“Those are snacks!” I protested and he rolled his eyes like a jackass. “Besides, I don’t know your skills. I don’t want to end up with food poisoning.”

“Oh, I’m a great cook,” he informed me as he moved on to avocados. When he found a few that met his exacting requirements, he pulled out a little mesh bag he’d brought and put them in there. “I’m braising those short ribs I just got in a red wine sauce, maybe sauté some mushrooms with them. Delicious.”

My damn traitor of a stomach growled and he laughed.

“You can stay for dinner, you know.”

Staying for dinner would put us in “friendly territory” and I didn’t think that was advisable. I needed to go home and process all the new sides of Theo Ganas I’d seen in just the one day we’d filmed together. Or take care of the new requests I had for Bookish makeovers, look over my slides for the presentation, check to see if my mom had figured out payroll...so many things to do. But none of it seemed quite as compelling as hearing more about these ribs Theo was planning to make.

I stood there, clutching the handle of my cart when he settled next to me. His hips bumping my elbows. “You don’t want to pass up those ribs. They’re my specialty.”

“Psshh.” I added an eye roll to really hammer in my skepticism regarding his cooking.

“It’s true.” His voice lowered, and suddenly it was all raspy and deep. It made something hot flash through my entire body. “It’s all about patience when it comes to good meat.” A breath skittered out of me, because for some reason that had sounded utterly filthy. “I like to take my time...really coax out the juices slowly. Simmer it low and slow.” The tip of his tongue came out and swiped over his bottom lip. My eyes were stuck to his mouth like I was under a spell.

“Okay,” I breathed out.

“But the real secret,” he confided, as I did grounding exercises in my head, “the true secret is massaging the meat. Work it with my fingers, you know?” I was sweating, but his laughing eyes told me he was just fucking with me.

“Are we still talking about food?” I sounded winded, but he was perfectly cool.

“I don’t know? Are we?”

Before he could say something that got me in trouble I pushed my cart past him and barreled to the aisle with ice cream.

“Try to keep up, Theodoro Anibal.”

He called my bluff and pushed me and my cart halfway across the supermarket while I shrieked my head off with laughter. In the end I went home and dined on the Cheetos and Red Bull he teased me about, but I did wonder about those ribs, way past my bedtime.

Chapter Eight

Theo