She wants to spend time with me, and that’s better than any paired, vaunted menu could offer.
“Very nice,” I agree past the catch in my throat.
How will I let you go when the time comes?
That evening, she cooks a simple meal of pasta with ripe tomatoes, garlic, and basil she picked from the garden outside.
“It’s Italian, I know.” She tosses a handful of chopped green chilies into the pan. “But my fatherwould always sneak a little heat into everything,justenough to make you sweat.”
“And you? Do you cook to make men sweat?”
She laughs, shaking her head as she stirs the pasta saucewithchilies. “Only if they deserve it.”
She dips a spoon and holds it out for me to taste.
“Should I be worried?” I ask even as I take the spoon in between my lips.
“You never have to be worried with me,” she replies huskily, and my heart expands.
“It’s delicious.” It is.
“But will it put hair on your chest?” she muses.
I raise an eyebrow.
She glances at me, the corners of her mouth tugging up in pure contentment. “My father would tell my cousins that if they ate spicy food, they’d get hair on their chest. Poor Marco; he’s still waiting, and he’s twenty-five.”
It feels good—her easy laughter filling a home and life that has been too quiet—no, not that…it’s beenempty.
Though the kitchen was designed for chefs, with a stove large enough to feed an army, it feels warmer, smaller, more intimate than any dinner I’ve had in years.
She asks me to set the table for us, the small oak one by the window. I find what I need in the cabinets in the kitchen. Limoges porcelain plates, Beauvillé napkins, and Sabre Paris cutlery. I light thepair of Louis XIII-style candle stands from the nineteenth century that were a gift from my grandmother to me.
I even raid my wine cellar to make our dinner special.
“Champagne for the pasta?” she teases, eyeing the unopened bottle chilling in a bucket nearby.
“That’s for dessert,” I reply.
I present to her a bottle of Pommard from my cellar, the wine dark and masculine, full of the tannins that the village is known for. “That’s for the pasta.”
She leans back in her chair, relaxed. “Tell me about it.”
“Clos des Epeneaux, 1996.” I carefully ease the cork free. “From Domaine Comte Armand. The vines there are a monopole—singular. The tannins in Pommard can be fierce, but with time….” I pour a taste of the ruby liquid into a glass. “They soften, revealing something richer, more elegant.”
I swirl it and taste it. “Parfait!”
She raises an eyebrow, amused. “You certainly love your wine.”
“Wine is….” I search for the right phrase, then smile. “As Alexandre Dumas once wrote, ‘Wine is the intellectual part of a meal. Meat is merely the material.’”
“Dumas said that?” Her eyes light up with curiosity. I love this about her—the endless inquisitiveness.
“Indeed.” I set the bottle down gently. “Dumas wasnot merely a novelist; he was a gourmand. Do you know which book of his he claims was his favorite?”
She wrinkles her nose. “Mine isCount of Monte Cristo.”
“Ah, yes, that’s a fine book, but his favorite was theLe Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine. It was posthumously published in 1873.”
