By the Book (Meant to Be #2)(35)

“I’m getting more lasagna, want some?” he asked.

She smiled, relieved. “I hope that was a rhetorical question,” she said.

He picked up her plate. “Absolutely.”

After the next episode, they both stood up. Izzy picked up her plate and wineglass, but Beau was empty-handed.

“I’m exhausted,” she said. “I think I’m heading to bed.”

He turned off the TV. “Yeah, me too.”

But then why…She was clearly missing something.

“Why do you look so confused?” he asked as he walked toward the door.

She nodded toward his dishes, still on the coffee table. “Your dishes. Aren’t you going put to them in the dishwasher? Or does the furniture in this house come to life and magically wash the dishes every night?”

He laughed. “Oh! No, don’t worry about them, you can just leave your dishes there. The housekeeper comes on Monday morning, she’ll take care of that.”

She was suddenly wide-awake. “Let me get this straight. It’s Friday night. And your plan is to let your dirty dishes sit there, all weekend, waiting for someone to clean them up for you, because you don’t know how to wash dishes, or even load a dishwasher?”

He glared at her, the same way he had the day she’d gotten there, but it didn’t bother her anymore.

“I know HOW to wash dishes. But why do it, when I pay someone else to do it?”

She pursed her lips. “Oh really? You know how to do it? When’s the last time you washed a dish?”

He looked even madder. “That’s not the point. The point is—”

Laughter exploded from her at the look on his face, the pure rage that he obviously had no memory of ever washing a dish. She laughed so hard she had to put her own dishes down on the sideboard so she wouldn’t drop them.

“You’re laughing at me,” Beau said, after watching her for a while.

She nodded, still giggling. “I absolutely am. ‘That’s not the point.’” She let out another cackle. “Incredible. Just amazing.” She pointed to the coffee table. “Get the dishes. I’m going to teach you how to load a dishwasher, Beau Towers.”

He was still trying to glare at her, but she could see the smile peeking through.

“It’s not that I don’t know how to load a dishwasher.” He walked over to the coffee table and piled his dishes on the tray, and then added her dishes on his way back. “I’ve seen people do it. Plenty of times. I’ve just never, exactly, done it myself.”

“Great,” she said on the way to the kitchen. “There’s a first time for everything.”

They stood in front of the dishwasher.

“Open that up,” Izzy said.

Beau let out a long dramatic sigh, but he set the tray full of dishes down and opened the dishwasher. Then he picked up the dishes and tossed them all inside. “There. Done.”

Izzy shook her head. “Bless your heart, but no, that’s not how you do it.” She gestured to the dishes inside the dishwasher. “First, you have to rinse the dishes.”

He stared at her. “Rinse them?”

She almost laughed at him again. “Yes, rinse them. Put them under the faucet and run hot water on them.”

“But why do I have to do that if the dishwasher is just going to clean them anyway?”

Izzy took a plate out of the dishwasher and held it up. “Look at all this cheese and tomato sauce caked on. Only the best dishwashers will get that food off, and this dishwasher, while fine, isn’t top-of-the-line like your television. We see where your priorities were.”

He growled something at her, but he took the dishes back out of the dishwasher and rinsed them while she watched.

“Second,” she said. “There’s an art to loading a dishwasher. This was my job at home for most of my life, so you’re lucky to have someone like me to teach you how to do it.”

“Lucky isn’t exactly the word I would use right now,” he said to the sink.

“Excuse me?” she asked him. “What was that?” She beamed at him. This was even more entertaining than the show had been. “Oh, nothing? That’s what I thought. Now, the plates should go there—down in the bottom, you see, where there’s plenty of room. The bowls should go there. The wineglasses you want to be careful with; they can easily break in dishwashers if you don’t put them carefully in the top rack. And finally, the flatware all goes in that little container—no, no, no, don’t just jam it all together like that! Separate the forks from the knives from the spoons! That way, when you unload it, you just have to grab a handful and put it in the right place in the drawer.”

“When I unload it, she says,” Beau said to a spoon. “Is she going to make me do that, too?”

Izzy ignored that. “Look, now we’re all done! Isn’t that better? Wasn’t that fun?”

Beau looked at her as he dried his hands. “You think writing is fun, you think cleaning the kitchen is fun…. Isabelle Marlowe, I’m starting to think you need a new understanding of the word fun.”

She just laughed at him as she left the kitchen.





Late Saturday morning, Izzy went out to the pool with coffee and some of the coffee cake that had been in the kitchen that morning—Michaela had obviously left them well stocked for the weekend. She’d wanted to go to the pool since the day she’d arrived—she’d even stopped and looked at it a few times on her stupid little walks around the gardens—but she hadn’t quite felt comfortable enough to just sit there, on one of those tempting lounge chairs, and relax.