“Do you really want me to be here?”
She was giving him an exit, and man, it would have been really easy to have taken it. But he was tired of easy. It just left him jogging in place.
“Yes. Stay. Please. I just can’t…” His eyes dropped to her lips, and he forced himself to ignore the way his mouth watered.
She smiled. No pity, no frustration. Just Cat. “Terms accepted.”
And like that, with kissing and sex taken out of the equation, the Burned Man, who’d been growling in Xavier’s ear, fell silent.
She crossed the line where the living room carpet gave way to the foot-worn brown linoleum of the kitchen. Onto sacred ground.
“Are you going to show me how a pro works?”
He went to the stove, turned on the burner beneath the pan, set the small plastic grocery bag on the counter and took out the rosemary. With a clamp of his fingers around the stem and a quick sweep downward, he removed the leaves. Swiping his favorite chef’s knife from the butcher block, he took a deep breath and exhaled. Then he let his mind go and his hands flew through the tough, waxy leaves. The familiar tap tap tap of the knife on the cutting board instantly relaxed him. Even with Cat standing a few feet to his right, arms crossed, hip leaning against the counter.
“I suppose you’re used to people watching you,” she said. He nodded. “I don’t know if I could paint with an audience.”
He shrugged. “Different processes.”
He had to stretch in front of her for the white onion and yellow pepper. Within her proximity, he could swear the hair on his arm stood on end. Magnetic, this woman.
He passed a damp rag over the cutting board, loving the sight of the clean streaks over the wood, and started on the onion. Some of the dice wasn’t exactly a quarter inch, which made him twitch, but he’d do better next time. The yellow pepper followed.
“Wow,” she murmured. “Very methodical.”
“You have to be.” He walked around her to get to the eggs in the refrigerator.
“I never would’ve thought to put rosemary in eggs. Velveeta maybe, but not rosemary.”
He threw her a wry look over his shoulder. “Please tell me you didn’t say Velveeta.”
“Oooo, did I disgust you? How about…Lean Cuisine? Tombstone? Hamburger Helper?”
Holy shit, there it was again. The tightness in his cheeks. The euphoria slipping through his bloodstream. Like desire, only innocent. When he caught his reflection in the microwave window, he didn’t recognize himself.
“I’ve eaten my share of Tombstones.” He bent over a glass bowl, cracking eggs. “Not bad for a hangover.”
She laughed quietly, nodding.
“Where’d you go to school?”
He whisked the eggs with a flourish. This was what he’d signed up for: conversation. Which meant he’d be asked questions about himself. He could answer; he’d just have to be careful about it. “Um, San Francisco?”
“Did you always want to cook?”
“No.”
He dumped the beaten eggs into the hot pan, rolled the pan around to get a nice thin layer on the bottom. “I was sort of…wandering around in life and I took a job as a dishwasher in one of those brunch cafes. Was totally green, just needed the paycheck.” Not really, but he needed a story more. He’d had money, lots of it; he’d just needed to do something other than troll for women to feed his Plant-made addiction. By that time he’d recognized what he’d been bred to need, and he hated it. He and the Burned Man’s ghost had gotten real close.
“At first the atmosphere in the kitchen scared me. Non-stop, small space, people always moving and always right where you needed to be. I wasn’t used to that at all. But then, on my first day off, I realized I missed it.” The eggs bubbled and he pulled back the edges to prepare to fold them over. “Couldn’t wait to punch back in. It was chaos, but ordered chaos, you know?”
He couldn’t see her face. She’d gone quiet.
“And then there were the flavors.” His tongue tingled reactively, the memory of those first few months coming back to him. “I didn’t have…I wasn’t used to eating food with a lot of flavor or variety growing up. You’d think that would ruin me, but it was the opposite. I think it made me better, more in tune with everything I put in my mouth. I ate pretty much everything I could, and when I’d talk about it with the other people in the kitchen, someone told me I had a great palate. That you have to have one to be a chef.” He shook his head at the pan as he folded the first half of the eggs over and sprinkled the onions, herbs and peppers into the fold. “Didn’t know what that meant at the time, where that would lead me. But I fell in love pretty hard.”
