Page 69 of His Tenth Dance

Kristie stood in his small kitchen, taking up nearly the whole alleyway between the sink and the island. As she turned from the sink with a mug in her hand, she said, “I saw you had chicken broth, and I thought it would be okay if I made some.”

“Of course it’s okay.” He smiled at her. “But this from a woman who won’t eat hot desserts in the summer?”

She’d told him she was a seasonal eater and baker, and that her friends often teased her about it.

“It feels really cold and dark outside,” she said, turning back to the window.

“It’s July,” he reminded her. “And we’ve been really busy on the farm lately, so I don’t have much in the way of gourmet groceries.”

“Anything is fine,” Kristie said, as he pulled open the fridge to once again consider his options.

He did have a roll of breakfast sausage that he could fry up—after he thawed it. It had come from his freezer and one of the pigs that Travis and Poppy had raised last year. But he’d made breakfast sandwiches for Kristie before, and he didn’t want to be pigeonholed.

Ridiculous, maybe, but how Mission felt nonetheless.

“I have a few frozen meals,” he said. “Spaghetti and meatballs, meatloaf, a lasagna. And I’ve got bread, so I could toast up some garlic bread.”

Sometimes work on the farm simply wiped Mission out, and he didn’t feel like cooking when he got home. To be honest, Mission felt like that most days. But since he’d started dating Kristie, he’d been eating less out of his freezer and more at restaurants—or whatever she brought him when she came over in the evenings.

“Let’s just do that,” Kristie said. “It doesn’t have to be a big thing.”

Mission got out four or five freezer meals and set them on the island in front of her. “Pick the one you want, and I’ll get the broiler going.”

He turned back to the stove to do that, then pulled out his Texas toast and a stick of butter. He grabbed his jarlic, garlic salt, and garlic powder. Kristie picked up a couple of the boxes and actually turned them over to read the back, but in the end, she still picked the spaghetti and meatballs.

“What have you got going on there?” she asked as Mission used the back of a spoon to mash the pre-chopped garlic, a littlebit of juice from the jar, garlic salt, and garlic powder all together into buttery deliciousness that he would spread onto the toast.

“Garlic butter,” he said.

She picked up the jarred garlic—jarlic—and looked from it to him, raising her eyebrows. “I’m surprised you use such a convenience item.”

“Oh, you are?” he teased. “Well, I haven’t been to culinary school, Miss Higgins, so you’ll pardon me if I use jarred garlic. It saves a lot of time, and it’s always good when you pull it out of the fridge.”

“I didn’t go to culinary school either,” she said, giving him a pointed look as she turned around.

Mission used the spoon to spread copious amounts of garlic butter on each piece of toast, then slid the tray into the oven. He ripped open her spaghetti and meatballs and stuck it in the microwave.

“What’s everyone else entering into the baking contest?” he asked.

Kristie sighed as she sank onto a barstool and lifted her chicken broth to her lips. “I don’t know…Lennie will do something eccentric—she likes to experiment in the kitchen.”

“Jocelyn’s will be a cake, I’m assuming,” Mission said. Kristie had told him that Jocelyn wanted to learn about and bake every type of cake there was and then enter a televised baking competition.

“Of course,” Kristie said, wrapping her fingers around her mug as if to warm them. “Harper sometimes surprises us,” she added. “But she’s busy and her desserts are definitely on the scaled up end of normal.”

She settled into silence, then got up and turned her back on him. “I’m just hoping I can keep up with them,” she said as she strolled over to the front window and looked out.

Mission sensed the vulnerability in her and heard the insecurity in her tone. “Let’s say you don’t,” he said, causing Kristie to whip back to him. “Just go with me.”

He prayed she would, for long enough to understand where he was coming from. “Let’s just say you don’t win anything. Let’s say we show up at the State Fair, and we’re wandering around the baked goods section…”

A small smile came to Kristie’s mouth, and Mission tilted his head. “Oh, is it not the baking section?”

“The Pantry has all kinds of things,” Kristie said. “Canned goods, jams, honeys, even homemade soaps and ointments. But the King Arthur Baking Company competition is in their own building.”

“Okay, great,” Mission said. “And let’s say we’re in that building, walking around, looking at all the desserts with ten words to describe them, and we get to yours….” He raised his eyebrows, just to check to make sure she’d come on this mental journey with him.

She folded her arms and cocked her hip, clearly with him.

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