The steaks hit the pan with a satisfying sizzle.
“Four minutes each side for medium rare,” she announces. “You want it more or less?”
“Medium rare is fine.”
“Medium rare is a sign of poor taste,” she quips. “True steak aficionados prefer their steaks rare.”
“Do they now?” I lean against the counter, watching her. “And are you a true steak aficionado?
“Me? Oh, no. God no.” She laughs. “I like mine medium rare too. I prefer that my food doesn’tbleed, if you know what I mean. Just wanted to see if you’d get all defensive about it. You know, try to prove you’re not some boring billionaire with boring taste in everything.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Boring.”
“Well, not boring exactly. Just... predictable maybe? I don’t know, I’m rambling.” Her cheeks flush slightly. “I was just teasing. Didn’t mean to insult you.Again. Sorry.”
The apology is so quintessentially her that I almost smile.
“For the record,” I tell her, “rare steak isn’t actually bloody. The red liquid is myoglobin, not blood. The blood gets drained during processing.”
She blinks at me. “You’re mansplaining steak biology to me right now? An environmental sciences doctoral student...”
I finally laugh. “I suppose I am. But hey, you started it with the aficionado thing.”
“Fair point.” She grins, and fuck if that smile doesn’t make something in my heart break. “Truce?”
I smile back. “Truce.”
She flips the steaks and the kitchen fills with the smell of searing meat and rendered fat. My stomach growls despite eating breakfast only a few hours ago.
When they’re done, she plates the steaks with some canned vegetables she warmed in a separate pan. Nothing fancy, but it’s the best meal I’ve had since Vin left.
We eat at the kitchen island in companionable silence. The hostility from yesterday has softened into something else. Not quite friendship, but not enemies either.
She’s still wearing my Columbia hoodie.
I should tell her to change into her own clothes. They dried long ago. But I don’t say anything because seeing her in my clothes does things to me that are completely inappropriate given our situation.
After lunch, she settles by the fireplace with a thick textbook. One of the few things that survived her equipment disaster, apparently. The cover is battered, the spine cracked from heavy use. “Fungal Ecology” in faded letters across the front.
At least it’s not that romance novel with the shirtless guy on the cover again.
Not that I’d care if it was,I remind myself.
I should retreat to my usual spot by the windows. Brood about the board situation, the lawsuits, Derek’s betrayal. All the shit I’ve been obsessing over since I got here.
Instead, I find myself drifting toward her corner of the room.
She’s curled on the sectional with her knees pulled to her chest, the book balanced on her thighs. She’s making notes in the margins with a pencil, occasionally muttering to herself. Then she laughs at something, a genuine delighted sound that makes me stop in my tracks.
“What’s so funny?” The question comes out before I can stop it.
She looks up, surprised to find me standing there. “Oh. Just this study design. It’s brilliant but also kind of absurd.”
I settle into the chair across from her. Close enough to see her face in the firelight but far enough to maintain distance. “How so?”
“So... okay... these researchers... they wanted to test whether fungal networks could recognize kin versus non-kin connections.” Her eyes are already lighting up, that passion resurfacing. “They set up this experiment with Douglas fir seedlings, some related, some not. And they discovered that the fungi actually preferentially allocated carbon to related trees. Like they could tell family from strangers underground.”
“Trees have family loyalties?” I’m genuinely surprised.