“When was that?”
“Five years ago?”
“That seems really fast. How long have you been at Shed?”
“Three years.”
“So, two years to go from dishwasher to school to a cook in the best restaurant in White Clover Creek. How is that possible?”
His kitchen—the place he felt most safe—suddenly felt very, very small. He glanced out the window, to the patch of sloped backyard that was nothing more than fallow dirt outlined by a chain-link fence. “I moved from the brunch place to a pretty popular bistro where I worked for free while I went to school. Pam knew the owner and visited one day. We met. She liked my technique and work ethic, what I cooked. Offered me a job here.” Seemed like forever ago. And just yesterday. “Besides, I don’t do much else.” It’s all I have.
He reached up to the cabinet to the left of the stove and took down two plates, feeling odd. He’d never taken down two plates at once before. The second one, the one that came with the double place setting, had no scratches on its surface, the red stripes around the edges still pristine and vibrant in their color. He tipped the omelet onto that one, letting it fold onto itself, then neatly divided it in half and gave Cat the better plate.
He turned around and did not expect at all to see what he did on her face. Wide eyes, clear expression, something that could be a smile but just as easily a laugh. That smoky voice turned breathy with wonder. “Nothing you do for fun?”
With a frown, he slid the plates onto his tiny faux maple table. He thought of the concrete-floored basement, the battered punching bag, the weary treadmill and the chipped set of weights. He wouldn’t call that fun. Just necessary.
“No. I cook. When I’m not working, I cook more. In the summer I have a garden out back. Don’t really like working in it, but I love the results.”
“Sounds more like an obsession.” It was a smile now. Definitely a smile. His heart gave a lurch.
“No. Just life. My life.”
He opened the silverware drawer to scrounge for a second fork.
“Didn’t you say something about biscuits earlier?” she asked. “Or was that false advertising?”
“No, you’re getting biscuits.” Using a potholder, he slid the baking sheet onto the stove top and scrutinized the puffs of golden brown. “Maybe less cheese next time,” he muttered.
Cat came to his side. “Blasphemy. When in doubt, the answer is always ‘more cheese.’ Quick, get one on my plate.” As he obeyed, she added, “I don’t see any boxed mix.”
He grunted. “Thought I’d play around a bit this morning.”
She raised an eyebrow at the barely risen sun whose rays pierced the small window in the house’s side door. As she slid out a chair she said, “Yeah, you don’t seem like the type to fritter away a morning with coffee and the crossword puzzle.”
“No.” He pulled out the opposite chair and stared at the meager food he was suddenly embarrassed of. It should have been prettier or more creative. “I need to cook.”
Her hand froze halfway to her fork. “Need to?”
He broke a biscuit, releasing the scent of herbs and cheese. “Yeah.” His throat felt like he’d taken too large a bite and couldn’t get it down. “Need to.”
Then he ate. Out of habit, he couldn’t chew anything without breaking down the fla
vors in his mouth and analyzing them.
Cat ate, too, a gentle, repetitive scrape of the fork on her plate. The silence of his house settled around them. It took another person to tell him how quiet his life was.
After a time, Cat slouched in her chair and slowly turned her plastic orange juice cup in a circle. She wore a faraway look. He barely recognized her.
“Are you okay?” The question rode funny on his tongue.
“You know”—her voice was soft as morning light—“I need to paint.”
He remembered what she’d told him on the stairs, before she said she’d get on her knees: how they were alike in some way. He hadn’t wanted to believe her then; he didn’t think he could believe her now. He wasn’t like anyone. “What do you mean?”
“It’s the only way to get it out.”
He held his breath. “Get what out?”
“What’s inside me.” She broke off a piece of biscuit.
Xavier just stared, like an idiot. “So…what did that feel like, the first time you painted?”
