Cream of the Crop Read online

  “Doesn’t matter. You seemed to do okay in my boots last weekend, didn’t you?” He winked and led me around toward the back of the truck. By my hand! “Besides, we’ve always got smocks and hairnets for visitors.”

  Hairnets?

  Oh yeah, hairnets. Within fifteen minutes of my arrival at Bailey Falls Creamery, which had always sounded quaint and darling and maybe just the tiniest bit Dickensian, I was beginning to realize that cheese making, even artisanal hipster made-by-the-hottest-man-imaginable cheese making, was an industrialized kind of operation with sterile, stainless-steel troughs, drains in the floors, and tables that looked right out of the movie Saw.

  The “shed” that I’d observed was huge! Room after room of all kinds of equipment, not to mention several “caves,” where the cheese was aged. Another concept I’d Disneyfied in my mind. Although an actual French Roquefort would only be called a Roquefort if aged in the actual caves where the bacteria is naturally present to create its beautiful, pungent beauty, most cheeses these days apparently are aged in noncave caves: climate- and humidity-controlled environments where cheeses can age and mellow over time, and be turned occasionally by the cheese maker.

  And my personal cheese maker had an entire team of cheese makers. A few full-timers, some part-timers that looked like local high school kids, and interns from the Culinary Institute up the road in Hyde Park. Bailey Falls Creamery was quite the operation.

  I was given a fifty-cent tour, basically a brisk walk-through end to end, before being brought back to the first room. The enormous stainless-steel trough was waiting for milk, which I’d learned was not only from Oscar’s herd, but from several other dairy farms in the area. Only pasture-raised, only organic, only happy, humanely treated cows got to bring their milk to his creamery.

  He watched happily as the milk spilled into the trough. Three women stood at the ready, stainless-steel paddles in hand, waiting for the milk to get to the right temperature.

  “Fantastic, I can’t wait to see how the magic happens!” I cried, clapping my hands. I looked around and saw a low bench over by the window. “Should I go ahead and sit over there? Don’t want to get in the way,” I said, starting for the bench.

  “Natalie,” a low voice called out softly, and I turned to see Oscar. Holding his paddle. Ungh.

  “Yes?” I asked, just as softly.

  “Here’s your hairnet,” he said, throwing me what looked like a handful of old hosiery.

  “You’re adorable.” I laughed and began to turn away once more when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Put on the hairnet, and the smock, and the boots, and meet me back here in five minutes.”

  I blinked back at him. “You’re kidding.”

  “You better get a move on,” he warned, not at all kidding. But just when I was about to tell him where he could stick his paddle, I saw the twinkle in his eye.

  Country boy tries to show the city girl she can’t cut the mustard. Hmph.

  I snatched the smock, and the boots, and the godforsaken hairnet, and met his challenging gaze with a toss of my hair. I’d call his bluff, no problem. “Should I take everything off and just wear the smock, or . . . ?” I looked at him innocently, opening the top button on my fitted black oxford.

  “Over your clothes is fine,” he replied through clenched teeth.

  I heard the women over by the tub giggle.

  “Be right back,” I sang out, heading for the restroom. Inside, I stared at the hairnet.

  I’d better get to take home some cheddar . . .

  It turns out I look fucking fantastic in a hairnet. I piled all my hair up on top of my head, popped the net on, but off to the side in a jaunty fashion, touched up my siren-red lipstick, and I was ready to paddle some cheddar. I plodded out in my shapeless smock and Oscar’s boots, with a grand smile, and was pleased when I saw him scan the length of my leg now visible beneath the smock.

  I had, in fact, taken off the clothes underneath. Because I was hot . . .

  “Okay, Caveman, show me how you make your wares,” I announced, rolling up my sleeves and trying to take the paddle away from him.

  “Not so fast. You’ll watch first, then you can go to work on that tub over there.”

  “Whatever,” I replied, playing along. I stood off to the side with Oscar and watched as the three women worked on the first trough.

