“Thought your house was on fire.”

“Oh my God.”

When I turned around to check her over, her face was bright red. The hair in her messy bun stuck out everywhere. Her cute as hell heart pajamas were coated in the same whatever that smudged her cheeks. And her dark eyes were wide as she blinked up at me.

Beep!

Beep!

Beep!

Her eyes widened farther as she practically jumped out of her damn skin. She didn’t move, her face contorting.

I reached up and grabbed the smoke detector, popping the battery out to silence it.

“Thanks.” She took the pieces from me with shaking hands.

“Hey.” I gently grabbed her upper arms, but she jolted like she hadn’t seen me move to do it. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I just hate that noise.” She shifted out of my hold, giving me a half-smile. “Any loud noise, really. Sensitive ears.” Moving to set the detector on the counter, her trembling made her lose hold. The pieces knocked over the spices like bowling pins, and her head dropped back as she muttered, “Fuck me.”

It wasn’t an invitation, but that didn’t stop lust from shooting through me like she was a naked centerfold spread on a Harley. I pushed the inappropriate reaction down, blaming my dry spell. I’d been too busy, and it’d been too long.

Need to get laid. That’s all.

I scanned the room. “The fuck happened?”

“I was trying to cook dinner.”

“What dinner?” ’Cause all I saw were burned… somethings. They looked how they smelled—like old, burned jock straps.

She gestured to whatever those lumps were next to the dropped baking tray. “Cauliflower steaks.”

Cauliflower.

That made sense.

“Where’re the steaks?” I’d planned on pizza, but if the steaks were still edible, I’d be good with that.

“There are none. It’s cauliflower steaks.”

It didn’t matter how much she repeated the words or how slow she said them, my brain couldn’t comprehend the idea of cauliflower being a steak.

No way in hell.

“You tried to make a vegetable into a steak?” I asked, fuckin’ horrified.

I just walked out of an inevitable murder scene, but this is the true crime.

“They’re supposed to be delicious if they’re cooked right,” she snapped defensively.

“Mac, you could’ve cooked them exactly as the recipe stated, and they’d still be shit ’cause they’re cauliflower.”

“They’re healthy.”

“They’re shit.” I went to clean up the mess, ignoring her protests.

The outside of the hunks of cauliflower resembled a full ashtray. Even with the charred and crumbling exterior, when the pieces broke, the inside was still raw.

No one wanted a cauliflower steak, and they sure as shit didn’t want a rare one.

“I don’t get it,” Mac said, scrolling on her phone. “I cooked it exactly.”