DISHING UP LOVE

by Robichaux, KD

  “Alrighty. It’s time to taste the fruits of our labor, sugar,” I tell her, trying to put on a more cheerful tone than I had minutes ago, knowing the camera is rolling and wanting them to have actual usable footage. I don’t want to have to reshoot anything. When we’re done with this, I want to kick everyone out, share our first meal, and then devour every last inch of this woman next to me. Whether it be physically or mentally. I want to learn everything about her, and I can’t do that unless I have the opportunity to get her truly alone, without the worry of my crew walking in at any minute, and chip away at her walls.

  I dish out the red beans mixture on top of the rice in each bowl, sprinkle the parsley and green onion on top, and then angle the bowl toward Carlos so he can zoom in on the contents. When he gives me a thumbs-up, I grab the fork, stick it in the rice and beans, and hand it to Erin, giving her a pointed look that clearly says “Eat.”

  As she stirs and blows on the food inside the bowl, I make my own plate then pull the other stool around the island to sit next to her there at the counter. Normally, I would’ve had the guest make place settings at their dining table for whoever they were cooking for. But like all things with Erin, this episode is different. We were cooking for just the two of us—for just her, really—so this laid back ending just… fits, even though it makes me a little sad to think about the gorgeous woman eating here alone every night.

  But if I have my way, she’ll never have to worry about eating dinner alone ever again.

  Chapter 7

  Erin

  “DEAR SWEET BABY Jesus in a handbasket, this is amazing,” I groan, closing my eyes and tilting my head back as I chew the next bite. “Sweet, sweet nectar of the gods.” I swallow.

  I feel Curtis’s eyes on me, but I don’t look over as I shovel more red beans and rice into my mouth.

  “So, you think all the Louisiana natives would forgive me for using an Instant Pot if they could taste this dish?” I hear the smile in his voice.

  “Never. But if we took it to a potluck in a different serving dish, they’d never have to know,” I reply, making him chuckle.

  “I’d call that a win in my book.” After a pause, he puts on his TV host voice, the same one I’ve listened to during countless episodes while waiting for Emmy’s show to come on. “Another successful meal after taking a Chef… to Go.”

  After a beat, the room goes from perfectly quiet to bustling as Martin calls “That’s a wrap!” and everyone starts packing up their equipment. The lighting comes down first, the room instantly dimming to its normal soft light, and as I look around, wondering if I’m supposed to do anything, Curtis rests his hand on my thigh, shaking his head.

  “Finish eating, sugar. They’ll take care of everything else,” he tells me, and I watch as I take another bite.

  One of the crew members begins cleaning the kitchen, and I halfway feel bad about it. It’s feels weird having someone clean up after me when I’ve done it all alone for so long. When she gets to the Instant Pot on the island next to Curtis, he holds up his hand to stop her, swallowing his bite.

  “Don’t worry about that, Rachel. I’ve still gotta teach her how to meal prep,” he says, and her eyes widen.

  “Oh crap. Were we supposed to film that? Carlos already has his camera and stuff packed up. But I can run to remind them if you—”

  Curtis shakes his head. “Don’t even think about it. We’re done for the day.”

  I don’t see the look he gives her, because she’s on the other side of him, his head turned in her direction. But the way her eyebrow lifts before her eyes come to me then back to him lets me know he gave her a signal indicating he wants everyone out so we can be alone.

  The idea is both stimulating and worrisome.

  Curtis is unlike any other man I’ve come across. He’s not intimidated by me whatsoever. Which is admittedly refreshing. I go out all the time and spend evenings talking with all sorts of men. But the second they find out I’m a psychologist, you can see a steel wall come crashing down from its hidden spot in the ceiling of their mind, immediately shutting me out. They never want me picking them apart, which I assume they think I do by having a deep and meaningful conversation with them in a dimly lit bar at my favorite two-top table in the corner.

