Page 33 of Touchdown, Tennessee

“My ass is still a little sore from your fingers the other night,” I said. “Use your cock instead tonight and it’ll hurt even more.”

He didn’t look up at me, his eyes still focused on the cutting board in front of him.

“Secret ingredient of a lot of cobblers is some fresh lemon juice,” he said, ignoring me. “Go look around the supply table and see if you can find some lemons for me, Peach.”

He was already ordering me around.

I headed over to the big supply table at the middle of the room, passing by Luke’s table on the way. He raised an eyebrow at me as I walked by, nodding over toward Gray at my table.

“Guess you’re the unlucky one tonight,” Luke muttered as I walked by.

“I can handle him.”

“Godspeed, Peachel.”

I found some lemons on the table and brought them back, dropping them on the table in front of Gray’s cutting board.

“Six lemons,” he said.

“Didn’t know how many I’d need. You going to tell me why you were following me earlier today on the quad, even though you didn’t show up to practice?”

“Maybe. If you’re good. Slice one lemon in half.”

He reached a hand out and just for one split second, I felt his palm settle on the small of my back.

My insides went molten as he rubbed a little circle there, and then his touch was gone again, a moment later.

The image of his kiss ripped through my memory.

I’d dated guys for months before without ever getting a kiss like that.

Gray Gilman clearly didn’t give a fuck about anything, and certainly didn’t care about me, but he was goddamn good at pretending, when he kissed me slow and deep.

His kiss had been sotenderout of nowhere, even after he was so hard-edged the rest of the time.

From the moment Gray showed up at my table, things started to move along smoothly. He made it all look easy, getting the apples neatly sliced, tossed with lemon juice, and coated with cinnamon sugar. He laid them all out at the bottom of three gigantic aluminum pans, and then he helped me with each step of the cobbler topping, too.

He talked me through each step of the recipe instead of mentioning a goddamn thing about the other night, or about why he was following me earlier today.

It was clear he knew how to cook, though.

“How are you so good at this?” I asked him when the cobbler was almost done being assembled.

“Had to cook for myself most of my life,” he told me. “It’s not too difficult.”

Just another thing you’re good at that I’m incapable of doing.

“This is ready to bake,” he said, lifting one tray. “Grab the other two, if you can. Let’s put them in.”

When we walked over to the big kitchen ovens at the edge of the room, most of my other teammates were still finishing up their recipes.

“I thought I was going to be the last one getting my thing into the oven,” I said. “I thought mine would end up as a pile of raw dough, to be honest.”

“You would have figured it out,” Gray said. “These are already preheated to 350. Perfect temp. Slide them in next to each other.”

We got the trays into the oven and sealed it up. “How long?”

“We’ll check them in 45 minutes. Set a timer on your phone, then come out on the back deck with me.”