The Affair

by J. L. Berg

  Taking a seat at the kitchen table, I wrapped my arms around my chest and shrugged. “Um, bad news?”

  With a quick smile, he replied, “How did I know you’d opt for the bad news first?”

  “Because I’m such an optimistic person?”

  He laughed. “You are definitely a half-empty sort of girl, aren’t you?”

  He wasn’t wrong.

  “What is your bad news, Sawyer?” I asked, needing him to get to the point.

  Sitting down beside me, he leaned back in the chair, his large body seeming to completely dwarf the wood chair. “I ran into Reed in town.”

  “Okay,” I said, not quite getting why this was bad news.

  “I ran into him outside the grocery store, driving your car.”

  Our eyes met, and suddenly, everything made sense.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “If he wasn’t a hundred percent convinced we were sleeping together before, I’m pretty sure that just sealed it for him.”

  “Did you explain?” I asked, feeling that same rush of panic I’d experienced at the store when Reed showed up.

  “He didn’t exactly give me time.”

  Taking a deep breath, I let it out, giving it all a second to settle.

  “It’s fine,” I finally said. “It doesn’t really matter what he thinks.”

  He seemed surprised by my answer and the truth behind my words. “Are you sure? Last time—”

  “Last time, he caught me off guard, and I reacted poorly,” I said before adding, “I’m sorry. It was wrong of me. I told you when you started at the store that my past with Reed wouldn’t affect what happened between you and me—and I meant it.”

  I swore, in that moment, you could hear a pin drop as I waited for him to react.

  “Well, okay then,” he replied, a megawatt smile plastered across his face. “Unfortunately, that’s not all.”

  My eyes widened as I prepared for the worst.

  “I didn’t get pizza,” he confessed, his face showing his failure. “All three were swamped, it being the World Series and all.”

  “Oh,” I replied. “Right.”

  Honestly, I’d had no idea. Reed used to care about those sorts of things—sports and teams—and when we split, I hadn’t given any of it a single second of my time.

  I counted it as a serious benefit. I hated sports.

  “That’s okay,” I finally answered. “I’ve honestly had my fill of pizza this week.”

  That wasn’t a lie. Not only were the pizza delivery guy and I on a first-name basis, I was well on my way to single-handedly funding his entire college career.

  “Okay, good. Because I thought maybe I could make you something? Nothing fancy, but it will be better than pizza, I can promise that.” His voice was hesitant again, and I was starting to like this shy side of him.

  “Yeah, that would be great,” I answered, trying to downplay my enthusiasm.

  “Great!” he echoed me, a slight grin tugging at his jawline. “Well then, I think we can move on to the good news.”

  Breathing a sigh of relief, I answered, “Good. I could use some of that. That journal is a doozy—”

  He held out his hands, stopping me. “Nope, none of that yet. Good news, remember?”

  “Right. What do you have for me?”

  He smiled, rising from his seat. “Remember when you went on and on yesterday about your nana’s oatmeal raisin cookies?”

  My head tilted to the side, my expression amused. “I don’t think I exactly went on and on about it.”

  His grin widened. “Oh, you did,” he argued. “It was quite the affirmation of love. I didn’t know someone could be that smitten with a cookie.”

  Rolling my eyes, I said, “Anyway, and?”

  “And …” he said, drawing out the suspense as he reached toward his back pocket, pulling out a folded piece of paper. I couldn’t tell what it was, but he began to mischievously wave it in front of me. “I just so happened to get a recipe from your aunt yesterday, and I thought maybe, if you’re feeling up to it, we could test it out?”

  “Wait, what? How?” My mind was spinning again, but this time, it had nothing to do with the flu. “She had the recipe? How? I thought it was lost! And you called my aunt?”

  I was putting Sawyer to shame with all these questions.

  “I called her while you were sleeping. I might have stolen your phone for a moment or two to grab the number.”

  I thought he was waiting for me to get mad, but honestly, I was still so focused on the cookie recipe that he could have told me he’d broken into my underwear drawer to get the phone number, and I probably wouldn’t have flinched.

  He continued explaining, “I was reading your nana’s journal entries last night and couldn’t stop thinking about those recipes. I mean, she does mention those cookies a time or two, you know?”

  I smiled fondly. “Yeah.”

  “So, I got to thinking, maybe you weren’t the only one in the family with a hankering.”

  “Did you just say the word hankering?”

  “Yeah,” he answered. “It’s a real word.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think it is.”

  “Anyway,” he went on, mimicking my use of the word just moments earlier, “I called her and asked, and wouldn’t you know? She missed the cookies just like you. But unlike you, she’s actually been trying to replicate them all these years, and she believes she’s pretty damn close. So, you want to make them or what?”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I went with the first thing that came to mind. “Yes.”

  “Great,” he said before adding, “But I hope you know that since you’re still recovering from the flu, most of this will actually done by me while you sit your ass in that chair over there.”

  Folding my arms across my chest, I made a pout with my lips—something that didn’t seem to faze him in the least because his arm stretched toward the chair. “No one wants influenza in their cookies, darling. Sorry.”

