Beach Blanket Santa (Holiday Brides Series) by Ginny Baird Read Free Book Online Page B

taught
you all I know, you’re going to have a love degree. When I’ve taught you all I
know, you’re going to have a love degree. You’re going be a love professor, and
soon you’ll be teaching me.
    That was all the encouragement he needed to grab an apron
off a nearby hook and tie it on. “Did you bring any sugar?”
    “I brought a small container, enough for what I use in my
coffee.”
    She produced the square Tupperware, and he whistled. “Got
quite a sweet tooth, have you?”
    Her cute face reddened all over. “I brought extra.”
    “Well, that’s good, extra good. And, I’m betting we both
brought butter.” He grinned, his enthusiasm building. He was going to do this.
Teach Sarah to bake cookies from scratch. Even if forcing himself to keep his
hands off her sumptuous body killed him. Man, didn’t she look sexy offering up
her sugar that way? “I brought eggs and a bag of flour for coating fried fish.”
    She gasped as he set it on the counter. “A whole five-pound
bag? Got quite an appetite, do you?”
    He shook a finger at her and grinned. “Got me there. Now,
all we need is vanilla.”
    “Think there’s any in the house?”
    He turned to check supplies in the pantry, figuring he could
replace anything they used later. After a few seconds passed, he held up a
small dark bottle.
    “Bingo.”

 
    Sarah didn’t know how Matt made it all look so easy. They didn’t
even have cookie cutters, but he’d fashioned some makeshift from various-sized
drinking glasses turned upside-down to use their rims as cutting surfaces.
“It’s incredible how you figured all that out,” she told him, duly impressed.
    “And you thought I’d only studied law at Georgetown.”
    “You didn’t learn this in law school,” she said astutely.
“You learned this at home.”
    “Guilty,” he said, not looking culpable in the least. “It
was all about food at the Salvatore house, especially with my folks running the
restaurant.”
    “That must have been something,” she said a bit wistfully. “Growing
up with a big happy family and so many siblings.”
    “We managed,” he said with a grin. “Managed to get into a
lot of trouble and drive our parents crazy. Though I understand I’ll have this
coming back at me one day.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “What goes around comes around. I have no illusions about my
own kids not giving me grief, in one way or another, when the time comes. I’ll
more or less accept it as my due.”
    It was easy to guess that Matt would make a terrific dad.
His life experience had primed him for it. Naturally, he wanted kids. Not five
children perhaps, but at least one or two.
    “Your turn,” he said, handing over the rolling pin. “Why
don’t you try?”
    Sarah took the weighty implement in her hand, not knowing
quite what to do with it. Naturally she understood she was to press it to that
little ball of dough and flatten it out, but she wasn’t so certain her results
would come out as stellar at Matt’s. The truth was, Sarah had never been
instructed much in the way of cooking at all. And, for one reason or another
had never felt much inclined to learn. Her mom was a restaurant kind of girl
who considered prepackaged dinners sold in the frozen section as good as
homemade. She’d probably passed that gene on to Sarah. Nearly everything Sarah
ate came out of some sort of box. Not that she was prepared to tell Mr. I’m-Italian-and-Cook-Everything-from-Scratchat the moment. He probably thought
she’d only packed frozen foods for her trip to the beach.
    “Go on,” he said kindly. “Just put your weight into it
evenly and give it a go.”
    Sarah smiled uncertainly over her shoulder. “All right,” she
said, determined to try. She centered her gaze on the big mound of glop on the
counter, wondering how she was going to press that into a perfect one-quarter-inch
slab the way he had. She grabbed each handle on the rolling pin and gingerly
pressed forward. The blob squished