Cara #2
Paige had been right about the sweater. Eliza had been right about the green.
Together, with the scarf loose at my throat and my hair down over my shoulders, I looked like a person I recognized and also didn’t.
I looked like the best version of a regular day.
I stood there for longer than I should have, staring at the woman in the mirror, and then I made myself look away before I could get any more stupid about it.
I went back to the kitchen and had a brief, one-sided conversation with the cats.
“Behave,” I told them. They stared at me.
“I mean it. All three of you. Darcy, I know you’re going to do your thing, just—don’t knock anything off the bookshelf, please.
Knightley, you’re fine. You’re always fine.
You’re my good boy. My sweet little baby.
” Knightley blinked at me with slow, dignified approval.
“Wentworth.” I pointed at him. “Wentworth, listen to me. You are not allowed to climb Jasper like a tree. You are not allowed to launch yourself at him from any surface. You are not allowed to sit in his lap and meow directly into his face. Do you understand me?”
Wentworth looked me in the eye and said nothing.
“I don’t trust you.”
He flopped onto his side and exposed his belly, which was what he did when he wanted to be forgiven for something he hadn’t done yet.
“I really don’t trust you.”
The soup was simmering low. The sandwiches were stacked and ready to go into the pan. The shortbread was cool and resting on a plate under a linen cloth. Everything was fine. Just fine.
I caught myself smiling at the stove and had to look away from it.
I was nervous. I was nervous in a way I had not been nervous in a very long time.
Not the nervous that made you want to call the whole thing off—the other kind.
The kind that lived right underneath your skin and made everything feel a little brighter and a little more fragile.
I’d forgotten what this felt like. I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt it like this.
The clock on the stove clicked over to eleven fifty-nine. A few seconds later, someone knocked on my door.
Of course, I thought, and went to answer it. Precisely on time.
Jasper was standing on my landing with a small bunch of wildflowers in one hand and a look on his face that said he had been waiting for this moment since he’d left my shop yesterday afternoon.
The wildflowers were the kind you’d pick up at the little stand by the feed store—daisies and black-eyed Susans and a few sprigs of something blue and lacy I couldn’t name, wrapped loosely in brown paper.
His eyes went to the scarf at my throat and stayed there for just a second longer than they needed to.
“Hi.”
He held the flowers out. “I didn’t know if you liked flowers. I took a guess.”
“I love flowers.” My voice came out steadier than I’d expected it to. “Thank you.”
I took them and stepped back to let him in.
The second he crossed the threshold, the apartment changed.
My apartment, my space, my smells—old books and vanilla and now tomato and butter—and him in the middle of it, suddenly and undeniably there.
His boots made a different sound on my hardwood than I was used to.
His shoulders took up a different amount of space than anyone else’s.
He stood just inside the door and looked around slowly, taking it in, and I watched him look.
“It’s nice,” he said quietly.
“Thanks.”
“Smells amazing.”
“That’s the soup. And the shortbread. The apartment usually smells like shortbread, actually. I bake a lot when I’m nervous.”
“You were nervous?”
“Shut up. I mean, no,” I scoffed. “I’m fine. Are you nervous?”
“A bit.” The smallest smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.
“Well, I’m not scary at all. Most of the time.” I turned to put the flowers in water before I could do or say anything stupider, and that was when I noticed the cats had already assembled.
They were arranged in the hallway like a tiny, inscrutable welcoming committee.
Darcy at the back, tail curled neatly around his feet, watching with the expression of a magistrate waiting to be impressed.
Knightley was in the middle of the hallway, sitting upright and regal, his yellow eyes tracking Jasper with calm, steady interest. Wentworth front and center, already at Jasper’s feet, tail straight up, head tilted, halfway to committing.
Jasper looked down at the three of them and went very still.
“Is this the full lineup?” he asked.
“This is the full lineup.”
He lowered himself into a crouch. He did it slowly—slower than a man without a bad knee would have, slower than he would probably have done it if he hadn’t been trying to make the movement look casual.
His right hand braced briefly on his thigh as he went down, and a small, tight look crossed his face and was gone again, and I felt a quiet pang somewhere I wasn’t expecting and said nothing about any of it.
He didn’t reach for them. He just held out one hand, palm up, and waited.
