Icy Pretty Love Read Online Free Page B

cheese and fresh farm milk. By the time I make it back to the apartment building, I’m staggering. Baldy starts sweating when he sees me.
    “Do you need any help with that, miss?”
    “Oh no, I’m fine, this is just how I get my exercise,” I gasp, but then one bag plummets off the top. Baldy lunges to catch it.
    Together we manage to lug my massive quantities of food into the elevator and then to my door. Luckily enough, Cohen still isn’t home. Was he kidnapped or something? Some bad guy planning to ransom him for millions? Will I have to step up as the intrepid girl detective to rescue him? I’d probably start untying him and he’d turn his nose up at my lack of Girl Scout knot abilities.
    As soon as Baldy and I tip all the food onto the living room carpet, we both take a panting break. It’s a bonding experience.
    “You should know that we do not usually allow your type into this establishment,” he says . Zis eztablishment . So much for bonding.
    I bristle. “My type?”
    “Your type.”
    “And what type is that?” I’m going to make him say it. Force the ugly word through his pursed lips.
    But he slips right past it. “As it happens, the Ashworths are particularly valuable patrons of ours and we are inclined to allow them their eccentricities.”
    So now I’m just one of Cohen’s eccentricities, like his papers and his empty fridge.
    “All I hope is that you keep in mind that this is an exception. If you come here to visit someone else, you will be turned away,” he finishes.
    “Yeah? Well, I couldn’t be paid to stay in your frilly ass apartment building if I had a choice about it,” I snarl.
    His eyebrows shoot up so high I nearly expect them to pop onto his bald scalp. “You are being kept here under duress?”
    “No, not exactly…”
    “Then I would venture to say that you could, in fact, be paid to stay here.”
    We glare at each other for minute.
    “I have to go. I have eggs,” I say.
    “And one would hope you are very careful with them.”
    It’s not until I’ve slammed the door that I realize he was warning me against getting pregnant. By the time I throw it open and yell, “Almost as careful as you should have been with your hair follicles!” he’s already gone. Stupid baldy baldface baldman.
    I cook off my anger, just like I’ve always done when I’ve been able to afford ingredients. I dice fruit, fry bread, sizzle bacon, and make the world’s most elaborate cheese-and-mushroom omelet. Everything smells too good for me to stay mad.
    Odd that he bothered me so much. I’m used to judgment. Maybe now, with my new life so close I can smell it on the breeze, judgment burns a little deeper.
    I check the time. Ten a.m. Still no Cohen. Maybe he really did make a run for it, in which case I’ll have to eat all this food by myself. What a shame.
    Bored, I toss myself backwards over the couch and text the only name I haven’t deleted from my phone.
     
RG: I’ve made a preposterous amount of breakfast and have no one to share it with. What are your opinions on mushroom omelets?
     
    Sam: You again.
     
RG: You’d be surprised how little that tells me about your opinions on mushroom omelets.
     
    Sam: You’re cooking?
     
    RG: Yes, I am an adult. Adults cook. Why does that surprise you?
     
    Sam: I assumed you were thirteen at the oldest.
     
RG: I choose to take that as a compliment in the sense that people will assume I’m thirty when I’m forty.
     
Sam: Did you really just invite me, a total stranger, to come and eat an omelet with you?
     
RG: If I’m left to my own devices, I’ll eat the entire thing by myself and it won’t be pretty.
     
    Sam: I could be a deranged killer.
     
    RG: This omelet is the true deranged killer.
     
    RG: And nah. You’d be pretending to be nice in order to lure me in.
     
    Sam: So you find nice people more suspicious than jerks.
     
RG: When it comes to men, yes. All men are jerks and I prefer the ones who are straightforward about