by Sarah Morgan
He stared down at the plate. The cookies were shaped like Christmas trees and specs of sugar dusted the golden brown surface.
“Aren’t cookies usually round?”
“They can be any shape you choose.”
“And you chose Christmas trees?”
“It’s a cookie, Mr. Blade. Eat it or don’t.”
He eyed the tray in her hands. Next to the plate of cookies was a mug full of—
“What the hell is that?” A slice of lemon floated on the top of straw-colored liquid.
“It’s herbal tea.”
“Herbal—?” He shook his head. “I’m pretty sure you didn’t find that in my cupboards.”
“I didn’t find anything much in your cupboards.”
“I drink coffee. Strong. Black.”
“You can’t drink strong black coffee in the afternoon. It will stop you sleeping. Herbal tea is refreshing and calming.”
He rarely slept, but he didn’t tell her that. He’d seen enough of his life plastered across the press over the past decade to make him miserly with the personal details he shared.
Herbal tea. As if that was going to solve his problems.
“Take it away.” If it had been neat whiskey he would have downed it in one, but he wasn’t swallowing herbal tea for anyone. “Do I look like a guy who drinks herbal tea and eats cookies shaped like Christmas trees?” His tone was infused with a harshness a thousand times more unpalatable than the brew in the cup in front of him and she studied him for a long moment.
“No, but you can’t tell much about a person by looking at them, can you? You were the one who taught me that. Has it occurred to you that maybe I’m not trying to sweeten you up, Mr. Blade. Maybe I’m trying to poison you.” She pushed the tray into his hands and walked away, dismissing him with a swish of her golden hair.
He stared after her, reeling from the contrast between her sweet face and the sharp rebuke.
Poison him?
That was it.
Finally he was ready to type something, and he had his hands full.
He took the tray into his study and set it down on his desk.
It was already dark and the only light in the room came from the glow of his laptop and the strange, luminescent light reflecting off the snow beyond the windows.
He returned to the screen. So far there were only two words on the page.
Chapter One.
He sat down and started to write.
Four
You are what you eat, so keep it sweet.
—Eva
Of all the rude, moody, irritable—
Eva stomped around the kitchen, hurt and upset. She’d been raised to consider what might lie beneath the surface of a person’s behavior. You didn’t have to be a psychologist to understand what was going on with Lucas, but still his words had stung.
She told herself that he was grieving. He was in pain. He was—
Cold. Distant. Intimidating. Formidable.
And obviously not a lover of herbal tea.
Her brief glimpse inside his study had shown her that the room was nothing like the rest of the apartment. It smelled of wood smoke and leather, and had both personality and warmth. A warmth that came from more than the flickering fire. Unlike the rest of his apartment, his office space had been furnished with loving care and attention. Two worn, deep leather sofas faced each other across a low table piled high with books. Not coffee-table books chosen as a design accent, but real books, thumbed at the corners and stacked haphazardly as if they’d only recently been read.
There had been a desk, she remembered, dominated by what appeared to be a very expensive computer, and there was also a laptop. The room was graced with the same soaring glass windows that enveloped the rest of the apartment, but the image that remained with her was of the bookshelves. They’d stretched from floor to ceiling and were packed with more books than she’d ever seen in her life outside a library. The covers didn’t match and leather-bound volumes were interspersed with the less durable paperbacks, the lines on their spines suggesting that they were well-read and well loved.
She was curious to know what Lucas Blade read when he wanted to escape from his own work and his own world. Did he read crime fiction or something different?
She’d had no opportunity to take a closer look. With a single glance and a few carefully chosen words, he’d made it clear that she was intruding on his space.
He didn’t want her here. She wasn’t welcome.
But before she’d turned away, she’d learned one other thing. Perhaps the most important thing of all. Whatever Lucas was doing in his office, it wasn’t writing.
The computer screen had been blank. Had it been smaller, she might not have noticed but as it was she’d managed to read two words—Chapter One.
There had been nothing else.
What had he been doing up there in the weeks he’d supposedly been hiding away and writing? What had he been doing while she’d been familiarizing herself with his kitchen?
Not working, that she was sure about.
In the few awkward moments before she’d plucked up the courage to knock on his door, she’d heard silence. There had been no sound. Nothing. No rhythmic rattle of fingers on a keyboard. No tap of the space bar. No soft whirr of a printer.
If she hadn’t seen him disappear inside, she would have assumed the room was empty.
She felt a pang of empathy.
After her grandmother had died she’d struggled to drag herself out of bed. If it hadn’t been for her friends, she probably wouldn’t have bothered.
Where were Lucas’s friends?
Why weren’t they banging on his door and bringing him hot meals? Why weren’t they insisting he left the apartment?
Because they thought he was in Vermont. Everyone thought he was in Vermont.
Only she knew differently.
