Getting Lucky (The Portland Pioneers Book 2) (16 page)

“I felt that way about baseball. . .once,” Noah mused, almost as if he weren’t really speaking to her at all.

“And now?” Maggie asked archly.

He just shrugged as her knife whizzed through one apple, then another. “I try not to think about baseball, actually. Especially now that I might not play again.” His tone was so deliberately casual, Maggie wondered if he’d ever said those particular words out loud before.

“My best friend, Jack, he couldn’t handle it. He loves the game so much, it’s like his obsession,” Noah continued, “so I guess if this was going to happen to someone, I’m glad it was me.”

“You were good, though,” Maggie observed.

He smirked. “I thought you didn’t watch baseball, Miss Maggie.”

“I don’t,” she said pointedly. “But again, when someone comes waltzing into my town, I’m sure as hell going to google them.”

“And you wanted to know how I knew Tabitha.” He said what she’d been too hesitant to mention. “I’m assuming you haven’t heard back from her.”

Maggie shook her head. “I thought it would be a long shot.”

“I’m grateful that I tried, mostly because I came here and met you,” he said, grinning stupidly at her. She just grinned stupidly back. How on earth was she going to play casual in front of Cal? Her heart was practically beating out Noah’s name in long, protracted syllables. Her crush had just begun and it was already careening out of control.

“Maggie,” Cal announced, rounding the corner, stopping when he saw her and Noah, “I’m about to die of hunger.”

“There’s an antipasti platter in the fridge,” Maggie said, turning back to her vegetables. “Oh, and I forgot to offer Noah something to drink. Cal, would you?”

Cal grumbled under his breath but dutifully recited the wines and beers available, as well as bottles of water and apple cider. Noah selected a bottle of beer and expertly popped the top off.

“So, how’s the house going?” Cal asked casually and Maggie shot him a “behave yourself” glare under her lashes as she set a huge frying pan on the stove and slid a pat of butter in to melt.

“I’ve barely touched the house,” Noah admitted, “though tomorrow I need to start. The hotel is getting a bit. . .confining.”

“It’ll take a bit to make that house livable,” Cal observed. “More than you think.”

“I don’t mind roughing it for a while. I was thinking of getting some camping gear, maybe.”

“Hannah bothering you that much? She’s just a kid,” Maggie teased.

“She’s just so. . .so. . .” Noah gave up with a shrug.

“Persistent?” Maggie supplied.

“
Some
persistence is good,” Noah observed with a wicked, sly smile in her direction.

“You two, go watch the game,” she suggested, shooing the boys out of kitchen. If they stayed, they’d end up fighting and destroying the dinner she’d worried so much over. And if Noah stayed, she’d end up ruining it all the same because his presence was so very distracting.

They finally went, and Maggie let out the tension in her shoulders with a sigh. Between Cal’s disapproval and all the things she couldn’t tell him, this whole day felt a little like a mine field.

The sound of butter sizzling in the skillet jerked Maggie out of her own maudlin thoughts, and she re-focused, reverting back to the backbone of her culinary training to catch up. Efficiently, she began to sauté the vegetables for the stuffing as she drained the potatoes, and then mashed them. She stowed them in a crock pot turned on low, knowing they’d keep perfectly until the rest of dinner was ready.

Glancing over at the oven timer to check the time with her internal schedule, she suddenly felt her heart freeze in her chest. Next to the timer was the temperature gauge and it clearly, horribly,
impossibly
stated that she’d left the turkey roasting at 500 degrees.

“Oh my god,” she actually said out loud, even though there was nobody else in the kitchen and Cal and Noah couldn’t possibly hear her in the living room over the noise of the football game. “Oh my god.”

She was frozen in place with dread, actually
afraid
to go turn the oven down and check to see the state of her gorgeous, beautiful, wonder of a turkey. Or what
had
been her gorgeous, beautiful wonder of a turkey.