  Not only does Curtis keep himself open to me, but he also had to catch himself from revealing too much in front of the rolling camera. Not only is Curtis unintimidated by me, but he also has no qualms being all bossy and putting me in my place. I know I should take better care of myself. I just don’t have anyone around to keep me in check when I get lazy and put everyone else’s needs before mine. I can’t help it. I’m a nurturer by nature. And knowing I’ll never get to put that part of me to use for what it was made for, I direct it onto my patients and my friends. And since my only real friend ran off and got married and travels the world, I confess I get a little depressed and don’t worry too much about my own well-being—hence why I put off things like… eating until I feel like I’m going to die.

  When the bustling ends, the room is deafeningly quiet as I hear the door shut behind the crew. I scrape every last grain of rice and every morsel of the beans and meat into the spoon before savoring the very last bite.

  “I swear I could lick the bowl,” I say before lifting my eyes to Curtis, who has been watching me with a little smile on his face. His eyes twinkle as they catch my every movement, and I squirm on my stool. “I’d say you could take a picture to make it last longer, but you have hours of footage of me now, so what’s the point.”

  “How is it that a person such as yourself, whose job it is to help people better themselves and teach them ways to take care of themselves, doesn’t apply it to their own life?” he asks. But it’s not in a scolding, accusatory way. He doesn’t give off any vibes of judgement. His tone is purely curious, as if he wants to understand me.

  I place my bowl down on the counter, putting my elbow there as well to lean my temple on my fist as I think about my answer. “I guess there’s a reason someone came up with that saying ‘practice what you preach.’” I shrug. “I use up all my energy on everyone else until there’s none left over for myself. That way I can sleep at night.” I sniff out a sad little laugh. “Wow. That went dark.” I smirk.

  He nods, looking down into his bowl for a silent moment before setting it on the counter next to mine and glancing at his watch. “It’s 9:28,” he murmurs to himself, pulling out his phone from his pocket. “What’s the name of the best haunted tour company you were talking about?”

  I give him the name and watch him google it, pulling up the website and clicking on the Buy Tickets link.

  “You don’t have patients on Saturdays, right?” he asks out of left field.

  “No, I’m just always available to them by phone,” I reply, and before I can stop him, he purchases two for tonight’s tour at eleven. “Uuummm…”

  “Shhh… just go with it,” he whispers, putting a finger to my lips, and my automatic reaction takes over. I bite him.

  He jumps a little in surprise, pulling his hand back before his eyes go wide. And then he throws his head back, letting out a laugh that makes me smile before I’m suddenly squealing as he lifts me into the air. I feel like I’m flying he’s so tall, and my heart races until my ass meets the countertop of the island.

  “Did you seriously just bite me?” he asks, and we look down at his pointer finger between us and see the little teeth marks.

  Up on my counter, I’m able to be eye-to-eye with him, and I make out the mischievous twinkle there mixed with the shock.

  “Yeah, my bad. It was my first response to something being in my face,” I reply, grimacing a little in apology.

  He lifts a brow. “So, note to self….”

  My lips pooch out at that as I lift my own brow. But before I can comment, he inserts, “We need to prep all your meals. You wouldn’t happen to have a food scale, do you?”

  I tilt my head to the side, my expression clearly stating “R
eally?”

  “That’s a no. Okay, well, we need to get you one of those in order to do this properly in the future, but for now, we can just guess. If I were Tupperware, where would I be?” he asks, and I try to ignore the bit about the future. He said it so casually, as if he knows for a fact he’ll be around past tonight.

  I look him up and down for a moment, deciding he might be right. I may let him stay until the morning.

  “Cabinet down there.” I point to the one beside the stove and watch as he turns to squat in front of the open cupboard. When he stands and turns back around to face me, he’s holding an unopened package of small containers, his expression full of unasked but unsurprised questions. “I got them one year to make cookies as Christmas presents, but then ended up just getting everyone boxes of chocolates. And I don’t cook enough to ever have leftovers.”

  He shakes his head but there’s a lift at each corner of his lips. “Why didn’t you bake the cookies?” he asks as he opens the package and begins washing and drying each of the containers.

