“It wasn’t too bad. I got curious looks but no questions about Ken. So I feel better about going without him now. How did things go for you last night?” Jolene asked, very casually. But her green eyes bored into Julie’s.
“Well, it probably would have gone better if I hadn’t fallen asleep on the way to the dance club,” she said. She decided not to reveal that the snooze had followed tears, because she didn’t want to tell Jolene just yet about the conversation that had led up to the crying.
“Yikes. You must have worked past that, though,” she said. “It looked like, uh, a successful date when I glanced out.”
“I would say it did get better, yeah.” She took another bite of the tuna noodle. It was good, but they’d been eating a lot of tuna, and the reason why was obvious. All those noodles and one can of tuna made a cheap, filling dish. “And he’s picking me up again any minute. We are going to make a pie.”
“Now that’s a unique date. Going over to his place to make him a pie. And you criticize me for being too traditional? What’s next — making him a quilt?” But she said it in a teasing manner.
“I’ll suggest a quilting bee if we decide to see each other again,” she said. “Or we might darn some socks together. Just depends on how crazy we get.”
“You kids today,” Jolene said. She wasn’t that much older than Julie, but because she had a house and had filled it with kids, she seemed much more mature. “But I’m surprised. You haven’t gone on a single date, to my knowledge, since Derek. Have you?”
“Didn’t have time to. Didn’t want to. Still don’t really have time to, but we’ll see. He snuck in by making me dislike him first. I got to know him without seeing him as a potential date and then liked him by accident.”
“And there was a crying baby to think about.”
“Pretty much. I was forced to get to know him, darn it.”
The doorbell rang and she excused herself and ran to answer it. She didn’t invite him in, because she didn’t want to risk any conversation about jobs with Jolene. She’d figure out a way to tell her later that Nick and Ken worked together. Not today. Today was pie day.
“You look great,” he said.
“Thanks. This is the first time you’ve seen me fully awake,” she said. “I can almost guarantee I won’t fall asleep and drop my face into the pie filling.”
Nick drove to the grocery store closest to his sister’s house. “You’ll have to show me what stuff we need. I pretty much limit my shopping to microwavable junk food I eat in the basement,” he said.
“First question is what kind of pie do you want? Apple?”
“Sure.”
“Solid crust, lattice crust or crumb topping?”
“Um, you know how to do that lattice thing? That would be cool.”
“OK. Do you know if your sister has the basics in her pantry, like flour?”
“No idea.”
“Doesn’t matter. All that stuff is dirt cheap.” They arrived at the grocery store and went straight to the apple display. “Some apples make better pie than others,” she said. “I will always go with a Granny Smith for pie. They don’t mush up and they’re not as overly sweet.” This is something she’d just read online, but she presented it as her own expertise from years of baking.
“We want to use real lard. It’s the secret to flaky crust,” she said, quoting the same site. She thought her mom had always used shortening, but that didn’t seem as authentic.
She directed him to purchase flour, sugar and the rest of the necessary ingredients. It felt nice to shop with him. To anyone else in the store, she thought, they must look like an established couple out doing their weekly shopping.
Back at his sister’s house, they carried in the groceries together, furthering her feeling that they were impersonating a long-term couple. Nick’s sister was nowhere to be seen; Nick said their mother had picked up Patty and the kids and had taken them to her house for the day while Brad had gone into work. “You might think she’d be glad to get out of the house, since we’ve been making her stay in bed. But she’s going to come back ready to scream, I promise you. Mom has been in rare form lately about the next election,” he said.
Under her direction, Nick located the pie pan, mixing bowls, rolling pin and the rest of the equipment they’d need, and she brought up the recipe she referred to as her “favorite” on her phone.
They started by peeling the apples, and she impressed on him the necessity of nice, even slices so they’d all bake at the same rate. They had a competition to see who could peel an apple in one long, continuous peel, but it turned out neither of them could. Julie almost wondered where the hot guy from the previous evening had gone.
At this point, he was funny and a little goofy. If she hadn’t experienced it first-hand, she wouldn’t have believed he was the same guy who, the previous night, had turned her on so much that she might have taken him to bed, if there had been any bed around to take him to. This just felt friendly, and she liked it.
“We should measure these. We need 6 cups,” she said. They scooped the pile into a large-capacity measuring cup.
“Oops,” Nick said. They had far more than they needed.
“No problem. We can eat the rest plain. Or actually, I think if we toss them with lemon juice they’ll keep and you can feed them to Matthew.” She popped one into her mouth and Nick did the same.
“OK, we toss these with the sugar and stuff,” she said. They added the brown sugar, cinnamon, sugar and everything else the recipe called for and Nick mixed it with a big spoon while Julie started clearing a spot for the pastry.
“I’ll just start this part,” she said. “Dry ingredients first, then the lard, and then the water.” She knew how to work the lard into the flour, and she recalled that the water added should be ice-cold, so she passed that fact on, smugly thinking that she sounded like a real expert. Then she realized that the proof would be in the pudding, or, in this case, the pie. If it didn’t taste good, he’d know she was faking it. Better let him do some of it himself, so if it wasn’t as delicious as expected, he might think it was him, not her. She smiled.
