Speaking of vegetables with attitude...the celery root was grotesque and vaguely homoerotic, somehow. The produce guy at the market had to show her where it was. Thirty-one years old, and Colleen had never seen a celery root before, despite having a twin who viewed cooking dinner on the same level as performing open-heart surgery on a child in the middle of a field after a plane crash.

Ah, well, time to get to work. Because raw seafood made her sick to her stomach, she figured she’d cook the scallops first. Melted the butter (not hard at all!), opened the container and dumped the nasty little creatures in. Speaking of nausea, she hadn’t talked to Faith in eighteen entire hours.

She found her phone, wandered out on the little balcony and called her pal. Faith and Levi’s house was on the next block, two houses down, so their backyards almost adjoined.

“Hey!” she said when Faith answered. “I’m looking at your house. If I get a telescope, I could totally spy on you two.”

“The good stuff happened an hour ago, the second that man walked through the door,” Faith said, a smile in her voice.

“Le sigh. How’s my godchild?”

“It’s official, by the way. We told my dad. There were tears.”

“Oh! You Hollands! Please ask your father to adopt me, since he threw me over for that slutty housekeeper.”

“I’m telling Mrs. J. you said that.”

“Don’t you dare.” She could hear Levi’s voice in the background.

“So what’s going on with you and Lucas?” Faith asked. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that you two were missing for an hour at the picnic yesterday.”

“Um...he’s coming here for dinner.”

“Is that code for sex?”

“Probably.” There was no probably about it. “Am I being stupid, Faith?”

There was a pause. “I can’t imagine you’d be stupid.”

“That pause concerns me.” She glimpsed Mr. Wong in the yard next door doing tai chi (or swatting a mosquito in slow motion). “I might be stupid. This isn’t a sure thing at all, him and me.”

“Is it ever? I mean, Jeremy and I were a sure thing.”

“Extenuating circumstances, pal.”

“And then, for a while, I thought Honor and Tom weren’t going to make it, and look at them. Hey, are you bringing Lucas to the wedding next weekend?”

“I don’t know. Should I?”

“Yes! So romantic! Levi, don’t you think Colleen should bring Lucas to Honor’s wedding? He does.”

There was a funny smell out here...someone was burning leaves or trash. “I should probably go,” Colleen said. “I have to do stuff. Food stuff. I also have to change into slutty underwear.”

“Have fun,” Faith said. “You’re not stupid.”

Colleen smiled. “Thanks, hon. Talk to you tomorrow.”

She turned, froze, then bolted.

It wasn’t leaves that were burning. It was scallops.

She yanked the frying pan off the burner. The smell was thick, but not quite acrid. More of a tarry, oily smell. “Sphincter,” she muttered.

Well, great chefs were innovators, right? She dumped the scallops onto a paper towel, let them cool a bit...crap, the carrots and parsnips needed to get cooking, didn’t they? She grabbed another pot, filled it with water, figuring she’d boil them a bit to soften, then roast them. Not to mention the stupid puree. Whose idea was this whole thing? Would it have been so hard to go to a restaurant?

She chopped the carrots and parsnips, figuring they’d cook faster that way, and threw them into the pot. Turned back to the scallops. She’d just trim off the burnt bottom edges. But wait, weren’t blackened scallops kind of good?

Time to call for backup. “Hey, Con,” she said.

“We’re slammed. What’s up?”

“Blackened scallops—delicious?”

“They’re great. Bye.”

Perfect! Necessity, the mother of invention.

Who said cooking was hard?

* * *

AN HOUR LATER, right on time, a knock came at the door.

Shit. “Don’t come in!” she yelled. “Not yet, don’t come in! And don’t look through the window, either! I will gouge your eyes out if you do. Sorry! That sounded mean. I didn’t intend it that way.”

“Is there a nice way to say ‘gouge your eyes out’?” Lucas asked, his voice full of laughter.

That voice was foreplay incarnate. She damn well better have the same effect on him, or life was just not fair.