How had this even happened? Maggie knew the answer to that question instantly. She’d meant to turn the oven down after basting the turkey, but almost right after she’d finished, Cal had started in on Noah, and then the man himself had shown up, kissing her with all the passion that she’d thought could
only
be one-sided. He’d basically blown her head clean off, and along with part of her skull, she’d apparently lost the fairly basic recipe for roasted turkey—the same method she’d been using for a good fifteen years.

“Oh my god,” she repeated again, because it had felt pretty good the first two times. Like an actual physical manifestation of the panic ballooning inside her.

Of course, that was the moment the doorbell rang again. She heard someone get up from the couch and open it. Cal, probably, Maggie thought with a growing hysteria. Normally, this would have been a fun laugh— “oh, look at Maggie darling, even with all her training, she still got distracted and forgot to do something,”—but this year was not like other Thanksgivings. Noah was here, and god damn it, she’d wanted so badly to impress him. There was something so infinitely satisfying and thrilling about the way he looked up at her when she was cooking or when he was eating the food she’d made, as if she was a kind of miracle come to save him with pure, unadulterated flavor.

And
oh
, the flavor of her poor turkey. Maggie couldn’t even contemplate it.

“Maggie, what’s going on?”

She glanced up and saw Ella staring at her with concern. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

Maggie couldn’t help the semi-hysterical giggle. “Ella, I ruined the turkey.”

The look on Ella’s face was nearly priceless, but being Ella, she recovered fairly quickly, bustling towards the oven with purpose.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” she began to say, all no-nonsense confidence, so much of it coming from her own faith and experience with Maggie’s abilities. But Maggie knew no amount of amazingly successful meals could save this turkey now.

“It’s roasted for over an hour longer than it should have at 500 degrees,” Maggie admitted.

“Maggie,” Ella turned back to her. “It’s
still
at 500.”

Another giggle. “Yes.”

Ella crossed her arms over the neon green boat-necked top she was wearing. “What is going on with you?” she asked sternly. Then her eyes widened. “And you’re even wearing an apron. I didn’t know you even
owned
an apron.”

Maggie sighed. “Is it so wrong for a girl to want to impress the guy she likes?”

“What?” Ella did another double-take. “You’re going to have to explain this. Go into detail.
Lots
of detail, but first. You need to turn that damn oven down and then pour me a glass of wine. Maybe
two
glasses of wine.”

Maggie hesitated and Ella barked again. “For the love of god, Maggie May, turn the damn oven
down
.”

“Fine,” Maggie grumbled, carelessly rotating the knob down to 300 or so. She didn’t even glance at the final temperature. It didn’t even matter at this point, she figured. The turkey was going to be dry as particle board. It was practically going to be turkey jerky.

Taking a deep breath, she pulled the oven door open and surveyed the potential wasteland.

Ella stooped down next to Maggie and peered in. “It doesn’t
seem
ruined,” Ella said. “It looks gorgeous.”

That was maybe the worst part, Maggie thought. It pretty much looked like Norman Rockwell’s turkey, the skin a beautiful, burnished brown, shiny and crackling with butter.

“It’s not going to taste gorgeous,” she admitted. “It’s going to be insanely dry.”

“So we put gravy on it. You make amazing gravy,” Ella said. “Besides, a little dry poultry never killed anyone.”

Maggie just sighed in defeat again. “But this was supposed to be the
perfect
Thanksgiving dinner.”

Ella’s smile was so wry. “Maggie, dear, you seem to forget that the rest of us make these mistakes on a regular basis. I’ve ruined plenty of dinners, and they were all still perfect.”

Maggie shot her good friend a disbelieving look. “It’s not always about the food, sweetheart,” Ella murmured. “When you’re my age, you’ll realize that. Now,” she paused, glancing around the kitchen, and pulling out one of the barstools, “pour me my wine, and dish.”

To her surprise, Maggie found herself following Ella’s instructions practically to the letter, even down to the extra-large glass of wine she poured. And because it was supposed to be a fucking holiday, she poured herself an equally large one. After all, it wasn’t like there was more she could ruin, right?

