Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty Four
Giovanni
I told her she wouldn’t cook while we were here.
That lasted until the car door shut outside the market.
Now it’s late afternoon, and my kitchen looks like a produce stand collided with a butcher’s block in the best possible way.
Bianca moves through the room like it's hers. Hair pinned up, sleeves pushed to her elbows, a thin sweater that keeps trying to slide off one shoulder, drawing my eyes to the delicate skin. There’s flour on the heel of her hand, lemon zest under a thumbnail, and a knife in her grip that says don’t argue.
I don’t.
She set a small board of canapés on the island before anything else: thin toasts brushed with oil and rubbed with raw garlic, topped three ways: ricotta and lemon with an anchovy laid across, fresh chopped tomatoes with a pinch of salt, and a fine dice of roasted peppers slicked with olive oil.
On the side, a short bowl of mixed olives and a wedge of Parmigiano with a proper hunk chipped out.
We pick at it without ceremony. She eats the same way she works, focused, quick, no fuss.
“Start the oven at one-fifty Celsius,” she says, head in the fridge. “Convection if you have it.”
“I do.” I turn the dial.
“Good.” She straightens, holding the lamb shoulder like she found treasure. “Paper towels?”
I hand them over. When our fingers brush, something tightens low in my back. She doesn’t react, which is its own kind of reaction. She sets the lamb down and dries it like she’s patting a sleeping dog.
“Okay,” she says, eyes on the meat. “Anchovy, garlic, rosemary, lemon peel, a little pepper. You have salted capers?”
“In the pantry.” I nod at the small door by the butler’s pantry. “Top shelf.”
She flashes me a quick smile, grateful, and I go get them because that smile does more to me than I’m willing to admit.
On the way back, I pass the La Marzocco, and the espresso in my blood begs for a second life. Not yet. The bottle of Albori Sangiovese sits on the counter, waiting until the right moment. She glances at it once every few minutes without touching it, as if building the anticipation.
It makes me want to pour her a glass and watch her mouth around the rim again, watch the tip of her tongue brush her lips to soak up every drop of flavor with her eyes half-lidded in pleasure. It makes me want to be that glass.
“Capers.” I set the jar down.
“Grazie.” She rinses a handful to lose the extra salt, then tips them onto a towel and blots. When she gathers them back up, she does it with the backs of her fingers, careful with the brine. “Mortar?”
I pass it over. She drops anchovies and garlic in first. The pestle moves in steady circles. The room smells like the sea and Sunday lunch. I lean on the other side of the island and let myself look at her because there’s nowhere else I want to look.
“You’re enjoying this,” I say.
“Obviously.” She doesn’t look up. “This wine wants lamb. It would be rude not to give it lamb.”
“Always teaching manners,” I say.
“Somebody has to.” She flicks me a glance. Then she adds capers, rosemary, lemon peel, grinds again, lifts the pestle to sniff. “Needs more lemon.” She hands me the grater without asking and nudges a fruit toward me with her wrist. “Zest, please.”
I oblige. The rasp hums over the skin. She keeps working, folds in oil, and the paste goes from coarse to glossy.
“Taste,” she says, tipping the mortar my way, quick as feeding a bite to someone at the stove. I take a small touch on my fingertip. Salt, herb, lemon, that low anchovy zing that makes everything around it stand up straighter. Heat blooms in her eyes while I lick my finger clean.
“Good,” I say.
She nods, quickly turning back to the lamb. “We’ll score the fat, not deep—just enough to get the paste in.”
I reach for the knife. “I’ll do it.”
She watches the first shallow crosshatch with open approval. “You’ve done this before.”
“Once or twice.” I hand the knife back, and she smears the paste over the lamb, working it into the lines, pressing some between bone and flesh like she’s tucking someone in for a nap.
When her hands are washed, she looks around for a towel. I hold one out. She takes it, and for a second, her fingers brush my wrist instead of the cloth. Not a shock. More like confirmation. Then she pulls back.
“Roasting rack?” she asks.
I pull one out and set it over a rimmed pan. She settles the lamb onto it and ties it with twine in three confident loops, snug but not strangling. There’s nothing performative about how she moves. The competence itself is the show.
“Into the oven,” she says. “We’ll start higher for thirty to get it moving, then drop it low and let time do the rest.”
“How long?”
She does the math in her head. “Three hours, maybe three and a half. We’ll turn and baste. It’ll be ready when it’s ready.”
I put the pan in. Heat hits my face, and the scent lifts, promising. When I close the door, she’s already at the sink, washing the mortar. I take the board to the counter, wipe it down.
