Page 9 of Never Say Yes To Your Brother's Best Friend

It’s so nice in here, with the huge windows, the massive stainless fridge, and the gas stove with the big hood overtop to suck up all the cooking vapors. It’s all so spotless and unused-looking that I’m almost scared to do just that. Use it.

Well, shit on that. I’m hungry, and the only way food is going to get made is if I rummage around in here to find dishes and a frying pan and invade the fridge.

Ten minutes later, I’m attempting eggs on a gas stove for the first time in my life, and let me tell you, this beast doesn’t function like the ancient thing in my apartment. Cooking with gas is a whole different ballgame, and it’s all I can do to keep the eggs from burning. I’m using a nonstick pan, but they keep freaking sticking.

“You mothers! Come on!” I slide the flipper under the eggs and try to twist and scoop them up without breaking the yolks. I get them halfway up, and so far, so good, but then…disaster. Yolks pour out of the slightly crispy whites and run all over the place. “Damn it! Curse you foul beasties!”

“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” a voice suddenly says.

“Ahh!” I scream, but I don’t flip the pan off the stove or send eggs flying across the room. The mess is contained. Go me. However, I do angle around and find Patrick leaning against the fridge. He came in here so silently, and now he’s standing only a few feet away. I never even heard a thing.

He’s rocking black again. Black jeans, black Henley. He’s done the vintage hair-sweep thing again, but he’s…oh. His beard. It’s not so overgrown and bushy today. He trimmed it down, and with the extra gone, it gives his face an entirely different look.

He still glowers like a classic grumpy pants, but I can see more of his face now. The trimming changed the shape of it. His face looks harder along the angles of his jaw, where the facial hair is now neatly level. It’s still a beard, just trimmed within literally about a quarter inch of its life, but even though his jaw is squared off, angular, and defined, he doesn’t look so scary. Maybe I’m just getting used to him.

That glower of his sends a shiver through me that ends right between my legs.

What the nuts? I didn’t just think that.

I didn’t find this man attractive in the least when I first saw him, but maybe I was just getting over my surprise at him being nothing like I thought he would be and looking nothing like I thought he would. I did say he has an interesting face, and that’s still true. I want to keep looking at him. And looking. And—

“I think your eggs are turning to char.”

“Frick!” Yup, he’s right. They’re burnt. Exceptionally burnt. It only took a few extra seconds of me not paying attention for them to burn. This gas thing is hecking potent.

I turn the burner down. The flames seem to go nowhere and are just as hungry for the pan. Hmphf. Whatever. I’m going to try again. I’m stubborn like that.

“How do you like your eggs?” I ask.

“Just like that,” he replies.

“No.” I was going to locate the trash can and feed it the eggs. I hate wasting, but these aren’t edible.

“Yes. Please.”

“You don’t have to take one for the team,” I say firmly.

He lifts a shoulder in a shrug, walks over to the impressive fridge, and finds the hot sauce. The bottle gets a hard shake before he sets it down on the concrete top next to the plates I set out. “Food is food. I don’t care much about what it tastes like. It’s only to fill a void.”

“Oh, you’re one of those. Is that from a long force of habit, your training, or the way you actually feel about eating?”

He looks surprised for all of a nanosecond before the glower returns, obscuring whatever he might be feeling. I’ve already learned that with myhusband,the less emotion he feels, the better he thinks it is.

“I’ll eat them,” he says insistently.

“Let me cook you something else too. To make up for that. They’re nasty.”

The fridge doesn’t have much in it. Just a package of steaks, a head of lettuce, a few peppers, a cucumber, and a thing of strawberries in the crisper. Then, a loaf of sliced bread on the top shelf, a gallon of milk near the back, a few sauces in the door, and a thing of orange juice there too. I’ve already pulled out the carton of eggs.

Patrick pulls out the loaf of bread, sniffs it, does that shrugging thing again, and throws two slices into the stainless steel retro toaster on the counter.

I finally scrape the nasty eggs onto a plate since he’s not going to let me waste them—I don’t want to argue over it—and crack two fresh ones in. I have the heat lower this time. If I break the yolks, I’ll eat them scrambled, but I’m not going to burn them.

Just then, the toaster pops up, and the toast gets tossed onto the plate. It’s not even another second before Patrick sets to work on it, shoveling hot-sauce-coated eggs into his mouth like there isn’t going to be another chance to eat burned eggs and super dry toast ever again.

There isn’t any yolk to sop up, but he cleans the plate of the hot sauce with a piece of crust.

I swear he’s done in less than three seconds.

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