Rowan nodded. He continued with his chopping. “I do most of the cooking around here.” I waited for him to tell me about his skills. Most guys loved an opportunity to show off. But Rowan just kept cutting tomatoes and placing them into the pot, his gorgeous lips moving as he counted under his breath.
Finally, the silence got a bit weird for me. “What are you making?”
“Tomato chutney. We’ve had a glut of tomatoes from the garden this summer, and I want to preserve them so we can keep enjoying them over the winter.”
“How very forward-thinking of you.”
“I like when everything is planned out,” Rowan said without looking up. His voice sounded a bit strange, but I might’ve imagined it. “I don’t like surprises. The tea’s ready.”
The kettle whistled. Rowan washed his hands again, then poured out the hot water and fiddled around with spoons and milk and saucers before presenting me with a cup of caramel-colored weirdness.
“Me neither, usually.” I sniffed the tea, wondering why so many people could like something that smelled like wet dirt. In America, tea was usually cold, and flavoured. “Every year atChristmas time I would bribe my sister Kelly with candy to sneak into our parents’ room, find the presents they hid in the closet, and tell me what they all were.”
“Why didn’t you go and look yourself?”
“Duh, because I didn’t want to get in trouble.” I raised the cup to my lips and took a sip.Gross.Ittastedlike wet dirt. I reached across the table and grabbed a small tomato from the stack and popped it into my mouth. The tart fruit popped on my tongue, bursting with flavor and rinsing away the taste of the tea. “That tomato is delicious! But yeah, that’s why I’m a scientist, I think. I like to know things, to understand them. Surprises mean that I haven’t figured things out yet. But four guys sneaking into my room this morning to leave thoughtful, beautiful gifts totally doesn’t count. That was an awesome surprise.”
Rowan looked up again, and the smile on his face lit up the whole room. “Want to help?”
“Maybe in a sec. Could you tell me the wifi password? I want to look up some info on the fae. I have questions.”
“Oh, the password is briarwood with a capital B and zeroes for o’s. But you’ll find much better information in the library. Ask Corbin to show you. We have a huge collection of occult and folklore books.”
Somehow, that didn’t surprise me one bit. “Okay. Where’s Corbin?”
Rowan shrugged.
“Fine.” Somehow, now that I was downstairs talking to Rowan, my theory didn’t seem as important. I got the feeling that these moments with the quiet boy were precious. “I’ll help you. What do I do?”
“Nothing until you’ve washed your hands.”
After washing my hands, Rowan handed me a knife and a bowl of freshly-picked bell and chili peppers. He showed me how to cut them to get all the seeds out. As he maneuvered the knifeto demonstrate the correct technique, I noticed how precise his cuts were. Always three cuts, never any more or any less. “With the chilis, we want to keep the seeds,” he explained. “That’s where all the heat comes from, but the pepper seeds are just woody. They taste like shite.”
Shite.I loved the way Brits talked.
“Got it.” I elbowed Rowan out of the way and started to massacre a chili. Rowan watched me mangle the fruit, his expression twisting uncomfortably. At one point, he was even gripping the table as if he was holding himself back from reclaiming the knife and banishing me from the kitchen.
“Right…” he gulped. “I’ll just go back over here and leave you to it.” He shuffled his own chopping board further around the butcher’s block so the mountain of produce and enormous pots obscured his view of me. He started chopping… one, two, three…always that same rhythm, and he didn’t say another word.
As I chopped and scraped, I kept darting glances over at Rowan. He had his dreadlocks tied back in a tidy bun high on his head, and I noticed a single hoop earring dangling from his left ear. The earring was carved with a delicate knotwork pattern. He wore a long sleeve sweater, even though warm sunlight streamed in from the high kitchen windows. At his wrists, I could just make out the edges of tattoos creeping toward his hands – more knotwork by the looks of it, and that strange stick writing I’d noticed on Arthur’s ink. He was the skinniest of all the guys, but toned, his shirt pulling across his shoulders as he made light work of the mountain of tomatoes. I loved the way his brow furrowed in concentration as he worked.
There was something so sexy about a guy wielding a knife and being perfectly comfortable in the kitchen.
Rowan caught me looking, and gave me a shy smile. My heart did a little flip-flop thing. He was really gorgeous, and he intrigued me with his softness and his oddness.
Stop it, Maeve. It’s a supremely bad idea to get all hot and bothered about any of my housemates/tenants… and I already kissed Arthur. Now I’m contemplating a move on Rowan.
What is wrong with me?
Maybe it was grief making me do these weird, un-Maeve things. Maybe it didn’t matter why I did them. Maybe it only mattered that Idid.
“Hey Rowan.” I dumped some oddly chopped peppers into the pot. “How did you end up living at Briarwood? I mean, you’re not a cousin of mine or something?”
Rowan stared into the pot. “Can you cut them a little more square? I really like them to be square.”
“Why, does it affect the taste? And you didn’t answer my question.”
I was kidding, but Rowan didn’t look at me. His voice went very quiet. “We’re not cousins. I’m an orphan, too. My parents were friends of your mother. She gave the house to Corbin’s family to look after, and they let the rest of us live here, too.”
