I just needed to clear my head. I spent entirely too much time thinking about that ass.
Literally.
I was supposed to be enjoying myself. I had two weeks until my student teaching job began, and I deserved a vacation from the insanity that was weddings, funerals, inheritances, and incest.
My stomach grumbled. Momma always said she could tell a proper lady in two ways—how graceful she acted in the face of adversity, and the quality of her shrimp and grits.
Well, I already humiliated myself with my current adversary, including indulging in activities in the bedroom I wasn’t sure had real names. The least I could do was have a home-cooked meal.
I showered, dressed, and spent too much time and money at the grocery store. Zach and I had a new agreement.
What was mine was mine.
What was his could rot in the sun for all I cared.
I bought my own food, claimed my own rooms, and smacked his hand when he stole one of my chocolate chip cookies. We shared the house, and that was it. I’d be damned if I let him near any of my desserts.
Including me.
My car’s trunk filled with groceries. I thought hauling the bags in from the curb to my old apartment was difficult. No wonder people hired help in estates this big. I was out of breath by the time I hit the hall and struggled just to lift the plastic bags onto the island. I grunted and went back for the bottled water.
Zach watched it all in amusement. He munched on an apple over the sink, but he didn’t offer to help—the silent treatment went both ways.
He set a box of spaghetti, a giant pack of ground meat and sausage, and a can of marinara sauce on the counter. I watched as he filled a pot too small for noodles with water. He warmed a skillet for his meat and claimed the entire cutting board for his mess.
What an ass. It was no accident that he started cooking the instant I got home. He just wanted to get in my way and under my skin while I made my dinner.
The mature, responsible thing to do would have been to surrender the stove until he was done. Screw it. I wasn’t letting that bastard chase me out of my own damn kitchen.
Shrimp and grits were on the line. Wars fought for less.
I dropped the fresh shrimp on the counter—whole and raw like Momma and Gran preferred—but the sink filled with his dishes. Two glasses were rimmed with his chalky protein powder supplements. A plate smeared with mustard. The colander for his spaghetti haphazardly angled to the side so he wouldn’t have to load the dishwasher.
I scowled and piled his mess before rinsing my shrimp. He laughed, still crunching on the apple.
The serpent in the garden had more tact that him.
But I wasn’t going to scold him. He wanted that. Expected it. If he couldn’t get me to talk, he’d try to rile me up. And usually it worked.
Not this time.
No way.
If he was that bored, he could call little Miss Tasty-Cake for a romp.
I ignored him as I cleaned the shrimp, but I needed the stove to get my bacon rendering and the grits on to boil. Zach paid no attention to the chunk of meat he burned in the skillet. I turned, nearly dropping the bowl of deveined shrimp.
The gas burner cranked all the way up. His ground meat smoked and charred on the bottom while the top quivered, pink and cold.
I wasn’t about to help him fix his mess, but he’d burn the damn house down!
I cleared my throat with all the subtlety of a cough with laryngitis. Zach grinned, pitched his apple core away, and flipped the meat. Half of the charred gunk stuck to the pan.
Then he dumped the noodles into the pot.
Lord have mercy, the water wasn’t even boiling.
Did he have any idea how to cook? No wonder he ordered out, brought in pizza, chicken, and hoagies. He wasn’t bulking—he was barely surviving on his own. The boy was lucky he managed to cut a bologna sandwich in half.
Not. My. Problem. I let him do his thing.
I searched the lower cabinet for a pot to cook the grits and a skillet for the shrimp. My father had excellent foresight in ordering three crystal gravy boats for special occasions but only one suitable skillet.
Fine. Shrimp and grits. From a wok. We’d call it fusion and I could sell it at a sixty percent markup in a restaurant.
I grabbed the dish. Zach moved behind me to stir his pasta. I rose, but my butt bumped his legs.
Not his legs.
Oh, God.
I bent over, head in the damn cabinet, booty on display, and I knocked into his hips. A rush of heat that should have gone to my cheeks decided to bolt straight down to the troublemaker between my legs.
I had deliberately ignored her this morning, a punishment for the dream about Zach.
Well, that was a mistake.
I couldn’t blame my reaction on the sexy dream. This particular bout of shame and weakness was brought to me by the letter F—as in Fuck, I should not be grinding against my step-brother’s legs. Terrible, sensual thoughts popped into my head. I imagined his hands holding my hips. Fierce strokes of his namesake that hit everywhere unholy inside me.
I remembered him in both reality and the dream, everything from his dusty scent to the monster between his legs.
Hard.
My senses came back to me…and they were pissed off.
Zach was hard.
I launched forward, crashing into the cabinet. The dishes and glasses above rattled around, but the only thing broken was the spell that sleezeball put me under.
I grunted and untangled myself from the pots and pans, but Zach already turned his attention, chiseling at the crispy flecks of meat in the skillet I needed.
He whistled a little tune.
Like nothing had happened. Like nothing passed between us. Like nothing about me bending over even affected him.
And why would it? The man-whore probably humped everything from here to Washington D.C. while he was on leave—storing it up for the long winter of his deployment like a perverted little squirrel. Money and girls. All the same to him.
So why did I let him bother me?
I gritted my teeth and slammed my wok against the stove. He turned off the burner. His sausage was still pink but the ground meat was Cajun blackened. I grimaced as he stirred the paste-like gloop that became of his noodles. The fool couldn’t even feed himself. He needed a personal chef more than a mansion.
Didn’t his parents teach him anything about the kitchen? He didn’t seem the home-maker type, and, from the bits I heard about Emily, his mother wasn’t either. She was the perpetual cleansing dieter—the one who ate a piece of ginger after every five raspberries to catch the free radicals. Her wedding menu demanded free-ranged chicken, cage-free eggs, deep-massaged beef, and non-GMO, pesticide-free, herbicide-free, taste-free salads, so fresh you could see where the caterpillars had munched.
It must have been her idea. My father used to eat McDonalds cheeseburgers he accidentally dropped on the ground.
I washed a knife and readied my ingredients, but curiosity burned me. I knew nothing about Zach’s family or his mother. I hadn’t even asked.
But nope.
I wasn’t getting involved. I didn’t care what Zach did. My only concern was that he didn’t imprint the taste of his insult to Italy into our best skillet.
I added water to my pot and opened the bag of white, stone-ground grits. My stomach rumbled in anticipation, but it sunk when I opened the fridge. I wanted to keep our food separate, but getting the label maker was probably a little overkill. I shifted the containers, moved the drinks, and searched behind Tupperware’d leftovers. Then I uttered an uncouth word and groaned.
No butter.
Thank God Gran wasn’t alive to witness this travesty. Only two sins existed in the world for her—taking the Lord’s name in vain and substituting anything for butter. Both margarine and profanity offended the baby Jesus.
I didn’t need Zach to sneak up behind me, summoned by my groan and the frustrated shoving of his Gatorade from my shelf. He reached over my head, aiming for a can of fake cheese that would be the best part of his meal. His arm brushed mine.
My heart stopped.
No, it leapt into my throat, which was good because it prevented me from speaking to him. In the drawer with his parmesan—butter. Four glorious sticks.