  A little flutter danced through my belly. Had he meant to call me that? Looking back, he neither acknowledged nor showed any signs he even realized he’d said it.

  So, I guessed neither would I.

  But it wouldn’t stop me from thinking about it over and over again.

  I had known Sawyer was a good cook. That amazing meal he’d made and brought to the store had proven it, and I’d spent a good amount of time dreaming of it while I subsisted on leftovers.

  Based on this knowledge of said cooking skills, I figured he’d be a whiz in the kitchen—one of those guys who could making dicing a carrot somehow look erotic.

  But as he began to fumble around the small space, I quickly learned something new and quite interesting about the man.

  Baking and cooking were two very different things, and as it turned out, Sawyer could only do one well.

  “Do you need help?” I asked after a cookie sheet came crashing to the floor.

  “Nope!” he declared. “I’ve got it all taken care of!”

  My brow rose as my eyes widened. He really was bad at this. “At some point, aren’t you supposed to preheat the oven?”

  “Shit!” He swiveled around, turning toward the very cold oven. A plume of white flour followed him.

  Has he even measured the flour yet? Where did that come from?

  Walking to the appliance in question, he flipped it on, and turned to me. “I’m sorry. I forgot to mention, I’m actually really terrible at this sort of thing.”

  “I can definitely tell that.” How could possibly like him more after learning this little tidbit of information. “How is it that you can cook so well but bake so badly?”

  His shoulders lifted. “I don’t know. Cooking has always come easy to me, but I think that’s maybe it’s because it’s a little less stringent. You can make a lot of dishes by sort of following a recipe—it’s your guide, more or less. But with baking, there are rules, you know?”

  I smiled. “You�
��re intimidated by baking?”

  “Yeah,” he answered. “Maybe a little.”

  “So, why did you suggest this? Why put yourself through the torture?”

  “That memory you described, the one with your grandma? There was such joy in your voice, such a sense of happiness in that one moment in time.” A second passed as his eyes met mine. “I guess I selfishly wanted to be part of that.”

  I just shook my head. “I don’t think anything you do, Sawyer Gallagher, is selfish.”

  He shrugged. “Well, I did pick up chocolate chips to throw into half the batch, so this might be a little selfish.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “I think we could allow that adjustment to the original recipe,” I said. “But only if you agree to try one with the raisins.”

  Leaning against the counter like he was at home here, he nodded. “Deal.”

  “Now, how about you let me help you?”

  His lips pressed together. “That’s a hard pass. Did you forget the part about you being sick?”

  I gave him a passive stare. “Did you forget the part about me not having a fever anymore? Have you ever heard of a little thing called the twenty-four-hour flu? Besides, the quicker we can get these in the oven, the sooner we can move on to you making dinner. And me eating it.”

  His eyes roamed over my body, but unfortunately, it was not in the way I’d like. “You feel okay otherwise? No dizziness or anything?”

  “I don’t want to go out and run a marathon or anything, but honestly, that’s pretty much my normal everyday attitude toward life, so yeah, I think I’m okay.”

  His expression was doubtful, but finally, he relented. “All right, but stick to the simple things—running the mixer, grabbing things from the pantry. Leave the actual measuring and touching of ingredients to me.”

  “Yes, boss,” I joked. “Now, where is this recipe? I want to see it.”

  He pointed to the countertop over by the fridge. Rising from the chair, I headed over there and got my first look at my aunt’s recipe that he’d jotted down. His handwriting was neat. Slender, stacked letters, all angular in shape that spelled out the ingredients and directions for making the oatmeal cookies. In the corner though, an amount was written, and I couldn’t figure out how it correlated to everything else.

  “What is this numeric value on this side?”

  He jogged over and looked over my shoulder. “Oh, that’s the amount I owe your aunt.”

  “Owe her? For what?”

  “Some shave gel and a moisturizer,” he answered before walking back toward the stove.

  “What? Are you kidding me?” I wasn’t sure if I was livid that she’d swindled yet another person into buying her crap or amazed he’d fallen for it.

  “She was extremely nice, and it saves me a trip to the store.”

  “Because you’re always running out of moisturizer?”

  He grinned, running a hand down his stubbled jaw before giving me a quick wink. “Can’t look this good without a little maintenance.”

  If my cheeks weren’t flushed before, they were now.

  “Do you have the butter?” I asked, my voice slightly high and squeaky, as I tried not to imagine what other kind of maintenance went into that body of his.

  Does he work out? And if so, what and where? Could I watch?

  Is his chest smooth? If I ran my hands all the way down—

  “Are you feeling all right?”

  “What?” I stammered. “Yep, all good! Why?”

  “I pointed to the butter on the counter there, and you didn’t seem to even notice,” he said, motioning to the two sticks of butter literally right next to me. “Are you sure you’re feeling up to this? We could just watch a movie, or I could even leave, so you could take a nap.”

  “Fine,” I said firmly. “I’m totally fine.”

  A grin crept up his mouth as his gaze settled on mine. “Okay. Why don’t you get a mixing bowl for me? I’ve managed to mix up the dry ingredients without destroying the kitchen, but I could use some assistance with the wet.”