  “That would’ve required a grocery run.” I shrug.

  “Didn’t the boxes of candy require a grocery run?”

  “Costco. My weakness. I had to go grab my economy size batch of K-cups and saw the pretty boxes of different Belgian chocolates. They were even already wrapped up for Christmas. All I had to do was write names on the already provided tags,” I explain, flipping my ponytail over my shoulder.

  “How… personal of you,” he teases.

  I pout my bottom lip. “Hey. Those chocolates were freaking delicious.” At his raised brow, I mumble, “I might’ve gotten myself a couple boxes for Christmas too.”

  “Have you ever made it past the coffee section of Costco? They have an amazing grocery section.”

  “No. I figured it was all like… family sized, giant portions of food, like everything else there,” I admit.

  “Negative,” he tells me, bringing the containers over to the Instant Pot before grabbing a ladle out of the drawer of kitchen utensils. “They may give you a shitload of food, but most of it is separated into individual portions. And a ton of it is already prepared. You just have to either stick it in the oven or heat it up in the microwave.”

  “I thought you frowned upon heat-up meals.” I cross my legs, leaning onto my right butt cheek to watch what he’s doing more closely.

  “I frown upon frozen meals. A lot of their stuff is made from scratch and never frozen. Their hand-pulled rotisserie chicken is da bomb.” He pulls the lid back off the Instant Pot and explains, “Okay, so this—” He holds up the silver ladle that’s been here since Emmy’s granny was alive. “—is an eight-ounce ladle. Eight ounces equals one cup, which is a serving size of the red beans. So you need to fill the ladle only halfway for the right amount of rice.”

  He does just that, scooping out enough rice to fill just half the oversized silver spoon before dumping it into the freshly washed plastic container. He does this several more times until all six have rice in the bottom of them. He then takes a whole ladleful of the red beans and meat concoction and pours it on top of the rice, lining them up next to each other once more before putting the ladle in the sink.

  He makes quick work of snapping the lids on all the Tupperware, looking like he’s done this a few times in his day. He stacks them all up then slides them toward himself and off the ledge of the counter, balancing them by placing his chin on the top one as he moves toward my fridge.

  “Wherever will I find the room to put these?” he asks in a dramatic tone as he looks inside the mostly empty space, making me giggle.

  “Asshooole,” I sing, and he closes the fridge, grinning when he turns back to me.

  He winks as he passes by, picking up the Instant Pot that’s had enough time to cool, since he unplugged it after he served us while everyone was still here. Moving over to my sink, he starts washing everything left after his crewmember did everything else.

  I brace my palms on the countertop, ready to hop down, but he stops me with a simple “Nope,” and I freeze in place.

  “You just chill and let someone take care of you for once,” he tells me, and my heart does this weird little thump and dive I’ve never felt before, making me squirm.

  I use my foot to hook the top rung of the stool and scoot it over to me to then place both feet on the seat, resting my elbows on my knees while I watch him work. His every movement is full of masculine grace, and it’s almost hypnotic, a calm settling over me as I take in the way his hands grip and flex, the way his forearms clench and relax, the way his back and shoulder muscles bulge beneath his white shirt.

  I let out an unconscious sigh at the view, and when he looks at me over his shoulder, I blush just a little at the knowing expression on his face. I make a joke to cover up my sudden blip of embarrassment. “So, is this what they mean by wife porn? I totally get it. No wonder y’all leave this part out of the show. You’d have to change your rating to TV-MA, for mature audiences only. You’d lose your status as a family show for sure,” I ramble.

  He chuckles. “I don’t normally wash my participants’ dishes. That’s one of Rachel’s jobs. You’re the first to get this royal treatment.”

  My eyes widen at that. “I suppose that makes sense. You’re a big, fancy chef who has minions to do his dirty work. You sure you don’t want—”

  His hands are full and covered in soap suds, so all he can do is narrow his eyes at me. “Don’t. Move. You need to relax.” After a beat and seeing my discomfort, he asks, “It’s like… physically paining you to let someone do something nice for you, isn’t it?”

