His pretty little wife was so much more than he’d ever expected to find. He really hadn’t cared about having a real wife until he’d seen her and then a sham of a marriage like he’d been planning went right out the window.
As he plowed, he thought about how much he wanted to get to know her. Yes, he wanted her to cook for him, there was no denying that. He could eat his weight in her food on a daily basis. But he wanted so much more. He didn’t know anything about her except that she’d been raised on a farm and had been cooking in a diner in Massachusetts. He needed to know everything.
When he’d finished plowing a small plot for her, certain she’d want more the next day, but he knew it was enough for one day, he went into the house to wash some of the dirt off him before going to work on the ranch.
He walked into the kitchen and heard a gasp. He looked over, and there was his beautiful bride completely naked in his bathtub. “Don’t mind me,” he said, happy to make her uncomfortable. He wasn’t in a hurry to get out onto the ranch now. No, he’d stick around until she got out of that tub. Not that the water hid anything from his view.
After washing his hands, he sat down at the table and watched her soaking in the bath. He didn’t even mind when she glared at him. “Please, just get to work so I can get out and start your lunch.”
“You know, my stomach is content for now, but there are other kinds of hunger.” He could see how the water dripped off the tips of her breasts. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but he was certain she wouldn’t appreciate that.
“Just go work.”
When he shook his head, she sat for a moment watching him and thinking about what she could do to shock him. Instead of sinking further into the water, she stood up, letting the water wash over her. She was horribly embarrassed, but with so many demon horde members in her family, she knew how to hide it. The demon horde hadn’t just played tricks on others. They had tricked each other as much as they could. “Would you hand me that towel?” she asked.
Doug’s jaw dropped as he stared at her, standing as naked as the day she was born in front of him. “Huh?”
“The towel from the table behind you,” she said, keeping her voice perfectly calm.
He grabbed the towel and handed it to her, seemingly unable to speak.
She wrapped it around her and smiled. “I believe I’ll go get dressed now. The show’s over, so you might as well go to work.” She was careful not to hurry as she walked toward the stairs, but as soon as she was out of sight, she ran up them as quickly as she could.
Back in the kitchen, Doug sat for a moment in silence, but then he grinned. She’d gotten the best of him. There was no way he was going to let her make a habit of that.
When Trudie got downstairs a short while later, he was nowhere in sight, and she was glad he’d finally gone off to work. She needed to make bread and get lunch started. A stew seemed fitting for lunch, and she could warm it the next day for lunch as well. And pot roast for supper. She’d thought about frying chicken, but pot roast sounded better. She frequently changed what she was planning to cook because something else sounded better anyway.
After mixing the bread, she left it in a bowl with a towel over it to let it rise. She’d made bread more times than she could count, and there was no need to even consult a recipe.
Once that was finished, she started the stew, and once it was on the stove over a medium heat, she punched down the bread and patted it into three loaves. With any other man a loaf would have been enough for two days, but she was starting to get a handle on Doug’s need for constant food.
While the stew cooked and the bread went through its second rising, she went upstairs and grabbed the seeds she’d brought with her from Massachusetts, and went outside. Her garden would be the best garden in all of Colorado.
She planted a row of peas, another of carrots, and one of potatoes before rushing back inside to finish lunch. The bread was ready and she popped it in the oven as she thickened the stew.
After all that, she sat down at the table for a minute, looking around her at the windows. They were as naked as she’d been that morning. She wanted curtains and a tablecloth done by Monday, and she knew she could do it. She was used to cooking two meals a day for sixty people. How hard could it be to cook three meals a day for one man?
When Doug walked into the house a short while later, he found her sitting, looking around the room. “Is something wrong with the house?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not at all. I just think it would look better with curtains. And a matching tablecloth of course. I don’t know why you don’t already have them.”
“Because I’m a man, and we don’t much care about curtains or tablecloths.”
“That’s probably it. Sit down, and I’ll get lunch.” Taking the bread out of the oven, she dumped it out of the pans onto the counter to cool for a moment. She ladled some stew into two bowls, and then she cut the bread. There was store bought butter in the fridge, but she’d seen a churn earlier. They wouldn’t be eating store bought butter for long, because she’d
