“I’m joking,” he rushed to reassure her. But her contrite statement was confusing and unsettling. She reminded him again of Dante, when he’d first taken the stray dog in. “You can store your tomatoes anywhere you want. But they are better when warmed by the sun and daylight.” He pulled all the tomatoes from the fridge, placing them on the table, purposefully not looking at her as he arranged them, because he wanted to give her a moment to compose herself. He wasn’t sure why she’d have such a strong reaction to a simple joke but she had, and he instinctively knew that she didn’t want him to read too much into it. He shelved it for later analysis and pretended he hadn’t registered her overreaction.
“What are you making?” Sure enough, her voice sounded almost normal afterwards, only to Nico’s ears, there was an overbrightness to it that showed him she was still a little affected by his comment.
“Pappa al Pomodoro,” he lifted his eyes to hers, infusing his smile with warmth and reassurance. “Have you ever had it?”
She shook her head. “But really, you don’t have to cook…”
“I want to.” He stepped around the kitchen bench, bringing his body to hers, wanting to erase the last remnant of stress that filled her eyes. He pressed his forehead to hers, breathing her in. “I like to cook. And I like the idea of cooking for you.”
“You’ll let me help?”
“I’ll let you sing for your supper,” he corrected. “Your job,” he reached for her hips and lifted her with ease, placing her on the bench top. “Is to entertain me with stories. Understood?”
“Got it.”
“And tell me where things are,” he tacked on, pressing a kiss to her lips, standing in between her legs. It was a mistake. Kissing her made his body instantly crave more, and he felt the same desire swamp her. Her arms lifted and wrapped around his neck, her fingertips tangling in his hair, her breathing erratic.
He pulled away from her while he still could, because nearness was dangerous, temptation overwhelming. “Chopping board?”
“Over there.” Her words were husky. He smiled as he turned away, sure that it wouldn’t be long before they indulged this mutual desire. And there’d be no running away afterwards.
He pulled a chopping board from behind the stovetop, placed it on the table, then rinsed the tomatoes.
“So?” She sipped her wine. “What would you like to hear?”
“Let’s start with the basics. How old are you?”
“I thought I was telling a story, not being interviewed,” she responded drily.
“Is your age a secret?”
Her half-smile twisted something inside of him. “No. I’m twenty six.”
“Knife?”
She hesitated for the briefest moment. “In the drawer.”
“Grazie.” He pulled out the sharpest blade and returned to the tomatoes, chopping each until there were at least forty halves scattered across the bench top. “How many books have you written?”
“Written? Oh, about a dozen. Published? Two.” She held two fingers in the air. At his quizzical look, she shrugged her shoulders. “I started writing when I was a kid, finished my first book at thirteen. It’s a teen sleuth story, lots of angst and mystery and stormy nights that end in disaster for my protagonist. The stories became a little more nuanced as I got older.”
“Is that what you write now?”
She nodded. “More or less. I write a series of books for young adults. They’re mysteries, and my main character is a kickass school girl who isn’t afraid of anyone or anything.”
“Did you always know you wanted to write?”
She was quiet for a moment. “I did, yeah. I loved to read, but I would often get frustrated by the way a story ended. I wanted to reach inside the pages and rearrange them, to give the characters something different. The only way I could do that was to write my own book, so I did.” He looked towards her as a faraway look overtook her eyes. Rather than interrupt her, he hunted around until he found a spoon and bowl, and began to scrape the seeds from the tomatoes, placing them all into the bowl. “We didn’t have a lot growing up. My mum’s a doctor, but she works for War Zone, the charity, so didn’t earn a huge salary, and she’s away almost all the time. It was pretty much just dad and me.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a high school English teacher.”
“Uh huh, so this is where you get your love of books?”
“Undoubtedly.” She nodded. “Every Friday night, we’d go to the library and borrow as many books as they’d let us. Our weekends were spent reading.” She reached for a sprig of rosemary that was in a vase on the counter and ran her fingertips over the blades. As with before, he admired the deftness of her slim fingers, momentarily distracted not just by her body but by her words. “In the summer, we’d throw the books into a basket with some grapes and cheese and go and find a park. We’d spend all day on a picnic blanket, reading, snacking, cloud-watching. It was bliss.”
A jolt of something a lot like envy speared Nico, surprising him with its intensity. “He sounds like an attentive father.”