Read Windstar for Free Online Page A

box of what apparently was grits along with a small glass jar of something else.
    “I’ve never eaten any. What do they taste like?” His frown deepened. “Are they good for you?”
    “Good to you,” she corrected and proceeded to pour a portion of the grits into a microwaveable measuring cup.
    “I’ll try anything once,” he said, propping his chin in his hand once again. He watched every move she made.
    “Bacon or spicy patty sausage?” she inquired as she stood with the fridge door opened. “Which do you prefer?”
    “Don’t know her but Kevin and I’ve played ball together,” he answered. “If she’s real spicy, let’s have Patty. I’m game.”
    Angela hung her head. “You are absolutely hopeless,” she told him. “Make yourself useful and do the toast.”
    “How do you do toast?” he asked as he slid off the stool. “Do you just wrap it around your dangly and …”
    “Enough!” she laughed. “I can’t take so much irreverence this early in the morning!”
    He surprised her by coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her and nuzzling her neck. “Stand aside, wench,” he said, “and let me at the butter. Can’t do toast properly without slathering her little backside with butter and getting her all oiled up, you know.”
    She moved aside, slipping easily out of his arms, her entire body tingling from the contact of his bare chest. She shook her head as he chuckled at her like the mischievous little boy she was beginning to understand he liked to pretend to be.
    “You’re lucky you didn’t go to work for Mike Gibson,” he told her as he took slices of bread and popped them into the four-slot toaster. “He likes to play practical jokes on people. Once Saran-wrapped a girl’s toilet seat shut.” He fetched a butter knife and a plate for the toast. “He’s particularly fond of plastic dog shit.”
    She let that pass though she felt him eyeing her, no doubt gauging her response. The timer on the microwave went off, letting her know the grits were cooked. She had sliced four patties of sausage and it was sizzling in the pan as she cracked eggs into a bowl and added a bit of half and half.
    “Damn me, if that don’t smell eatable,” he said of the sausage. The first of the toast popped up and he began slathering it with butter.
    “Trust me,” she said, flipping the sausage. “You’ll like it.” She asked him how much toast he was going to make since he’d put four more slices in the toaster.
    “I like me toast,” he said then tucked his bottom lip between his teeth for a moment and she knew he was about to say something off-color. “I should say I like doing me toast. Getting it all hot and buttered.”
    Sausage out of the pan, she poured the eggs in and began whisking them, drawing his immediate attention.
    “You’re good at that, wench,” he said. “And you’re making me mouth water.”
    He’d been doing that to her all morning, she thought as she took the skillet off the fire. “Toast ready?” she asked.
    “Aye,” he said. “And dripping with cream as a properly done piece of ass … ah, toast should be.”
    Ignoring that deliberate attempt to get a rise out of her, she brought the food to the counter. “Okay, here’s the proper way to eat a good southern breakfast,” she said.
    He hiked himself up on the stool again to watch her.
    “First, you ladle a blob of grits onto your plate.”
    “That doesn’t sound good,” he said, pretending to gag. “I’m not altogether sure I want a blob of anything on me plate.”
    She spooned scrambled egg on top of the grits. “Now you mix them together.”
    “Whatever the hell for?” he asked. “I like me food separate on me plate, wench!”
    “They’re all going in the same place and coming out the same place,” she told him. “What are you complaining about?”
    He threaded his fingers together and pursed his lips as though put out with her remark.
    “Then you cut up the patty sausage and mix it into