  Did he just say wet?

  “Sure,” I said, feeling highly distracted.

  But then again, he’d been a distraction since arriving at my store with his devastating good looks and nonstop charm. Now that he’d made himself right at home in my house, I felt like all my attention was focused on him and how not to rip off his shirt.

  Because that would be bad, I reminded myself.

  Very, very bad.

  Reaching high into the cabinet, I managed to grab a glass mixing bowl and set it down on the counter. Taking a look at the recipe, I tried to keep myself busy, pulling out the rest of the ingredients and setting them on the table.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, curiosity blazing in those green eyes of his.

  “Grabbing everything we need and putting it on the table. Don’t you do that?”

  He chuckled. “No, I’m more of a high-stress, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants type baker. But I can see how this could reduce some of that anxiety I was having.”

  “This was always my job,” I explained. “Grabbing everything from the pantry for my nana. She liked to have it all within arm’s reach. But she had more counter space than we do, so it was a little easier to bake with her.”

  His gaze moved about the kitchen. “You could expand,” he said before quickly amending his words. “In the future.”

  “Actually, that was one thing my mom always wanted—a bigger kitchen—but she never had the money. Everything Mom and Dad made went back to the store or to the two of us, making sure we had money for all of our extracurricular activities and college.”

  “That’s what parents are supposed to do,” he said, and I couldn’t help but notice the dismal tone in his voice.

  It was that missing piece of the puzzle again, the one that I couldn’t figure out, the one I was too afraid to ask. How could two brothers raised in the same house have such different upbringings?

  “Tell me about the journal. I know you were dying to share when I walked in,” he said as we came together, side by side, at the small counter.

  I reached for the eggs and handed them to him, keeping my promise to not actually handle any of the ingredients even though I was feeling perfectly fine. “Oh, um, I haven’t gotten that far into it.”

  “Is it different?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, the writing is way different; it’s like the letter. I don’t know why she didn’t write like that throughout all of her journals. It’s quite lovely.”

  “Maybe she wanted this one to be different,” he offered. “Like the journal itself. Or maybe she wrote differently because she was different. The events had changed her.”

  I wanted to tell him more—about how reading it made me feel, about the details inside—but something stopped me.

  Or someone.

  Discovering who my nana’s secret affair had been with changed things. Not because I didn’t trust Sawyer with the information, but because the story felt too close to home. William wasn’t a neighbor like Aunt Sally had thought.

  Nana had fallen for her brother-in-law while she nursed him back to health.

  My ex-brother-in-law was currently standing in my kitchen, helping me get over the flu.

  Coincidence? Maybe. But for now, that information could just stay between Nana and me until I had a minute or two to process it.

  “Have you thought more about whether you want to tell your mom and aunt?” he asked as he slowly began to crack an egg. It was a painful process to watch.

  “A little, and I’m still unsure. I think once I get through the whole thing, I’ll know better. I feel sort of terrible, like I’m keeping this huge secret from them, but at the same time, I want to protect them. I have a certain image of the kind of man my father was during his life. I’m not sure I’d ever want anyone to change that.”

  “I can respect that,” he responded.

  “Really? What happened to the guy from last night who said the tru
th was the only way?”

  “I guess I realized I’m not the best expert when it comes to family.”

  And why is that, Sawyer? I wanted to ask.

  “I don’t think any of us are.” It was a cop-out. I was a total coward for not asking what I really wanted to know. “I think these are ready for the raisins,” I announced.

  With me supervising, we successfully mixed all the wet and dry ingredients and added the oats.

  “You mean, the chocolate chips?” He grinned.

  “I thought we’d agreed on half and half? Don’t think I’ve forgotten your promise to try one of the originals.”

  “I know; I know. But don’t hate me if I don’t like it.”

  Giving him more sincerity than was necessary, I replied, “I don’t think I could if I tried.” I took a step back to grab the chocolate chips and raisins from the table, and before I could register what was happening, my feet were slipping out from under me.

  Hands locked around my waist, and suddenly, I was in Sawyer’s arms.

  “You okay?” he asked, his body pressed against mine.

  “Mmhmm.” It was all I could manage.

  “I think this might have been my fault,” he said, his gaze turning downward. A light dusting of flour covered the floor, making the otherwise stable linoleum somewhat like an ice rink.

  “Oh,” I blurted out. “That’s okay. You caught me at least.”

  “Yeah.” He smiled, his arms still slightly around me. “I did.”

  I waited for him to step back, to put a safe distance between us, but when he didn’t, my eyes naturally drifted to his lips.

  “What are we doing here, Sawyer?” I breathed out, hoping he’d understand my meaning.

  “Dancing around something we’re both too afraid to act on,” he spoke low, and his voice was filled with an intensity that sent sparks up my spine.

  “I’m not a very good dancer,” I finally said, meeting his gaze.

  I felt his hand tighten around my waist, and his head bent dangerously close to my own.

  “Me either, but I’m willing to take a chance on the right partner.”

  In all the fantasies I’d had over the last month that revolved around this man, none of them measured up to that first kiss.