24. Nonna’s Bolognese #2
“Sof.” Frankie’s voice carried a warning, though she was smiling. “What have we told you about interrogating guests?”
“That it’s rude but sometimes necessary for gathering intelligence,” Sofia replied solemnly, making Lucas cough to hide what sounded like laughter.
“She gets that from her father,” Frankie noted dryly as she shot a warning look at Xavier, who was laughing openly as he set a pot to boil on the stove. “Xavi, come meet Marie’s…employer.”
Xavier rounded the counter, and I was struck again by how imposing he was.
Tall and broad-shouldered, with an arm full of tattoos that slipped out from the T-shirt and jeans he typically wore at home, he looked less like a duke and more like a street-fighter.
Or at the very least, the bad boy chef he had been before gaining a title.
“Lucas Lyons,” he pronounced in an accent rooted as much in the streets of South London as in a posh private school. “Xavier Parker. We met last year at the Sinai gala, right?”
The way they sized each other up reminded me of two predators meeting on neutral ground—polite but wary. Frankie often described Xavier as a tiger, and Lucas prowled through life like a panther. Two big cats figuring out their territory.
Lucas nodded as he accepted a handshake. “That’s right. Did you end up investing in Huntwell’s last venture?”
“Nah. Wasn’t worth the trouble. Nathan’s all right, ’specially now that he’s with our Joni, but I wouldn’t trust his brother Carrick as far as I could throw him.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
Frankie and I glanced at each other and hid smiles.
“I was just starting dinner.” Xavier motioned toward the kitchen. “Marie, you want to cook with me? I’m curious to see what them frogs in Paris actually taught you.”
“Xavi, didn’t you study in Paris too?” Frankie wiped banana off Lucy’s face and took her out of the highchair to join her sister on the carpet.
“Yeah, but in the end, you know I taught them a thing or two.”
I followed him into the kitchen, leaving Lucas with Frankie and the girls.
“So.” Xavier started pulling ingredients from the refrigerator without preamble. “That’s the bloke who made my sister-in-law show up crying on my doorstep, eh?”
“Frankie talks too much,” I muttered as I grabbed a spare apron off a rack.
“Ces talks exactly enough.” His eyes were sharp as they studied my face. “What is it with you Zola girls? First, I have to rescue Joni, now you. Who’s next, Kate or Lea?”
“You’re feeding me dinner. It’s hardly a rescue.”
“Why can’t any of you pick a man who doesn’t make you cry?”
“I seem to remember you making my sister cry for a very long time,” I reminded him as I tied the apron.
Xavier’s expression shuttered. “Yeah. Well. Not anymore. Not ever again.” He jerked his head toward Lucas. “I suppose the real question is whether he’s worth all the drama.”
Before I could answer, he was setting out ingredients for a familiar recipe.
“Bolognese?” I asked.
“Ces doesn’t know your nonna’s recipe, but I’m betting you do. I’ll save the squid ink for another night if you teach it to me now. I’ll make the pappardelle. You make the sauce. Can you keep up?”
I grinned. “You’re on.”
For the next hour, I lost myself in cooking.
Xavier was a demanding kitchen mate, occasionally correcting my knife work and critiquing my technique with blunt honesty that reminded me of Ondine and my teachers at the Institute.
He was also generous with praise when I got something right, and I relaxed in a way I hadn’t all day long.
Nonna’s bolognese was a Zola family recipe that had evolved over generations—a great-great-grandmother’s version that required slow cooking and patience. As I browned the meat while Xavier made pasta from scratch, the kitchen filled with the rich, complex aromas that reminded me of home.
“Yep, that’s it,” Xavier said as he tasted a bit of the sauce, now bubbling away in the pan. “It was the pancetta I was getting wrong. I didn’t realize she used two types in the same recipe.”
“Just a tiny bit of the smoked,” I instructed.
“Otherwise, it overpowers the whole thing. We’re lucky you had it.
” I grinned. “I actually added that part by accident when I was twelve. Nonna was so mad until she tasted the sauce and realized I’d made her family’s hundred-year-old recipe better.
She stayed mad, but she kept doing it my way from then on. ”
On the other side of the kitchen island, Lucas sat on the floor with Sofia, helping her with a pop-up book. Lucy was crawling around, babbling happily while Frankie supervised from the sofa and folded yet another basket of laundry.
“Hold on there, kiddo.” Lucas grabbed Lucy just before she ripped a piece of the art off the page. “You touch that, and your sister will eat you for breakfast.”
“I would never eat my sister for breakfast,” Sofia promised solemnly as she glued a foldable stairway into place.
“Lunch, then.” Lucas plopped Lucy in his lap with surprising ease.
Sofia eyed him from the side, clearly unsure about whether or not he was joking. When he winked, she burst out laughing.
Something in my heart squeezed.
“He’s good with them,” Xavier observed as he folded the final piece of pasta dough for the last time before he sliced it into ribbons.
