Page 93 of Wilde Flame
Her eyes lit up.
“Why don’t you get a glass,” I said, motioning with my head to the right cupboard. Of course, she already knew from the few days she’d stayed here. I tried not to laugh when she got out a huge Yeti cup.
“Is that big enough, Lili?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what it is, but I’m craving orange juice so bad.”
After pouring herself a full glass, she put the juice back in the fridge, then helped me with all the pizza fixings.
“What about the crust?”
Glancing at her, I smirked. “I’m making it.”
Lilibeth let out a bark of laughter. “You’re making the pizza crust?”
I placed a hand over my heart and made a face as if mortally wounded. “You don’t think I can?”
Her head tilted as she regarded me. “At this point, I don’t doubt anything when it comes to you, Caden Wilde. You probably make the best pizza crust I’ll ever eat.”
“Damn straight. You’ll be comparing this crust to all other crusts for the rest of your life.”
She chuckled. “I washed all the veggies. What do you want me to do now?”
“Start cutting up the bell peppers and onion?”
“Any certain way you want them cut?”
I shook my head. “Whatever’s easiest.”
She walked over to the sink and set the cutting board across it, running cold water.
“I see you remembered my mother’s trick for the tears and onions,” I said, as I started to mix the dough.
“We shall see if it really works,” Lilibeth said, winking at me…and causing a strange sensation to hit me square in the chest.
She moved on to the bell peppers with nary a tear, then began cutting the pepperoni.
“So…bacon?” I asked, as I rolled out the dough and shaped it for our pizzas.
“It’s the strangest thing. I love bacon. I could eat bacon on pretty much everything. But this morning my parents had it, and the smell made me feel sick. Then Mrs. Harper had bacon grease in a frying pan, and the moment I smelled it, I was running to the bathroom.” Then she turned to look at me. “Do you want to know something crazy?”
“Tell me,” I replied.
Bending down, Lilibeth picked up Misty and snuggled her for a few moments before setting her back down. “Like I said earlier, Mrs. Harper knew I was pregnant. I mean, me rushing off to throw up was probably a huge giveaway, but when I walked out of the bathroom, she handed me peppermint water and said it was the only thing that helped with her morning sickness.”
I tossed the crust into the air. “Throwing up might’ve been a sign, but sometimes I swear that woman has this sixth sense or something. She knows things.”
Lilibeth pointed to me. “Yes! Thank you! I thought I was alone in thinking that. I bet she was an amazing teacher.”
“She was.”
We worked side by side for a few minutes in silence.
“Lilibeth, will it be difficult for you to live here? I keep thinking back to our conversation on Christmas, and I don’t want to make things hard on you. If you’d really prefer, I can talk to Gatlin about you moving into Emeline’s cabin. He was going to move into it in the spring, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”
She’d been spreading pizza sauce onto her crust when she stopped, paused a moment, then looked at me. I felt my breath catch in my throat as I waited for her to reply.
“The one thing I’ve valued more than anything in this…friendship…we’ve started is that we’ve been honest and upfront from the beginning. Yes, I was worried I’d fall in love with you if we kept sleeping together.” Placing a hand on her stomach, she smiled. “That was before the baby. I won’t lie and say I didn’t want to climb you like a tree yesterday, when you showed up in that damn baseball hat, though. But…I can control my feelings and put the baby first.