But first, she had to feed the man. She wasn’t ready to fall into bed (give her an hour). And before they could eat, she had to get rid of the, er, evidence. She resumed flapping the dish towel at the window, trying to dispel the thin veil of smoke layering the kitchen. Who knew roasting beets was so hard? How dare they be hard? It wasn’t like they were the world’s most popular vegetable.

Rufus wandered into the kitchen, started to snuff at the scallops, then hung his head and slunk away. Perhaps not a good sign.

It didn’t smell so good in there. She dashed around, grabbing scented candles from various and sundry surfaces throughout the apartment.

Lucas knocked again. “Colleen? Everything all right?”

“Stop bugging me! I know you’re here! Just...give me a sec.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes! Why would you even ask that? It’s fine. Just...I’m changing, that’s all.” And yes, she had to change because at the moment, she was wearing a now-filthy, beet-stained, scallop-stained, everything-stained O’Rourke’s T-shirt with the sweatpants she’d stolen from Connor last month and hemmed by hacking off four inches at the bottom, and it wasn’t as sexy as it sounded.

The smoke could dissipate on its own. She had to beautify. She yanked off her shirt, tripping over Rufus. “Sorry, baby.”

“Did you say something?” Lucas asked. He may have been laughing.

“Shut up! Just wait for me!” The shirt caught on her hair clip, tugging painfully, and she whacked her knee on the door frame, then staggered into the door so that it slammed into the wall.

“Colleen?”

“I’m coming! Just keep your pants on.”

Seven minutes later, she was slightly sweaty but totally gorgeous, please God. Tight black dress, hair down (if perhaps smelling of charred mollusks), some lip gloss, long silver earrings, barefoot because she’d spilled some boiling water on her foot and her slutty shoes were a bit painful to begin with.

Oh, crikey. She needed a nap. And possibly the fire department.

But no, no, Lucas was here. Her one and only love, etc., etc., and yes, she was excited about that. It would’ve been nice if she had time for a shower, but hey. What was a girl to do? She opened the door.

“Hi,” she said, trying for dew-kissed and sultry, and her voice did sound huskier, thanks to the smoke inhalation from earlier. “Come on in.” Rufus began his Serenade of the Visitor. Ah rah! Ah rah! Ah rooroo rah!

“It smells so good in here,” Lucas said. “Were you burning feathers?”

“Hush, boy. It’ll be delicious. I had a slight fire. It was nothing. Wine?”

“Sounds like I’ll need some.” He held out a bouquet of yellow roses.

“Thanks,” she said.

They were her favorite. He remembered.

Le sigh.

Lucas surveyed the kitchen. “Wow. Look at all this. Did you just make dinner for China?”

“You want to eat tonight or not?” she asked. But yeah, okay, she was seeing the kitchen through his eyes. Plates, pots, bowls, spatulas, three frying pans, a Dutch oven, several whisks and three cookie sheets. Oh, and the baseball bat she used because she couldn’t find a rolling pin.

“How many people are coming tonight?” he asked.

“You’re it.” She poured some wine and downed it, then refilled her glass and got him one. “So. What’s new? Oh, shit, I forgot about those conceited beets! Go in the living room and stay out of my way. Sorry! I meant that in a nice way. Get. Go. Come on, I’m losing the war here.”

“Do you want help, Colleen?”

“No! Just get out. Scratch my dog’s stomach.”

He left, Rufus following, and Colleen yanked on an oven mitt, grabbed the beets out of the oven (they looked like charcoal briquettes, for the love of God, maybe jacking the heat to five hundred hadn’t been wise). The Pyrex dish slipped from her hands and clattered against the oven door, spilling half the ashen vegetable.

“I’m fine!” she called. “Do not come in here.”

Forty-five minutes later, feeling as if she’d just fought off an army of rabid mountain gorillas, she sat down at the table. “Beet salad with goat cheese and roasted almonds over a bed of arugula,” she said.

Not that she was hungry, not after seeing all this food for the past eternity. But hey. Maybe she’d feel better after she started eating.

