Ace took a chunk of wood from the cache under the stove and flipped it into the air. He spun around and caught the wood one-handed. “I’m good with my hands,” he said, giving Stephanie another crooked grin.

This poor kid has watched too many Tom Cruise movies, Stephanie thought. He had him down pretty well, too, except Ace’s nose was larger, making him seem closer to Snoopy doing Joe Cool.

“Okay, Ace, I’m going to give your hands a chance to make lunch. I think we’ll have an abbreviated menu of fish chowder and biscuits. I don’t suppose we have twenty or thirty cans of fish chowder lying around somewhere?”

“Don’t suppose we do.”

“Okay,” Stephanie said, “then we’ll go to plan two. Find a recipe for the blasted stuff.” She fumbled in the cabinet drawer for Lucy’s recipe book and tore out the chowder page. “You assemble the soup ingredients, and I’ll get started on the biscuits.” Her eyes opened wide at the biscuit recipe. “Twelve cups of flour? I’ll need a cement mixer to make this recipe.”

Ace plunked a huge earthenware bowl onto the counter and gave Stephanie’s waist a squeeze. “This is the bowl Lucy uses for biscuits,” he said, dropping a kiss on Stephanie’s shoulder.

Stephanie waved a large wooden spoon at him. “This is the spoon Stephanie uses for smacking knuckles. Kiss me again, and you’ll never play the piano.”

Ace looked insulted. “How can you resist me? I’m oh so cool.”

“Listen, Ace, I’m going to level with you. I don’t know diddly about cooking for twenty-six people, I’ve never been on a ship before, and this is the first time I’ve seen a woodstove up close. I’m doing this so my cousin Lucy can have a honeymoon, and—”

“Lucy got married? No joke?”

“She’s marrying Stanley Shelton, the plumber.”

Ace looked impressed. “It’s always nice to have a plumber in the family.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

About the Author

Bestselling author JANET EVANOVICH is the winner of the New Jersey Romance Writers Golden Leaf Award and multiple Romantic Times awards, including Lifetime Achievement. She is also a long-standing member of RWA.

“Romance novels are birthday cake and life is often peanut butter and jelly. I think everyone should have lots of delicious romance novels lying around for those times when the peanut butter of life gets stuck to the roof of your mouth.” Janet Evanovich, 1988

Also by Janet Evanovich

One for the Money
Two for the Dough
Three to Get Deadly
Four to Score
High Five
Hot Six
Seven Up
Hard Eight
Visions of Sugar Plums
To the Nines
Ten Big Ones
Love Overboard

Copyright

This book was originally published as a Loveswept paperback in 1991, in a slightly altered form, by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.