“You’ll notice I find nothing about that funny.”
“And if you could see into my head, you’d see I don’t find it funny either, but sometimes you’ve got two choices: laugh, or lose your shit. Me? I choose to laugh.”
“Maybe find a third option,” I muttered as I took a drink of my beer. I wasn’t going to give the idiot a hope he didn’t deserve, but privately I had to respect his attitude. I suppose if I had been busted like he had, I wouldn’t have dealt with it with the same barely there grace as him. The other guys would have been too mortified for words if they’d been in Colin’s shoes, so I admired his willingness to hold his head high.
“Might not win me any points back,” he said as he busied himself looking through the cabinets. “But if I’m honest, I’m glad it was you rather than, say…Cait.”
“Cait intentionally stays ignorant of anything that happens down that hallway while she’s in the building,” I told him with a snort. “She works with nothing but men; she knows better.”
“That’s a fair point,” he said. “Normally, if I heard about a woman living with a bunch of young guys in the middle of the woods, I’d feel sympathy for her.”
“I really hope you’re not that stupid. I mean, you’re clearly stupid, but you can’t possibly bethatstupid.”
“I can be pretty stupid, but when it comes to Cait? I don’t feel bad for her. Honestly, I’m more likely to feel bad for the rest of us.”
“You’re going to say shit like that where she could hear you?”
“Please, I’ve known people like her; she would love hearing that I pity the rest of us having to deal with her.” Well, he didn’thave common sense, but he clearly had enough brain cells to understand people, if only a little. “What are you doing?”
“Well, I’m attempting to start the meal I was assigned, but I’m a little lostanda little frazzled because my…” he stopped and something like alarm flashed over his face before he let out a laugh and shook his head. “My new boss busted me choking the chicken.”
“What?” came the startled shout from the hallway, and Reno appeared, his eyes wide. “You were doingwhat? And hewhat?”
“You heard, dunno why you think I’ll repeat myself,” Colin said with a scathing dryness that even I appreciated. “But if the aura of death energy coming from behind me is any indication, you should probably be more worried about what you’re supposed to be doing rather than my poor attempt at quick self-gratification. Just a thought.”
He was a lot smarter when he wasn’t focused on his dick, because I could see the moment Reno realized I was sitting there and with a sheepish grin, ducked out of the room again. I rolled my eyes. “You’re not doing yourself any favors by making me think you’re an idiot. Reno has a big mouth.”
“Getting my balls busted by a bunch of guys for doing something all guys do, I can live with,” he said with a shrug. “And I’m going to be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Jesus Christ, another idiot who doesn’t know how to cook.”
“Oh, I can cook, at least, basic stuff. The problem is, all my life, I’ve either had food cooked and served up to me, or I was only responsible for cooking for myself. Cooking for a group of guys isn’t exactly my thing. I don’t know how much to use here,” he said, turning to shrug. “I assume a lot.”
“God save me,” I muttered, pushing up from the counter to see what was supposed to be cooked since I didn’t know either.
Colin leaned back slightly just as I realized I had butted my way into his personal space. I glanced at him, daring him to saysomething, but he looked amused as he took a step backward, giving me space to look. After reading, I did the quick mental math to calculate how much food would need to be put together. With that, I opened the fridge and gathered the meat before moving to the pantry.
Setting it all out, I directed him toward the pots and pans, and he diligently went about filling one of them with water, albeit with a measuring cup, which made me roll my eyes. “Just fill the damn thing.”
“I’ve been told that the amount of water you cook the pasta in affects not only the taste, but how well it cooks. Since I don’t really know what I’m doing in the kitchen enough to be confident, I’m going to take the expert opinion on this,” he said, with another one of his shrugs.
I went back to the counter. “If you want to waste your time, be my guest, but don’t waste our time.”
“An extra minute or two to make sure dinner doesn’t turn out to be a disaster won’t hurt,” he said as he continued.
“You’re really going to argue with me over this?”
“If measuring the water is so significant a crime, then I can fill it up the way you want me to.”
His tone was agreeable enough, but his words made me feel like I was being unreasonable. I glared at him as I took a deep drink of water, as he slapped the large pot onto the stove and lit it with the sound of clicking and the whoosh of flames. He opened the cabinet that held all our spices, giving a grunt I couldn’t decipher before grabbing the large container of salt and frowning.
“Slightly like the sea,” he muttered to himself before dumping salt in and stirring.
“You just made it take even longer,” I told him with a sigh.
He glanced over his shoulder with a blank expression. “Huh?”
“Salt raises the boiling point of water,” I told him with a pleased smirk. “Which means you should add it at the end, when it’s already boiling, to make things quicker. I guess that expert opinion only got you so far.”