“Beans,” she says next. “Cannellini. We’ll start them with onion, garlic, a little sage. We didn’t soak them overnight, so they’ll take a while. I think we should put them in the oven too, to save us from standing over the stove for three hours. Then they meet the juices from the lamb.”
“Bossy.”
“Efficient,” she corrects with a smile while setting the second stove.
I go into the pantry and bring out a Dutch oven.
I set the pot over a flame. “Tell me what you want.”
“Olive oil in the pot. More than you think.” I pour.
“Stop.” She tosses in smashed garlic cloves, an onion halved through the root, a sprig of sage.
The kitchen fills with the aroma as they melt in the oil just enough.
She adds the beans, then covers them with water by an inch.
“No salt yet,” she says, and flicks her fingers at me when I reach.
“I’m trying.”
She doesn’t look at me, but she hears it. Her mouth presses at the corner, a line I want to trace. With my tongue.
I set the heavy lid on the pot and transfer it to the oven. The scent of garlic and sage sneaks out from under the lid.
Bianca turns back to the puntarelle on the board. She snaps the pale stems from the head and slices them into fine curls. They fall into a bowl of iced water and tighten into a crisp tangle. “You still have that anchovy we didn’t use?”
“Two tins.”
“Good man.” She glances up. “Sorry. Good—”
“Man works,” I say. “I’ll let you know if I want a promotion.”
We stand close at the island while she makes the dressing: garlic mashed to a paste with anchovy, lemon, vinegar, a ribbon of oil, black pepper. Nothing sweet. It smells like a siren enticing you to come closer.
She slides the bowl of puntarelle to me. “Spin it dry in ten minutes.”
“Yes, Chef.”
She hears the word and cuts me a look. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what.”
“Don’t call me Chef like you’re winding me up.”
“I’m just using your title.”
That earns me a look that says she can see right through me.
It sends a bolt of desire straight to my cock.
We snack on more crostino, a curl of Parmigiano, and drink water because the wine has to wait.
I top off her glass without being asked. We find our rhythm as the beans simmer away, and the lamb sizzles under the crust of its own fat, perfuming the house. She opens the oven, bastes, closes, and turns down the temperature before setting a timer.
“Now we just let it cook and baste occasionally,” she says.
“Copy.” I lean a hip into the island and watch her pull the cores from two heads of garlic. She tucks the cloves into a small dish, floods them with oil, covers them, and sets them aside. The garlic will turn mild and spreadable, a delicious accompaniment to the beans and bread.
“What else?” I ask.
“Chicken liver crostini if I were home,” she says, half to herself. “But I didn’t see any I loved in the case. We’ll do radicchio instead. But we don’t need to start that now. It won’t take long, so we’ll do it just before the lamb comes out. The garlic we’ll start a little before that.”
“Do you cook like this when no one is watching?” I ask.
“Yes.” She doesn’t look up. “Sometimes more simply. But this is still simple. It’s just… exactly the thing.”
Exactly the thing. That’s the part of her that gets me. No dressing up. No drama. Exact.
“Do you?” she asks.
“Sometimes.” I pick up my water, wishing it were wine, and take a sip. “More often I take a plate from someone else’s hands and eat standing up.”
She snorts. “Tragic.”
“Often necessary.”
“Still tragic.”
But she’s smiling now. The line at her mouth eases. She sets her palms on the island and looks at the oven like she can will time to move.
“We could open the wine to breathe,” I offer.
Her eyes cut to the bottle, then to me. “It doesn’t need to breathe that long.”
“You’re serious about rules,” I say.
“I am serious about wine,” she answers, meeting my eyes. “About doing everything right to maximize…” Her breath hitches.
“Pleasure?” I offer.
“Yes,” she says, barely a whisper.
The word hangs between us. I don’t move. She doesn’t either. The oven hums behind her, the only sound in the kitchen.
Sun angles in through the glass doors that look out over the vineyard and highlights the flour at her wrist. I swipe the flour away with my thumb before I think. Her skin is warm. She doesn’t step back.
“Thanks,” she says. Soft.
I hook a thumb toward her hair. “You’ll lose that pin if you don’t fix it.”
“Can you get it?” she asks, turning her back to me without warning. The sweater slips again; her neck is right there.
Gently, I brush my fingers over her soft hair, the silky strands caressing my fingers. I find the pin and pull it out so her hair swings down over the bare skin of her shoulder.
She exhales once, quietly. I could stand here for the next week, just like this, and call it a good use of time.