  “So when the milk is the right temperature, they add the rennet. In this tub over here, they’ve already done that. See how when she slices into it, it almost looks like it’s set up a bit? Now it’s ready for the next step.”

  “Which is?” I asked, conscious of his elbow touching mine. He was, too, because he bumped me with his.

  “Remember Little Miss Muffet?”

  “I should probably tell you now that if you’re going to call a spider over to sit down beside me, you’re also going to want to hold tight to your balls, because—”

  “Good lord, woman,” he interrupted, furrowing his brow—while also surreptitiously dropping his hands protectively. “What the hell kind of fairy tales did you read when you were a kid? They’re separating the curds from the whey.”

  “Oh! Sure, sure, that part.” I sighed, relaxing back once more. And as we watched, the woman walked up and down the length of the tub, pulling along a steel contraption that almost looked a little like a small handheld rake, except with only a few teeth. Almost immediately, you could see that when it cut into the jiggly white mass, tiny pieces began to form, suddenly floating in a sea of yellowish-white liquid.

  I wasn’t aware that I was crinkling my nose until he bumped me once more with his elbow. “What’s the matter, not quite what you were expecting?”

  “No.” I sniffed. “It’s quite interesting. Very much so.” It looked disgusting. And now that it looked disgusting, I became aware of a somewhat strange odor in the air. It wasn’t rancid or spoiled; the place was spotless, for goodness’ sake. But there was a definite . . . funk. Funk I liked, especially when I was enjoying a really good piece of Maytag blue at the end of a long day with a few figs and some honey. But this funk was all around me, and I wasn’t really liking it.

  “Okay, your turn!” Oscar said, tugging me by the elbow to the untouched third tub, obviously my introduction to the world of cheese making.

  “Fabulous,” I said, smiling wide as I approached the milky-white substance. Not at all what cheese making had represented in my head for so many years. Where were the artfully scarred wooden tables, the crooked yet charming slate floor, the barn cats cleaning their faces prettily in the window while waiting for a bowlful of cream?

  Not here. But Oscar was still smiling, and looked so proud. “Go ahead, see if it’s ready. If it is, when you slice into it, it’ll give, but it won’t be mushy. You’ll be able to make a clean slice, but it’ll still fall back on itself,” Oscar said, handing me a little curved spatula.

  “Fabulous,” I repeated, the smell stronger here. I’d once gone to Coney Island when I was a kid and eaten three Nathan’s hot dogs followed by a tall glass of milk. Two spins on the Wonder Wheel later and I’d honked it all up. I wasn’t really a fan of hot dogs or milk after that, and this . . . precheese . . . had a similar warm smell. But when I looked over at Oscar, he seemed curious to see what I’d do, so I tried to remember what they’d done at the tub we’d just watched.

  Initially, before slicing it, she’d poked it. So I poked it. It jiggled slightly. I poked it again. Same thing. It sort of sprang back, almost like a panna cotta or flan texture.

  Now I never wanted either of those desserts again.

  I started to poke it a third time, when Oscar leaned in behind me, and with his mouth right beneath my ear, and my hairnet, said, “Are you going to poke it all day, or are you going to do something with it?”

  Stifling every witty retort I had flying through my brain in that instant, I took a dee
p breath and stuck in my little spatula. He was right, it wasn’t mushy, and a clean slice fell back from the blade.

  “Looks like it’s ready to go,” I said, handing it back to him and starting to turn for the door.

  “Whoa whoa whoa, city girl, we’ve still got a ton of work to do,” he called.

  “We do?” I asked, silently begging for fresh air, any air, any air sans funk.

  “Unless you’re too soft to do a country day’s work,” he said, his voice literally dripping with challenge.

  I turned on my heel and marched straight back to him, poking my spatula in his chest. “Bring it, Caveman,” I whispered, then stuck my empty hand straight out to the side. Picking up her cue perfectly, one of the other women tossed a rake thingie and I caught it in midair.

