The Spark Between Us by Stacy Travis

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Sarah

Left to his own devices,Braden kept a relatively clean house, and my attempts at straightening gave it a helpful boost. Tonight, it was spotless. I’d been stress cleaning all day.

Once I’d cleaned the kitchen, the den, the entire outdoor space where we’d set up two long folding tables and chairs Braden had borrowed from who knows where, I found a recipe I’d seen one night on the Food Network. Then I bought the ingredients to chicken piccata, garlic bread, heirloom tomato and burrata salad with basil, and a giant casserole of baked ziti.

And I’d yet to cook anything.

“Why are you so wound up?” Braden came up behind me and dropped his hands on my shoulders as I stood arranging hot pink peonies in a vase on the table I’d set for eleven on the patio outside. Then rearranging them.

“I’m not,” I said, not even reacting when he dropped a kiss in the crook of my neck. That didn’t go over well.

Braden spun me around to face him. “Talk to me, Sarah.”

“My family stresses me out.”

“But they’re your family. You’ve known them your entire life, and they still like you.”

I turned back toward the flowers and pulled a few unruly leaves from the stems, and moved the blooms around again.

“Hey.” Braden took my hands in his to still them. “The flowers are fine. You are not. What’s up?”

“I’m different around my family than I am with you,” I admitted. I told him a little more about how my siblings saw me a certain way, and even though we were all adults, we reverted to old habits. My family expected me to be the responsible, unfun one who kept everyone in line.

“I don’t see you that way at all.” Braden observed me as though looking for my other side.

I leaned into him, grateful. “Thank you. That’s why being here has been so good for me. It pushed to see myself differently. I guess I’m worried about slipping back into old habits, being who they expect me to be.”

His arms encircled me. “I’m here. I’ve got your back. This is going to be fine.” He sounded so calm, it made me almost feel that way too. But not quite.

“My sisters meddle. And they’re observant. They’ll know something’s going on between us.”

“Would that be terrible?”

“I don’t know,” I huffed. A part of me wanted it to be evident that there was something between us, so evident that Braden would dazzle them with his arresting smile and tell him he was crazy about me.

Except I was the one who was crazy.

Crazy for fantasizing. That had become an unavoidable given. But also crazy for agreeing to have my entire band of sibling misfits and their boyfriends and fiancés drive out and join us for dinner.

Not just crazy—insane.

First, let’s be honest. I am a dedicated and experienced watcher of Top Chef. But am I a chef? Not so much.

However, I was a determined non-chef, and in most areas of my life thus far, determination had been enough.

“What the hell was I thinking?!” I spun around and walked back inside. I knew I needed to do something useful in the kitchen, so I turned on the oven and the stove. I also opened a bunch of cabinets but took nothing out. I’d locked poor Bella outside so I wouldn’t abandon my menu plans and feed her all the ingredients.

He looked around and I saw the combination of shock and fear in his eyes. He put an arm around me and backed me away from the stove after turning off all six burners that I had flaming without a single pot to put on them.

Obviously a fire hazard.

“Sarah, what’s the plan here?” he asked quietly, rubbing my shoulders. From where we stood just outside the kitchen, I caught a glimpse of what he’d seen when he walked into the room. There was flour in a shallow bowl and also near the bowl and on the floor. The countertops were covered with tomatoes, some in a partial state of being sliced or diced.

Three loaves of French bread sat in their sleeves amid several heads of garlic and a pound of butter, as though they were going to jump up and magically turn themselves into garlic bread.

Fifteen raw chicken breasts were on the floor in zippered bags beside a can of corn I’d been using to pound them flat because Braden didn’t own a meat mallet, and I couldn’t find a hammer.

Basil pulled from its stems was strewn everywhere. An untouched can of sweet iced tea sat on the windowsill, condensation dripping down its sides.

I closed my eyes and started to laugh. Braden’s grip tightened, probably because he wasn’t sure whether or not I was losing it. Then he reached for the can of tea and pulled the tab before handing it to me.

I took a shaky sip and he folded me into an embrace. We stood there for a minute or more while his unspoken words told me I’d be able to get this dinner on the table somehow because he was here for me.

When I calmed down and opened my eyes, I shook my head. “I have no clue what I’m doing. When I said I like to cook for other people, I meant one other person. Like you. I’d cook for you. But eleven people—”

He nodded and took a step closer to the mess in the kitchen. “I used to cook for everyone at the station. I can do quantity. Let me help you.”

My heart swelled at those words. “Please. I’d love the help.” The fight for self-sufficiency left me and I acquiesced.

“The only way out is through. You know that expression?”

“No, but I like it.”

We spent the next two hours paging through the recipes, figuring out what still needed chopping and arranging, and pounding the chicken breasts into submission. That felt good.

Working together, it didn’t feel like work at all. Braden fired up two sauté pans on the stove and swirled a pour of olive oil with some butter while I patted the chicken with a flour, salt, and pepper mixture.

Ten minutes later, we had fifteen beautifully browned, thinly pounded pieces of chicken simmering in a lemon-butter sauce with capers.

From there, the salad was easy, and buttering the garlic bread led to Braden buttering parts of me. For the first time in my life, I felt the ease of working with a partner. I mean, sure, I experienced that at work because people came in with different skill sets. The parts became a better whole.

But I’d never experienced that with another person in my life, partly because that phase of my life wasn’t supposed to start until I got tenure and was ready to find a relationship.

Life doesn’t work that way.

Braden was right about beauty in the unexpected. By trying to keep my life under tight restraints, I’d cut myself off from parts of my life I knew I wanted to experience. The unexpected moments I’d had with Braden had brought out the best version of myself.

“I think everything’s good to go. I’m gonna head upstairs and shower,” Braden said. “And in case it wasn’t clear, that was an invitation.”

He brushed a light kiss against my lips and set me free to continue puttering with the peonies. Or join him upstairs.