“What are you doing?” he asked, glancing around with a frown.
“Going into the bank. Do you want me to leave my key here so you can turn the engine back on and have the heat?”
“No.” He undid his own seat belt. “I could use a short walk to stretch my legs. I’ll come with you.”
She shrugged and opened her door to get out and Jake quickly did the same on his side. He scanned the parking lot as he walked around to meet her at the front of the vehicle and walked her inside, but didn’t see anyone. Inside, he settled in one of the chairs where he could keep an eye on her as well as the parking lot outside while he waited. A lot of his job was watching and waiting. The bodyguard job, not the cook/housekeeper job. Jake was finding this cover surprisingly challenging. His mother might think he was a good cook, but she was a mother and as such was delusional when it came to her sons. He suspected most mothers were.
As far as Elaine Notte was concerned, he and Neil practically walked on water, or could if they wished. However, if today had done anything, it had proved to Jake that he couldn’t cook worth a damn. He’d stayed up all night, silently prowling the house and repeatedly checking on Nicole as she worked. When she’d moved through the dark house to seek out her bed just before seven that morning, Jake had retreated to the shadows, seeing her but not being seen. Once she was safely in her room he’d then gone to the kitchen to consider what to make for brunch for the two ladies when they got up.
Jake had made pancakes, intending to keep them warming in the oven until the gals got up, only to throw them out when they came out looking like Cajun pancakes. He had never been served pancakes as black as the ones he’d produced. And he’d destroyed one of Nicole’s frying pans in the effort.
He’d followed up that effort with French toast . . . with the same results.
Omelets had been his third effort, but they had been a sort of congealed mess: half raw, half blackened, and wholly crunchy from the eggshells that had somehow made their way into the mix.
Marguerite had come out as he was inspecting that effort, his clothes covered with everything from flour to eggs, and his face wreathed with disappointment, and had taken pity on him. She was the real person behind the lovely, fluffy, perfect omelets they’d had that morning. She’d called a local restaurant and had them delivered. Marguerite apparently couldn’t cook worth a damn either. But then the last time she’d cooked had been in medieval days. She’d only recently returned to eating and had a cook/housekeeper to manage the cooking.
Five minutes after Marguerite had left for the airport and Nicole had gone down to her studio, the doorbell had rung. Jake had rushed to answer it, expecting it to be Cody and his boys to handle the security system, but instead it had been a courier with a delivery. Jake had signed for it, surprised to find his name on the package. He’d taken it upstairs to find that it contained three cookbooks. Cooking for Dummies was the first book. The titles did not get more encouraging after that.
After greeting Cody and his men and showing them around, Jake had left them to work with the admonition not to bother Nicole in the studio and had retired to the kitchen to go through the books looking for something to make for supper. Something easy that he couldn’t burn or completely destroy. He’d been on his third and most successful effort, the peppercorn steak sauce, when Nicole’s scream had drawn him downstairs. He’d been just finishing it off when she’d come up and announced she was going out.
As her bodyguard Jake had to go with her, but there was another reason. He’d pretty much emptied her refrigerator and freezer with his failed attempts at cooking that morning and afternoon. He had to replace the food, or explain where it had all gone. But that was going to be tricky shopping with her. How the devil was he supposed to explain that he was picking up a carton of eggs when she’d had a full carton that morning? Never mind the onions, cheese, and various other foods he’d run through.
Jake contemplated the matter briefly as he watched Nicole slowly make her way toward the front of the bank line, and then suddenly pulled out his phone and punched in a number.
“Dan?” he said a minute later when his call was answered.
“Yeah buddy. This you, Jake?”
“Yeah, listen, Hank gave you a couple days off, right?”
“Of course. He always gives us time off between gigs.”
“Yes, he does,” Jake agreed, and then asked, “How would you like to make a couple hundred bucks for an hour or two of easy work? Maybe only an hour,” he added.
“I’m listening,” Dan said with interest.