Read Online Rumor Has It by Tami Hoag - Free Book Online Page B

of Fairfax Street.”
    Heartthrob. What an inadequate word, Katie thought. Beneath her baggy pink T-shirt her heart was throbbing all right, but that was the least of what Nick could do to her with nothing more than a glance.
    She dropped her paintbrush and tried to straighten her hair, only succeeding in streaking ivory paint through the strands that had escaped her braid. Now that she had made a decision about an ongoing relationship with him, she felt skittish, as if Nick would somehow know by looking at her that she had decided to take the monumental step.
    “Morning, Nick!” Maggie said, beaming a big smile at him as he came in. “What is that delicious aroma?”
    “Hiya, Maggie.” He grinned, lifting an enormous roasting pan. “I brought lunch. Lasagna. Are you people hungry or what?”
    “Starved. Ravenous. Famished,” Maggie answered. She abandoned her post to lift the lid onlunch. Nick chuckled at her heartfelt groan as she stared longingly at the dish he'd prepared.
    “Nick, you didn't have to cook for all these people!” Katie exclaimed. There were easily a dozen people working in the house and several more outside.
    “All these people? This would have been a slow day in my mother's kitchen.”
    “You're from a large family, Nick?” Maggie asked.
    “Huge. You practically had to have reservations for a place at the table. It was great.”
    Katie ignored the little twinge of warning she felt. So he had enjoyed growing up in a large family. What did that have to do with the two of them? Nothing, she firmly told herself.
    “John Harris said everyone was devoting their best talents to this job,” Nick said, setting his roaster down on a table that was a sheet of plywood over two sawhorses. He lifted the lid off the pan. Immediately three people poked their heads into the room through various doors, their noses twitching. Nick gave what Katie thought was an adorable shrug and said, “Me, I can cook a little bit.”
    His was an understatement Katie realized a few minutes later after sampling his cooking. Nick's lasagna was far removed from what Katie was used to buying frozen. Everything in it was absolutely fresh and perfectly prepared. The tomato sauce was bursting with sweet flavor. The variety of herbs and spices were a delight to the taste buds. The cheese had that special bite that told Katie it was freshly grated. The combination of ingredients had resulted in a masterpiece.
    “This is heaven,” Katie said with a sigh. She and Nick sat side by side under a magnolia tree in the front yard, eating their lunch from paper plates. In addition to the lasagna he'd brought loaves of warm garlic bread. Everyone had chipped in for soda and beer, and Mavis Davies had provided two pans of her special chocolate- chip brownies for dessert. “I'm going to write to the people who package those diet dinners and tell them they've got a nerve calling the stuff they make lasagna,” Katie said.
    Nick frowned at her. “You buy frozen stuff? To eat?”
    “I'm no cook. If it doesn't come with microwave instructions on the box, I can't make it.”
    He shuddered and muttered something in Italian that sounded like a prayer. His warm brown eyes found Katie's and he said earnestly, “Cooking should be a joy, just as eating should be a joy.”
    “Well,” she said, scooping up another forkful of lasagna. “I can promise you, if I cook it, it won't be a joy to eat.”
    “Didn't your mother teach you to cook?”
    “My mother left when I was ten,” she said almost matter- of- factly. “My father cooked, my brother cooked. I was too busy with other things.”
    “I'm sorry,” he said quietly. “I didn't know.”
    “Of course you didn't,” she said as she attacked her dessert.
    There was a finality in her tone that suggested the topic was closed. Nick wouldn't let go quite that easily. He wanted to know who Katie was. Bitting into his own rich square of chocolate dessert, he made a mental note to get the recipe from