Shade(112)

“What did you say?” he asked with a warning glint in his eyes, almost licking his lips in anticipation.

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Damn,” Shade muttered under his breath.

Going inside, he found a pitcher of tea and fixed a couple of glasses of ice then carried them outside.

He had already placed plates with baked potatoes on the table and was putting the steaks on a platter when Lily returned.

“Exactly how long have you been here?” Lily asked, taking a seat at the table.

“Long enough.” Shade grinned, setting the plate of steaks down.

“I would complain, but the food looks too good,” Lily said with wry amusement.

Shade placed one of the big steaks on her plate before serving himself. Lily cut off a piece of the tender meat then took a bite.

“It’s delicious,” she complimented.

“You didn’t think I could cook?” Shade raised a brow.

“Why would you need to cook? You have a bunch of pretty women cooking and delivering it to you,” Lily teased without an ounce of jealousy in her remark.

Shade had trouble swallowing his own bite of steak.

“I’ll have you know that we all take turns cooking and sharing chores.”

“I bet that’s interesting. How often does Winter get stuck doing chores?”

“Not often, unless it’s a punishment. She has a way of finagling things to get her way,” Shade said wryly. She was becoming as good at playing cards as he was.

“I know. It comes from being a high school principal. She was a mastermind at making the kids do things they didn’t want to do.”

“Really?” Shade cut his steak, absently listening. He really didn’t want to talk about Winter; she was a constant pain in his ass.

Lily nodded. “The seniors wanted to cut class on the first day of spring—it was a tradition at our school—yet students every year would manage to get into trouble. The previous principal had tried to stop it but wasn’t successful. Winter, on the other hand, acted all gung ho for us to have the day off. She told us that, if we volunteered to clean the kitchen of the school’s chef training program, she would let us have the afternoon off. What she didn’t tell us was that the students had made pizza the day before and hadn’t used pizza pans. It took us all day to clean those ovens. I had nightmares about burnt-on cheese for a month.”

Shade stopped eating. That sneaky bitch had managed to trick him out of his marker by using the same trick on him she had used on high school students. Hell, he would have given her the marker, anyway; he didn’t want to fuck her, but he would have made her work for it or held onto it for a rainy day.#p#分页标题#e#

Lily’s laughter said she knew Winter had fooled him.

“Don’t tell me she got you on that one?”

“Let’s change the subject before I decide to stuff her into our oven.”

Viper wouldn’t let me, anyway, Shade thought grumpily.

They talked the rest of the meal about the different things people ordered through the factory.

“Diamond is becoming our best customer. We had a new shipment come in the first of the week. I had to be up early to help unload the truck. Diamond was sitting in the parking lot. She brought me breakfast so I wouldn’t tell Knox on her.”

“Did you?”

“Fuck no. She brought pancakes.”

“Knox put Diamond on a budget,” Lily told him.

“She’s finally calmed down. She’s too busy decorating her new house.”

Shade got up to turn off the grill, making sure it was out before they went inside. Lily had already cleaned the table by the time he turned around, so Shade shut and locked the back door.

“I cooked; you can do the dishes,” he said, opening the fridge to take out a beer, carrying it past her rigid body to the living room.

“What do you want to watch? Something scary or something funny?”

“Funny,” Lily answered as she continued putting up the dishes.

“Scary it is,” he teased while studying the titles of the movies.

“Don’t you dare.”

“Then you better hurry up.”

She sat down on the opposite side of the couch from him only minutes later.

He had chosen a romantic comedy to watch with a fairly explicit sex scene. When it came on the screen, Lily jumped up and went into the kitchen, making the excuse that she wanted popcorn.

When she returned with popcorn and a beer for him, he was shocked. She hadn’t been happy when he had grabbed a beer out of the fridge, but she had voluntarily brought him another one while she drank a soda.

She had subconsciously recognized that alcohol and pain didn’t have to go together. It was only a tiny baby step for her, but for him, it gave him hope the size of the Grand Canyon.