Silence descends for a moment before I catch her gaze out of the corner of my eye, and then, in unison, we burst out laughing. Her face lights up as she covers her flaming red cheeks, and the knots in my stomach begin to unravel at the sound of her happy voice again. It gives me hope that we can move past the whole Friday night disaster and get back to normal.
“A for effort, Cozy.” I sigh, lifting my bottle of water up to her in a mock toast.
Her smiling eyes fall, and she blinks quickly before moving into a standing position.
“Where are you going?” I ask, looking up at her and trying not to stare at her legs.
She tugs on one of her braids and stammers, “To check on Everly.”
“I can do that.” I set my water down and stand.
“It’s my job, Mr. Fletcher,” she says crisply and then takes off, leaving me standing alone with the poisoned potato salad.
The scent of charred wood makes me horny.
Which is problematic because a large part of my charcuterie board design technique is to torch my boards with a weed burner. Burning helps the natural grain of the wood pop out, achieving a unique zebra stripe appearance to the boards once they’re finished. I used to use a smaller flame torch, but it would take me hours and I’d be dripping in sweat with cramps from hunching over by the time I was done. This torch has a three-foot pole and much larger flame, so it’s cut my burning time in half.
Plus, I feel like a badass when I’m operating it.
Who knew all that time I spent taking college courses as a young teenager would result in me finding my passion for making charcuterie boards of all things? Skills I achieved from doing 4-H projects with my father on the farm, not taught by a professor in a college lecture hall.
When I was a kid, my dad and I did all sorts of woodworking projects in the machine shed. Various shelves, cutting boards, benches, and stools. Some cheesy decorative items like snowmen and American flags that my mom still displays proudly in her home. We would enter them as 4-H projects in the county fair, and I’d always earn a blue ribbon and oftentimes, best of show.
My sister was the girlie daughter. She enjoyed baking and cooking with Mom, so her 4-H projects would be of the consumable variety.
In hindsight, I should have had a better balance between woodworking and kitchen projects because the putrid look on Max’s face when he sampled my potato salad earlier this week is burned into my memory. And the moment I realized that we were bonding over my failed attempt at a classic salad is when I knew I’d failed miserably at Dakota’s plan for me.
“Be aloof. Be unavailable. Don’t say much to him.”
Ugh, I should have gone to the coffee shop like I planned. But when Everly turned those baby blue eyes on me, I couldn’t say no. Plus, Max’s entire office was drenched in his intoxicating scent, and I could barely form a coherent thought, let alone come up with an excuse for why I shouldn’t go with them on their picnic.
Heavy sigh.
I’ve done a better job the rest of the week at avoiding him and acting indifferent. I even declined a dinner invite from him last night when Michael made too much homemade pasta. Saying no to fresh pasta about killed me. But I was in survival mode after what I had witnessed the other night.
When I stumbled upon Max…chopping wood.
Yep. That’s right. The millionaire really did chop his own wood. It wasn’t total bullshit. I nearly dropped my bag full of dill pickles that I had just picked up from the grocery store when I caught sight of him down by the creek. He was dressed in jeans and a flannel, even though it was a warm summer night. He had clear safety goggles on and was working in front of a large tree stump situated beside a log rack with rows and rows of freshly chopped wood.
I watched in awe as he bent over to pick up a giant log that looked much too heavy to manhandle. He grunted as he set it on his chopping station. Then he picked up the axe propped on a nearby tree, spread his legs, and inhaled a huge breath before winding the axe back and crashing it down on top of the wood.
I nearly came on the spot.
He would mumble curse words for every log that didn’t split open on the first swing. I know because I stood there watching for far longer than was appropriate. It was like a lumberjack fantasy and a Zaddy fantasy were having dirty sex in my brain, and I couldn’t walk away until they both had their happy ending.
He stacked the freshly chopped wood up in a wheelbarrow, and when he propped the axe up on the tree and bent over to push the wheelbarrow up to the house, he caught me standing there, staring at him.
I nearly tripped on my feet as I hurried off to my tiny house with my pickle jars clanking in my bag like a disgusting pervert who got off watching her boss swing an axe.