“What’s so funny?” Nick had caught her.
“Oh, nothing. Just thinking about … stuff.” She pointed to the flour-lard mixture. “I’m going to let you do this next step. It’s pivotal. You have to sprinkle in half a cup of really cold water, and mix it up, but you can’t overmix it or your pastry won’t be light and flaky. It’ll be tough and heavy.” She handed over the bowl and watched him struggle, the same way she used to struggle with this step when her mother and sister taught her.
“I think it’s going to need a lot more water, or it just isn’t going to mix,” he said.
“It always seems like that, but you can’t add any more flour and you have to mix it as little as you can.
“Well, that’s impossible.”
“Pie is hard,” she said.
Nick did the hair thing and she stared at him.
“What?”
“You did the hair thing. You have flour in your hair now,” she said.
“Pie is hard,” he said. Then he added that the dough was as mixed as it was going to get, so they divided it into two halves and rolled the first half out.
“You don’t want it to stick to the counter because then it’ll be a bitch to get it from the counter into the pan,” she said. “So use whatever flour you need.” He didn’t do too badly, really, she thought. She showed him how to roll the dough around the rolling pin to transfer it over the pie pan. She dumped in all the apples, and then they rolled out the rest of the dough.
“Cut it into nice even strips,” she said. They wove the lattice top together and she showed him how to crimp the edges.
“It looks good,” Nick said, and she agreed. She put it in the oven, set the timer and it was all done but for the baking. She looked around the kitchen, which looked like a bomb had gone off. She realized she was looking forward to kissing him, but they couldn’t leave Pa
tty’s kitchen in this condition. They’d probably need almost as long as it would take to bake to get everything cleaned up.
“You know what comes next,” she said, thinking the answer was obvious.
Nick seemed to have reached a different conclusion. He washed the flour from his hands and wrapped his arms around her in a big clumsy hug.
“I was going to say cleaning the kitchen, but this is better,” she said, nuzzling up to him.
“You want to check out my nanny quarters?” he asked.
“Well, when you put it that way, how can I resist?”
He showed her to the basement. About half of it was being used for an unfinished storage and laundry area, but a finished section had been walled off. He opened the door to a large bedroom with private bath.
“Luxurious accommodations compared to mine,” she said. “A lot more privacy, too.”
His room was far more spacious than her own and included a mini-fridge with a microwave perched on top of it, and a coffee maker perched on top of that, like a bachelor kitchen tower. She walked over and touched it, wondering if he’d invited her down here just to show her his place, or if he had ulterior motives.
“Want me to make you some coffee? I’m prepared, in case you feel like you might go to sleep,” he joked.
So much for ulterior motives, she thought. Maybe he did just want to show her around. Then she felt him come up behind her again. He brushed her hair away from the nape of her neck and warmly kissed her there, making the hairs on her neck rise and her whole body come to attention immediately.
In an instant, everything changed. She turned around and they reached for each other. Extremely aware that they were alone in private for the first time, she felt a reckless feeling come over her, and she freely explored his body with her hands. She couldn’t touch him enough. Running her hands over his smooth, muscled chest made her want to explore even more of him. His hair was as silky as she’d imagined. She loved how no matter how many times she ran her fingers through it, it fell back into perfection. But he was just kissing her and stroking her arms and back. He didn’t try to take it beyond deep kissing, although she wouldn’t have objected to more.
Julie had always assumed, without ever really thinking it through, that the man should be the aggressor and the woman should decide what to allow. All at once, she dropped this idea. “I want to touch more of you,” she whispered breathily into his ear, expecting him to immediately yield.
“We have a pie in the oven,” he whispered back, a touch of humor in his voice.
“We’ll be done before the pie is,” she whispered back, using the same light, teasing tone.
“Oh, no, we won’t be,” he said. “Give me some credit. You could bake two pies before I’d be ready to leave bed with you.” Somehow he’d managed to turn her down while still sounding sexy, she thought. Was it possible to tempt him into changing his mind? Or did he just intend to keep her hot and bothered for another half an hour? Then she stopped thinking and just surrendered herself to the feelings Nick was arousing in her.
He kissed aggressively and thoroughly. There was nothing hesitant in any of his movements. He knew what he wanted and he knew exactly how he wanted to make her feel. Their breathing was ragged and punctuated with little sounds of desire, and Julie felt her body yearn for more. She wanted to feel his hands on her breasts and aggressively pressed her body against him, hoping to intensify his responses. She was gratified at how strongly he reacted. With a groan, he immediately pulled her even more tightly against him.
The delicious aroma of apple pie was in the air, and Julie knew it was probably time to check on it. But she didn’t care. Nick did, though. He gripped her forearms with his large hands and forcibly held her away from him.
“We need to check that pie,” he said. “It will only take a minute, right?”
“Yeah,” Julie said, reluctantly. How in the heck had he been able to even care about the pie? She sure didn’t. But she followed him upstairs and they opened the oven. The pie looked perfect, so even though there were still several minutes left on the timer, they agreed it was done. Nick placed the pie on a rack on the counter and turned off the oven.
