14. Elijah
ELIJAH
“Everything you need is on the kitchen island,” Ernesto said, pointing. “And I’ve written out the directions for you.”
Elijah eyed his personal chef with misgivings. “I don’t know if this is such a good idea, all things considered.”
“You’re going to be fine.” Ernesto hesitated. “Do you want me to stay and do the cooking for you?”
“No. She’s not the kind of woman who appreciates it when a man shows off,” Elijah said.
“At least, not when he shows off his money. She’ll like it better if I do the cooking than if I have someone else do it for me.
And anyway, that’s what I promised her this was going to be, and I want to show her that I can follow through.
” He sighed. “But you know I’ve never cooked before. ”
“This is an easy meal,” Ernesto assured him.
“It’ll taste nice, but really, it’s not that hard to make.
You just boil the water, put the pasta in, set the timer.
Use the time it’s cooking to prep your garlic bread and pop that in the oven.
The salad I’ve already chopped up for you, so you just have to mix the ingredients together in the bowl. No one could mess that up.”
“I bet you I’ll find a way.” Elijah sighed. “I just shouldn’t have offered this. I have lots of things I know how to do well. I should have offered to do some of those things for her.”
“Nonsense,” Ernesto said firmly. “Every woman likes a man who knows how to cook. She’s going to appreciate this. And you’ll do fine, but if you get in over your head, text me.”
Elijah nodded. “All right. Thanks, Ernesto.”
The chef threw him a mock salute and left.
Elijah leaned on the counter and surveyed the written instructions Ernesto had left. Step one: put a saucepan on to boil.
Well, what the hell was a saucepan?
He squinted at the instructions. There was a parenthetical: The saucepan is the one by your left hand.
He had to chuckle. Ernesto had thought of everything. He filled the saucepan with water, narrowed his eyes at it, and then dumped half of it back out. That was probably too much.
He put the pot on to boil, took out the bread that was supposed to be garlic toast, and began to spread butter on it.
He almost missed the moment the pot began to bubble. When he turned back to face it, it was frothing, the water about to spill out onto the countertop. He turned the heat down quickly and grabbed the bag of spaghetti.
Pouring it in caused immediate problems. The noodles didn’t fit into the pot.
They stood up against the sides, and almost at once he could smell burning.
He grabbed a spoon and began to push the noodles down, breaking them in the process.
Now they were in smaller pieces—but at least they were in the pot. It was going to have to do.
He grabbed for the instructions. How long were these things supposed to cook for? Five minutes would be enough, according to what Ernesto had written, and he was already supposed to be heating up the tomato sauce in a different pan. And then you can pull the garlic bread out of the oven.
The garlic bread was supposed to be in the oven already?
Panicking, he kicked the oven open with his foot and shoved the pan in. With his free hand, the one that wasn’t stirring the pasta, he grabbed for the jar of tomato sauce and nearly fumbled it, just barely managing to catch it before it crashed to the floor.
The door swung open to reveal Stephanie.
“I was knocking,” she said. “I guess you didn’t hear me…” Her eyes swept across the scene. “Wow. Looks like I’ve been missing out on some fun.”
Elijah couldn’t help it. He let out a groan. “I’m hopeless,” he said. He put the jar of sauce on the counter and tried to give the noodles a stir, but they were starting to clump together. “I have a confession to make. I’m not really a cook.”
She laughed. “I never would have guessed! Let me help out with that.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
“I’m a good cook,” she said. “And if we work together, I bet we can salvage this.” She sniffed. “Is that garlic bread?”
“Oh, God, is it burning?”
“Relax. It smells great,” she said. “Why don’t you check on it? Do you have any olive oil?”
“Not… that I know of.” He looked around.
“That bottle there.” She pointed to a glass bottle on the counter among Ernesto’s ingredients. “Could you hand me that?”
He did so, and she drizzled a little into the pot with the spaghetti. “Put a little of this in first next time,” she advised. “It’ll help ensure that the pasta doesn’t stick together.”
“Will it still work?”
“See for yourself.” She used the spoon to lift a strand of spaghetti out of the pot and plucked it up with her fingers. “Come here.”
He did so with misgivings. She held the noodle out. “Open.”
He opened his mouth and she popped it in. Her fingers lingered for a moment, pressing against his lips—had that been deliberate? His heart raced, but she was already turning back to the pot and starting to stir again.
But he thought he saw the hint of a blush on her cheeks.
He had never experienced anything like this. This was their fourth date, or maybe their fifth—again, it depended on how you counted. She had brushed his lips with her fingers—nothing more than that—and they were both completely undone.
