Gone With the Nerd (Nerds, #4)(8)
Author: Vicki Lewis Thompson

"You have, Flynn. You’ve been extremely valuable."

He was convinced that the wine was causing this moment when their eyes were locked and sparks seemed to be shooting off of both of them. "What happened to your glasses?"

"They were sliding all over the place while I was unpacking, so I took them off."

"You probably need the screws tightened." The wine was coaxing him to lean over and kiss her, which he most certainly wasn’t about to do. They’d been discussing his life with Kristen, so how could he be thinking of kissing Zoe?

She smiled at him. "I’ll bet you have one of those little kits with the tiny screwdriver inside and little spare screws."

"Yeah, I do. I can fix your glasses. They just need to be screwed… tighter."

"That would be nice." She had a dreamy, come-closer expression in her eyes.

"No problem. Glad to do it." Damn. He wanted to kiss her. He justified his unacceptable urges by reminding himself that she made a living being kissable. A close-up shot of her lips was guaranteed to make any guy in the Free World ditch his significant other and long for the ecstasy promised by Zoe’s mouth.

So he could be forgiven for thinking of kissing her. Any normal male would be engulfed by her natural sensuality. He felt himself drifting toward those smiling lips.

"George is coming out."

Apparently she hadn’t been as mesmerized by the moment as he had, because she’d caught a movement from the corner of her eye. Well, of course she hadn’t been mesmerized. He wasn’t her type. He was her Rent-a-Nerd. He would do well to remember his place in the scheme of things.

He turned to look, and sure enough, George had ventured out to sniff the first piece of cheese.

Zoe’s voice was low and filled with excitement. "This is going to work."

"Could be."

Sure enough, George wolfed down the first piece of cheese and moved to the next.

"He’s just like Pac-Man," Zoe said.

"I used to love that game." Flynn watched George moving steadily toward the door.

"Me, too." Zoe drank her wine and watched George move laboriously through piece after piece. "It’s what gave me the idea to try this."

"Well, it’s working like a charm." Flynn poured himself a touch more wine.

"Let’s drink to ridding the cabin of George without bloodshed." Zoe raised her glass and smiled at him.

"I’m for that." Flynn clicked his glass with hers and drank. Damn it, this cabin was feeling cozier by the minute. Good thing Zoe was so far out of his league. He’d been with her less than two hours, and he already felt as if he’d betrayed Kristen.

"George is out!" Zoe bounded from her chair and slammed the door on the tiny mouse.

"I’m e-mailing Kristen," Flynn said, and retrieved his laptop.

Omigod, Zoe Tarleton is actually spending the weekend in Long Shaft! I can hardly believe this is happening. Who would ever think that a big star like her would end up coming to a little place like this? But she’s here, she’s really here! No one is supposed to know about it, of course. But I know, and I’m completely stoked! I know everything about her. I’ve done lots of research. You might say I’m a secret fan. I think she should stay here awhile. In fact, maybe she should stay here forever and ever….

Chapter Six

While Flynn got on the Internet to type in his love note to Kristen, Zoe returned to the kitchen, closed the back door, and looked for something they could fix for dinner without burning down the cabin. She felt as if they had a third person on this trip and she didn’t like it, even though she’d agreed that Flynn could communicate with Kristen.

This whole Kristen business was kind of weird anyway. Flynn could have e-mailed his lady love earlier, while Zoe had unpacked groceries. At least fifteen minutes had gone by before she’d spotted George, plenty of time to type a message. Yet apparently he’d been fooling around with something else instead.

Also, and this was the salient point—what the hell was he doing with condoms on this trip? Ever since she’d seen them in that little compartment of his suitcase, she’d been second-guessing herself. Maybe it had been a box of something else. Maybe he’d saved a condom box and was reusing it for … something.

No, that was nuts. Nobody, not even Flynn, would save an empty condom box and reload it with some other doodad. Besides, Flynn didn’t have doodads. He had his basic wardrobe and a shaving kit. That was it.

Except for condoms. No matter how she turned the situation around, examining it from all angles, she came up with the same conclusion. Flynn thought there was a chance he’d get lucky this weekend.

