I knocked on Scarlett’s back door, noting that the tiny table here on the porch was set for two with napkins and utensils. There was a candle on the railing next to the table.

I heard footsteps and watched with pleasure as Scarlett hurried to the door. She wore a long dress with blue watercolor blossoms that swished around her ankles. Her feet were bare.

“Hi,” she said. Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair hung loose down her back.

She’d spent the day at the spa with her friends, and I’d expected her to look more relaxed than she did.

I leaned in for a kiss, intending to just brush my mouth against hers. But she shoved her hands into my hair and held on for dear life as she kissed the hell out of me. She pulled back just as abruptly, leaving me stunned and breathless.

“What was that for?” I asked.

She smiled up at me. There was something a little shy and a lot unusual for Scarlett in that smile. “Just an appetizer,” she said. “Come on in. Dinner’s almost ready.”

Uh-oh. Scarlett Bodine was many things. Many wonderful, good, wild things. A cook was not one of those things. Even her sandwiches were borderline terrible. I wasn’t much better in the kitchen, but at least I didn’t try to kid myself about it.

Something smelled burnt. Something else smelled just plain bad.

“I hope you like chicken. I roasted one,” she announced.

“Um. That sounds great.” I needed to find a meat thermometer stat. I was sure that chicken was one of those meats that could kill you if it was undercooked. “I didn’t know you cooked.”

She shrugged, looking slightly ill. I wondered if she’d sampled something she cooked.

“I wanted to try something new,” Scarlett said, sticking her chin out. “Just because it’s not something I’ve done before doesn’t mean I won’t be good at it.”

“What can I do to help?” I offered.

“How about you put the potatoes in the microwave while I check the asparagus?”

I glanced in the pot on the stovetop. Dear god, she’d boiled asparagus… from a can.

At least we’d have baked potatoes. I unwrapped them and dumped them onto the microwave tray, hitting the potato button. Idiot proof.

“What’s the special occasion?” I asked. She was up to something. That much was clear, but as with everything Scarlett did, I couldn’t even begin to predict what it would be.

“Hang on, let me go find the wine opener,” she said, hurrying out to the porch. Scarlett’s screened-in porch served as a bar of sorts during bonfires. She kept her bottle openers and corkscrew out there.

I yanked open a couple of drawers before finding a rusty meat thermometer. Glancing over my shoulder, I opened the oven and shoved the thermometer in the smoking bird. Two hundred and forty degrees. I hoped that was hot enough to cook off bacteria. I heard her at the door and yanked the thermometer out and tossed it behind a roll of paper towels on the counter.

“Looks great,” I said as if I’d been admiring the blackened bird and closed the oven.

She brightened. “Thanks! My mama always used to say there was nothin’ easier than roasting a chicken.”

Scarlett’s mama was a liar.

Casually, I pulled my phone out as if to check my messages. I opened the browser and did a quick search for chicken temperatures. At least we didn’t have to worry about salmonella now.

“There’s pie for dessert,” she said, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.

Oh, hell.

“I didn’t have time to bake one so I bought it at the Pop In.”

I bit back my sigh of relief.

“Could Johanna cook?” Scarlett asked.

I was unsettled by the quick turn of conversation. Especially since Johanna had recently reared her head in my life with that text message this afternoon. “Uh. I suppose she could. She just generally chose not to. We ate out a lot and had a part-time chef prepare meals for the week for us.”

Scarlett looked relieved. I was just about to ask her what this was all about when something exploded. We both ducked behind her tiny kitchen island. When no shrapnel rained down upon us, I realized it was the microwave.

“The potatoes,” Scarlett yelped.

I made it to the microwave first and opened the door. One of the idiot-proof baked potatoes had exploded, coating the inside of the microwave with potato particles.

“At least we can split this one,” Scarlett said, reaching in to grab the other potato. “Ouch! Hot!” She tossed it back and forth from hand to hand.

She smacked her elbow off of the counter, and the potato landed on the floor with a dull splat. “Well, shit!”

I grabbed it and brushed it off. “Five second rule, right?” The potato was probably going to be the only edible part of the meal, and I wasn’t going to throw it in the trash.

“Should we wash it off?” Scarlett wondered.

I shrugged. “Maybe if we just don’t eat the skin it will be fine,” I suggested.

She nodded. “I’ll get the chicken out, and you can carve it.”

“Great.” I had no idea how to carve a chicken. Would she be disappointed in that? Did all Bootleg men know how to carve birds? Hell, they probably went out and shot them first.

She pulled the roaster out of the oven and put it on the wood top of the island. “It doesn’t really look like the picture,” Scarlett said, chewing on her lower lip and studying the chicken’s coffee-brown skin.

It didn’t look like any roast chicken I’d ever seen. “I think it looks really good,” I lied.

“Do you need any special utensils?” she asked.

“A knife,” I said with authority. I’d never even seen my father carve the turkey at Thanksgiving. We always had it catered.

Scarlett handed me a steak knife, and after burning the hell out of my hand on hot chicken skin, I grabbed a wooden spoon from the pitcher on her counter. Sawing through the skin was like trying to cut my way through shoe leather with a butter knife. The meat under the leathery skin was bone dry. At least we could dump the asparagus soup on top of it. I did my best to saw my way through and scrape meat off of the charcoal skeleton. It hit the plate sounding like jerky.

