeping a home. He imagined her younger, husband hunting at college. She said she hadn’t finished. That must have been when she’d gotten hurt. Being raped when she was barely out of her teens seemed like a brutal price to pay for her naivete.
Now she wandered alone, taking only what she could carry from place to place. Living inside pages of books because it was safer. She’d opened herself up at least once to a man who repaid that trust by smacking her around and chasing her out of Denver. Chris wanted to kill both of these men. Slowly.
He looked out on the lawn and remembered her advice on Easy. People wanting to pretend the world wasn’t a violent place when it obviously could be. Slick’s parents had wanted her to forget what happened to her. But once she’d been shown a darker, harder world than the one she knew, she couldn’t pretend life was just cookies and PTA meetings. No blaming her for that. But she missed her old life. And she wanted a tiny piece of it back. Lunch on Sundays.
He gathered his own plate and his empty bottle and headed into the little blue house. She was pulling more pepper cookies out of the oven. “So this is what your mom does?” he asked her, putting his plate in the sink and grabbing the dishwashing detergent. “Lunch on Sundays?” She glared at him. He grinned. “I just want to make sure you’re qualified for the position.”
“What do you normally eat for lunch on Sundays?” she challenged.
He thought about this. “Saturday night’s pizza. Or Friday night’s pizza. Or Thursday night’s pizza, if nothing’s growing on it. I eat a lot of pizza.”
She made a face. “So this is a step up for you, either way.”
“Oh, definitely. Especially if Sunday lunch includes cookies. Or some kind of dessert. Feel free to branch out.”
“Not before 8 am,” she insisted.
“We’ll have to renegotiate in the summer. It gets way too hot to put it off, Slick.” He immediately regretted saying it. Because the look on her face said she wasn’t planning on being around that long. “8 am,” he repeated. “Copy that.”
When he was finished with the dishes, he realized she’d packed a tupperware container full of cookies for him. “Try to make these last until next Sunday.”
He eyed the box. “Yeah, I’m not gonna lie. That’s not a possibility, Slick.”
Chapter 10
It was Thursday night, Poker Night, and while Hawk opened the cold pizza box sitting on Chris’s kitchen island, Tex managed to find the tupperware container that Chris had stupidly left out.
“Don’t touch that,” he demanded.
“What is it?” Tex asked, prying open the lid against orders.
Chris tried to reach for the box, but Tex moved out of the way, taking the box with him.
“What is it?” Hawk repeated.
“Cookies,” Tex declared, peering into the box. “Where’d you get cookies?”
“Those are mine. They’re special cookies,” Chris said, again trying to snag the box.
Hawk looked up from the pizza. “You put weed in cookies?”
Tex frowned at Hawk. “You don’t put weed in cookies. You put weed in the butter and then make the cookies.”
Doc came into the kitchen from the living room, scowling. “Are we really gonna eat weed butter cookies? What are we, 16?”
“There’s no weed. It’s pepper,” Chris informed him.
Tex reared back from the box. “Do what now?”
“There’s pepper in the cookies. And they’re mine.”
“Who puts pepper in cookies?” Doc asked, eyeing the cookies like he was certain ‘pepper’ was the new street word for weed.
“Slick does. They’re…” he paused to remember, “Mexican chocolate.”
“Holy Shit!” Tex yelled. “You found a chick who can make Spicy Mexican Chocolate cookies! You bastard!” And he unceremoniously shoved a whole cookie in his mouth. Then he muttered something about “Texas” and “Just like home,” and other things that were hard to understand because his mouth was full. But the obvious gist was that he loved the cookies. He offered Doc one and threw one at Hawk from across the kitchen.
Doc and Hawk both sniffed their cookies then took a bite. “Damn,” Hawk said. “Viva la Mexico.”
“Why’s she making you cookies?” Tex asked pointedly.