Once she accepted that fact, another one came bounding along on its heels. Flynn wasn’t nearly as committed to this Kristen person as he’d implied. Kristen might be a safety net, a way for him to protect himself until he decided how he wanted this weekend to go. That made him a lot more complicated than she’d thought.

So now what? The idea of a weekend fling with her favorite nerd had crossed her mind more than once in the past few hours. She’d dismissed it because of Kristen. Also, she didn’t see Flynn as the weekend fling type, and she might end up ruining a perfectly good lawyer-client relationship. Flynn was the best in the business, which was why he got clients even if he did happen to drive a nerd car.

"So what do you think we should fix for dinner? Something with olive oil?"

She turned to find him leaning in the doorway. Looking down at the bottle in her hand, she realized she’d spent quite a while fixated on Flynn instead of scoping out a dinner plan. "That’s what I was thinking," she said. "Something with olive oil."

"Like what?"

She thought quickly. Olive oil had to do with Italian cooking. She knew that because of the fabulous dipping sauce at her favorite restaurant. Glancing at the pile of groceries she’d unloaded from the bags Margo had carted in, she noticed a package of angel-hair pasta. "Spaghetti?"

"Spaghetti sounds good. But I don’t see ajar of sauce. How can you have spaghetti without sauce?"

"Maybe we have one of those envelopes of dry ingredients you mix in with tomato paste." Zoe rummaged through the pile on the counter, but no little packet showed itself. "Here’s a can of tomatoes," she said brightly, holding it up. "We could mush them up and add a lot of salt and pepper."

Flynn looked doubtful. "In a pinch, maybe, but I think more goes into spaghetti sauce than that. Maybe some of the olive oil. Is that garlic?"

"I guess so." Zoe picked up the tiny bulblike thing and held it to her nose. "Probably garlic. And this is definitely an onion." She picked that up, too.

"It looks like Margo thought we’d make our own sauce."

"She probably did." Zoe didn’t relish the idea of admitting to Margo that she couldn’t pull that off. She’d look like a spoiled rotten diva if she did that. "I have an idea. Let’s get creative. We’ll open up the tomatoes, mash them up a little, add some of the garlic, and some of the onion. We’ll keep tasting until it seems right."

"I have a better idea." Flynn looked immensely pleased with himself. "I’ll go back online and find a recipe for spaghetti sauce. Then we can get the exact measurements we need."

"C’mon, Flynn. Let’s try this on our own. We might come up with a whole new taste."

"More likely something totally inedible. Look, we know we’re both bad in the kitchen. I’m sure I can find some good recipes. I’ll Google spaghetti sauce. Be right back."

"But the thing is, I’m not into recipes," she called after him. "That’s the reason I—" She gave up protesting when she heard the sound of his laptop booting up. She should have known he was a recipes kind of guy.

But she had a little time to maneuver before he showed up with his Googled spaghetti sauce formula. She could get the jump on him and show him that innovation had it all over following directions. He would be so amazed. She liked the idea of amazing Flynn.

First she found a big kettle, filled it with water, and dumped in the pasta. After turning the burner on high, she located a can opener and a pan for the tomatoes. There. She had the pasta on one burner and the potential sauce on another one.

Next step, mush those tomatoes into a pulp. The utensil drawer had the kind of potato masher she remembered her grandmother using, so she took it out and began pulverizing the tomatoes.

Now this was what she called creative cooking! She’d bet Julia Child started out this way, forging a path to creative cuisine. Zoe poured in some of the olive oil, which seemed like the right move at this point. The tomatoes were sticking to the bottom of the pan and olive oil was good lubrication. She’d learned that from massage.

Massage made her think of sex, which she hadn’t had in ages. One bout of watching her love life dragged through the scab sheets was quite enough. She wasn’t only worried about her feelings. Her parents had suffered, too. They were simple people who’d never anticipated having an international star for a daughter.

They still weren’t comfortable with it. Her mother had once confided that they wished Zoe had become a schoolteacher or a nurse. That way they wouldn’t have to cringe every time they passed the magazines in the grocery store checkout aisle. Whenever the gossip was flying, they stopped shopping completely and bought takeout, and they hated takeout.

