Page 64 of My Wife
His lips part and he gets to his feet. “Oh, that’s how you want to play?”
“I didn’t mean it. The words just kind of slipped?—”
He stalks toward me, eyes heavy.
Flustered, I answer his question, “When I was a kid, there was rarely enough food. My mother left one day and all I had was a half-empty jar of peanut butter. I was five. Never saw her again.”
He abruptly goes still.
“At fifteen, I got a job at the All Ears Diner & Fuel Station.”
“By the highway?”
“I met Grandma Dolly there.”
“Like your grandmother would come in and?—?”
“No, that’s where we met for the first time.”
His expression sharpens as if he senses there’s more to the story.
“I knew how to sign because, when I was eleven, the family I lived with had a daughter who was Deaf. I learned fast and it stuck with me, I guess.” I rub the back of my leg with the top of my foot because this conversation makes my skin itchy.
“Was the Bundt Dolly’s favorite?”
“No, she only ever ordered coffee. But we connected. I’d go to her house and she’d teach me how to bake and cook. Always said a gal needs to know how to feed herself and her family—her husband had passed away earlier that year.”
“Funny, my grandmother says that too … and she’s a widow.”
I cannot imagine this man having a family other than a pack of wolves, though Pierre commented that he has siblings.
“Now, I mostly read cooking blogs and plan a dream that will never come true—to become an actress.”
“How does that relate to food blogs?”
“Baking is a lot like building a road to Hollywood, step by step—even though that was a big, fat, bust.”
“What happened to Mrs. Hyper Positivity?”
“Miss.”
With a lift of his eyebrow, he seems to register this detail of my singlehood and logs it for later. “When do you have time for this blog reading and daydreaming?”
“When I can’t sleep which is almost always.”
“But you don’t cook much?”
It almost feels like we’re having a normal conversation with a side of subtext. “Rexlan preferred pizza rolls and not the homemade ones, which I perfected, I might add.”
“Whoever Rexlan is has terrible taste.”
“You don’t know that.” I’m not sure why I’m jumping to my ex’s defense.
Liam captures my gaze. “I’d try them and guarantee I’d like them.”
I roll my eyes because if nothing else this man is a contrarian.
Eager to change the subject, I say, “Tell me how you became captain.”
