Wow, he thought. Someone likes her food spicy!
He scratched under Casey’s neck. “Where’s Jenny? Where’s your mama?”
“Jenny?” he called toward the living room.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” she replied from her bedroom. “Help yourself to coffee…and anything else you see.”
He glanced at his half-finished cup and winked at Casey. “Good thing she didn’t mind!” Casey bucked up and licked his chin from where she was lying in his elbow. He looked around the kitchen for breakfast, but he didn’t see anything else to help himself to, just the spice wheel on the table. He assumed breakfast was warming in the oven and figured he should wait for Jenny before he got started.
Jenny came into the kitchen dressed in jeans and a white, long-sleeved, buttoned-down shirt. Her jeans were belted with some sort of Indian-style beaded belt and she wore them slung low on her hips, like Sam imagined a cowgirl would wear them. She had on leather boots too—the real deal, not from Bloomingdales or Saks—and they were well worn and scuffed from years of use. Her hair was tightly braided back. Probably a good idea. That silky mane was pretty tempting when it was down.
She smiled at him, but he couldn’t read her face and sensed something standoffish in her manner. Maybe she was still upset about him kissing her hand last night. He waited to see what would happen. He was starting to learn with Jenny, you never knew.
“Morning,” she offered, not meeting his eyes.
“Morning.”
“Hungry?” she asked pleasantly. He caught it again, that smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Sure.”
“What’re you in the mood for?”
You. On the table. Shirt optional. “Umm. I don’t know. What’re you offering?”
“I made omelets and bacon.”
“Sounds great.”
She opened the oven and took out a warm platter of omelets and placed it gingerly on the table between the two place settings: four small omelets sat prettily on the platter, with a bunch of bacon on the side. She took Casey from him and sat down across from him, smiling that unpleasant, pleasant smile. It was starting to unsettle him in the same way a man gets unsettled when a woman says she’s “fine” but is clearly perturbed about some unknown thing.
“Wow. Four. Is anyone else coming?”
“Nope,” she replied. “All for you. The first one is green pepper, the second one is red pepper, and the third one is yellow pepper. Want to know what the fourth one is?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s an all-weather omelet. Has one vegetable in it from every season…spring peas, summer corn, autumn yams and winter squash.” She got up and placed Casey back in her pen, then turned to face Sam, hands on her hips, her eyes boring into his. “Peppers and weather. And a little bit of cheap pig on the side. I wanted you to feel at home.”
***
He stared at her, speechless, and she stared right back, daring him to confess everything. She couldn’t have been more surprised when his face suddenly contorted with a loud guffaw and he started laughing so hard his face turned red and he grabbed his napkin off the table to dab at his eyes.
Her indignant confidence took a hit from his unexpected reaction. Not that she had a world of experiences in such matters, but this couldn’t be the standard response when a man was caught trying to cheat on his perfect girlfriend! She crossed her arms over her chest and pursed her lips, watching him clutch his stomach with laughter, and at long last, collect himself.
“Jenny,” he finally said, wiping at his eyes, when he could actually speak again.
“Sam,” she replied tartly, every bit the expectant schoolmarm waiting for answers.
He gestured to her laptop, crossing the kitchen to stand beside it. Grazing the space bar with one finger, the picture of Sam and Pepper suddenly sprang to life on Jenny’s kitchen counter. “Someone doing a little Googling this morning?”
Conferring her most contemptuous look, she knew she should declare, Yes, that’s exactly what I did, bucko, and you’ve got another think coming if you think you’re going to cheat on Pepper Pettway with me! However, a little seed of doubt was taking root in her gut based on his reaction, and she worried that she may have jumped to conclusions from looking at a few glamorous pictures on the Internet.
“Jenny. Pepper and I aren’t together anymore.”
She swallowed and covered her mouth with her hand. She could feel her cheeks burning, and knew she was turning thirty shades of scarlet. She wondered for the second time in twelve hours why the forces of the universe couldn’t see fit to open large craters in the floor of one’s apartment when a situation clearly called for one. When she looked up at him, he was smiling, and to her relief he didn’t seem angry or upset, just sort of amused, eyebrows raised in quizzical merriment, waiting for her next misguided assumption about him and his life.