A minute later, Erica sat down at the table again and started to eat the noodles with chopsticks.
"This sausage tastes really good, but why is it white?" she asked.
Matthew put the pot he had used to cook the noodles under the tap and explained, "It's called a weisswurst, made from minced pork and veal, flavored with parsley, lemon and other natural ingredients." A weisswurst was a traditional Bavarian sausage which literally translated to white sausage because of its white-colored skin.
"Did you use the oven to roast it again?"
"Yes, I did," he said, putting away the dishes he had just washed.
Erica ate with satisfaction, gulping down her food without pausing to breathe. "I didn't expect you to be such a good cook!"
Her words of praise made him smile, but as she continued to eat another mouthful, she said something that made him want to give her a good beating!
"You know what they say, the way to a woman's heart is through her stomach. Did Paige fall in love with your cooking before she fell in love with you?" 'Wow! This tastes amazing!' She was completely enamored by his cooking, even though totally oblivious of his mood.
He watched her put a shrimp into her mouth and chew it happily.
Matthew walked over to the table and sat across her. "If I want a woman, all I need to do is call her. I don't have to cook for anyone."
"Wow! You've got a lot of confidence! But, I guess you're right. You're handsome and rich. You're in good shape and great at cooking. You're the whole package! I'm starting to feel a little reluctant to let you go back to another woman." Although, Matthew had a bad temper, he was everything a woman could ask for in a man!
Matthew said calmly, "That's not something you can control."
"You are right about that too!"
Erica took another mouthful and suddenly something important popped into her mind. She asked the man sitting opposite to her, "Don't you want some?"
"Thanks, but no."
She held the bowl to his face and brought some noodles to his mouth. "Seriously! This is too good! Come on, have some."
Erica added one more dish to her list of favorite foods—Matthew's seafood noodles.
Casting a glance at the noodles on her chopsticks, he refused decisively. "I know what it tastes like. Just help yourself!"
"Okay! Oh, didn't you say that ham tasted good when cooked with tomatoes? How come you cooked it with cantaloupe instead?"
The man furrowed his eyebrows and said, "You've got a lot of questions, don't you?"
Erica held the bowl in her hand, blinking her eyes at him nonchalantly. "Really? I've always been like this with my dad and he never said that I was too talkative. Does it bother you?"
Matthew felt a dull pain at the temples. "The tomatoes weren't fresh, so I used cantaloupes instead. You don't like it?"
With a sly smile on her face, she threw his words back at him. "You've got a lot of questions too, don't you? Why do you care whether I like cantaloupes or not? What's it to you?"
She sounded annoyed. 'What's her problem?' Matthew wondered. As soon as Matthew took the plate of ham and stood up, Erica looked at him with confusion and asked, "What are you doing?"
"I was going to throw it away, since you don't like it."
'Throw it away?' Erica's eyes widened in shock. That dish cost at least 43 dollars to make, exclusive of the fee for human labor, and he wanted to throw it away just like that? Erica snatched the plate away from him and said, "I like cantaloupes. I used to ask my dad's friends to bring me cantaloupes from Xinjiang. Why wouldn't I like cantaloupes?"
To prove her words, Erica picked up the fruit fork and put a piece of cantaloupe wrapped in ham into her mouth.
She stuffed a large piece of cantaloupe into her mouth casually and her cheeks bulged out. She chewed the food in her mouth and repeatedly praised his cooking. "It's delicious. More delicious than the meat from Xuanzang, the Buddhist monk!"
Before leaving the table, Matthew cast her a disdainful look. "Don't forget to wash the dishes," he reminded her.
"Oh," she said and then paused into a pensive expression. But, washing dishes…
Erica had never washed dishes before.
After a while, she looked around the kitchen counter and the dining room to find the place squeaky-clean. She didn't realize that there were no servants there. Although she had been eating food cooked by different chefs, she had never seen anyone cleaning the villa before.
But if Matthew wasn't doing the cleaning, then who on earth was keeping this place so clean?
Before long, Erica had cleaned up the rest of the seafood noodles in her bowl, slurping the soup like some kind of vacuum cleaner. The only thing she left behind was three or four pieces of ham. Then, showing no signs of embarrassment she wiped her mouth and belched loudly.
"I'm so full I don't think I can eat another bite. There is some ham left. Why don't you finish it?" 'Would he mind? Maybe not, ' she thought. They had kissed, after all. Why would he have a problem eating her leftovers?
Sitting in the living room, Matthew closed his eyes, suppressing his anger and waved his hand dismissively. "Throw it away!"
Erica, however, wouldn't let it go. She brought the ham to the living room while he was scrolling through his cell phone. When he noticed the girl approaching him with a bowl, he felt a pang of apprehension. "What do you think you're doing?"
She giggled, forking a piece of cantaloupe and brought it to his lips. "Matthew, this is the result of your hard work. It would be a shame to throw it away."
"I don't care!"
"But my father said it's shameful to waste food! Very shameful! He hates wasting food the most. He will be unhappy if he knows that you are wasting food like this! If he is angry enough to drag you to run ten kilometers with five kilograms of weight on your back, I'm afraid that your soft skin…"
Matthew looked at her incredulously, feeling as though he had married a complete weirdo. "First of all, you're the one who didn't finish the food. You are the one who's wasting food. Secondly, if I have to run ten kilometers with weights tomorrow, you're coming with me!"
'What? Has he lost his mind? He doesn't seem afraid of dad's punishment.' Having realized that her plan had backfired, she resorted to making threats. "If you don't finish this, I'm going to call my father and tell him that you're wasting food! Will you eat it or not?"
After a short pause, he said, "I can eat it if you want."
Her eyes lit up. "Really?"
"Well, come here!"
She walked forward and sat beside him. "Okay, I'm here. What next?"
He lowered his head and whispered into her ear, "Feed it to me."
"No problem!" She had just fed him a date and a cherry, what did she have to lose by feeding him cantaloupe? Absolutely nothing!
"And, I want two kisses for every bite I take."
"What! Are you? I…I… You're being impossible!" She rolled her eyes at him as she didn't find his ambitious request funny.
Raising his eyebrows, Matthew said, "Well, if you're not going to play along then I'm not eating either. I'll call your father and tell him how his dear daughter is wasting food…" With that, he unlocked his cell phone and tapped on the contact list. It seemed as though he really was going to make a call.
Erica's eyes shot up with bewilderment because she knew her father very well. If she and Matthew called him at the same time, Wesley would undoubtedly believe Matthew over her.
Without wasting another second, Erica snatched the phone from Matthew's hand and threw it onto the sofa. She brought a piece of cantaloupe to his lips and said, "Fine! I'll do it. It's not like I haven't kissed you before. Just eat this first!"
Matthew smiled and ate the piece of cantaloupe.
When he swallowed the fruit in his mouth, he raised his eyebrows at her, indicating that it was her turn to keep her side of the bargain!
