Page 5 of Buttercup and the Beard

No. None of that.

“Do you have any food? I haven’t eaten yet today.”

“Why the hell not?” I bark, back to being irritated at this fiasco.

A stony stare is my only answer. I know I was rude, but it’s damn near nine o’clock at night and she hasn’t eaten shit today? That’s not gonna fly.

“I woke up late to meet my realtor, then we were too busy looking at properties to stop for lunch. I was planning on eating when I got home. Not like I expected to get stranded on the side of the road in a freak March snowstorm, Boone.”

The way my name rolls off her tongue is damn near indecent in my mind, no matter that she’s giving me snark when she said it.

“Yeah. Hang on.” In a shuffling limp, I head back into the kitchen and throw the fridge open, pulling out the beef stew I made for dinner with the leftover rolls.

Spooning some into a bowl, I pop it into the microwave and then preheat the oven to warm up the bread.

“What’s wrong with your leg?” she asks, standing in the entryway to the kitchen. Her eyes trail from my toes to my throat in an ocular caress. Unless I’m imagining things, there’s heat in her gaze too.

I prop my hip against the counter to take some of the weight off the leg that’s burning like a bitch now that the pain meds have worn off. The slight tug and pull of motion against the straining stitches pisses me off.

“Had a run-in with a bear. He managed to get a swipe in before I knocked him out.”

“What? Oh my God. You should be sitting down. Here, sit, I can microwave food as well as the next person.”

She drags one of the barstools from the breakfast nook over to me and points to the cushion like that alone is going to get me to listen.

“I’m fine.” I pop four bread rolls on a baking sheet and slide them into the heating oven just as the microwave timer dings.

“You don’t look fine. You’re not even putting weight on it. Is it really bad?”

I shrug, not in the mood to repeat again that I’m fine.

“Please sit. I’ve got the food, I promise.”

The worry in her tone is enough to have me plopping my ass down, and the immediate relief at being off my feet irritates me.

I’m used to being up and doing, not sitting around like an invalid. The next two weeks are going to be a bitch and a half.

Jem moves around my kitchen like she’s been here before, the two of us in a weird domestic scene that might be from an alternate universe.

A cozy, intimate, alternate universe.

“Where’s your cutlery?” she asks while pulling drawers open at random. I point to the drawer next to the dishwasher instead of answering her, comfortable watching her complete the simple task of getting food.

An oven mitt on each hand, she places the now hot bowl of stew onto a hot pad with one before snagging the sheet pan out of the oven with the other.

I guess because she’s worked for Ally for years at the bakery, she’s comfortable multitasking around a hot stove.

Whatever the reason, I like seeing her in my space. And that thought came out of nowhere.

“What do you mean stranded?” I ask, remembering her earlier diatribe about why she didn’t eat today.

“I was driving home when the snow started falling by the bucketful. Pulled off the side of the road, and didn’t have service on my cell. Tried to wait it out, but my car ran out of gas. Figured I could hoof it back to town before I froze to death in my car.”

She speaks through bites of food, which is disappearing at a fast rate.

“Where’s your car?”

Jem points off into the distance. “About a forty-five minute walk that way.”

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