“He is,” I agreed. “I’d have thought children would make him uncomfortable. I doubt he has much experience with them.”
I didn’t think I’d ever seen a child at Prideview the entire time I’d worked there.
“Kids have a way of seeing through rubbish,” Xavier said. “I don’t know your man there, Marie, but he’s not a fake, I can tell you that.”
Lucy started squalling loudly enough that Lucas handed her to Frankie, then stood up and wandered over to the counter.
He looked delightfully rumpled, having shed his suit jacket, rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, and ignored the bits of cut paper and art debris now clinging to his wool pants.
“Need any help?” he asked as Xavier finished cutting his pasta and was able to take Lucas’s spot on the floor.
I tipped my head at him. “Would you even know what to do?”
“I do actually prepare my own meals from time to time. I can boil water. Scramble eggs. Um…”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s all right; we’re nearly done.”
I tasted the sauce one final time. It needed just a touch more salt. As I reached for the sea salt, I turned to find Lucas standing impossibly close, his eyes focused on my cheek.
“You have a little…”
His thumb brushed across my cheek, ostensibly removing a bit of sauce. Then, with a brief glance toward my family, who weren’t paying the slightest bit of attention to us, his mouth followed.
The kiss was brief, innocent. Only slightly drifting toward my mouth, but not quite making it there. When he pulled back, his eyes had darkened with something much more intense than the bright red sauce.
“Couldn’t help it,” he said softly. “I like who you are with your family.”
“Lucas…”
“I like them too,” he continued. “I didn’t know families like this existed. Mine is, well, you know. Not like this.”
I glanced again at Frankie and Xavier, and for the first time, saw what he saw.
What felt like such a normal scene to me—bickering of devoted parents, squirrelly children, messy house—would have seemed alien to someone like Lucas.
Prideview was practically a museum, and Clifford and Winnifred Lyons were a pair of icicles.
Before I could respond, Xavier’s voice cut through the moment. “I think it’s time to eat.”
The dining room table could easily seat twelve, but our small group made it feel intimate rather than cavernous. Sofia regaled us with stories from school while Lucy banged her spoon against her tray with aplomb. Lucas looked on like he’d been smacked in the face but was glad for it.
“Oh my God ,” he groaned after his first bite of the bolognese. His hand found mine under the table as if he were looking for support. “Marie. This is incredible. Why haven’t you ever made this for us at home?”
“You’ve never made them Nonna’s bolognese?” Frankie asked. “I assumed that’s how you got yourself hired in the first place.”
“It’s a family recipe.” I shrugged off the compliment. “Nothing fancy.”
The meal planning at Prideview required a bit more flair when the expectation was Michelin-level dining. Plus, how could I explain that for me, the sauce was personal? I’d only ever had it at a table surrounded by people I loved. How could I share it with anyone different?
As Lucas took another bite, the dove in my chest flapped its wings again.
“Maybe it’s better you don’t,” he said. “They’ll never let you make anything else. As it is, I’ll probably request it on the side at least once a week if I can get it.”
I didn’t even have to ask myself to know that I’d be making a weekly batch of secret bolognese whether Lucas remembered to ask me or not.
We were just finishing when Xavier’s phone rang. His expression grew serious as he answered and left the room to conduct a hurried conversation.
“I have to go,” he said when he returned. “There’s been a problem in Kendal. A fire in one of the tenant cottages. No one was hurt, but I need to be there tonight. Ces, do you want to stay?—”
“Absolutely not.” Frankie was already rising from the table. “You know our rule. You don’t deal with Kendal without us.”
Something unspoken passed between them. It was strong, built from the kind of bond that only came when you knew something hard was going to happen—or maybe it already had—and that you could weather anything together.
My heart ached.
It wasn’t just love that Frankie and Xavier had. It was a partnership. Trust.
Within twenty minutes, they had packed their things and called their driver to take them to the train station, and I was kissing my nieces goodbye at the door.
“Sorry to rush out.” Frankie hugged me. “But it’s a two-and-a-half-hour train ride, and we need to be on the seven thirty. I’d like the girls to sleep a little tonight.”
“Of course.” I squeezed her hard. “We’ll lock up behind us.”
“Don’t bother.” She pressed a key into my hand. “We’ll be in Kendal until this is sorted out, so the flat is yours for as long as you need it. You and”—she cast a quick glance over my shoulder at Lucas— “whoever else you want.”
I looked down at the key. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” But as her family prepared to leave, she tugged me into the foyer, out of Lucas’s earshot while he said his goodbyes to Xavier.
“That man is in love with you,” she said quietly.
My heart skipped. “Frankie?—”
“But I don’t think he knows it yet,” she continued. “And that’s the most dangerous kind.”
Before I could respond, Xavier appeared beside us and began shepherding his family toward the elevator with the same protective intensity I’d seen in him since the day we’d met.
The doors closed as my sister and nieces waved goodbye.
And Lucas and I were alone.