  I worked hard that day. I raked cheese, I salted, I paddled, I pounded, I flipped, I shaped, and I hooped. I washed rinds, flipped rounds, scraped mold, injected mold, rotated molds, and damn near threw up about a hundred times. And through it all, sassing and teasing me, but also educating me, was Oscar. He knew every aspect of his little cheese world, and he was free with both knowledge and comebacks.

  I laughed my ass off all day, but I must admit, nothing smelled as good as the clean fresh air at the end of the day, when he finally let me go outside to scruff around a bit.

  “Sweet, sweet air, let me eat you,” I shouted, running past him when he finally pronounced it was quitting time.

  “You’ll get used to the funk,” he teased, taking off his own hairnet (which looked almost as good on him as it did on me) and scratched at his hair, extra curly after cooking under the nylon all day.

  “I wouldn’t count on it. I’ll be lucky to ever eat Comté again! You may have ruined me.” I sighed, sucking in big gulps of the fresh air. I was feeling a little queasy. Cheese making was long, backbreaking work, and I’d never take it for granted again.

  I also might need to modify my Dream Cupboard to reflect less cheese making and more cheese eating. Fingers crossed. Because right now, the last thing I wanted was—

  “Oh, I almost forgot. Since I can’t really pay you for today, I’ve got a surprise.” From behind his back, he pulled out a paper bag with Bailey Falls Creamery stamped on the outside, with the signature blue and white gingham wrapping peeking out from inside. “Your favorite Brie.”

  I threw up on his boots. The ones I was wearing, luckily . . .

  “I threw up on your boots.”

  “You sure did.”

  “I mean, my God, I threw up on your boots! For fuck’s sake, how embarrassing!” I moaned, covering my face with the damp towel he’d brought me. One thought about Brie, the tiniest whiff, and out came the pancakes from earlier that morning. I could just die.

  After making sure I wasn’t about to barf again, he’d driven me to his house, and tucked me into a rocking chair on the front porch with a glass of water and the cool towel.

  “I don’t even know what happened! It was just, like, no more funk.”

  “It happens.”

  He said everything in that matter-of-fact, easygoing way. I’d thrown up all over the place, and he took it in stride as though I’d just dropped a bag of pretzels or something.

  Was that his game? Acting like nothing bothered him, no skin off my nose, nothing was a big deal? Was not playing games his game?

  Before I could ruminate on this for very long, the wind shifted and I got a strong whiff of . . .

  “P to the U,” I groaned, pinching my nose.

  “You get used to it. They’re just cows.”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s me. I’m downwind of me, and all I can smell is vomit. I need to get back to Roxie’s so I can shower.”

  He rocked back and forth on his heels, seeming to ruminate on something himself. “I’ve got a shower here. I’ve even got some flowery soap that girls like.”

  “Oh, you do, do you?” I asked. Was it left over from Missy? Hell, who gives a shit? “What kind of soap do you use?”

  “Lava.”

  “Of course you do.” I sighed, stretching out in the rocking chair, not feeling sick at all anymore. “I suppose I could shower here. It does present a problem, though.”

  “Problem?”

  “Mmm-hmm. I’ll be naked. And you won’t be.”

  He shook his head. “I must not have been clear. If you’re showering, I’m showering.”

  My skin tingled. “That makes sense. Water conservation, being a good host—all those things.”

  “Plus, you’ll be naked. And wet.”

  I blinked. “Why are we still talking about this, instead of doing it?”

  I stood in his bathroom, letting the water warm up while brushing my teeth with my finger and then swishing with half a bottle of Scope I’d found in the medicine chest. I rinsed once more, just as the steam was starting to fog up the mirror. It was an old-fashioned bathroom, with a makeshift shower suspended over a claw-foot tub, which I’d bet someone’s last dollar was original to the house.

  I never bet with my own money.

  He knocked at the door just as I was slipping out of my clothes, and I turned to look at him over my shoulder as he peeked his head around, his eyes covered with his hands.

  “You decent?”

  “Far from it,” I replied.

