28. Sam

With quick strides, I make my way toward Carter’s front door. When I step into his house, I’m expecting the delicious smells of whatever he made for dinner. Instead, I find an assortment of ingredients spread out on the counter as if he was going to start cooking but stopped right after getting everything prepped. Carter is bent over the breakfast bar, reading something on his iPad.

His navy blue running shorts are stretched across his ass, which totally makes up for the lack of food aromas. I’d take that sight over food any day.

“Hey, whatcha doing?” I move across the house to wrap my arms around his waist. I press a kiss into his neck in hello.

“I am familiarizing myself with this recipe. I thought it would be delicious, but because I’m me, I’m trying to decide if I should change it a little to make it better.”

“Mmm. I’m always up for one of your experiments.”

“Good, because you’re going to be a part of it.” Carter finally turns around to give me a proper kiss. I’m too distracted for his words to fully register right away.

I pull back. “Wait, what? How can I be a part of your experiment?”

“I’m giving you a cooking lesson tonight.”

My eyes widen. “You are?”

“Mm-hmm.”

My grin takes over my face, and I lean in to kiss him again. “Can we start now?”

Carter laughs at my eagerness but agrees. He snags his iPad and hands it to me. “Read through this recipe a few times to get an idea of what we’re making. That’s always the first step. If you find something you want to make, you have to read through the entire recipe to decide if it’s something you feel comfortable making.”

I follow his instructions. My mouth starts to water, and I read through the list of ingredients and instructions. It’s all very straightforward and easily followed. Which means I’ll find some way to screw it up.

“Once you feel comfortable with the recipe, go through your ingredients list to determine if you have both the item and the quantity of the item it calls for.”

My lips quirk at how professional Carter is acting. “Yes, Chef,” I mock.

He laughs and swats my stomach. I move around the kitchen to find he’s already pulled out everything we’ll need and has placed it on the counter. I still double-check the quantities on the recipe because I’ve been known to flub those in the past.

“It looks like we’ve got everything except for the biscuits.”

Carter grabs those while he tells me to start on the first instruction. We continue walking step by step through the recipe. It’s fun and flirty, and even when my lack of knowledge makes me look like an idiot, Carter never makes me feel bad for it. He teases me, of course, but he also teaches me how to do it properly.

“This smells so good. I’m gonna have to make it for the guys at the house the next time I’m on kitchen duty.”

“I thought it might be a good one. It makes a ton of food without needing to spend a fortune on groceries.”

“You picked this recipe specifically so I could make it for the guys, didn’t you?”

Carter shrugs, but the flush in his cheeks gives him away. “I just thought you might like to make something other than lasagna once in a while.”

I grab his T-shirt and pull him to my chest. “Thank you.” I smack a kiss to his lips, thinking it’ll be quick since we have food on the stove. Carter is the one who comes back for more, and I’ll never say no to kissing him. Things quickly turn heated, and I have to physically push Carter away to get myself to stop.

“We’re going to ruin dinner—again—if we don’t stop.” My voice is raspy, and I’d give anything to not have to finish cooking right now.

Carter grins. “Oops.”

“You’re just trying to get me to mess up so you can keep calling me Smoky,” I accuse, making him laugh.

“I’m going to call you Smoky for the rest of our lives. Whether you become a five-star chef or not.”

“Good.” I kiss him once more just because I feel like it and then go back to finishing the meal.

We work side by side for the next half hour until the dish gets put into the oven. Carter sets a timer on his phone before we sit down on the couch to catch up on our days.

“How was work?” I grab one of Carter’s legs to pull his foot into my lap. I massage his feet as he tells me about the weird day he had.

“Do you think this Hutton guy has something to do with it?” I ask.

“I honestly don’t know. It’s odd, though, right? I mean, how did he even know Inez was looking into things? And what do I do about his data being inaccurate? That many errors would’ve raised a red flag to a data enterer, so has our database been incorrect this whole time?”

“It could’ve been, but who has access to change it?”

“My whole team. But like I said, there’s no motive behind that.” He exhales. “I don’t know. It’s frustrating, and I’m also worried Tom isn’t going to care. He didn’t think it was a big deal that the date on RetLab was wrong.”

“True, but that was before you found out the program wasn’t scoring the data accurately. If he doesn’t care about this now, he could be in on it.”

“You think this is some sort of scheme?”

“What would a researcher get if they had perfect data?”

Carter thinks about my question for a bit. “More funding, recognition, better research equipment.”

“And your company would also benefit from all of that, as well.”

“True. I just don’t see how an entire fucking company could be supporting a shady researcher. It wouldn’t stay quiet.”

“Except the company hasn’t been running as one entity. It’s been running as multiple research teams under the same umbrella. Your database caused everyone to start working as one group, just with separate goals.”

“Huh. I didn’t think about it like that.”

Carter’s timer goes off, so we table the conversation for now. I have a feeling this won’t be the last time he needs to talk through this situation. I just wish I could be more help. Carter’s job flies straight over my head most of the time. But I do know people. I know that his coworker got a bad feeling from that guy, which means something is definitely up. I’m not sure what that means for Carter—or his team, for that matter. My guess is it will all get sorted by next week after he meets with his boss.

At least I hope that’s the case.