He squatted, dropped the wood beside the kitchen stove, and looked up at her from his spot on the floor. “Oh?”
“Sauce.”
“Yes. For spaghetti.”
She looked at him blankly, brows raised.
“You don’t know spaghetti?” he asked. She shook her head. “Pasta. Noodles?”
“Oh. I used to eat that when I was little. I remember sucking down these long noodles.” She paused, red as the sauce in the pot. “But I thought it was a stew or something. I didn’t know.” She lost her smile and indicated his sparsely stocked cupboard, chewing her bottom lip with what looked like consternation. “So many things. So much choice.”
“Inthere?”
“There’s rice. I recognize rice. But the package said it was dirty. Beans are obvious, but that one said risotto and there it’s orzo and… What on earth is orzo?” Her eyes met his, and for the first time, he understood the enormity of this for her.
But she was smiling, which alleviated some of the tension inside him. Not just fear and anger from what those men had done to her, but the pressure of being host and guide to this stranger in a strange land. Of all the people in the world, he was probably the least qualified.
“Let’s get some water on to boil,” he said finally.
He filled a pot at the sink, relieved that the power hadn’t gone out yet, and thought about how it would feel to have no experience of modern life. Because even Luc, country boy though he was, had flown on an airplane to get here. Backward though he was, he still used a mobile phone. He glanced at her, beautiful despite being covered from neck to toe in his ugly clothes. Except for her back, which he wouldn’t let himself look at—partly because those scars would only rile him up again and she didn’t need his rage, but also because hewantedto so badly.
Ripping his thoughts away from what he now knew about her body, he sought for something mundane.
“Orzo is another kind of pasta,” he explained. “Also Italian, like spaghetti.”
“It’s shaped like rice.”
He smiled a response, put the water on to boil, and strode into the other room to check the fire. Everything seemed to be doing just fine without him, which he appreciated. She’d taken care of things in his absence.
“Where do you usually eat?” she asked when he returned to the kitchen.
“At the kitchen table.”
She nodded, got the second wooden chair from the living room, and set it at the table before pulling two forks from the kitchen’s lone drawer and two plates from the cabinet above.
They were quiet, and with six minutes on the timer when they finished setting up, there was nothing left to do but stand there and not look at each other.
It made him nervous—her proximity, her presence in his kitchen.
Without thinking, he reached into a lower cabinet for a bottle of wine, which he opened and served. He lifted his head to find her…staring.
“Are you okay?” he asked, because really, she looked at him as though he were an alien. Which wasn’t all that odd, considering how bad he was with these situations. He’d clearly done something wrong, not asked her something he should have or—
“Thank you, Luc.”
“Oh,” he stammered. “You’re welcome.”
With a breath in, she looked at the table. “So. Spaghetti is Italian.”
“Yes,” he said. “And with spaghetti, you drink wine.” He handed Abby the cork from the bottle he’d opened. “Smell that.”
After examining it for a moment, she put it to her nose, breathed in, turned it, and did the same on the other side. The wine-stained side.
“Smells old.”
“Yes? Anything else?”
“It reminds me of that room up in the barn, with all the barrels.” She looked at him. “Is that strange?”