  I grimace. “It’s not that. I just feel guilty when someone else is doing work in front of me while I just sit there and do nothing.”

  He seems to ponder on that for a moment before nodding once. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, there’s nothing else to be done, and there’s no room for your luscious little body over here, because mine takes up the whole sink area. So chill.”

  My face heats for an entirely different reason this time, and I can’t help the smile that pulls at my lips as I feel myself relax. The tension in my body melts as I sink down onto the stool to rest by back against the island, watching as he dries our bowls before putting them back in the cabinet where they go. The Instant Pot is next, and he searches out a spot to put it. He rearranges a few things on the counter next to the stove, placing the butcher block of knives on the other side of it to make room in the corner. And the Instant Pot finds its new home there, where I’ll think of Curtis Rockwell every time I see it when I enter my kitchen.

  “Out of sight, out of mind, sugar. It’s going to live right here, so you might actually remember to use it,” he says, patting the top of it before he slowly prowls toward me. As he comes right up to me, my breath catches when he leans down, placing a hand on the counter on either side of me and bringing his face oh-so close to mine.

  Is this when he’ll give me that kiss he threatened me with? Is this the moment he’ll erase the memory of every kiss I’ve ever had in my life, overshadowing all other intimate moments I can ever remember having and replacing them with the feel of his flawless lips on mine?

  My eyes shutter, and everything disappears around me except for the man just inches away from me. When my lids completely close, all I sense is my breath rushing in and out of my lungs as I anticipate his kiss, all my nerves seeming to rush to my lips, awaiting the press of his mouth to mine. They’ve grown so sensitive I can feel his breath mingling with mine where the air passes through my slightly parted lips. I can barely stand the anxiousness of it all, adrenaline pumping through me as if I’m at the top of a roller coaster ride. I’ve never felt such excitement, not even at one of the Comic Cons Emmy and I attend, in line about to meet one of my celebrity idols.

  Sorry, Jensen Ackles, but you’ve got nothing on the man currently hovering over me, making every hair on my body stand on end, my nerve endings doing the same, reaching toward him as if they all want to l
atch onto him Venom-style and never let go.

  And just when I think I may come unglued and launch myself at him, he dips his head to the side and nuzzles my ear, making me shiver. “Our haunted tour awaits, sugar,” he whispers there, and my pussy clenches at the same time I want to cry out in frustration as he stands up straight, reaching his hand out for me to take. There’s an evil little glint in his eye I catch before he smothers it with his excitement. “You think they’ll tell the story about Kathy Bates’s character in American Horror Story?” he asks, spinning around as I take his hand before tugging me out of the kitchen.

  “Most definitely. It’s on every tour I’ve ever taken,” I reply, trying to get my body to calm its tits… especially my tits. My nipples could cut glass, and it reminds me I never put on a bra after we got home from the grocery store. “Holy shit.”

  He stops in his tracks. “What’s wrong?” he asks, hearing the worry in my tone.

  “I never put on a freaking bra, and we just recorded a whole fucking episode of your show. The entire world is going to be staring at my boobs when the show airs,” I squeak, starting to hyperventilate.

  He doesn’t look fazed and shakes his head. “Nah, you’re all good. I kept an eye on them the whole time, and your nipples didn’t make their grand entrance until about three minutes ago when you were basically fapping to me washing your dishes.” He smirks.

  For the first time in my entire life, I’m speechless.

  There is no comeback to that.

  Instead, after my teeth click shut, I spin on my heel and rush up the stairs to my room, hearing him laugh behind me. I rip my shirt over my head and scramble around, looking for the bra I wore to work today. When I find it tangled up in the shirt I’d been wearing, I flap it around in the air until it pulls loose, hooking it in front before spinning it around my body then sticking my hands through the straps. I hike my boobs up inside the cups then scramble through my dresser drawer to find a cute tank top. If I’m going to be walking around in the humid evening air, I’m going to need less fabric on my body.