Free The Pint-Sized Secret by Sherryl Woods

mock salute. “Okay, then, what if you hadn’t been able to persuade me to change my mind? Would all of this have gone to waste or did you have a stand-in in mind?”
    “I would have taken it home and dined all alone,” he said with exaggerated self-pity. “Such a waste.”
    Brianna dug into the picnic basket and came up with caviar and toasted triangles of bread to put it on. “Do you often dine at home on caviar?”
    “Not if I can help it,” Jeb said. “I hate the stuff, but women seem to like it. I was out to impress you.”
    “Fried chicken would have done the trick, especially if you’d cooked it yourself. I do love to see a man in an apron, especially if he’s in front of a stove, instead of a grill.”
    “Sorry. You’re fresh out of luck. I can order up a gourmet dining experience from any restaurant in town, but I can’t boil water. I’m afraid there have been too many testy housekeepers in my past, begging me to stay out of their kitchens.”
    “And here I thought anyone worthy of the Delacourt name would have to be capable of great feats of daring everywhere from the boardroom to the kitchen.”
    “Wrong family. The men in my family grew up pitifully pampered.” He grinned. “But I’m willing to learn, if you’re willing to teach me. I get bored with pheasant under glass and beef Wellington.”
    “You are joking, aren’t you?”
    He chuckled at her startled expression. “About the pheasant or the cooking lessons?”
    “Both.”
    He shook his head. “Only about the pheasant.”
    “There are cooking schools if you’re serious,” she pointed out.
    “I’d rather be tutored, one-on-one.”
    “I’m sure they’d arrange that, as well.”
    “I meant by you.”
    She laughed. “I know you did. Sorry. My days are crowded enough as they are. While you’re dining on pheasant, I’m popping something frozen into the microwave. The last time I had time to cook a real meal was…” She hesitated, then shrugged. “I honestly can’t remember that far back.”
    “Let’s make a deal,” Jeb said impulsively. “One meal a week, I buy the ingredients. You teach me to cook. You can pick the night and the menu.”
    He told himself the suggestion was only a way to guarantee that she would keep seeing him, keep allowing him into her home so he could keep an eye on her, but he knew better. It had long since gotten personal. He was just looking for excuses to keep seeing her. First it had been the invitation to join him for a run, then the even more impulsive invitation to the sacrosanct bachelor beach house, now this. He was pathetically eager to find some niche for himself in her life.
    And she was plainly just as eager to keep him out. She was shaking her head before he finished making the suggestion.
    “No time,” she insisted.
    “That must mean my father is working you entirely too hard. I’ll have to speak to him.”
    “Don’t you dare,” she said, sounding genuinely alarmed. “I love my job. Yes, it does take a lot of my time, but I’m more than willing to put in the hours. How many people get a chance to do something they love and get paid for it?”
    “Probably not as many as there should be,” Jeb said, thinking of his own situation. He was trapped in a business he didn’t care much about one way or the other. He stayed out of family loyalty and inertia, he supposed, unlike Michael and Tyler, who genuinely loved every aspect of it. They were the true oilmen in the company. They were the ones who deserved to inherit it, though his father seemed dead set on carving it into equal shares for all five of them.
    “Does that include you?” Brianna asked, studying him intently.
    Since she’d already heard the rumors about his dissatisfaction, he saw no reason to deny it. “Pretty much.”
    “Surely you have options. Why don’t you leave? Do what you love?”
    “I’m not sure I have an answer for that. Maybe it’s as simple as middle-kid syndrome.”
    “Meaning?”
    “There