“So, what are we making here?” He leaned back against the cabinets and stared at my collection ofingredients.
My mouth was dry and I had to swallow before I could answer. “Apple pie. And pumpkin bread pudding. You pick which one for today. And preheat theoven.”
He moved to the half-sized oven—which brought him two feet closer to me, because I was a stupid fuck with stupid, stupid ideas—and stared at it dubiously. “Hmm. I don’t think it does ‘preheat.’”
“Are you joking?” I narrowed my eyes, but he looked innocent enough. “It doesn’tdopreheat, you just turn it on and wait for it to reachtemperature.”
“Oh.”
I rolled my eyes and knocked my hip into his, moving him out of the way so I could set the controls. “You’ve made me dinner a bunch of times. Dozens. I feel like you’re pretending ignorancehere.”
“I’ve made you spaghetti, stir-fry, curry, tacos, and steak subs. Know how I know? Because those are the five things I know how to cook.” He looked at the ceiling. “Not including sandwiches. And eggs. I know lots of ways to eateggs.”
I laughed. Jesus, he was adorable. “This is good to know.” I looked at my assembled ingredients and realized I’d missed one crucial thing. “Shit. Do you have abowl?”
He tilted his head and gave me an exasperated look. “Of course. How do you think I eatcereal?”
“A mixing bowl. A big bowl to… mixthings.”
He pursed his lips. “I generally mix them in a pasta pot. Will thatwork?”
I nodded. “Whynot?”
He grabbed a giant pot from a lower cabinet and set it on thecounter.
“Okay, we’re going with pie today, since I need more bowls for the other. I’ll bring them whenever you want me to come back for roundtwo.”
“You can come anytime, Julian.” I darted a look at him, but he was pouring coffee and I couldn’t see his face. “I should just give you a key, not that I ever bother locking up.Me casa es sucasa.”
I carefully picked up the ingredients I didn’t need today and put them back in the bag one by one.My house is your house, I wanted to say, except you won’t tell me what you’ve been working on and you won’t tell me a single thing about your life before the wind blew you toO’Leary.
But, of course, I didn’t say that. I wouldn’t. Icouldn’t.
Instead, I introduced Daniel to the magic and mystery of apple peeling, and I swear to God, it was the most fun and frustrating pie-baking experience of my life. He hung on my every word, he snitched apple pieces nearly as fast as I could cut them, and he stoodright therenext to me, with the heat pouring off his goddamn chest like he was a human furnace, making me so nervous and jittery that it’s a wonder I didn’t lose a finger to the paringknife.
“Congratulations,” I said as I stuck the pie pan in the oven. “We have officially baked the thinnest, most apple-less pie in the history ofpies.”
“But on the upside, I don’t need to eat breakfast now.” His teasing grin was heart-stopping. “And my hands smell like a fancy candle. I should bottle this.Smell.”
He stuck his hand under my nose, so his fingers splayed lightly against my cheekand…
Well, at this point I needed to accept that every breath he took was going to make me hard, didn’t I? It wasn’t a matter of avoiding compromising situations with him. I was a giant vat of kerosene and Daniel Michaelson was a litmatch.
“Yes. Apple pie is the newAxebody spray,” I agreed, batting his hand away from my face and angling my body—hopefully inconspicuously—toward the counter as I cleaned it with a rag. “The ladies will love you. Maybe you should go take a shower while this bakes, before you get allsticky.”
Because thinking of him sticky was totallyhelpful.
“Don’t people have sexual reactions to food smells?” he asked, ignoring my suggestion. “Like, men are supposed find women sexier when they smell like vanilla. I wonder if cinnamon has the sameeffect.”
I could say for sure that itdid.
“I have no clue what smell makes women sexy,” I told him. “Whatever it is, I’mimmune.”
“Totally immune?” He grabbed his shirt off the counter and pushed himself up to sit there like it was the most natural thing ever, which it was. I couldn’t remember how many times we’d been in this room together over the past few months while something—apparently, one of exactly six things—bubbled on the stove. He’d sit on that counter, near the refrigerator, and I’d sit on this counter near the sink, and it had been easy asbreathing.
Now I couldn’t breathe without smelling cinnamon, which would ever-after remind me ofhim.
“I mean, you don’t have to talk about this at all,” Daniel said. “If it’s toopersonal.”