  His answering grin was slow and sweet. He uncovered his eyes just as I let my smock hit the floor, and I loved the way they lit up at the sight of me, naked and ready for the shower.

  “Nice,” he murmured.

  I did love how he said exactly what was on his mind.

  “Did you have this in mind when you asked me over here today?” I asked.

  He closed the door, stepped toward me, then pulled his shirt off over his head. “You mean, when I invited you over to teach you how to make cheese only so you could vomit on me? All in the hopes of getting you naked and wet in my shower?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “I knew it.”

  He unzipped his jeans, pushed them down, and stepped out of them, leaving him as naked as I was, but with one beautiful difference.

  “You’re hard.” I gulped.

  “I’ve been hard all damn day.” And with that he lifted me straight up and over the edge of the tub, under the spray of the water.

  “That must have been terrible,” I teased as he closed the pink rose shower curtain around us. “I like the flowers, by the way.”

  “What flowers?”

  “On the curtain?” I shook my head as he gathered up handfuls of my hair and dipped them under the water. “We’re kind of surrounded by them.”

  “I don’t see anything but you right now, Pinup.” And then his mouth was on me, leaning down and pressing kisses all along my neck, my throat, my jaw, as the water spilled down over both of us. I could feel him against my stomach, hard and thick. And he’d been hard all day?

  It got me hot because the idea that someone like Oscar, all giant Paul Bunyan guy, was thinking about me all day, was intoxicating. “Did you really think about me today?”

  “Mm-hm,” he said, his voice hot on my skin. I could feel his breath moving across my skin. “I thought about you all week.”

  “You could have called me.”

  “I didn’t have your number.” He tipped my head back under the water, saturating my hair. Filling his hands with shampoo, he began to work up a lather.

  “Roxie would have given it to you.”

  “True,” he said, massaging my head with strong and sure fingertips. “But then you would have known I was gonna call you.”

  “And that’s bad?” I sputtered, just as he thrust his hips against mine.

  “I knew you’d be back.”

  Humph. Cheeky.

  “Now close your eyes.” He brought my hands to my hair, encouraging me to rinse the bubbles out.

&
nbsp; I did, leaning back and feeling the suds wash away, smoothing my long hair back and making sure there were no tangles. He knew I’d be back. How cocky was this guy? How did he know that—

  He put his mouth on me. Ohhhh.

  He put his mouth on me there.

  My eyes flew open to look down, down between my legs, where a beautifully wet Oscar was kneeling, kissing, licking my sensitive skin. His tongue delved deep and I shivered, slapping at the shower tile, slapping at his shoulders, trying to get purchase on anything that could ground me while his mouth surrounded me with the sweetest kind of torture there is.

  One hand slid up the back of my leg, opening me further, snaking around my knee and lifting it to the edge of the tub, exposing me fully to him, to whatever he wanted to see or touch or taste.

  “Oh. Yes,” I cried out, as he flicked his tongue against my clit, his shoulder pushing my legs wider as he panted against me, his mouth open and wet and hot and . . .

  there

  there

  there

  right

  exactly

  there . . .

  “Oscar,” I groaned, feeling his late-afternoon stubble scrape against my sensitive skin, too much and not enough all at once and wrapped together and

  there

  there

  there

  fuck

  there

  oh

  yes

  there.

  And I exploded.

  “There she is,” he moaned, licking and sucking and letting me ride it out as he held me up. And as soon as I was boneless and noodly, he scooped me up, wet and slippery, and carried me to his bed.

  I tried to wrap my arms around him, tried to get them to work, but I was still shaking, still shivering as he rose over me. Dimly I saw him rolling the condom on. Dimly I saw him wrapping my legs around his waist. Dimly I heard him grunt as he twisted, pushing into me with words like so tight and so beautiful and fuck that’s good.

  Finally I lifted my hips to meet his thrusts, wild and rough. He hovered over me, stretching his glorious body across me, those colors on his chest and arms flashing as he gazed down at me, all eyebrow scar and biting down on his lower lip and spilling down those gorgeous words all over me.