Page 57 of Love Off-Limits
Mom bustled back into the kitchen, a basket piled with individually wrapped sandwiches swinging over her arm. “All right, who’s hungry?”
Tyler cleared his throat, and I wondered if he had the same lump forming in his that I had in mine. “I could eat,” he said.
“You can always eat,” I said.
He grinned as he filled the last segment of the final tray. “True.” He pushed the tray forward. “There. I think that’s the last of it.”
Mom nodded. “Bless y’all’s hearts. That’s the most tedious part of the whole process.”
“Why do you freeze the milk?” Tyler asked as he steadily moved the oversized trays back into the freezer, his long arms making the task look easy.
“If you don’t, the lye will scorch it,” Mom said. She handed us our sandwiches—she really did bring Tyler two—and set one to the side. “We can eat in here if that’s all right. Your father and Penelope are taking a little mid-morning nap and I don’t want to disturb them.” She held out a couple of single-serve bottles of orange juice.
“Wow, thanks,” Tyler said, appreciation clear in his tone. Which was pretty typical. Mom was very good at blowing people away with her open-hearted hospitality.
Tyler took a bite of his sandwich and groaned. “Oh, man. This is delicious.”
Mom beamed. “I’m glad you like it.”
“I don’t understand,” Tyler continued after another enormous bite. “The lye burns the milk?”
“Not necessarily, but it increases the temperature,” I explained. “If you start with frozen milk, it warms up to a hundred degrees or so. But if it’s any warmer than that, room temperature, or even fridge-cold, it’ll heat up too much and burn.”
“And don’t forget the stirring,” Mom added. “That’s the other thing you have to do. Stir the entire time.”
I finished my breakfast sandwich while Mom continued her explanation. Only she could turn typically boring facts about lye and saponification into full-scale entertainment, though for all I knew, Tyler was bored out of his mind and was just really good at pretending. Either way, he was giving my mother his undivided attention. And I loved that. The way he laughed with her. Responded to her questions. Nodded like he was fully engaged.
His eyes darted to mine more than once, pulling a grin from me each time.
Seeing Tyler all over the farm with Penelope on his heels was adorable. And seeing Tylershirtlesswith Penelope in his arms was straight-up sexy.
But this was different. This was Tyler interacting with someone I loved. Making her feel seen. Validating her interests. Her talents.
He was a good man. A great one, even.
Try as I might to keep a level head, to keep myself from falling into the deep brown of his eyes every time he looked my direction, I was beginning to feel utterly powerless to resist him.
Chapter Sixteen
Olivia
Dad woke up a few minutes later, and Mom left to help him with his breakfast and check on Penelope while Tyler and I got started on the soap.
With my hands hidden in thick rubber gloves that reached all the way up to my elbows and safety glasses over my eyes, I sprinkled the lye over the frozen goat’s milk, then stirred while it dissolved. A lock of hair fell into my face, and I tried to blow it out of the way only to have it fall right back over my cheek.
Tyler’s hands were suddenly over my shoulders, collecting my hair and pulling it into a ponytail. I stilled as his fingers brushed over my neck, goosebumps erupting over my skin.
“Do you have a hair tie?” he said softly, his voice close to my ear.
I swallowed.Focus, Olivia.He’d asked me a question. We were talking about...hair. Hair ties.Right.I glanced at my wrists, fully covered by the gloves. That’s normally where a hair tie would be if I had one. Except, this morning I’d grabbed a new one that was a little snug on my wrist. I’d taken it off andslipped it into my back pocket. Lucky, since there was no way to retrieve one off my actual wrist.
Maybe not so lucky because Mom was across the hall with Dad, so unless I wanted Tyler to just stand there and hold my hair which, on second thought, wasn’t actually a terrible prospect, I was going to have to ask him to stick his hand in my pocket.
“Um, I do have one. But it’s in my back pocket.”
“Right or left?” he asked without missing a beat.
“Right, I think? Whichever one doesn’t have my phone in it?”
