“What do you mean?” she asked.
“The breads and things,” he stuttered. “They try to make it look like they’re baked on site, but they’re not.”
Idiot. He was talking about
bread
?
“Oh.” She looked longingly at that chocolate éclair. “I don’t really care. I’m starving.”
“You’re up early.”
“Can’t kick the jet lag.” She avoided his eyes, and really, could he blame her? “And I haven’t been sleeping well.”
Something skittered through his gut, and it wasn’t hunger.
“I have biscuits in the oven at home,” he said. “And I’m making omelets.” He held up the little plastic bag of rosemary and the pepper.
She blinked up at him and didn’t say anything.
“Never mind,” he mumbled, and started to turn away.
“No, wait. Sorry. I’m just thinking about my schedule, if I have time.”
He toyed with the rosemary in the bag, counting the leaves on a single stalk. Then he blurted out, “I’m sorry about the other day.”
“Xavier, don’t.”
“For walking away. For shoving you into the wall like that.”
She rolled her eyes and made a sound of frustration. Aimed at him. “Don’t apologize to me. Please, just don’t. I should be apologizing to you.” She rubbed fingers across her forehead. “I knew about that tourist, how she broke your heart. I knew how resistant you were to going out with me, and I still went after you. I wanted more. You didn’t. And you realized that while you were kissing me. Bottom line is, I suck.”
He blinked. Twice. She had no idea what he wanted. But he knew that he wanted to smile again, and he wanted it to be because of her.
“You don’t suck.”
She let out a short laugh. “Thanks.”
“I don’t invite people who suck back to my house for biscuits and omelets.”
It felt good, to say that. Even better when she pulled her hat down over her ears and gave up eyeing that sad éclair.
“Lead the way.”
“Okay, if you’d told me you lived on the top of Pike’s Peak, I
might not have accepted the invitation.”
She huffed hard as they reached the top of the staircase that
ended at his street. He snuck a sideways glance at her, noting the flush in her cheeks and the faint smile. “Sorry. You okay?”
“I will be.”
“This is it.” He gestured to the blue-shingled two bedroom wedged between Massive New Construction to the north and Million-dollar Re-do to the south. As he led the way up the concrete front steps, suddenly he was painfully aware that they weren’t level, and that the corner gutter was broken and that there was a large gash in the screen door.
He saw the unspoken question cross her face: how does a cook afford to own a home in this neighborhood, when even plots for tear-downs cost a fortune? The answer? He needed to live near town since he didn’t know how to drive, and this was the cheapest house Gwen Carroway’s money could buy him.
After Gwen had stopped the slavery and put an end to the business of selling the Tedrans’ glamour, she’d given all her money to him to help him start a new life. Every day he was reminded of what he could afford, and why. He hated money.
He slid his key into the lock, ignoring the jitters in his hand. Hopefully Cat was, too.
Inside, the smell of the cheese biscuits greeted them. He toed off his boots and unwound his scarf. In the three years he’d lived here, he’d never given a second thought to the mustard-yellow tile in the tiny foyer or the dim, brown globe light that set the tone for the whole nineteen-sixties feel of the house. Not retro, just…old.
He walked into the living room with the big window looking down the slope toward town, and tossed his coat over the beige recliner. When he turned around, he almost choked at the sight of Cat. In his house. Not only was she the first woman he’d ever invited inside, she was the first
person
.
She’d draped her coat over the half wall dividing the foyer from the living room, and was now bending over to pull off her fuzzy boots. Her hair made a long, swinging curtain. The sight of her, here, in the place where he cooked and exercised and tried to sleep, messed with his head. Made him doubt his bravery back in the store. Made him think he’d made a terrible mistake.
No, you didn’t
, murmured the Burned Man.
This is only the beginning.
She stepped onto the worn, shedding carpet in her socked feet.
Before she got to the coffee table he said, “You were wrong, before. I do owe you an apology.” She stopped, and waited with those huge caramel eyes fixed right on him. He focused on the lime green table lamp he’d bought from Goodwill for five bucks. He took a couple of hard swallows. “I don’t know what I want. I was aware of that when I met you, and when I went to the movie and then for coffee. I’m sorry for dragging you into my shit, for giving you mixed messages.”
