Page 21 of His Pickle Her Jam

“Why don’t we see where all the duplicates happened first and maybe we can reach a compromise?”

I begrudgingly had to agree. It was difficult to see the man as my enemy when he was being all reasonable and shit.

We compared lists, made notes, and yeah, it was a good start. Once we finished, I realized our flavor profiles had crossed paths more than once.

The pickling process was a lot more interesting than I’d given it credit for, and I was surprised at how much experimentation went along with creating different recipes.

Buck was a regular maverick, pushing the envelope in what was standard pickling. He added hints of whiskey, vanilla, and spices I would never have expected in his recipes.

The fact he was sharing all that info with me left me speechless and a little curious to try his culinary inventions.

“Okay, so, we both ordered the blueberries, cherries, strawberries, jalapenos, just about all the herbs, and they also accidentally sent red tomatoes instead of green,” he said, confirming what I already knew.

“What are we going to do?” I asked, one hand on my hip, the other against my forehead.

“Okay, I know we can get a little competitive when we’re on opposite sides of a discussion, but what do you say we try to work together on this?” he asked.

“How do you mean?”

“For example, do you need the entire bushel of blueberries?” he asked.

“What are you asking exactly? If you want to know how much of something I am going to use to try to mess up my recipes?—”

Buck raised his hands when he saw I was ready to lay into him.

“Easy! I am not asking for your secret recipes, Pretty Girl. And I promise I have no intention of sabotaging you. I’m just trying to see if maybe we could share?”

His eyes glittered with humor, and I huffed out a breath. Buck wasn’t like other men who saw me as some big-mouthed brat whenever my hackles rose.

On the contrary, he seemed to enjoy my temper. I was a lot to take in, and after a few failed relationships where my partner wanted to try to tame me or curb my opinions, well, I learned to watch out for men with those same tendencies.

Buck was a surprise.

I supposed I was getting used to his nickname, at least, when I was thinking about him. But the urge to call him David was always there on the tip of my tongue.

His attitude was refreshing. The man honestly seemed to enjoy engaging in witty banter.

There was also the fact he had the whole bad boy charming bartender thing going for him.

Still, I needed to be wary. I’d been sort of tricked by him before and there was no way I was going to be one of the women he kept on rotation.

His dark gaze roamed over me, and my body responded. I could feel my nipples tightening beneath my clothes, and that needy little ache inside my core started throbbing all over again.

Animal magnetism. That was what the man had. And plenty of it.

If I was going to act on this insanely intense physical reaction I had to him, I was going to have to ask some questions.

Once we got this whole messy order thing figured out.

“Actually, I over-ordered, in case I fucked something up,” I admitted.

“Me too,” he said, grinning.

“So, you know what this means,” I replied, taking a step closer to him.

“What’s that?” Buck asked.

I bit my lip while he took a bigger, wider step, bringing his Croc-covered toes right up against mine.

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