Free Romancing the Running Back by Jeanette Murray

Taking in the stage in front of them, where a black man in a chef coat and hat stood, giving them the evil eye for—she assumed—being late, understanding dawned. “It’s a cooking class.”
    “Yes and no. Shh,” he said, silencing any questions she might have had. “It’s starting.”
    Before she could ask another question anyway—she didn’t care for being silenced, and would have thought of one just to piss him off—the man at the front began to speak.
    It sounded remarkably like instructions, but she had no clue what was going on. “What?” she hissed at Josiah when people started to get up and move around. “What’s going on?”
    He raised a brow. “Do you have a problem with your hearing?”
    “Apparently. That sounded like gibberish.”
    “It was instructions for our first course.”
    Huh. That explained it. She had less than no cooking experience. Opening a can was considered a dangerous and rare feat for her. “Uh, how about you do that and I’ll stand off to the side, out of the way?”
    “No way, maid of honor.” He hooked an arm through hers and tugged her over toward the line to the side where an industrial sink sat. People washed their hands and moved on to the fridge to pull out ingredients. She washed her hands alongside Josiah, watching as he relaxed for the first time since he’d picked her up that morning. Then she wandered over and slid out a tray from the glass-front refrigerator, holding what she assumed were their ingredients for the first course.
    They wandered back to their table, where Josiah started laying out the food. “What’s the first course?”
    He sighed and said, “Summer soup. Here, chop this.” He put a cucumber in front of her, set a knife beside it and went at the eggplant he was skinning.
    Was it called skinning? Peeling? Grating? Who knew?
    “I . . .” She glanced toward the other tables, watched as a few of them began to peel—skin?—their own cucumbers. “Okay, then.” If she wanted to eat, apparently she’d work for it. “I have to warn you, though, I’m not really dexterous. I might lose a finger doing this.”
    “Don’t,” he warned in a tone that suggested she’d get no sympathy from his camp if she did.
    *   *   *
    Josiah watched her struggle with the cucumber from the corner of his eye. It was sort of sad, in a comical way, how out of her league she was just because of a vegetable. Living alone himself, he knew it was easier to open a can or nuke a meal than to cook something for one, but still. You should be able to handle a knife, right?
    As he thought it, the knife slipped and she nearly lost the tip of a finger as it slid across the wet surface of the cuke and clattered onto the table. His heart stuttered, and he quickly grabbed the cucumber and her hand in one of his. “Did it getyou? Any blood?”
    “No,” she said, hand shaking a little inside his grip. “I don’t know what—”
    His entire system relaxed fractionally once he’d assured himself she hadn’t sliced off anything important. “Try again.”
    Her face turned mutinous. “Can we just call that a sign from the kitchen gods that this wasn’t a good part to start with?”
    “No. Let’s do this once more.” He showed her a better way to grip the vegetable, then picked up the knife. “Slide it this way. See how your fingers are protected?”
    “No. It’s backwards to me.” Her eyes were nearly crossed trying to figure it out.
    With an internal groan, he wrapped one arm around her and held the cucumber and her hand in one palm, showing her how the knife scraped up the skin with the other. “See now?” When she said nothing, he brought her other hand up, placed the knife in her fingers properly, and guided them up the cucumber a few times. Thin ribbons of green curled and slid off to fall harmlessly to the table below.
    “And one more.” He slid the knife up once more, waiting until the newest slice of skin fell.
    “Oh.” Anya’s voice was low,