She wiggled her fork between her fingers, the tines tapping on the table. “Like I’d found something? Only I didn’t know I was looking for it.”
The last bite of eggs went into his mouth, but they tasted like dust.
“Like…somebody opened a door in my mind. It answered a lot of questions about myself, but created a whole mess of others.” She laughed. “Like a kid cooped up all winter and then running free outside the first warm day. That sound weird?”
He remembered the first day he’d been given a knife and told to dice a whole box of jalapenos, then to de-leaf another box of flat parsley. While the other cooks had snickered at him having to do the crap jobs, when he’d finished, he’d looked around for more.
“Not at all,” he said. “I bet when you put down your brush that door closed and that kid was locked back inside.” She sat up straighter. “So you started to paint like crazy, just to keep that first feeling alive. To keep that door open. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
He shoved his plate away and asked, “Did it work?” even though he already knew her answer.
“No. It created a monster. I was barely eating, barely sleeping. Just painting. Trying to get it all out. Trying to figure it all out.” She stared deeply into his eyes. “It’s what I do. Still.”
“Working your life around it. Forever thinking about it.”
“Yeah. Oh, my God. You know.”
He knew. He knew it all too well.
“So this was different from the home thing? You said you left Indiana to find a home. Painting wasn’t part of that?”
She contemplated her orange juice again. “I don’t know. Maybe. All I know is that I took a bus east from Indiana, not caring where it went. It hit the coast. I’d never seen the ocean before. And the second I did, something came alive in me. So blue. Endless possibilities. And…something else. A kinship, maybe? I know that sounds silly. Anyway, I just kept traveling south, following the water. I knew I couldn’t ever leave it. I just kept going and going, until I couldn’t go any farther.” She let out an embarrassed laugh, but there was a gleam in her eye. “God, growing up in Indiana, never knowing there was a place like the islands…”
He watched the glow course through her, while a faint dread started to build within him. “When did you start to paint?”
“When I got to the Keys. I spent every day on or in or near the water, and still it wasn’t enough. Boating didn’t do it. Snorkeling or swimming didn’t do it. One day I was walking past an art supply shop and it just sort of hit me. I bought some paints and brushes and just…tried to get out what was in my heart.”
Xavier shoved his chair away from the table, the sound loud and abrupt in the hushed kitchen. The first woman he’d ever been interested in outside of orgasm, and she loved water. Enough to build her life around it.
“You have a funny look on your face,” she said. The second time she’d told him that.
It was stupid and reactionary to draw lines between Cat and the Ofarians. First, any connection was impossible; the Ofarians knew where every single one of their kind was at all times. And second, Cat didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of his baggage. He sure as hell had to stop thinking that he stood on one side and the rest of the world on the other. The Ofarians who had orchestrated and created his life, and then tossed it into the shitter, were locked away. Gone for good.
He met her eyes over the table. She made the whole kitchen warmer. She couldn’t be further from an Ofarian. Millions of people—women—loved water. Hell, Pam and Jill took yearly trips to Hawaii.
“You must have a lot of paintings,” he said, to cover up his awkward response and to fill the silence, “if you’ve been going at it as long as you have. If you need it as strongly as I need to cook.”
Her shoulders dropped in visible relief, and he knew she’d prepared herself for him running away again. “Hundreds. I rent a storage space for them all. But Michael says I won’t need that much longer if I start to sell.”
“Michael?”
She popped the last bite of her biscuit into her mouth. “Ebrecht? Film producer? Oh, you said you don’t watch movies. He bought one of my paintings a couple years ago, saw my other stuff, liked it, made some calls, and voila, here I am.”
He snatched his dish and dumped it into the sink with more force than usual. He slapped on the hot water, squirted the soap in a swirl.
Cat appeared at his side, holding out her dish. “He’s just a business acquaintance. I wouldn’t even call us friends.”