She glanced up the elegant curve of the stairs to the closed door, wondering how to handle the situation. She wasn’t exactly in a position to criticize him for his lack of social life. She couldn’t even get herself a date. She was hardly qualified to rekindle his flagging inspiration, or whatever it was that was preventing him from writing. All she could do was make sure he was well fed. That, at least, was within the scope of her experience.
What would tempt him? It had to smell good, be quick and easy to eat and not too heavy.
She opened the fridge, now fully stocked, and pulled out cheese, eggs and milk.
She’d whip up a soufflé, light and fluffy, serve it with some of the fresh salad leaves she’d purchased earlier. And she’d make bread.
Who could resist the smell of freshly baked bread?
For the next few hours she whisked, poured and kneaded. She rarely consulted a recipe and never weighed anything. Instead she relied on instinct and experience. Neither had failed her yet. She added rosemary and sea salt to the dough and made a few notes in the small book she always carried so she could add the recipe to her blog later.
She’d started her blog, Eat with Eva, as a way of recording and remembering all that her grandmother had taught her. To begin with she’d only had a few loyal followers, but they were growing rapidly and what had started out as an interest and a hobby had turned into a passion and a job. She’d been as surprised by the discovery that she could earn her living doing what she loved as she was by the surge in her own ambition.
She wanted this to be big. Not because she wanted fame and fortune, but because she wanted to spread the word about good, simple cooking to everyone. With that objective in mind, she tried only to use simple ingredients that could be easily sourced. She wanted people to use her recipes after a hard day at work, not just for the occasional dinner party.
She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t cooked. One of her earliest memories was of standing on a chair next to the stove, concentrating as her grandmother taught her how to make the perfect omelet.
At Urban Genie, she rarely did the cooking herself. He
r job was to outsource catering, and she spent her days discussing menus, meeting with new suppliers, managing budgets.
It was a pleasure to be back in the kitchen, especially a kitchen as well equipped as this one. And part of that pleasure was the feeling of being close to her grandmother, as if this memory and the happy feelings were something that couldn’t be erased by her absence. It was a way of keeping her alive, of remembering the touch, the smells, the smiles that had been exchanged during activities exactly like this one.
She’d discovered that a legacy wasn’t money, it was memories. And inside her was a treasure trove of a thousand special moments.
She shaped the dough into rolls, scored the tops and placed them on a baking tray.
Out of the corner of her eye she spied the knife that Lucas had left on the table.
Having witnessed plenty of accidents in the kitchens where she’d worked, she was obsessively careful with knives.
After a moment, she picked it up and slid it into the back of one of the drawers so that it was hidden from view.
It occurred to her that if he tried to harm himself with that knife it would now be covered in her fingerprints and she paused, horrified by her thought process.
She pushed the drawer closed, exasperated with herself and also with him because she knew exactly who had put that thought in her head. He had, with his comments about never really knowing a person. Even though she disagreed with him, his words had seeped into her mind and contaminated her usually sunny thoughts, like poison dropped into a clear mountain stream.
Unsettled, she slid the softly curved rolls into the oven. Hopefully Lucas would give them a more positive response than he had the herbal tea.
While she waited for them to cook, she tidied up. At home her untidy nature had been a source of argument between herself and Paige, who had shared an apartment with her for years. The only exception to her tendency to drop things where she stood was in the kitchen. Her kitchen was always spotless.
Timing it perfectly, she removed the rolls from the oven, leaned in to inhale the delicious fragrance and transferred them to a wire cooling rack. The magic of baking never failed to charm her.
While she waited for the soufflé to rise, she pulled out her phone and took a photo of the rolls, focusing in on the domed, crusty surfaces. She posted it to her Instagram account and noted that the number of her followers had rocketed since the day before. She’d been experimenting, working out what time of day attracted most traffic.
Frankie loathed social media. Paige, the business brain behind their company, understood the importance of building a connection with customers but had no time, so it had fallen to Eva to manage all Urban Genie’s accounts as well as her own. The interaction suited her social personality, and she loved seeing increased interest in the company as a result of her endeavors. Encouraged by Paige, she’d started her own YouTube channel demonstrating recipes and it was gaining popularity.
Maybe she’d film herself making bread rolls while she was here. The kitchen would be a fabulous backdrop.
Finally the meal was ready, but there was still no sign of Lucas.
She was about to risk life and limb by taking up another tray when she heard the sound of the door opening and footsteps on the stairs.
Lucas had pushed the sleeves of his black sweater back to his elbows, revealing forearms that were strong, the muscles contoured. He didn’t look like a guy who spent his day glued to a computer. He looked like a sexy construction worker. His hair was rumpled, his jaw dusky with shadow and he seemed distracted.
Was his mind on his book or his dead wife?
He glanced around the kitchen. “What are you doing?”
“Cooking. You need to eat.”
“I’m not hungry. I came down for whiskey.”
She told herself his drinking habits were none of her business. “You should eat something. Good nutrition is important, and you are hungry.”
“And how would you know that?”