She tried to cut a beet. It was harder than perhaps it should’ve been. She had sawed off the burnt parts, and they were the requisite color of blood, but they weren’t exactly tender. She kept trying. Nope, nothing. More pressure, perhaps? The knife snapped, her hand thunking down on the table, clattering the dishes.

Lucas raised an eyebrow—Prince of Darkness, Sardonic Edition—but said nothing.

Well, how about an almond? Harmless creatures, almonds. Except this one appeared to be petrified. Onto the goat cheese. That, at least, was delicious. A little clot of it fell off her fork and shot right down into her cleavage. Colleen opted to pretend that didn’t happen.

Lucas smiled.

“And how was your day, dear?” she asked.

“Wonderful.” He tried to cut a beet, failed and took a bite of arugula, chewed, winced and washed it down with a lot of water. Sue her. It wasn’t arugula season, and yes, fine! It was bitter. “How’s Paulie today?”

“Sad. Hungry.” She tried another almond. Crikey, the thing was as hard as a pebble. Hopefully her molar hadn’t just cracked. “How’s Bryce?”

“Unemployed once again.”

“Yeah, I heard about that.” From the kitchen came a popping sound.

Damn it! She’d turned up the heat under the scallops to warm them up, as she maybe cooked them a tiny bit early (like, two hours too early). “Back in a flash.”

Scallops, she learned, could be both leathery, burnt and yet still undercooked. The celery root and potato puree was the consistency of water; perhaps she shouldn’t have boiled the ingredients quite so much, but she’d been trying to speed things up. The carrots and parsnips were okay, if you liked tasteless, rubbery vegetables.

Ah. Here was one small scallop that was only charred and not raw. She ate it, cringing at the carbon flavor, and heard the unmistakable crunch of sand.

“This is delicious,” Lucas said. “Maybe we can go out for cheeseburgers later on.”

She closed her eyes in defeat. “Okay, it’s a disaster. You’re very welcome.”

“I’m very grateful. You get an A for effort. Next time, I’ll cook for you instead.”

She peeked at him through her lashes.

When the Prince of Darkness was smiling, women everywhere should lock up their special places.

A hot, electric ripple spread through her, nearly painful, it was so intense.

Her special places weren’t going to be locked up, nuh-uh.

“I did have some success with dessert,” she said.

“Then let’s have dessert.”

“Shall we leave ground zero and eat in the living room?”

“Sounds good.”

He picked up the wine and their glasses, and she took a few candles that were failing to mask the odor of char, and set them on the coffee table. It smelled better in here, at least, and it was cozy and neat, except for the magazine Rufus had apparently eaten and regurgitated at some point when she was wrangling veggies. She sighed and went to the kitchen, returning with the paper towels.

“Let me do that,” Lucas offered.

“Just sit there and look pretty.”

The rain had picked up, and it was such a lovely sound, the patter and tap, the occasional car passing. Rufus crooned at Lucas and splayed himself obscenely.

Colleen ignored her slutty pet (though she knew the feeling) and went into the kitchen, washed her hands twice in the crowded sink, then got two servings of pudding from the fridge and put the berries on top. Beautiful. At least they’d have this. She might suck as a chef, but she could handle dessert. The necessities in life, that was the theory.

Carrying the ramekins into the living room, Colleen decided that all was not lost. There was Lucas, sitting on the floor in front of the couch, idly scratching her dog’s belly. “You’re allowed on the furniture, you know,” she said.

“I’m good here,” he answered.

Yes, he was. He’d be even better in her bed.

She swallowed a bite of pudding, which unfortunately had a raspberry in it. An unchewed raspberry. Some very racy choking ensued.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” she wheezed, grabbing a tissue to wipe her streaming eyes. “Good, good. It’s all good. If you can choke, you can breathe.” She choked again, involuntarily. “See?”

He waited until she was breathing more or less normally, then resumed eating the pudding. Which was excellent, thank you very much.

A flash of lightning lit up the living room, and thunder rumbled in the distance, and shit, Rufus hated thunder. On cue, he bolted upright, knocking Lucas’s pudding onto the floor and racing straight for Colleen’s womb.