She crept closer but still kept her distance. If he stretched out an arm he couldn’t touch her. “I think I understand,” she said.
She couldn’t possibly, but he nodded anyway. The gentleness in her voice made him ache. It made him want to collapse to his knees before her.
“Do you really want me to be here?”
She was giving him an exit, and man, it would have been really easy to have taken it. But he was tired of easy. It just left him jogging in place.
“Yes. Stay. Please. I just can’t…” His eyes dropped to her lips, and he forced himself to ignore the way his mouth watered.
She smiled. No pity, no frustration. Just Cat. “Terms accepted.”
And like that, with kissing and sex taken out of the equation, the Burned Man, who’d been growling in Xavier’s ear, fell silent.
She crossed the line where the living room carpet gave way to the foot-worn brown linoleum of the kitchen. Onto sacred ground.
“Are you going to show me how a pro works?”
He went to the stove, turned on the burner beneath the pan, set the small plastic grocery bag on the counter and took out the rosemary. With a clamp of his fingers around the stem and a quick sweep downward, he removed the leaves. Swiping his favorite chef’s knife from the butcher block, he took a deep breath and exhaled. Then he let his mind go and his hands flew through the tough, waxy leaves. The familiar
tap tap tap
of the knife on the cutting board instantly relaxed him. Even with Cat standing a few feet to his right, arms crossed, hip leaning against the counter.
“I suppose you’re used to people watching you,” she said. He nodded. “I don’t know if I could paint with an audience.”
He shrugged. “Different processes.”
He had to stretch in front of her for the white onion and yellow pepper. Within her proximity, he could swear the hair on his arm stood on end. Magnetic, this woman.
He passed a damp rag over the cutting board, loving the sight of the clean streaks over the wood, and started on the onion. Some of the dice wasn’t exactly a quarter inch, which made him twitch, but he’d do better next time. The yellow pepper followed.
“Wow,” she murmured. “Very methodical.”
“You have to be.” He walked around her to get to the eggs in the refrigerator.
“I never would’ve thought to put rosemary in eggs. Velveeta maybe, but not rosemary.”
He threw her a wry look over his shoulder. “Please tell me you didn’t say Velveeta.”
“Oooo, did I disgust you? How about…Lean Cuisine? Tombstone? Hamburger Helper?”
Holy shit, there it was again. The tightness in his cheeks. The euphoria slipping through his bloodstream. Like desire, only innocent. When he caught his reflection in the microwave window, he didn’t recognize himself.
“I’ve eaten my share of Tombstones.” He bent over a glass bowl, cracking eggs. “Not bad for a hangover.”
She laughed quietly, nodding.
“Where’d you go to school?”
He whisked the eggs with a flourish. This was what he’d signed up for: conversation. Which meant he’d be asked questions about himself. He could answer; he’d just have to be careful about it. “Um, San Francisco?”
“Did you always want to cook?”
“No.”
He dumped the beaten eggs into the hot pan, rolled the pan around to get a nice thin layer on the bottom. “I was sort of…wandering around in life and I took a job as a dishwasher in one of those brunch cafes. Was totally green, just needed the paycheck.” Not really, but he needed a story more. He’d had money, lots of it; he’d just needed to do something other than
troll for women to feed his Plant-made addiction. By that time he’d recognized what he’d been bred to need, and he hated it. He and the Burned Man’s ghost had gotten real close.
“At first the atmosphere in the kitchen scared me. Non-stop, small space, people always moving and always right where you needed to be. I wasn’t used to that at all. But then, on my first day off, I realized I missed it.” The eggs bubbled and he pulled back the edges to prepare to fold them over. “Couldn’t wait to punch back in. It was chaos, but ordered chaos, you know?”
He couldn’t see her face. She’d gone quiet.
“And then there were the flavors.” His tongue tingled reactively, the memory of those first few months coming back to him. “I didn’t have…I wasn’t used to eating food with a lot of flavor or variety growing up. You’d think that would ruin me, but it was the opposite. I think it made me better, more in tune with everything I put in my mouth. I ate pretty much everything I could, and when I’d talk about it with the other people in the kitchen, someone told me I had a great palate. That you have to have one to be a chef.” He shook his head at the pan as he folded the first half of the eggs over and sprinkled the onions, herbs and peppers into the fold. “Didn’t know what that meant at the time, where that would lead me. But I fell in love pretty hard.”