“Now,” he said. “No more worrying about the pie.” He started to kiss her, but she was a little irritated that he’d been more worried about the pie than her body.
“We can’t let your sister come home and find her kitchen like this,” she said. “We should clean it right now.”
“The kitchen looks fine,” he said, trying to kiss her.
He couldn’t hold a straight face as he said it, however, and quickly gave in.
“All right, we clean the kitchen. But we have to clean it fast,” he said.
She got all the apple peels and cores into the garbage while he started loading the dishwasher, and he put away the leftover ingredients while she wiped off the counter. It didn’t take as long as she’d feared. Nick started to poke a finger into the filling between two rows of lattice crust, but Julie stopped him.
“Hands off the pie,” she said. “It’ll be a juicy mess until it cools somewhat. So keep your fingers out of it.”
“What can we do to kill time while the pie cools, I wonder?”
“You could make me some coffee,” she said. “To prevent me from falling asleep.”
“Oh, look, Patty has a super nice and expensive coffeemaker up here. Much better than the one in my bedroom. So maybe you want me to make coffee up here?”
“Nah, I prefer lousy coffee. I doubt I could even choke down coffee made with a good coffee maker. Let’s use the cheap, shitty one in your room.”
“If you insist,” he said, and led her back downstairs to his bedroom.
Julie immediately jumped onto the middle of his queen-sized bed. “I’m so very, very tired. I think I’ll just lie down on this bed and take a little. nap. I hope nobody disturbs me.” She arranged herself into what she hoped was a sexy-in-a-funny-way pose and closed her eyes. Her big smile was a dead giveaway, though
“I’m pretty tired too. I bet this girl doesn’t even notice when I get into the bed with her,” he said, and eased into the bed next to her, slowly, muttering that he sure hoped he didn’t wake her up.
Julie could feel him looking at her, so she opened her eyes. He was lying next to her, his face right over hers, and as soon as she opened her eyes, he started kissing her. They didn’t even try to talk further.
All either of them wanted was to be in this bed together, alone, and they stopped joking. As always, his kisses got very serious very quickly. He rolled onto Julie and her body welcomed the feeling of his body weight on her. There was something about that, even fully clothed. She tilted her hips up to him, dying to feel him press right into him. If the layers of jeans fell away, he’d be one quick movement from entering her. She could feel how excited he was.
He placed his hand on her bare belly and for just a moment, she worried whether he might be turned off by her soft little roll there. Then she stopped worrying about that. His excitement was obvious. She pushed her self-consciousness away and let him know she welcomed the next step by lifting his hand and placing it on her breast. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted to feel more, and she shifted her body a little so he could reach behind her and unfasten her bra. He pushed her top and bra up and bared her breasts.
“They’re beautiful,” he said, and then he couldn’t say anything else, because he was moving his lips from one nipple to the next, sucking and licking and, experimentally, biting. He was obviously gauging her reaction to everything he did, judging what degree of gentle to rough she liked best, and then focusing on giving her as much pleasure as possible. He started sucking on her right nipple, his weight supported on his left forearm, leaving his right hand free to play with her left nipple.
He was so involved in kissing and sucking her nipples that he wasn’t talking at all, but she couldn’t stop moaning. It had been forever since she’d felt anything remotely like this, and her body was begging
for more of it. She rolled her hips against him, desperate to feel his erection against her most sensitive parts. She wished their jeans would magically disappear, because she didn’t want him to stop doing what he was doing, but she did want him to start doing other things.
“That feels so good,” she whispered. “God, that feels amazing.” His body was rocking against hers and she didn’t know how it was even possible to feel this much desire and not continue on.
He moaned and reached for the button of her jeans.
“Yes, please,” Julie breathed. She was so ready for his touch.
The sounds of the front door opening and Patty calling out, “We’re home!” were like a blast of cold water. Nick and Julie looked at each other. “We have about 30 seconds before Matthew comes running down here if I don’t go upstairs right now,” he said, apologetically.
She nodded, quickly fastened her bra and jumped out of his bed. Nick did the hair thing, and that reminded her that her hair was going to give her away if she didn’t comb it.
“Can I borrow a comb?”
“You better,” he said, nodding toward his bathroom.
She put her hair in order, but her face was another matter. She was blushing, so she splashed a little cold water on her face in an effort to hide it.
Nick took her hand and led her up the stairs. Halfway up, he turned to her and whispered, “We are going to find a way to avoid getting interrupted. Soon.” Then he kissed her again and greeted his sister as if everything were completely cool.
“How was Mom?”
“Off her rocker. She wanted to tell me her latest conspiracy theory. I just had to nod my head and pretend to agree. Otherwise she’d have been miffed. It’s not worth it to argue with her,” she said. “In happier news, it smells like the pie experiment was a success.”
“Very successful,” Nick said. “Well, at least, going by how it looks. We haven’t cut it yet. It was still too hot last time we checked.”
Perfect Fit (Small-Town Secrets-Fairview Series Book 4) Page 8
