by Liz Isaacson
The wind picked up, sending smoke in their direction, and LeRoy ducked and scrambled back toward the door, slamming it closed behind him as bits of flame and ash landed on the deck.
Kurt inhaled—a big mistake, as he started coughing. Still, he managed to get the hose twisted onto the spigot and he turned the faucet, hoping and praying with everything he had that there would be water.
Relief roared through him at the first inklings of wetness, and he sprayed the deck closest to the house. After turning the knob as far as it would go, he painted the house with water, boosting himself onto the deck just as Dwayne opened the backdoor, another hose in his hand.
Together they extinguished the few flames that had started burning the deck. “How’s LeRoy?” Kurt’s breath came in quick pants, and he didn’t know how to make it stop.
“Shook up,” Dwayne said.
Sirens filled the night air. Dwayne and Kurt advanced on the barn, but it was a lost cause. He hoped there hadn’t been any animals inside. The flames hissed and spat as they focused on the doorway and extended the spray down toward the ground.
Red lights painted the sky, and the real firefighters arrived with a much bigger hose and better equipment. Kurt fell back, his chest rumbling with another cough. He turned off his hose and turned to face a paramedic. “Sit down,” the man said. At least it wasn’t a woman.
“Oh, come on, Luis,” Kurt protested, knowing the woman he didn’t want to see was around here somewhere if Luis was.
“I heard you coughing when I came around the house.” The stout Hispanic man pointed to the edge of the deck. “Sit. Let me listen.”
Kurt did as he was told, water seeping through his pajama pants and another cough racking his body, as Luis listened to him breathe.
“You’re coming to the hospital.” Luis coiled his stethoscope around his neck.
“I’m honestly fine,” Kurt said, though his throat scratched. He’d only been in the smoke for a few minutes. At the corner of the deck, another paramedic was listening to Dwayne’s lungs.
“He needs to go too.” The woman’s voice conjured up all kinds of feelings and memories in Kurt’s heart and mind. He didn’t want to see Alicia, the last woman he’d met in person through the dating app they both used.
“Let’s get loaded up,” Luis said.
And yet there she stood, her blonde hair cascading from its customary ponytail. “Kurt?” she asked as she drew closer.
“Hey, Leesh.” He wished he’d grabbed his cowboy hat before exiting his cabin. Then he’d at least have something to hide behind. “I’m fine, seriously.”
“Get in the bus, Kurt.” She turned back to Dwayne. “You too.”
“We can drive ourselves in,” Dwayne said. “How about that?”
“I don’t think you’ll come,” Luis said.
“We’ve got to take the ATV back,” Dwayne said. “Update our men and my wife. Then we’ll come, I swear.” His words rumbled, and he choked out the last couple before coughing.
Alicia and Luis exchanged a glance and Alicia rounded on Kurt. “If you’re not in the ER in thirty minutes, I’m coming back out to get you myself.”
Kurt nodded, and let Dwayne do all the talking. They finally escaped, and they hadn’t taken more than four steps past the burnt out barn before Dwayne said, “She broke up with you?”
“Sure did.” And only a week before they were supposed to go to San Antonio to visit his family for Thanksgiving.
“I gotta say, she still seems interested.”
“Well, I’m not.” Kurt increased his pace to put an end to the conversation, but that caused his breath to come quicker, and that made him cough.
That night, Kurt felt like he’d been run over by a truck. But one bonus of being tied up in the emergency room for a couple of hours was that once he and Dwayne finally got released, Kurt had been able to stop by the grocery store.
The doctor had ordered him and Dwayne to stay down for the day, and Kurt had happily agreed. In fact, he’d only been awake for forty minutes when knocking sounded on his door.
He wiped his hands on his black-and-white striped apron and hurried across the cabin to let May in. She stood haloed in the white light from his porch, and he found her absolutely angelic.
“Hey.” He leaned into the doorframe and grinned at her.
“Hey, yourself.” She nudged him back with one hand. “I have lots of bags in the car. Maybe you can use some of your superpowers to help me bring them in.”
