“Good.” He held up a bobby pin. “I was about to unlock the door and let myself in.”
“Not a good idea. We detectives have words for that.”
“We haven’t discussedexchanging keys.” He put added emphasis on the last two words. She completely ignored it because that was the last thing she was ready to talk about. If she gave him access to her place, he would want to give her access to his, and his place was beautiful and made her feel so uncomfortable.
As she opened the door and let him into her cramped one-bedroom apartment, she scooped up a couple bags of food from the floor and brought them in with her. With all the groceries now sitting on top of the kitchen counter, she looked at it in wonder. “I didn’t mean for you to buy out the store. I meant just a few things.”
“Yeah, well,just a few thingsended up being more than just a few. And every time we’re here, we don’t have any food to eat.”
“I know. It’s a fact of life, isn’t it?”
“Short of having a chef who delivers or living on a property where we have somebody cook our meals, we are responsible for putting food on the table.”
“I guess we could do takeout every night.” She tilted her head, gave him a one-arm shrug. “Lord knows, sometimes I can go weeks and weeks that way.”
“Not the healthiest of diets,” he noted in admonishment.
“No, and you’re also used to having whatever you want. I’m just not in that league.”
“You might not be, but that doesn’t mean you’re not capable of doing more than you are.”
She snorted. “Go ahead and criticize me,” she snapped, “and see how much food you’ll get.”
He shrugged. “I brought pretty-easy-to-fix stuff. If nothing else, I’ll slap together a sandwich. Go have a shower and an attitude change, and, when you’re done, you’ll probably feel better.”
Glaring, she stomped off to the bathroom, muttering, “Who needs an attitude change?”
She did, clearly, but she wasn’t about to acknowledge that. She quickly stripped down, stepped into the hot water, and stood here for a long moment, trying to figure out why she was so cranky, tired, and irritable. Well, from the looks of it, he had just spent hundreds of dollars on groceries, so now she felt beholden to him. If she tried to pay him, he’d be insulted, but she would give it a good shot anyway. She had asked him to pick up a few things, although he had picked up way-the-hell more than a few.
And yet he had also done it out of kindness, plus the fact that he too wanted to eat, which had turned her back around to being cranky.
When she stepped out of the shower, she quickly toweled off her hair, then ran a comb through it. Walking back into her bedroom, the towel wrapped around her chest, she found some clothes. Just a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Dressed again, she padded out to the kitchen in bare feet to find that he had already put away most of the groceries.
“How much do I owe you for today’s haul?” she asked in a crisp voice.
“Nothing.”
Exactly what she had expected him to say, yet it didn’t make her feel any better. “I’m happy to pay for the groceries. You know that.”
He waved a hand. “And I’m happy to bring some groceries and have a meal with you. If I were to go to a high-end restaurant, it would take a couple hundred dollars to do a couple meals. This way, we’ve got lots of meals here.”
“Are you cooking then?” she teased, something about his words hitting her funny bone.
“I can cook”—he turned to look at her—“in case you didn’t think I could.”
She shrugged. “I can cook too. That doesn’t mean I make a big fancy meal out of it though.”
“I don’t do five-star-restaurant stuff by any means, but I can throw a steak on the barbecue, steam some vegetables, and make a salad.”
Her stomach growled at the mention of food.
Hearing that, he laughed. “The trouble is, you don’t even have a barbecue, do you?”
She shook her head. “The best I have to offer is a cast-iron skillet.”
He frowned and considered the idea. “You know what? A cast-iron skillet does a hell of a job on a steak.” He rummaged around in her cupboards, while she put on coffee, and, when she turned around, he had pulled out a large cast-iron pan, looking at it approvingly.
“Don’t know where you got this, but it’s exactly what we’ll use.” He put it on the burner, while he unwrapped steaks.