“Because you’re moody and irritable. I’m the same when I’m hungry.” She hoped she sounded kind rather than judgmental. “Of course it could be that you’re moody because your work isn’t going well, but you never know. Eat. If nothing else, it will make you nicer to be around.”
“What makes you think my work isn’t going well?”
“I saw the computer screen—there were no words on it.”
“The process of writing isn’t all about putting words on the page. Sometimes it’s about thinking, and staring out of the window.” But there was an edge to his tone that told her she’d touched a nerve.
“I have a friend who’s a writer and she tells me that when the words are flowing it feels like magic.”
“And when they’re not, is that a curse?”
She served the meal. “I don’t know. I’m not a writer, but I’m guessing it could feel that way. Is that how it feels?”
“Maybe I’m moody and irritable because I have an overnight guest I wasn’t expecting and didn’t want.”
“Maybe, but why don’t you eat something and we’ll find out. Being hungry isn’t going to help your mood or your brainpower.” Eva pushed the plate in front of him and saw his expression change.
“What is that?”
“It’s a perfect soufflé. Try a mouthful.”
“I’ve told you, I’m not—”
“Here’s a fork.” She handed it to him and dressed the salad leaves with organic olive oil and balsamic vinegar she’d bought on her trip to Dean & DeLuca.
“Who goes to the trouble of making a complicated soufflé for supper at home?”
“Who goes to the trouble of buying an oven as beautiful as that one and not using it?” She pushed the salad toward him. “It’s like buying a Ferrari and keeping it in the garage.”
In some ways he reminded her of a Ferrari. Sleek. Beautiful. Out of her league.
“The oven came with the apartment. I don’t cook.”
And she had a feeling that everything in the apartment was the best. “If you don’t cook, what do you eat?”
“When I’m working? Not much. Sometimes I order takeout.”
“That’s shockingly unhealthy.”
“Most of the time I’m too busy to care what I’m eating.”
She watched as he slid his fork through the light, airy soufflé. Try it, she thought, and discover what it’s like to care about what you’re eating.
He took a mouthful and nodded. “It’s good.” He took another mouthful and paused. “No, I’m wrong about that.”
She was offended. “You don’t think it’s good?”
He took a third mouthful and a fourth and then lowered his fork down slowly. “First she drugs her victims—”
“Excuse me?”
He stared down at his plate. He didn’t seem to have heard her. “She invites them to dinner. A romantic evening. Soft music. Wine. It’s all going well. He thinks he’s going to get lucky—”
“And then she breaks the bottle over his head?”
He glanced up and blinked. “She would never do anything so unsubtle.”
“But I would,” Eva said sweetly, “if you insult my cooking.”
“When did I insult your cooking?”
“You said it wasn’t good.”
“It’s not good. It’s better than good.” He slid the fork into the fluffy soufflé, examining it closely. “It’s perfect. Like eating a cloud.”
His compliment thawed the frosty atmosphere and Eva watched as he cleared his plate. “In that case I forgive you.” Although she wouldn’t have admitted it, she was relieved to see him eating. The vast, empty fridge had worried her. Not eating was a bad sign. She knew. She’d lost fifteen pounds after her grandmother had died. Getting through each hour had been hard and every day had felt like a month. Sympathy swelled inside her.
He stared at his plate. “If you were going to poison someone, how would you do it?”
Sympathy evaporated. “Keep being obnoxious and
you might find out.”
He put his fork down slowly. “Was I being obnoxious?”
“You were questioning whether my food was poisonous.”
“Are you always this sensitive?”
“Is it sensitive to be hurt when someone criticizes your professional abilities? If someone asked you how you choose to bore your readers, you’d be similarly offended.”
“I never bore my readers.”
“And I never poison the people I cook for.”
“My question was abstract, not personal. I was speaking hypothetically.”
“Then your timing was bad. Abstract is when you don’t have a plate of freshly cooked food in front of you.”
His gaze locked on hers and she noticed that his eyes weren’t black, but a velvety dark brown. A slow dangerous heat spread through her body until her limbs had the liquid consistency of warm honey.
He was the first to lower his gaze. “You’re right. I was hungry.” He helped himself to another roll, his voice level. “And, for the record, I do own a Ferrari I keep in the garage.”
Her heart was pounding. What just happened? What was that look? “You own a Ferrari in New York City?”
“Hence the reason it stays in the garage for most of the winter. Apparently it doesn’t like idling in traffic or the bitter cold.” He glanced across at her plate. “You’re not eating?”
“I want to make sure you don’t die before I take a mouthful.”
He laughed, and in that instant she understood exactly why he had to fight off women. That smile held an indecent amount of seductive charm. She hastily started eating to take her mind off the direction her thoughts were taking.
“So tell me,” he said, breaking off a piece of roll, “what hell do you intend to inflict on my apartment?”
“Excuse me?”
“At least spare me pine needles.”
“I have a Nordmann fir arriving any minute.”
“Cancel the order.”
“You can’t have Christmas without a tree.”
“I’ve managed it for the past three years.”
“All the more reason to have an extra big one this year.”