And as she finished the dinner, pulling out beautifully crusty stuffing out of the oven, bubbling and moist inside, sweet potatoes flavored with orange and brown sugar, dishing up cranberry sauce brimming with walnuts, Maggie told Ella about Noah and everything that had happened between them.

Not
everything
, of course, but even then, Ella unabashedly demanded even more details. “You’re not giving me enough adjectives,” she said more than once to Maggie, who could only blush in response and take another sip of her wine.

The doorbell rang once, then again, and Rosa showed up in the doorway, Miguel obviously stopping in the living room to hang out with Cal and Noah. Maggie had seen the way Rosa’s son got that awestruck expression on his face whenever he saw Noah. Maggie hoped Noah would be nice to Miguel, before she remembered that the single person Noah hadn’t been a model of respectful friendliness to was Calvin. And she reminded herself, Cal had been an ass to Noah
first
.

“Everything under control?” Rosa asked, as Maggie whisked the gravy briskly, relieved at the very least that it didn’t have any lumps.

“Now it is,” Ella chuckled, “but you should have seen Maggie’s panic attack an hour ago.”

“What happened?” Rosa glanced over at the foil-covered turkey sitting so innocuously on the stove-top. Even though it had been almost two hours since discovering her mistake, that horrible sick feeling at the base of Maggie’s stomach hadn’t gone away. It was guilt, maybe, Maggie thought, though deep down she was worried it was fear. She’d never been one of those girls who really cared
what a guy thought of her, and she had never particularly gone out of her way to impress anyone before, at least not like this, but her crush on Noah had snuck up so quickly and so overwhelmingly that it was hard not to wonder.

“I left the oven at 500 degrees,” Maggie finally admitted, taking another swallow of wine. “For
a while
.”

Rosa looked totally unconcerned, which surprised Maggie.

“I told you not to worry so much, Mags,” Ella crowed from her barstool perch, voice loud with all the wine she’d drunk.

“I’m sure the turkey will taste fine. You brined it, yes?” Rosa asked.

The wine helped Maggie shoot her assistant cook a smarter-ass look than she normally would. “Of course I brined it. I’m still
me,
” she said, “I haven’t been replaced by an alien.”

“Then you’re fine,” Rosa said, patting Maggie comfortingly on the arm. “I’ll go make sure the table’s all set. Do you need any help in here?”

Maggie waved her off. “No, we’re fine. I just need to heat the bread and dinner’s ready. Wine’s in the fridge, if you want to open it. And make sure the guys turn the TV off. No football at the table.” That was Maggie’s hard and fast rule and she and Cal argued over it every single year.

Rosa knew the history and rolled her eyes. “I’ll tell Cal,” she said, “but it’s your rule.”

Normally the rule was in place because Maggie didn’t feel like proper
attention could possibly be paid to the food if everyone was worried about points and injuries and third downs. It was testament to how nervous she was that she almost contemplated not fighting Cal this year. Maybe an ideally-timed touchdown could distract Noah from how dry the turkey was.

Maggie didn’t even realize it until they were seated at the table, and Cal was sharpening the carving knife, but she was practically holding her breath. What if he cut into all that burnished brown skin and, like one of those Egyptian mummies suddenly exposed to oxygen, the whole middle just collapsed in a heap of dust and bones?

She twisted the stem of her wine glass and resolutely avoided looking directly across the table where Noah had just happened to sit.

“This looks beautiful, Maggie,” Cal said politely, and Maggie had to stifle a groan of horror. She glanced over at her suddenly empty wineglass and found that she’d finished
another
. Whoops. Maggie realized that she might be a little tipsy. Or maybe she’d passed tipsy by and was now a little drunk.

She’d had two glasses in the kitchen with Ella, right? Only two, Maggie reasoned, that wasn’t bad at all. Then she remembered that first glass she’d poured and how large it had been. And then she remembered Ella uncorking another bottle of the dry crisp chardonnay she’d stocked in the fridge for the day. Double whoops.