I rolled my eyes. Drake had a crush on Clem, so that automatically put him in ‘persona non grata’ territory for me. Anybody that had a crush on my girl was someone I wasn’t going to like on principle alone.
“I…” I started to say something in reply, but as I walked into my kitchen, I was hit like a freight train straight to the dick.
Because there Sophia was, in my kitchen, at my stove, cooking me a goddamn steak, in goddamn booty shorts that hugged her ass like the fine fuzzy hairs on a peach. Jesus H Christ, did she look fuckin’ amazing.
I swallowed hard and said, “I’m glad you left. Wouldn’t want you getting caught up in that. I want to pay for your college and all, but that shit’s expensive, and getting more expensive as the day passes. I won’t have the money to continue to pay for you both. And I like your sister more so…”
He flipped me off as Clem started to laugh.
It was the other giggle, however, that had my heart beating faster.
I looked again toward the stove to see Sophia now turned around, watching me.
She was wearing a white t-shirt that was older than she was.
How did I know that? Because it used to be mine. Then Clem commandeered it, then Boston, then Clem again, only for somehow Sophia to end up with it.
I saw it and shook my head. “Where did you find that old shirt?”
Sophia looked down at my old football shirt, the one that was cut practically in half because that was what all football players used to wear back in the day—cut-off t-shirts with the sleeves and bottom half of the shirt missing—and shrugged. “Honestly? I needed a shirt to change into since I came straight from work, and this was in Clem’s closet. I didn’t realize it was old, though. It still looks new.”
It didn’t look new. It looked vintage, which it was.
But I wasn’t calling her on it.
Calling her on it might make her take it off, and I found that I really liked seeing her wearing my things.
“You’re welcome to anything in this house, girl,” I told her bluntly. “Anything.”
Her head tilted, and I could see the calculation in her eyes. Almost as if she was asking me ‘anything’ as in ‘anything being me.’
I wasn’t immune to her looks. And let’s just say, I knew that she had a thing for me.
Every single girl under the age of fifty had a thing for an outlaw biker.
I’d heard it at every single sporting event, pep rally, or school function.
“Oh my God, Clem. Your dad is hot.”
I had silver and brown hair, a beard that had more silver in it than brown now, and a body that was built like a man—not a boy.
And I knew when a woman was interested.
I think that at first, that’d been why I’d been so hell-bent on staying away from her.
I couldn’t encourage her—or hell, even my—attraction. Not when my best friend was her dad.
Even worse…
“How do you want your steak cooked?” Boston asked, interrupting my thoughts. “Because I’m about to grill these bitches.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know how I want it cooked, Boz.”
Boston rolled his eyes. “But that was before.”
“Before…” I let that question linger, since I didn’t have any idea where he was going with his line of thought.
“Before we tried this sous vide thing,” Clem pointed at a large vat of water on my counter, with a large black thing with a digital thermometer sticking out of it. I frowned at the contraption.
“What is it?” I asked curiously.
“It’s a sous vide,” Clem repeated.
I felt my eye twitch, causing Sophia to laugh.
“It’s pretty much a large vat of water that heats up to the perfect internal temperature of how you want your steak cooked. In this instance, all steaks were cooked to the internal temperature of ‘medium rare,’” Sophia explained, pointing at the cutting board next to the stove where some gray-looking steaks sat, looking disgusting.
I felt my gorge rise. “Okay.”
“Anyway,” she continued, pulling a couple of paper towels off the roll and patting the steaks dry. “Once they’re cooked fully, you pull them out of the plastic bags—that are BPA free if you’re about to point that out—and then you sear them on either a cast iron skillet or a grill. In this case, we’re going to do the grill since Boston said you didn’t allow them to touch your cast-iron skillet.”
My lips twitched. “I don’t usually, no.”
After the one time I’d seen them letting the dog lick the grease out of it, and then them using soap on it, there was one hard and fast rule in my household—you didn’t touch the cast-iron skillet. Nope. No, nuh-uh.
At least they respected that.
Though, I had a feeling that had more to do with Sophia than my kids.