He loved the way her pink lips curved up, was mesmerized by the sparkle in her dark eyes. She wore her hair down tonight, and it was much longer than he’d anticipated, reaching halfway down her back though she’d secured it in a high ponytail. His fingers itched to touch it, but he balled them tight.
“Superpowers?” he echoed as he followed her down the stairs toward where she’d parked in front of his cabin.
“Oh, please. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard that you and Dwayne are the heroes of Grape Seed Falls.”
“I haven’t heard that, actually.” He didn’t want to admit that he’d slept most of the afternoon away, and had then started obsessing over the menu for tonight. He’d almost gone back into town to fetch different ingredients. Nothing heroic about any of that.
“Well, LeRoy’s been tellin’ everyone who comes into the grill. Everyone in town is buzzing about how you and Dwayne saved his house from the fire.”
“I sprayed a hose,” Kurt said as he loaded plastic bags onto his lower arms. “The firemen were two minutes out.” He looked at the bags he carried, with more in the car. “What are we makin’ tonight, anyway? It’s three courses, May.”
“I didn’t know what to make,” she said, her playful tone taking on some hints of anxiety. “I thought this was an experiment.”
“Yeah, to see if we can cook together,” he said, pausing to peer down at her. But one look at her, and he knew they could do a lot more than cook together. He swallowed, his throat thick and his lungs feeling like he’d just inhaled another wave of smoke. “We weren’t deciding the menu tonight,” he said, his words barely ghosting between them.
She stepped into his personal space, and his muscles seized. “You look different without your cowboy hat.” She reached up and traced her fingers along his hairline, the touch so personal and intimate that Kurt’s heart started ricocheting around his chest.
“Handsome,” she murmured. All at once, she seemed to realize what she was doing and what she’d said. She bolted backward a few steps and dropped her hand, blinking all the while.
Kurt grinned at her and started toward his cabin. “Well, I think you’re downright beautiful yourself, Miss May.” He chuckled as her more delicate footfalls came with him up the stairs. “I wish I wasn’t carrying in fifty pounds of groceries, but I’m sure glad you came.” He beamed at her, ducked through the front door, and headed for the kitchen.
Chapter Five
May paused on the front step of Kurt’s cabin, wondering what in tarnation she was doing here. She’d been questioning herself since she got off work two hours ago. Because she’d showered again—not that unusual after a busy day sweating in the restaurant’s kitchen. But putting on lipstick, pants with a real waistband, and sandals, that was all new. So was the grocery shopping.
May almost always ate at the restaurant before going home. If she cooked in her own kitchen it was scrambled eggs or grilled cheese sandwiches. Something she could throw together in a few minutes while she fed Char and thought about which romantic comedy she wanted to watch that night.
“You comin’?” he called from inside the cabin, and May took a deep breath. She liked Kurt. He’d been easy to talk to and she found him easy to look at. Now she just needed to see if he was easy to cook with.
“So I see noodles here,” he said, unpacking her bags. She noticed he’d found his black hat and put it on. “Brie, cream, butter….” He glanced up at her and their eyes locked. “You want to make macaroni and cheese for the cook
off?”
She lifted one shoulder into a shrug, not wanting to commit to anything, especially because he’d spoken in such an incredulous voice. “I was thinking maybe something like fried mac and cheese balls for the appetizer.”
New appreciation filled his eyes. “That’s not a bad idea.” He returned to the task of spreading out the groceries, muttering what each thing was as he set them out on the island separating his kitchen from his living room. “Brisket, flank steak, peppers, onions….”
May realized that she had bought a lot of food, and a squirrel of foolishness raced through her. “I don’t know what you were thinking of doing for the cookoff,” she said. “You said we didn’t have to solidify the menu tonight.”
“No, of course not.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out her apron. “All right. Well, then let’s just cook.” She stepped over to his stove, where he already had onions and garlic sautéing in a pan, with a couple of browned chicken breasts on a plate nearby. “What did you start without me?”