He’d never known the definition of jealousy in the Plant, where every man shared and you had no choice who you were with. He’d always thought it a silly emotion, a waste of energy, one that he never truly understood. Strange that the meaning finally came to him over a woman who wasn’t even his, talking about a man he didn’t even know.
The phone rang, a harsh jangling sound he didn’t immediately recognize. Utility companies had this number. And Pam, for emergencies. And one other person…but he hadn’t talked to Gwen Carroway since leaving San Francisco.
He looked at the phone, a hunk of red plastic slapped crookedly on the wall. It kept ringing. He’d never had need for voice mail.
Cat jutted a thumb at the kitchen corner. “Are you going to get that?”
He frowned at the phone. Didn’t move. It kept ringing and ringing. Maybe it was Pam. Maybe, for the first time in three years, there actually was an emergency. Or maybe it was the electric company. At seven forty-five in the morning.
“You okay?” Cat’s voice barely broke through the terrible sound.
The phone clanged like an alarm. The world was testing him. To make a woman like Cat remind him of the Ofarians and then possibly have one of the most powerful Ofarians call him?
The ringing stopped.
The silence forced him to suck oxygen into his lungs. When he faced Cat, she wore a quizzical look, but also a compassionate one. Like she knew he was odd but didn’t care. She didn’t back away. She didn’t make a poor excuse and dive for her coat.
Gently, he added her plate to the scalding water and growing pile of bubbles in the sink. When he was done washing, she took the plates from his hands and dried them. The moment passed quietly, but in his head, the phone still reverberated.
The world was testing him, and he was going to pass.
He turned to face her, and she’d never looked more lovely. “Are you free tomorrow morning? I’d like to take you someplace.”
TEN
Michael split in order to spend the afternoon with two different women.
He’d arranged a meeting between Cat and an L.A.-based publicist. She’d been spacey the past few days. Pulling away from him. She’d arrived at the publicist meeting wearing a secretive little smile, and when Michael had asked her about where she’d been that morning, she actually seemed offended he’d asked. As if he wasn’t in charge of her entire image and held her whole career in his hands.
<
br /> He hadn’t liked that at all.
His main body went back up to the house. He’d thought he could last a whole day away, but the lure of his fire woman was too great. It had become a daily occurrence, him sitting in the garage and staring at her. He’d even rented a car specifically for these back-and-forth trips, and had slipped a valet at the Margaret three hundred dollars to let him park there whenever he wanted.
Michael tossed his coat over the banister of the curving staircase. The dim sound of television applause drew his attention. The TV in the game room was on, which wouldn’t have made him stop if it weren’t for the fact that he could see Sean’s short hair peeking over one of the leather recliners. Sean never watched TV.
Michael headed toward the game room. Picture windows lined the back wall. On the other side of the glass, beyond the frozen creek, rose a maze of white ski trails cutting through the snow-topped evergreens. The big-screen TV sat diagonally in a corner, with a semicircle of recliners facing it. The channel was tuned to a talk show, but Sean wasn’t watching. He sat sprawled in a chair, his legs splayed out at angles, his arms dangling over the sides. His eyes gazed past the ski runs and seemingly into the heart of the mountain, and it was that troubled stare that drew Michael over.
He stood right in front of Sean. “Hey.” No response. Michael lightly kicked Sean’s sneakered toe. “I said, hey.”
Sean startled, straightening. “Oh. Hey.” He wouldn’t look Michael in the eye.
Michael tried to get right in Sean’s line of sight but the younger man’s eyes darted around. “You splitting?”
“What? No, Mike.”
“Good.” Michael exhaled. Sean couldn’t afford to be wandering around. You never knew who’d be watching. “So what’s up?”
“Nothing.”
Typical teenager response, except that Sean was twenty-two. He’d lost a lot of years to the hospital, and sometimes that lack of maturity came out in spades.
Michael ran a hand through his hair and watched a single skier round the last turn before the run ended at the lift. “How’s my girl?”
A Taste of Ice (The Elementals) Page 9