“When was that?”
“Five years ago?”
“That seems really fast. How long have you been at Shed?”
“Three years.”
“So, two years to go from dishwasher to school to a cook in the best restaurant in White Clover Creek. How is that possible?”
His kitchen—the place he felt most safe—suddenly felt very, very small. He glanced out the window, to the patch of sloped backyard that was nothing more than fallow dirt outlined by a chain-link fence. “I moved from the brunch place to a pretty popular bistro where I worked for free while I went to school. Pam knew the owner and visited one day. We met. She liked my technique and work ethic, what I cooked. Offered me a job here.” Seemed like forever ago. And just yesterday. “Besides, I don’t do much else.”
It’s all I have.
He reached up to the cabinet to the left of the stove and took
down two plates, feeling odd. He’d never taken down two plates at once before. The second one, the one that came with the double place setting, had no scratches on its surface, the red stripes around the edges still pristine and vibrant in their color. He tipped the omelet onto that one, letting it fold onto itself, then neatly divided it in half and gave Cat the better plate.
He turned around and did not expect at all to see what he did on her face. Wide eyes, clear expression, something that could be a smile but just as easily a laugh. That smoky voice turned breathy with wonder. “Nothing you do for fun?”
With a frown, he slid the plates onto his tiny faux maple table. He thought of the concrete-floored basement, the battered punching bag, the weary treadmill and the chipped set of weights. He wouldn’t call that fun. Just necessary.
“No. I cook. When I’m not working, I cook more. In the summer I have a garden out back. Don’t really like working in it, but I love the results.”
“Sounds more like an obsession.” It was a smile now. Definitely a smile. His heart gave a lurch.
“No. Just life. My life.”
He opened the silverware drawer to scrounge for a second fork.
“Didn’t you say something about biscuits earlier?” she asked. “Or was that false advertising?”
“No, you’re getting biscuits.” Using a potholder, he slid the baking sheet onto the stove top and scrutinized the puffs of golden brown. “Maybe less cheese next time,” he muttered.
Cat came to his side. “Blasphemy. When in doubt, the answer is always ‘more cheese.’ Quick, get one on my plate.” As he obeyed, she added, “I don’t see any boxed mix.”
He grunted. “Thought I’d play around a bit this morning.”
She raised an eyebrow at the barely risen sun whose rays pierced the small window in the house’s side door. As she slid out a chair she said, “Yeah, you don’t seem like the type to fritter away a morning with coffee and the crossword puzzle.”
“No.” He pulled out the opposite chair and stared at the meager food he was suddenly embarrassed of. It should have been prettier or more creative. “I need to cook.”
Her hand froze halfway to her fork. “Need to?”
He broke a biscuit, releasing the scent of herbs and cheese. “Yeah.” His throat felt like he’d taken too large a bite and couldn’t get it down. “Need to.”
Then he ate. Out of habit, he couldn’t chew anything without breaking down the flavors in his mouth and analyzing them.
Cat ate, too, a gentle, repetitive scrape of the fork on her plate. The silence of his house settled around them. It took another person to tell him how quiet his life was.
After a time, Cat slouched in her chair and slowly turned her plastic orange juice cup in a circle. She wore a faraway look. He barely recognized her.
“Are you okay?” The question rode funny on his tongue.
“You know”—her voice was soft as morning light—“I need to paint.”
He remembered what she’d told him on the stairs, before she said she’d get on her knees: how they were alike in some way. He hadn’t wanted to believe her then; he didn’t think he could believe her now. He wasn’t like anyone. “What do you mean?”
“It’s the only way to get it out.”
He held his breath. “Get what out?”
“What’s inside me.” She broke off a piece of biscuit.
Xavier just stared, like an idiot. “So…what did that feel like, the first time you painted?”
She wiggled her fork between her fingers, the tines tapping on the table. “Like I’d found something? Only I didn’t know I was looking for it.”
The last bite of eggs went into his mouth, but they tasted like dust.