Thunder Canyon Homecoming / A Thunder Canyon Christmas: Thunder Canyon Homecoming

“I pay him to put them all over my body.” She didn’t usually engage in this kind of flirtatious banter, but Corey’s reaction to her statement was so typically and possessively male, she couldn’t resist teasing him a little. “And he’s worth every penny.”

“I could do the same thing—for free.”

She lifted a brow. “Show me your diploma, cowboy.”

“Well, no one’s ever called it a diploma, but—”

She laughed. “I was referring to a professional accreditation. Stefan trained in Sweden.”

“I graduated from Texas A&M,” he said, flicking on his indicator.

Instead of heading in the direction Erin lived, he turned the opposite way.

“Where are we going?” she asked, more curious than concerned.

“I told Russ we had plans for dinner,” he reminded her. “You don’t want to make a liar out of me, do you?”

“I just don’t want you to feel obligated—”

“Erin.”

She frowned at the interruption.

“You seem to be forgetting that I’m the one who tracked you down this morning and pretty much blackmailed you into spending the day with me.”

“You did, didn’t you?”

“Which should prove that if I didn’t want to be with you, I wouldn’t be.”

“Okay,” she finally said, but the furrow in her brow deepened when he pulled into the parking lot of the Super Saver Mart, still referred to by a lot of the locals as the Thunder Canyon Mercantile. “This is where we’re going for dinner?”

He chuckled. “This is where we’re going to get the ingredients for dinner.”

She looked at him suspiciously.

“No, I don’t expect you to cook dinner for me,” he said be fore she could ask. “I’m going to cook for you.”

“You are?”

“Why do you sound so surprised?”

“I guess because I am,” she admitted, as they made their way toward the entrance. “No man has ever cooked me dinner before.”

He eyed her warily. “Are you one of those—what do they call them—vegetarians or vegans or whatever?”

The tone of his voice left her in no doubt what this man from cattle country thought of that possibility and made her lips curve. “No, I’m not a vegetarian or a vegan.”

“Are you a picky eater?”

“There are some things I don’t like,” she admitted, “but I’m not picky.”

“What don’t you like?”

“Peas. Pickles. Pineapple.”

He lifted his brows. “You have something against the letter ‘p’?”

“I don’t like squash, either.”

“Like…pumpkin?”

She smiled again. “Any kind of squash.”

“Well then, I think we’re pretty safe,” he told her. “Because there are no peas, pickles, pineapple or squash in my red sauce.”

“I do like red sauce.”

“How do you feel about pasta?”

“I love pasta.”

He grinned. “Then let’s go shopping.”

Chapter Five

If she’d been surprised by his offer to cook for her, she was even more so by the ease with which he pushed the cart around the grocery store. He didn’t just toss the vegetables into a bag, he checked the color of the tomatoes, tested the firmness of the garlic, gauged the texture of the peppers.

She made a face when he was sniffing the mushrooms. “Those aren’t one of my favorite foods,” she admitted to him.

“These are shiitake, not porcini,” he teased.

“I’m just not a fan of any kind of fungus,” she said.

“You won’t even taste them.”

She decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, she was going to sit down for a home-cooked meal that she didn’t have to prepare, and she was curious about his skill in the kitchen. Okay, she was curious about his skill in other areas, too, but she refused to let her mind go down that path. Again.

He added a head of romaine lettuce, a bag of carrots, a bunch of green onions and a cucumber.

Moving out of the produce department to the bakery, he grabbed a loaf of French bread, then a package of fresh fettucine, extra virgin olive oil, basil, oregano, a hunk of parmesan cheese and a bottle of red wine.

“You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”

He took a mental inventory of the ingredients as they moved along the conveyor belt toward the cashier. “I hope so.”

“Do you do this often?”

“Shop for groceries?”