“Tortilla soup.” He joined her, and a thrill shot through her at his proximity. The masculine smell of his cologne or aftershave made her eyes drift closed, and May had to squeeze a tight grip around her emotions.
After all, this man wore a huge, black cowboy hat and boots that had definitely seen better days. Why she was even out here on the ranch was still a mystery to her.
“So I was thinking we’d do a menu that was decidedly Texan,” he said. “I’ve noticed that’s what the judges like best.” He stirred his vegetables and turned back to the island to measure the chicken stock. “Katia won with a fried okra doughnut last year, right?”
He acted like he didn’t know, but surely he did. She searched her memory for his face at last year’s competition, which May had watched from the sidelines. She couldn’t find him there, which surprised her. “Yes. It was a frying competition, though.”
“Right. And this is a three-course meal.” He dumped the chicken stock in the pan with a flourish of steam. “So I like the look of that flank steak. Very fajita. Very Texan.”
“What did you get?” she asked.
“I was thinking tortilla soup, since I’m fairly decent with soups and stews.” He picked up his wooden spoon and paid the soup base the attention it needed. “But I think chili is too rudimentary.” He pulled open his fridge. “I made some over the holidays though. I pulled this out of the freezer when I got home from the hospital.”
He handed her a plastic container of chili, and he seemed a little nervous to her. “What did the doctor say?” She opened his microwave and put the chili inside.
“Oh, you know doctors. Did a chest x-ray and took my blood. Asked me what hurt.” He mixed a cup of masa harina with water, using a whisk like it was a third hand. May was impressed by his skills with kitchen utensils, even if she didn’t want to be.
“What did hurt?” She turned back to the counter and pulled the package of flank steak toward her. She had gotten it to make fajitas, and she could whip up a marinade from memory while he worked on his soup.
“My head, mostly,” he said. “I experienced some shortness of breath, but the doc put me on oxygen for about an hour, and that helped.” They moved seamlessly in the kitchen together, and with May mixing cumin and chili powder with lime and pineapple juice and Kurt humming as he added enchilada sauce and cheese to his soup, May felt a sense of calm she hadn’t in a long, long time.
“Can I borrow your cumin and chili powder?” He stepped next to her side, already reaching for her spices. “They look more gourmet than mine.”
She started to sweep her hand toward them too, and his fingers landed on top of hers. Everything stilled. The only sound in the kitchen came from the clicking of Kurt’s electric stove and the incessant beep from the microwave as it alerted her that she’d never taken the chili out.
His face colored as he curled his fingers around hers, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. He captured her fingers and lifted them to his lips. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes,” she croaked out, trying to figure out when her blood had turned into a racecar roaring through her veins.
He released her fingers and collected her spices, turning back to the stove with, “This seems like a good pairing,” he said. “Same spices in the appetizer and the main dish. Are you gonna make the tortillas from scratch?” He acted like he hadn’t even touched her, but May stared at her fingers, wondering why they weren’t coated in red paint from the warmth in his mouth.
“Yeah.” She startled. “Yes. Yes, I’m going to make the tortillas from scratch.” She took the flank steak out of the freezer where she’d stored it while she’d mixed together the marinade. It sliced up nice and thin and she dunked it in the garlic and worchestershire sauce, the spices, the citrus juices. With it covered with plastic wrap, she set it in his fridge and reached for the microwave as it beeped again.
He handed her a spoon from the end drawer in the island and she stirred his chili before lifting a bite to her lips. Kurt abandoned his soup to watch her, his eyes earnest and sparking with blue fire. She could get lost in eyes like those, and she looked away so she didn’t drown.
The heat of his chili burned against the back of her tongue in all the right ways. “This is fantastic,” she said. “Are you sure we can’t make this as the main?”
He grinned and ducked his head, hiding his pleasure behind that hat. “Too ordinary,” he said. “Fajitas will be better. We can really showcase the knife skills and some great technique with the tortillas.”
“And the grill,” she said. “Do you have a grill pan?”
