Guarding Sophie Read Online Free PDF Page B

don’t understand.”
    â€œI’ve eaten a lot of sandwiches over the past few days. They’re easy to make, and I don’t burn them.”
    â€œYou bought three hundred dollars’ worth of food earlier! Didn’t you buy a prime rib?”
    â€œMaybe I could cook it on the grill—”
    â€œNo,” she said. “No, no, no. It won’t work. You have to cook prime rib slowly, and it needs to start on high heat.” She almost groaned aloud. “That piece of meat was seventy dollars! I thought you were serving dinner for ten or something. Please tell me you know how to cook.”
    He stopped at the red light and turned to face her. “What would you say if I told you that I don’t?”
    She was mystified, but she found herself smiling at the amusement in his face.
    â€œWhy did you buy all that food if you don’t know how to cook?”
    â€œI thought I could teach myself. I have a gas stove; I have a brand-new grill—what could be so hard?”
    She couldn’t imagine how one person could be so handsome and so infuriating at the same time. He was tall. He had muscles, but he was leaner than other pro football players she’d seen photos of. His dark wavy hair was smoothed into a low ponytail, which he’d pulled into a knot at the nape of his neck. His tapered brows, chiseled cheekbones, and strong jaw framed dark, twinkling eyes, a straight nose with a scar on the bridge, and full lips. Stubble looked good on him too. She saw laugh lines when he smiled. He’d turned the bill of his ball cap off-center and rested one tanned wrist over the steering wheel of his Lexus.
    It wasn’t his fault that she was a cooking-show junkie when she lived in Cocoa Beach. She loved to cook. Leaving the kitchen she’d scrimped and saved to outfit with the best cooking equipment and gadgets she could afford was almost as painful as leaving her family and friends. Her family offered to pack the stuff up and put it in storage for her when she’d called home. Of course, she was worried they’d have an ugly encounter with Peter while they were doing so.
    She thought about explaining to Kyle that cooking was a lot more than dumping something in a pan and turning on the stove, but maybe she needed to cut him a break. So he was a little clueless. They’d have no chance of being spotted if they were making a gigantic prime rib or something together. Teaching him some basics might be fun.
    Making food would mean they’d have to go to his place. She didn’t have a stove in the teeny kitchen at the mother-in-law apartment she lived in. Was it too weird to go to his house? They weren’t putting the moves on each other. They were friends.
    Seventy dollars’ worth of prime rib. She started making a shopping list in her head.
    â€œDo you have a roasting pan at home? My kitchen stuff didn’t make the trip,” she said. She’d brought her three-and-a-half-quart Caribbean blue Le Creuset Dutch oven and a microplane in her suitcase. She couldn’t use the Dutch oven right now, but she couldn’t leave it behind.
    â€œWhat’s a roasting pan? Is that like a skillet?”
    She couldn’t decide if she wanted to cry or scream first. “No, it’s not. We need to go back to Noel Foods. We’ll get a disposable one, and you can order a better roasting pan from Amazon if you decide you’d like to roast more stuff after this.”
    S HE WAS CHATTERING away about peppercorns, kosher salt, and au jus (he’d had the stuff before; he wasn’t a complete idiot) and a big knife they needed to cut the finished prime rib with as she pushed a cart down the seasonings aisle at Noel Foods. It was all he could do not to laugh out loud. Unless he was really mistaken, she’d just invited herself over to his house to save the prime rib.
    â€œI have a knife set. We’re covered there,” he said. “What else do