“What the hell are you doing?” he asked incredulously, staring at her with a kind of horrified, I-don’t-believe-it expression.
“Figuring out how many scoops of coffee to use.” Wasn’t it obvious? She frowned at him. She’d specifically mentioned the bottles, so what else would she have been doing?
“Multiplying and dividing?”
“Well, how do you do it?” She crossed her arms, both feeling and sounding defensive.
“I put in the water, and I dump in how much coffee I think I’ll need.”
“How does it taste?”
He blew out a breath. “Sometimes it tastes pretty good,” he said cautiously.
“I get better results than ‘sometimes’ with my method.”
“But you need a fu—a damn calculator to figure it out!”
“Oh, really?” Ostentatiously, she looked around. “I don’t believe I see one, and I was doing just fine.” She couldn’t believe it. He’d just caught himself before he said fucking, and substituted damn. When was the last time he’d bothered to moderate his language? Huh. She was beginning to have a little fun.
“So what’s this magic formula?” he demanded after a few seconds, when she simply sat there looking at him, her head cocked a little as if she were waiting.
“Figure out how many ounces of water you have and divide by five—”
“Why?”
“Because, for reasons unknown to mankind, coffeemakers figure a cup of coffee is five ounces, rather than eight.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, it’s true. Haven’t you ever measured water into a coffeemaker and noticed it doesn’t match?”
“I don’t pay attention to shit like that. But this isn’t a coffeemaker. It’s a percolator.”
“But the scoops seem to be based on how much coffee you need for five ounces, so it doesn’t matter. Then the type of grind makes a difference—”
“I don’t want to hear it. You’re making this way too complicated.”
“I make good coffee.” She was beginning to feel a little indignant on behalf of her coffeemaking skills.
“So you say. I haven’t seen any proof yet. Finish with this mathematical thing.” He was glaring at her as if she’d told him there was no Santa Claus.
“If the grind is coarse, then you need to use a little bit more; if it’s fine, a little less. This looks like a medium grind, but the scoop looks big, so I’m estimating two cups for each scoop of coffee. Therefore, after I divide the ounces of water by five, I divide that answer by two, and that gives me how many scoops of coffee I need.”
Still looking like a thundercloud, he pointed at the percolator. “All right, get the coffee going. This had better be good.”
“Or what?” she taunted. “You’ll strip me of my coffee privileges, and risk death by dismemberment?”
“Just make the damn coffee!”
“Do you like it strong, weak, or medium?”
His jaw clenched. “Go for medium.”
“All right.” As she measured the coffee into the basket in the percolator, she couldn’t help prodding the beast just a little. “Do your clients like your coffee?”
His jaw got even tighter. “One of them usually takes over making it, after the first day,” he finally admitted.
“My clients like my coffee,” she said smugly. She added another half-scoop, because she figured he’d like it a little stronger than she did, and a half-scoop seemed like a nice compromise. Turning on the camp stove, she set the percolator on the fire. By the time they finished their trips to the outside, the coffee should be ready.
With that in mind, she gingerly flexed her foot; the ache wasn’t too bad. “I think I can put some weight on my foot today, if you’ll help me up.”
“And I think you’re rushing things,” he said, but he got to his feet and held both his hands out to her. She gripped them, and he effortlessly pulled her upright, releasing her hands to put both arms around her and support her weight.
That wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind … and he still didn’t have a shirt on. She tried to ignore being cradled against that naked chest, and the strong arms that were wrapped around her, concentrating instead on gaining her balance as she stood on her left foot. Cautiously she put her right foot on the ground, held her breath, and transferred a little of her weight to her injured ankle. It hurt. It ached. But it wasn’t the shooting agony it had been when she’d first hurt it, and it didn’t buckle under the stress.
“Let me see if I can take a step.”
His deep voice rumbled against her temple. “I’ve got you. Go ahead.”
And he did have her. She couldn’t have put all her weight on her feet even if she’d wanted to. She eased more pressure onto her foot and took one short, hobbling step. “Ouch. Wow.” She took a deep breath of relief. “It’s definitely better than it was, so I guess that means it’s a sprain and not a break.”
“That’s enough. If you try to do too much, you’ll make it worse. C’mon, let’s go down and get this over with.”
“Getting it over with” meant, of course, that she once again made the trip down the ladder while draped over his shoulder, as that was the fastest method. But it also meant that he had to put on his shirt, so all in all she considered that a good trade-off. She didn’t know how much longer she could have borne looking at all that muscle.