Wentworth walked right up to him, sniffed his knuckles once, and then head-butted Jasper’s palm so hard it actually moved his hand sideways.
“Well,” I said. “That’s one down.”
“He’s enthusiastic.”
“He’s a menace. He’s a very sweet menace.”
Knightley approached next, more deliberately.
He did a slow, thoughtful figure-eight around Jasper’s ankles, rubbing the full length of his body against Jasper’s jeans on each pass, and then sat down just inside his orbit and looked up at him with the expression of a cat granting an audience.
Jasper scratched him behind one ear, and Knightley closed his eyes and leaned into it like a dignified man accepting a dignified tribute.
“This one’s Knightley,” I said.
“He’s a gentleman.”
“He’s the best behaved of the three ninety-nine percent of the time, but that one percent is the absolute worst; he’s tricky. Don’t let that fool you. He once knocked an entire cup of tea off my nightstand because I didn’t start petting him as soon as he demanded.”
“Noted.”
Darcy had not moved. Darcy had jumped on the arm of the couch, watching from a safe distance, eyes narrow and assessing. Jasper looked up at me.
“Two out of three?”
“Darcy takes his time. Don’t take it personally.”
“Wasn’t planning to.”
He started to rise, and I watched him do it without meaning to.
He put his left hand on his knee and pushed up slowly, carefully, his weight shifting onto the other leg first, and his mouth tightened for just a second before it let go.
I looked away before he could catch me looking. He caught me anyway.
“I’m fine,” he said, quietly. “Functional.”
“I didn’t ask. I wouldn’t pry.”
“I know. But you were about to. Because even if you don’t pry, you care. Am I right?”
I huffed a small laugh and turned toward the kitchen before he could see my face, which I was pretty sure had gone pink again somewhere around I know. He followed me in at a slower pace, giving me a second to collect myself, which I appreciated more than I was going to admit out loud.
I put the wildflowers in the mason jar, which I had to admit out loud was a mason jar and not a vase, and Jasper said he didn’t care, which I already knew he wouldn’t.
I set them on the little kitchen table where the light from the window would catch them.
They looked exactly right there—small and unfussy and genuinely pretty.
“Coffee or tea?” I asked.
“What are you having?”
“Tea.”
“Then I’ll have tea.”
I smiled at the kettle and busied myself with the mugs.
“Can I help with anything?” he asked.
“You can sit. The kitchen’s too small for two people. We’d set each other on fire.”
He didn’t sit right away. Instead, he drifted closer and came to stand just behind my shoulder, looking at the pot.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Tomato. My grandmother’s recipe.” I stirred it, very focused on the stirring. He was close enough that I could feel his warmth at my back, and the kitchen was small, and I had not been exaggerating about the fire hazard.
He reached past me, and I thought he was going to take the spoon, but instead his hand came around mine—light, just his fingers closing gently over my wrist—and he guided my hand toward him, tilting the spoon slightly. Not taking over. Just redirecting. I forgot entirely what I’d been about to say.
He bent his head and blew across the surface of the spoon, slow and careful, his eyes coming up to mine over my shoulder as he did it, and the look on his face was so quietly intentional that my stomach turned over completely.
Then he tasted it.
I was looking at him. I was very aware that I was looking at him. I made no effort to stop.
“Good,” he said, low, his fingers still loose around my wrist. He wasn’t looking at the soup anymore.
The word took a second to reach me. “It needs a few more minutes,” I said, which was technically true and also the only sentence I could locate in my scrambled brain.
He let go of my wrist slowly, unhurried, took a small step back, and I turned back to the pot, stirred it with tremendous concentration, and did not say anything for a moment because I needed the moment.
“You can sit,” I squeaked. “Would you like a drink? Oh wait. Tea. Oh my god.”
He sat, obedient, at the small kitchen table where the wildflowers were now presiding. The chair was a little low for him, but he didn’t say anything. He put his hands flat on the table and watched me move around the kitchen with an attention that was neither a stare nor casual.
I tried very hard not to think about it. But I thought about nothing else.
I put the sandwiches into my cast-iron pan with a generous pat of butter and pressed them down with the spatula the way my grandmother had taught me, with a little shimmy at the end for good color.
The kitchen filled with the sound and smell of bread crisping in butter, and Jasper made a small appreciative sound behind me that I pretended not to hear.