The Husband Recipe Read Free Page B

not allowed. She wasn’t OCD, not by any means, but she liked everything to be clean, and if there were specific places for items then those items might as well be in those places. That made perfect sense to her.
Lauren ate her lunch at the kitchen nook, overlooking her well-kept backyard. As she ate she mentally went over her schedule for the rest of the day. The edits, thirty minutes on the treadmill, then a shower. Dinner with Gran and Miss Patsy at six, and after that she’d stop by the grocery store. Tomorrow after she finished the edits and dropped them off at FedEx, she’d make the lasagna and peach cobbler.
At the moment the neighboring backyard was as quiet as her own, and she had her schedule set for the next two days. All was well. For now.
The kids had been quiet for a good half hour or so. They must really be feeling guilty about that broken window. Whatever the reason for the rare moment of silence, Cole would take it. He made a couple of phone calls—including one to a glass company to arrange for the neighbor’s window to be repaired—and then he sat in front of the computer. Hank had used the family computer last, and it was still on his favorite site for games. This particular favorite was a Dad-approved site, as Cole insisted they all be. He checked the history, to make sure none of the kids had wandered too far astray. While he tried to watch them when they were using the computer, it was impossible to keep an eye on the kids 24/7. One child, maybe, but three? He was constantly being pulled in all directions. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the kids, but these days you couldn’t be too careful. There were a lot of weirdos out there, and children were trusting by nature.
Finding no offenders in the computer history, Cole went to Google and typed in his neighbor’s name. Lauren Russell. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, exactly, but these days it made sense to check up on the people who came to your door. No matter how cute they were. The kids were unerringly trusting; he was not.
Even though he’d gone into the search with no expectations, he was surprised by what he found. First of all, the picture of Lauren that was at the top of the first page of her website was not at all flattering. Her hair had been pulled back tight, entirely out of her face, and she wore one of those fake picture-smiles, like she was literally saying cheese. Was that a turtleneck? Did they even make those anymore? She hadn’t been wearing enough makeup when the photo had been taken, and the harsh lights had washed her out. But it was her.
He liked her better mad and in her pajamas, hair in a sloppy ponytail with bangs and escaping strands falling into her face, and eyes flashing. She looked better in natural light, with no makeup at all and fury coloring her face with a natural blush.
If he hadn’t been looking for her specifically, he never would’ve found this site. It was all recipes and decorating and table etiquette. In the Donovan house they ate a lot of fish sticks and spaghetti out of a can, their decorations were almost all made by the kids—they’d outgrown the limited space on the fridge door long ago and had moved on to the walls—and proper etiquette at the table meant you didn’t stand on it while anyone else was eating.
When they’d been living in Birmingham, Janet had provided a lot of their meals. She’d dropped by every weekend to stock the freezer with casseroles and homemade soup and chili. But they hadn’t relied on her entirely. Cole refused to let himself rely on anyone for anything. He could find his way around the kitchen, and for the past year Meredith had been learning to cook. He’d done his best to help her, but talk about the blind leading the blind…
A couple days a week Meredith insisted on making supper. Alone. She saw herself as the woman of the house, and like it or not, she was. Cole didn’t want her to spend her youth taking care of her brothers—and him—and he