Page 84 of So Steady

“Twenty-eight,” she said with all the dignity she could muster.

Noah laughed. He laughed and laughed and banged the steering wheel.

“Are you done?” she said, trying and failing not to smile.

“Almost.” He rubbed his eyes. “The impressive part was you didn’t throw up afterward.”

“It was sheer spite, Sam said I was going to, so I didn’t. I did feel sick for about a week, though.”

Noah gave a loud, contented sigh. “Great story.”

She rolled her eyes. “Thanks. What about you? What’s your worst teenage drinking story?”

He glanced across at her and she knew she’d trodden on a landmine. While she was staining her teeth burgundy with boxed wine, he’d been a fully patched member of a bikie gang. She doubted his worst drinking story was one he wanted to tell. Or one she wanted to hear.

“Sorry.”

“S’okay.” His eyes were fixed on the road. The air between them had crystalized slightly.

Nicole cast around for a different subject. “Do you cook? Like dinner?”

His smile returned. “Yeah.”

“Really? What do you make?”

He shrugged. “Stir-fries, curry. I do pretty good lasagne.”

“Really?” She was amazed. She hadn’t expected him to say yes, let alone mention lasagne. “Who taught you to cook? Your mum?”

His mouth twisted and she could have slapped herself. She’d just stepped on the same ‘Noah’s family was heavily involved in a bikie gang, he did not have a conventional childhood’ landmine again.

“Forget it. I don’t know why I said that. My mum didn’t teach me to cook. She left when we were little, but even when she was home, she never made anything. Dad cooked.”

She could feel Noah watching her and she kept her eyes on the road.

“I taught myself to cook,” he said. “I had to.”

Something in his voice tugged at her heart like a balloon string. “Because no one cooked for you?”

“Because I had scurvy.”

“What?”

He smiled. “I had scurvy. Like what pirates get.”

“What? How?”

“We only had toast at home; pizza, and fish and chips at the clubhouse. When I was twelve, all my teeth started coming loose and I had a headache all the time. I went to the doctor and he told me I had scurvy.”

Nicole gasped. “No!”

He grinned and extended his left forearm toward her. She saw the tattoo that took up the greatest part of the skin was a mottled black pirate ship. “Secret’s out.”

“What did you do?”

“Doctor told me to eat vegetables, so I did. Raw ‘til I figured out how to cook them. Wasn’t too hard.”

Nicole couldn’t smile, she was still too horrified. “What did your parents say?”

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