“Do I have a grill pan.” He shook his head, a laugh spilling from his mouth. He bent to retrieve the requested item from a cupboard in the island. “Here you go, ma’am.”
May had never appreciated being called ma’am, especially as she got older. But coming from him, it was almost the same as him calling her “Miss May,” or like he’d done last night before signing off the chat—sweetheart.
She’d lain awake for an hour wondering if he called every woman sweetheart or not. If he did, she certainly didn’t like that. And if he didn’t, did she like it for her? Or not?
She had no idea. It had been a while since she’d been serious enough with a man to even be considered someone’s sweetheart.
The clicking of claws drew her attention from the chop she was performing on the onions, bell peppers, and poblano. “Oh, you have a dog.” She set her knife down and wiped her hands across the bluebonnets on her apron.
“Border collie,” he confirmed. “Sit on down, Patches. Let the lady pet you.”
The beautiful black and white dog complied. “He’s perfect,” she said, crouching to scratch the dog’s ears. “He’s got the markings of a show dog.” She glanced at Kurt, who watched her as Patches licked her neck. “Did he show?”
“No, he’s a ranch dog. He’s the one who alerted me to the fire last night.” He returned to his pot of soup, his teeth tight. May wasn’t sure what had upset him. Maybe he wasn’t feeling as well as he claimed to be.
She scrubbed down Patches for another few moments, then stood and moved to the corner to wash her hands. “I have a miniature poodle,” she said. “Her name’s Charlie, but I call her Char.”
“Any other pets?” he asked.
“Nope. You?”
“Yeah, I’ve got two horses. Minnie and Old Susanna. They’re both pintos.” He adjusted the dial on his electric fryer, and May felt almost completely charmed by him. A flash of insecurity lit up her whole body. What did she have to offer him? A sixteen-pound dog and the longest work hours on the planet?
She turned away from him and tried to shut off her thoughts. But they drip, drip, dripped like a leaky faucet as she kneaded together the flour, salt, and lard. Kurt wasn’t overly chatty in the kitchen, something May appreciated. Twenty minutes later, she had her vegetables and steak properly charred, her tortillas wonderfully golden brown, and a homemade guacamole
chilling in the fridge. She whizzed together a salsa using his food processor and announced, “Done.”
He’d been sitting at the bar for five minutes, his soup sitting on the burner to keep warm, and little glass prep bowls filled with shredded cheese, fried tortilla strips, and pico de gallo he’d made in a matter of minutes.
“Good thing,” he said, a heavy twang of teasing in his voice. “I’m starving.”
She pulled out a bag of tortilla chips and ripped them open before taking the guacamole from the fridge. He dished up two bowls of soup and she pulled off cilantro leaves to sprinkle over the fajita mixture.
“Should we pray?” he asked, his voice low and husky.
May turned to find him only inches from her, and she could only get her head to nod.
“I’ll say it.” He folded his arms and bowed his head, and May saw so much strength in him in such a simple gesture.
Thank you, she thought, hoping the words would reach the Lord this far out in the country. Thank you for letting me meet him and cook with him.
She wasn’t sure if their relationship would go anywhere. But she wanted to find out. And she wanted to be grateful for this evening, no matter what.
Chapter Six
Kurt forced himself to eat slowly. He’d made his mother’s tortilla soup dozens of times, but this was a particularly good batch. Thankfully. He mentally thanked God it had turned out. As soon as May had arrived, Kurt’s attention had divided. He couldn’t help watching her. Sliding closer to her. Drawing in a deep draw of her decidedly peachy perfumy scent.
“This is so great,” she said, sprinkling a few more tortilla strips over her bowl.
“You don’t like them soggy.” He tipped the brim of his hat toward her food.
“No.” She grinned. “I sort of have a thing against soggy bread.”
“So no bread pudding for you.”
She made a face that elicited a laugh from Kurt. “No, thank you. I mean, I’ll make it. Our raspberry bread pudding won an award in the Texas Hill Country magazine a few years ago.” She shook her head and took another bite of soup. “But I don’t like to eat it.”