It was a feeling he could never have imagined. That something so small could affect him so much. It was strange—almost magical.
He wanted more of it. He wanted to do more little things. Rest a hand on the small of her back. Inhale the scent of her hair. Stare into her eyes.
Who was he? How had these become the things he was desperate for?
And would he get them?
Shaking off the intense imaginings, he went to the oven and looked in at the garlic bread. “How do I know when this is done?”
“Is it looking brown?”
“A little.”
“Then it’s probably done. It’s just toast. It should be whatever shade of brown you like your toast to be.”
He examined the bread and decided it was probably good enough. Grabbing an oven mitt, he pulled it out and set it on the counter.
Stephanie looked over. “Oh, yeah. That looks perfect,” she said with a smile. “Hand me the strainer?”
He passed it to her, and she drained the pasta in the sink and shook it. “I’ll do the sauce,” she suggested.
He groaned again. “I really didn’t mean for you to get here and have to take over all the work. This is pretty embarrassing.”
“No, don’t be embarrassed. We did this together,” she told him. “It’s a group project. Do you have a serving bowl for this spaghetti?”
“Honestly, I don’t have the slightest idea,” he admitted.
“Yeah, you really don’t cook, do you?”
“I have a personal chef,” he admitted.
She laughed. “I should have known you would have something like that. Tonight’s his night off?”
“Well, I kind of gave him the night off. I wanted to do this,” he said.
“I wanted to make you dinner. I thought I would be able to manage it. I overestimated myself, clearly, but… I just didn’t think it would be as special if you got here and found a stranger cooking.
If it’s going to be like that, we might as well just go out to a restaurant, right?
” He shrugged. “I guess I was being silly.”
Stephanie had stopped what she was doing and turned to face him. There was a softness in her eyes now that he had never seen there before.
“You weren’t being silly,” she said quietly.
“It was a really nice thing to do, and it means a lot. I’d much rather have something you tried to make for me, even if it isn’t exactly gourmet cooking.
This was thoughtful.” She grinned. “And I do like that we ended up working together on it. Should we set the table?”
“I need to put the salad together,” he remembered. “I can handle that on my own, though.”
“Let me do the table, then.” She started opening cabinets. “Ah.” She’d found the plates, and now she pulled them down and set one before each of the chairs that faced each other at the table. Then she went on the hunt for silverware.
Elijah pulled the lettuce, onions, carrots, and tomatoes out of the refrigerator and threw them together in the big salad bowl Ernesto had left there for him to find.
This really had been set up perfectly for him, making it nearly impossible for him to struggle with it in any way.
He’d managed, though. He rolled his eyes at himself as he carried the bowl to the table and put serving tongs in it.
“All right,” he told Stephanie. “Dinner is served.”
She sat down. Then she jumped up again. “Oh, drinks!”
“No, that much I can handle.” He produced a bottle of wine and a corkscrew. “I may not be a Michelin-star chef, but I can open a bottle with the best of them.”
She grinned. “It’s good to know that you have at least one skill in the kitchen.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m great at this.” He uncorked the wine, stood up, grabbed a couple of glasses, and brought them back. He poured a little bit into each and handed one across the table.
She took it and raised it. “To teamwork?”
“To teamwork.” He clinked his glass against hers and took a sip. “And to learning new things from each other.”
“Hear, hear.”
“So maybe next time we will go out, though,” he said, digging into the spaghetti. “This didn’t exactly go as planned, even though we did manage to save the situation.”
“Maybe next time you come to my place and I’ll cook for you,” she countered easily, as if the idea of him coming to her place hadn’t been a bone of contention right from the very start. As if she wasn’t even thinking about things in those terms.
And maybe she wasn’t. Maybe they’d come far enough in their relationship to be more relaxed with each other now.
Maybe she would feel comfortable bringing him home.
She had felt comfortable enough to come here.
And come to think of it, he hadn’t intended to put those kinds of moves on her when he’d brought her here.
It really had just been about the food for him. About the chance to cook for her.
Now he was thinking about it, though. How had she taken it when he had asked her to come over? What had she thought it might mean?
She had agreed to come, whatever she had thought. It hadn’t been enough to compel her to stay away.
This is turning into a real relationship. A serious relationship. If things keep going the way they have been… who knows. We might even end up putting a label on it.
The strangest thing of all was the fact that that idea didn’t scare him.
In fact, it kind of appealed to him.
What would it be like to be able to call Stephanie his girlfriend? It was a difficult thing to imagine. He hadn’t been tied down in a very long time.
But with someone like her, someone who made him laugh even when everything was going wrong…
Well, suddenly the idea of being tied down didn’t sound so bad anymore.