“Like this,” he murmured, guiding her hands on the rolling pin. “Let the dough tell you what it needs.”
She snorted. “Back home, the dough behaved itself. Here it’s like wrestling an unruly toddler with gluten issues.”
His chuckle vibrated warmly against her ear. “Then perhaps you will teach it manners.”
“What if I don’t speak medieval dough?” She asked, trying to inject some levity into the moment before she did something stupid like melting into a puddle of hormones right there on the kitchen floor.
His chuckle was a low rumble that vibrated through his chest and into her spine.
“Then you learn its language. Feel how it responds to pressure. Watch how it changes texture as you work it.”
Under his guidance, the recalcitrant dough began to behave, rolling out into something that actually resembled pastry rather than a lumpy disaster. But she was having trouble focusing on the improvement, too aware of every point of contact between them, every shift of his body as he adjusted their positions.
“Better?” he asked, his voice closer to her ear than strictly necessary for cooking instruction.
“Much,” she managed, though she wasn’t entirely sure if she was talking about the dough anymore.
“Now for the filling.” He stepped away, leaving her feeling oddly bereft, and moved to examine her meat mixture with the focused intensity of a general planning battle strategy. “This needs more seasoning. And the vegetables should be smaller.”
“I don’t have a food processor,” she protested, then caught his blank look. “A machine that chops things in seconds instead of hacking at them with a dull knife that onlywishesit were a cleaver. Honestly, I could make this sing in my own kitchen. Here…” She waved at the mess of uneven vegetables. “Here it just feels like cooking with one hand tied behind my back.”
Tristan’s brows lifted. “Yet still you persist.”
“Because I know what it’ssupposedto taste like,” she shot back, wiping sweat from her brow. “I can see it in my head, I can taste the balance, I just can’t get the tools or ingredients to cooperate. It’s like trying to paint the Mona Lisa with finger paints.”
He selected a knife from the collection hanging near the hearth, testing its edge with his thumb.
He kissed the blade along a whetstone in three economical strokes, then set the steel aside. “Tools earn their edge with use.”
He slid the pot farther from the blaze with a peel and nudged a trammel a notch higher, calming the heat like a man settling a skittish horse.
“Here. Let me show you.”
Watching Tristan work with a knife was like watching a master craftsman practice his art. His movements were precise and economical, each cut perfectly measured, the blade dancing through vegetables with a rhythm that spoke of years of practice. The onions diced neatly, the carrots in perfect bits, and everything uniform and professional.
“Show off,” Rachel said, but she was smiling as she said it.
“Efficiency,” he corrected, though she caught the pleased note in his voice. “When you understand your tools and trust your skills, the work becomes... meditative. Peaceful.”
“Is that why you cook? For peace?”
The question seemed to catch him off guard, and his knife stilled for a moment before resuming its steady rhythm. “Once, perhaps. Now...”
“Now?”
“Now I find myself cooking for other reasons,” he said quietly, not looking at her as he spoke. “Reasons that are perhaps less wise.”
Before she could ask what he meant, he was moving again, adding the perfectly chopped vegetables to her meat mixture, seasoning with pinches of herbs that released their scent into the warm kitchen air. Pepper bloomed, sage went green and bright, and a grate of nutmeg, a luxury, rounded the meat’s rough edges. His movements were sure and practiced, transforming her amateur attempt into something that actually smelled like food rather than an unfortunate accident.
“Taste,” he said, offering her a spoon.
Their fingers brushed as she took it from him, and she saw his jaw tighten at the contact. The meat mixture was perfect—savory and complex, seasoned with herbs that somehow combined to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
“That’s incredible,” she said honestly. “Pepper upfront, sage mid, nutmeg on the finish. If I could control the heat, I’d brush the coffins with egg for shine.”
“Coffins?” he echoed, amused.
“Pie crusts,” she admitted. “Different century, same hunger.”
