Page 21 of The Workaholic Down the Hall

I sniffed and glared at him, but I got some joy from the fact that he was shivering and his cheeks were red. I turned back to the mountains and just sat, listening to the breeze through the trees and smelling the fall scents. Someone was burning leaves somewhere and the acrid scent made me feel a bit warmer. The sun hit the top of the mountains and began to lower behind them. I couldn't look directly at it, of course, but it was pretty, sinking in a pink sky.

“Oh, fuck it,” Noah said. “I'm freezing.”

I expected him to get up and head back inside. Instead, he picked me up and set me on his lap like I was a china doll and not a super-sized pregnant woman. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me tight against him. “That's better,” he said.

“That can't be comfortable. I weigh a ton.”

“It's perfect.” His voice was soft, awe struck.

I watched the sunset in silence, snuggled against him, breathing in his scent along with the outdoor smells, and I pretended just for a moment that this was real, that he was mine, and that he'd never leave me. Never leave us.

But the moment did end, the sun sank, and we went back inside. I felt lighter, peaceful, and I didn't feel the need to say anything. I sat back at the kitchen table and enjoyed the moment as Noah rattled around and put together some sort of dinner.

“How do you feel about baked ziti?” he asked.

“That sounds great.” Really, anything I didn't have to cook sounded wonderful. “Do you need help?” Of course, I was just being polite, and was relieved when he assured me he didn't need help.

Once the food was in the oven, he sat next to me. “That felt like a lot of work for a day of doing nothing.”

“We have to eat,” I said. “If it were left up to me, we'd have spaghetti with sauce from a jar.”

He grimaced. “That would have been a heck of a lot easier. Too bad we can't get take-out here like we can in Atlanta.”

There were take-out menus in a drawer near the fridge, but he was right, it wasn't the same. Catalpa Creek didn't offer the array of choices and the ease we had for take-out in Atlanta. “I'm not even sure all the restaurants will deliver this far out of town.”

He raised his brows. “How far out of town are we?”

“About fifteen miles.”

“Why'd you choose to submit yourself to my mother's crazy?” he asked. “Didn't your family want you close to them?”

I sighed. “Mimi is really my only family. My parents died when I was a kid.” I saw the pity in his eyes and hurried to tell him the rest. “I was lucky. I have a huge family, so I never had to go into the foster care system.”

“But you don't keep in touch with any of them?”

I shrugged, wishing for a subject change, an escape, but there was nothing and nowhere to go. I didn't talk about my family, not ever, not to anyone. I liked to pretend it was in the past, that I was a different person now, that I didn't need them and never had. “I keep in touch. I send Christmas cards. Mimi is the only one I've been really close to. The rest of my family…There are a lot of them, but none of them have much money. I was another mouth to feed, another kid to make Christmas tighter. I never stayed with one relative too long, before another found some room for me. Luckily, they're a pretty tight knit bunch, all living in Atlanta or close by, so I didn't have to change schools too often.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't know.”

I shrugged. “It's nothing to be sorry about. I know how lucky I was, how much worse it could have been. I'm grateful to every one of them for taking me in and taking care of me, I never went without anything I needed. I just…Well, I want more for our daughter. I adore Nora and May, Cody and Carrie. When Nora offered me the job, offered to help with the baby, I couldn't turn her down. And I love it here. I love your mother, even if she does drive me crazy most of the time and probably should be moved into a home for kidnapping us.”

Noah laughed, but it sounded a bit forced. Luckily, the timer on the oven dinged. He leapt up and pulled out the ziti. He dished it onto plates for each of us.

The ziti didn't look quite like anything I'd eaten before, but it smelled good and was steaming warm. I stuck my fork in and lifted it to my mouth, blowing on it to cool it. I shoved it in, starving, and bit down on something hard and sharp. I was so stunned, I spit it out. “Ouch.”

Noah was making a face and crunching away. “It's kind of crunchy, isn't it?”

Using my fork, I sifted through the casserole on my plate. “Um, Noah, did you cook the noodles?”

He finally gave up and spit his food onto his plate. “They cooked in the oven.”

I laughed until my sides hurt and the confused, slightly injured look on Noah's face just made me laugh harder. It felt so good to laugh, I may have laughed a little louder and longer than strictly necessary. “You have to cook the noodles before you put them in the oven.” Even I knew that, and I never cooked unless I had to.

“Why would I do that? Don't they get cooked in the oven?”

“Please tell me you at least cooked the meat first?”

He blanched. “I swear the recipe didn't say I had to cook anything first.”

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