Page 13 of A Different Kind of Hooker

I shook my head. “No,” I answered carefully. “I don’t usually call women by anything other than their names.”

“Okay,” she replied quietly. “Though that makes no sense.”

“It’s just slipping out with you, Eliza,” I said, trying not to sound like a complete douchebag. “However, I can try to rein it in if it bothers you.”

She bit her bottom lip again. “It doesn’t bother me,” she replied. “I just think…you know, if you call me that on camera, my viewers might get the wrong idea.”

Good.

“I’ll do my best,” I lied, because I had no problem with people misconstruing our relationship. “It never occurred to me that you might have a boyfriend that’ll object.”

Eliza snorted. “Please,” she drawled out. “If I had a boyfriend, I’d hope that he wasn’t the type to allow me to have strange men coming to my apartment at night. I mean, I wouldn’t want him inviting strange women to his place at night, either.”

“So, no boyfriend,” I said, making sure.

“Nope, no boyfriend,” she confirmed.

“Perfect,” I grinned. “Though I’m not afraid to throw punches, it’s nice not to have that concern.”

“What about you?” she asked. “Do you have a girlfriend that’s going to leave negative reviews on my channel because you’re a cheating asshole?”

I choked out a laugh. “Uh…no,” I clarified. “No girlfriend.”

“Good,” she replied, sounding a little relieved, though that was probably just my wishful thinking.

“Okay, so where are the ingredients?” I asked, needing to focus on the reason that I was here.

Together, Eliza and I got out all the ingredients to make some cupcakes, and she had even managed to get cupcake wrappers with little footballs on them. Yeah, they were regular American rawhide footballs, but I wasn’t going to ignore her effort. If they made rugby football cupcake wrappers, I’d be surprised.

Once we had everything ready, I helped Eliza set up the camera, though it weighed nothing and she could do it herself. I just wasn’t the type of guy to stand around while a woman did whatever it was that needed to be done. Yeah, Eliza was very capable, but that hardly mattered.

Looking up at me, she said, “Are you ready?”

“For you to tell people to have 911 on standby in case I’m a crazed murderer?” Eliza nodded as she grinned up at me. “Absolutely, baby.”

*****

Eliza~

Istared down at the cupcake cake, and though the artistic factor needed a bit of work, it looked like itcouldbe a football. However, more importantly, thanks to Heron, the cupcakes were actually edible this time around. Apparently, Heron knew the difference between sugar and salt, and he also knew how to bake cupcakes. If it wasn’t enough that he saved lives for a living and also entertained the masses on a professional level, but the man knew how to pre-heat an oven. He was like a real-life unicorn come to spotlight all my failures.

Awesome.

There was also the fact that I had over twenty viewers tonight, but Heron had quickly pointed out that they were probably his teammates and fellow firefighters since he’d told them all that he was coming on my show tonight. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and I really was grateful that this man had taken time out of his day to help a complete stranger.

“Well, I mean…they’re edible, so that’s a good thing,” I muttered, the camera still rolling.

“I have a question, baby,” Heron said as he stood next to me, his attempts at not calling me baby failing terribly. Luckily, I didn’t mind.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“How are we supposed to get the cupcake cake into a box without messing up the design?” he asked, reminding me why I should probably just get a second job at Wendy’s or somewhere. Better yet, living in an apartment for the rest of my life wasn’t the end of the world. “Baby?”

“Maybe we can scoop it up with a pizza spatula thingy, then slide it into the box,” I suggested.

“Do you have a pizza spatula thingy?” he asked.

“No,” I answered. “I never thought I’d need one.”

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