“How about I just carve one side?” I suggested, wiping the sweat from my brow. “Then the rest of it will stay… fresh.”

“That’s a great idea. I can use the rest for soup… or something.”

Scarlett made up our plates—real ones, not the paper plates like I was used to with her—with half of the non-exploded potato, a soupy dollop of asparagus, and several chunks of chicken leather. “I thought we could eat on the porch,” she said nervously.

“I’d like that,” I told her, wanting to wipe the worry from her face. I took the plates from her and beckoned toward the door.

We sat at the tiny table, our plates touching. I was just wondering if I should eat the entire potato first to soak up the rest of the “food” on the plate when Scarlett took a deep breath.

“I have something I wanna say.”

I looked up from my plate grateful for the distraction.

“I think things are good. Between us, I mean,” she added. She looked at me like she was waiting for me to say something.

“I… think they’re good too?” I said suspiciously. Was she trying to break up with me? Give me food poisoning and then send me packing? Was this some kind of bizarre Bootleg Justice for not telling her that my almost ex-wife texted me with regrets?

Tentatively, I picked up a chunk of chicken and examined it on my fork.

“Well, I’ve been thinking that maybe we should… what I mean to say is… Oh, hell. I’ve never had this conversation before.”

“What conversation?” I was getting more anxious by the second.

“You can’t leave town without telling me, and you can’t get naked with anyone else,” she blurted out.

I blinked, at a loss.

“I like you,” she said to her plate, sounding like she was choking on the words.

I forgot what I was doing and accidentally put the chicken in my mouth. It tasted like petrified feet.

I cleared my throat, trying to soften the chicken with my saliva. “I like you, too,” I said through my mouthful. No amount of chewing was going to make this chicken softer. I was either going to have to swallow it whole and choke on it or spit it out.

“Well, since we like each other. I don’t think that you should just up and leave without at least talking to me about it first, and if you think I’d be okay with you having sex with someone else, you are sorely mistaken.” Her voice rose.

“Are you breaking up with me?” I demanded, moving the chicken to the side of my mouth.

“What? No!” She looked horrified. “I’m doing the opposite.”

“You’re asking me to be your boyfriend?”

Scarlett looked uncomfortable. She shrugged one shoulder. “I’m not really asking. It’s more like telling than asking.”

I sucked in a breath to laugh and lodged the chicken between my tonsils. My laugh became a coughing fit.

She jumped up and slapped me on the back. I managed to spit the chicken out into my napkin. “Excuse me,” I gasped.

“Are you okay?”

“Just went down the wrong pipe,” I said, gulping down my wine.

Scarlett sat back down and forked up a mushy lump of asparagus. I didn’t care how much I liked her. I wasn’t touching that green slime.

“So, what do you think?” she asked, her pretty gray eyes pulling me in.

I thought the chicken was a biohazard.

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about relationships,” I said. “The first time we had sex, I tried to bring it up, and you shut me down.”

Scarlett took a deep breath. “I just never expected to get so attached to you. And now if you were to just pack up and go home, I’d be… upset.” Her eyes narrowed, and she pointed her drippy glob of asparagus at me. “And I’d be real upset if I caught you showing off that cock to anyone else.”

“Scarlett, I’m not going anywhere for the time being, and I certainly wouldn’t leave without at least talking to you first. And I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that I’d want to be with anyone else when I have you. There’s no one out there like you. I’d be the biggest idiot in the world to keep looking when I have you in my bed.”

She beamed at me, and I felt the tension in my shoulders relax. “Really?”

“Really.”

She grinned and wiggled in her seat. I watched in horror as she shoveled the asparagus into her pretty mouth. Her face froze, and then her eyes widened as the realization hit her. She clamped a hand over her mouth.

I shoved her napkin at her. “Spit it out before you vomit,” I ordered.

“Gah!” She grabbed the napkin and pressed it to her mouth. “Ohmygod. Ohmygod. Ohmygod.”

I held out her wine glass. “Drink.”

She drained the glass like she had the beer the first night I met her.

Scarlett put the glass down with a clunk. “That was the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.”

“You didn’t try the chicken yet,” I pointed out.

“Man!” she wailed, throwing the napkin of masticated disaster on the table. “I just wanted tonight to be perfect!”

I reached across the table and held her hand. “Baby, it is.”

“No. It’s not! The food is horrible, and I got all nervous and basically forced you to be my boyfriend, and I’m really hungry and all we’ve got is half a potato each!”

I used my grip on her hand to pull her out of her chair and over into my lap.

She sat stiffly against me, and I hid my smile. Her stubborn streak was a mile-wide like my gran would say.

“I’d like to point out that I haven’t turned you down, and we have pie.”

“You didn’t say yes,” she said, pouting at her hands in her lap.

“Scarlett, when’s the last time anyone said no to you?”

“It happens on occasion.”

“Not this occasion,” I told her.

She raised her gaze to mine, and I felt my heart glow a little brighter.

“I’ll be your boyfriend on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You promise to never cook again.”