Page 77 of One Bride for Three Single Dads

Have I already let her down like that?

“It’s just gossip,” I murmur, not quite as convincingly as I wish I would. “Guys talk shit all the time. It’s not a big deal.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a big deal to me,” he declares, then stalks out of the room in a huff.

Chapter 33

JOLENE

The people who set up the cottage were nice enough to stock the refrigerator and cabinets for us. In fact, there is a deep freeze behind the kitchen that I discovered on the second day. It held all kinds of exciting, foil-wrapped parcels. Premade casseroles of mysterious origin. I was determined to try them all.

Ovens in Ireland are not in Fahrenheit. I also discovered that on the second day. Now I have gotten accustomed to using my cell phone to translate directions and recipes into American-style. Things get weighed here. Milliliters and grams and things like that. Temperature is in Celsius.

Still, hot is still hot, no matter where you go.

I don’t know what we have been eating, precisely, but it has been pretty good. The first week, the guys went back to the general store and got a few cases of beer and wine. We put the beer in the refrigerator, because there are some things that we just can’t change about ourselves.

I think there are many variations on shepherd’s pie. That’s the one that has mashed potatoes on top, and stew on the bottom. I don’t know what’s in the stew. It could be beef. But it could be lamb, I guess.

And yet, I know that they have been waiting for me to cook.

Which I have avoided doing, all these months.

When I first started working for them, it was just coincidental. Order a pizza here. Order Chinese food there.

And then, I started to get nervous. So I branched out into “assembling” food. Finger foods. Heating things up.

But cooking, in my mind, means more than just popping something out of a box and into an oven or sauté pan. You have to chop things. Maybe prepare things. Maybe create a dough of some kind from scratch or a sauce, even.

That, I have not done.

The most complicated thing that I have done is make spaghetti for the kids. That’s one jar, one box, and one plastic tub full of grated Parmesan cheese.

Easy.

Today is our two-month anniversary. The job is going really well. The guys are really pleased with the Irish crew they put together. They are really pleased with me. Aside from Alexis feeling progressively more homesick by the day, everything is going really, really well.

So, yeah, I should cook something, right?

Throw a new monkey wrench into the whole thing!

Why not?

In the middle of the afternoon, Cole goes down for his nap at the same time as Harmony. Afterward, I find Alexis standing by the front window and sidle up beside her.

“Looking at the ocean, are we?”

She sighs. “It’s different every day,” she observes profoundly.

I stare at it for a few moments. She has a point. Today I can actually make out the line of the horizon. Usually it’s just a blur, but today it is a thin gray line.

“I’m considering cooking dinner.”

She casts me a sly, sidelong look. “I think we are out of frozen casseroles,” she carefully informs me.

“I’m considering cooking dinner… from scratch.”

From her silence, I can tell that she has already realized I have avoided doing this. Or maybe her mother said something about it. Amber is observant like that too.

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