Page 180 of Taming the Beasts
“You want to catch some of the game?” Otto asked Callum. He turned to me. “Unless you girls need some help in here?”
“No, we’re good,” I said and shooed them out of the kitchen. I wanted to prepare the perfect feast for them. I checked the temperature of the turkey and pulled it out of the oven so it could start resting.
I turned to Emma as she plopped a whole stick of butter into the potatoes. “How is my favorite girl?” I asked.
“I’m doing okay,” Emma said.
I laughed. “You know I’m talking about the baby.” I put my hands on her stomach and smiled when I immediately got kicked. That kid loved me.
“We don’t know if it’s a girl.”
“It’s definitely a girl,” I said. “And I know that you looked at the gender reveal card and you’re just not telling me.
She smiled. “We haven’t looked, I swear. We want it to be a surprise. Like how it would have been in the 1700s.”
“I read that some babies were fed directly from a goat’s udders back then. And you can give it a diaper made of moss.”
“Ew, what? To both of those things.”
“And since you’re keeping things old-fashioned, are you also going to hire a wet nurse? I’m pretty sure they were quite common back then.”
“No.”
“I mentioned it to Otto the other day and he’s been going around talking about boob nannies ever since.”
Emma laughed. “Well you can tell Otto I’m not planning on hiring a boob nanny. Where does he come up with this stuff?”
I shrugged. “No idea.” But he always made me laugh.
The twins walked into the kitchen.
“Do you lovely ladies need some help in here?” Ace asked.
“I think we got it covered,” I said. I was just waiting for the turkey to rest and a few sides to finish in the oven. “Have you heard from Grudge and Kebe? Dinner will be ready really soon. Where are they?”
“Grudge just texted,” Huxley said. “They’ll be here any minute. Apparently they had some issues with their side dish.”
Ace walked over to the stove. “This smells so good.” He put his arm around me and lightly nipped at my earlobe.
God, all my boyfriends were so distracting today. Luckily everything was pretty much done.
Kebe and Grudge walked into the kitchen just as Emma finished the mashed potatoes and I pulled out the biscuits from the oven.
“Sorry we’re late,” Grudge said. “She tried to bring raw tubers and we had to pivot at the last minute.” He slid into a stool at the kitchen island. “What’s up, hot stuff?”
I ignored his last comment. Kebe and Grudge had been dating for a year now. But it was only fair that Grudge still said stuff like that to me because Kebe still flirted with Callum and Huxley way too much. But what the heck had he just said about raw tubers?
“Excuse me?” I asked. “What the heck is a tuber?”
“Potatoes is what people call them these days,” Kebe said. “Oh, I see that you cooked your tubers. That works too, I guess.”
Who the hell ate raw potatoes? “So what did you bring?” I asked and stared warily at the bread pan covered in foil.
“I made a loaf of bread from ground papyrus flour.”
“Isn’t papyrus...like...paper?” Emma asked.
Kebe waved her hand through the air. “Yeah but parts of papyrus are edible too. You’ll see. Because it’s in the loaf.”