Zoe had passed the stage of feeling guilty about that, but she didn’t go out of her way to stir up the gossipmongers, either. An affair wasn’t worth the angst of wondering when the tabloids would get the story and her parents would be back to take-out menus.

Too funny—one of Hollywood’s biggest sex symbols wasn’t having any sex because she was a scaredy-cat, afraid of the repercussions. But what if she happened to be in a situation where no one would ever find out? Hmm. Whatever happens in Long Shaft stays in Long Shaft.

She shouldn’t be thinking about that now, though. She had cooking chores. Garlic was definitely an Italian kind of spice, but this thing looked too big to throw in as is. Luckily, the big piece broke apart into smaller pieces. Cool. She tossed in four of them. They seemed kind of hard and crusty, but the cooking process would probably soften them up.

She’d always wanted to experiment like this, but her mother was a follow-the-recipe kind of person like Flynn. Her roommates had bought into the same propaganda, insisting that recipes were the only way to go. Finally Zoe had decided to leave the cooking to those who loved reading the fine print. She shouldn’t have let herself be intimidated, because this was turning out to be a blast.

"Sorry I took so long. I found several, so I had to narrow the search." Flynn came into the kitchen still gazing at the screen of his open laptop. "I don’t have a printer, so you’ll just have to read it on the—" His nose twitched, as if smelling the food cooking. He glanced up. "Zoe, what are you doing?"

She smiled at him. He was so far behind the curve. "Making spaghetti."

"How? You don’t know what you’re doing."

"Does it look like I don’t know what I’m doing?"

"Yes."

"Look again. I have pasta there and sauce here. Everything’s under control." she turned away from the stove to relocate the onion in the pile of groceries still on the counter. "I have good instincts."

"Do your instincts tell you when a pot is boiling over?"

She spun around and discovered foam coming out of the kettle where she’d dumped the pasta. "Omigosh." Dropping the onion, she reached for the kettle.

"Zoe, don’t!"

"It’s making a mess!" She grabbed it off the stove, discovering too late that the handles were blazing hot. As she twirled around, she dropped both pot and contents with a clatter into the sink. The pot wobbled and fell over, discharging all its contents.

"Did you burn yourself?" Flynn shoved his laptop onto a clear space on the counter and turned to her. "Let me see."

"I’ll be fine." Her fingers stung, but her pride stung worse. She’d been so sure that she could handle whipping up a gourmet feast. She wanted to blame Flynn for coming in at the wrong moment and distracting her, but she knew the pot would have boiled over regardless.

"Let me look at your hand." Flynn reached for her.

"I’m okay. Really." She put both hands behind her back. Then she heard a now-familiar hissing sound and glanced quickly at the stove. "Oh no!" Her sauce mixture was bubbling over, too.

This time, as she made a move to get it, Flynn grabbed her arm. "Wait! Get a pot holder first!"

"I don’t have one! I don’t know where they are!"

"Let me." He shoved a finger into the knot of his tie and loosened it enough that he could wrap the end around the handle of the pan. After moving in to the back of the stove, he turned off both burners.

Gathering the tattered remnants of her pride, Zoe took stock. All might not be lost. "If I can get the pasta back in the kettle and add more water, I can finish cooking that while I cut up the onion for the sauce." She opened a couple of drawers and finally found the silverware. A fork should do the trick.

"Zoe, I think maybe—"

"I’m sure this will work." Her fingers still smarted, so she tested the handle of the kettle before trying to hold it. The handle had cooled. Holding the kettle steady, she began scooping the pasta back inside.

She got most of it, filled the kettle with water, and put it back on the stove. This time she turned the burner to medium instead of high. She’d miscalculated the first time. A girl couldn’t be expected to know everything right off the bat.

Time to check out how Flynn was handling this, though. He was awfully quiet. Glancing in his direction, she discovered him standing in the same spot as before, staring at her in disbelief. He hadn’t even bothered to fix his tie.

"I suppose this all seems a little unorthodox to you." "You could say that."

She had to give him credit for not laughing, because he looked as if he really wanted to. The corners of his mouth were twitching. "It’s just that recipes are so boring," she said.

"And so nerdlike."