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Deliberately she forked off more tuna. "I've never understood people who cook like you, like they do on some of the cooking shows. Tossing things together, shaking a little of this in, pinches of that. How do you know it's right?"

If that was really what she'd been thinking about with her mouth in that sexy sulk, he'd go outside and eat a shovelful of mulch. "I don't know. It usually is, or different enough to be right some other way. "

Maybe he couldn't get inside her head, but he had to figure whatever was in there had to do with sex, or the ramifications of having it. But they'd play it her way for the moment. "If I'm going to cook, and since I don't want to spend every night in a restaurant, I'm going to cook, I want to enjoy it. If I regimented it, it'd start to piss me off. "

"If I don't regiment it to some extent, I get nervous. Is it going to be too bland, or overly spiced? Overcooked, underdone? I'd be a wreck by the time I had a meal on the table. " Worry flickered over her face. "I don't belong here, do I?"

"Define here. "

"Here, here. " She gestured wide with both arms. "With you, eating this really lovely and inventive meal, in your beautifully designed kitchen in your strangely charming and neglected house after relieving some sort of sexual insanity upstairs in your I'm-a-man-and-I-know-it bedroom. "

He sat back and decided to clear the buzz from his head with a long drink of wine. He'd figured her right, he decided, but he just never seemed to figure her enough. "I've never heard that definition of here before. Must come from up north. "

"You know what I mean," she fired back. "This isn't. . . It isn't - "

"Efficient? Tidy? Organized?"

"Don't take that placating tone with me. "

"That wasn't my placating tone, it was my exasperated tone. What's your problem, Red?"

"You confuse me. "

"Oh. " He shrugged a shoulder. "If that's all. " And went back to his meal.

"Do you think that's funny?"

"No, but I think I'm hungry, and that I can't do a hell of. a lot about the fact that you're confused. Could be I don't mind all that much confusing you, anyway, since otherwise you'd start lining things up in alphabetical order. "

Those bluebell eyes went to slits. "A, you're arrogant and annoying. B, you're bossy and bullheaded. C - "

"C, you're contrary and constricting, but that doesn't bother me the way it once did. I think we've got something interesting between us. Neither one of us was looking for it, but I can roll with that. You pick it apart. Hell if I know why I'm starting to like that about you. "

"I've got more to risk than you do. "

He sobered. "I'm not going to hurt your kids. "

"If I believed you were the sort of man who would, or could, I wouldn't be with you on this level. "

"What's this level'?"

"Evening sex and kitchen dinners. "

"You seemed to handle the sex better than the meal. "

"You're exactly right. Because I don't know what you expect from me now, and I'm not entirely sure what I expect from you. "

"And this is your equivalent of tossing ingredients in a pot. "

She huffed out a breath. "Apparently you understand me better than I do you. "

"I'm not that complicated. "

"Oh, please. You're a maze, Logan. " She leaned forward until she could see the gold flecks on the green of his eyes. "A goddamn maze without any geometric pattern. Professionally, you're one of the most creative, versatile, and knowledgeable landscape designers I've ever worked with, but you do half of your designing and scheduling on the fly, with little scraps of papers stuffed into your truck or your pockets. "

He scooped up more rice. "It works for me. "

"Apparently, but it shouldn't work for anyone. You thrive in chaos, which this house clearly illustrates. Nobody should thrive in chaos. "


Tags: Nora Roberts In the Garden Romance