“Wow! I didn’t know that.” She straightens, obviously intrigued. “What is it?”
I pour the wine into glasses, so it can breathe. “Well, it’s a cookbook, but more than that, it’s an encyclopedic guide to 19th-century French cuisine, containing recipes, culinary history, and Dumas' personal thoughts on food and entertaining. The work was a passion project for Dumas.”
“I must read it.”
“I think I have a copy.” I look toward the living room where I have my favorite books resting in antique bookshelves. “But it’s in French. I’ll find you one in English.”
“Thank you,” she says shyly.
I sit as she serves the pasta onto plates.
The kitchen is suffused with the warmth of vine-ripened tomatoes and fresh basil. She’s finished the pasta with a snowfall of parmesan and a ribbon of fine olive oil, its aroma mellow and rich.
“I’m surprised that someone who doesn’t cook is so into food,” she teases.
“Well, I like to read…and eat.” I stare at her, pulse hammering, one thought cutting through the noise: I have to keep her.
“Now I need to go back and read Dumas to see if he describes food in his fiction in some special way.”
“Do you know, in his introduction to the book, Dumas apologized to posterity for not having eaten enough.”
She chuckles, delighted. “That sounds like a man I’d have liked to meet.”
I tilt my glass toward hers. “Then you’ll have to settle for me,mon amour. I’m a more modest gourmand.”
“Modest,” she repeats, clinking her glass against mine, “is not the word I’d use.”
“What do you think about the wine?”
She lifts the glass, inhales, and her smile fades into something softer. “The nose is…like the earth after rain. And…violets?”
I nod. “Truffle, leather, spice. A wine that knows its strength, but isn’t screaming it.”
She takes a sip, closes her eyes, and sighs. “It’s like velvet. Dark velvet. Strong but gentle at the same time.”
I watch her lips curve around the rim of the glass, and a pressure blooms in my chest.
She opens her eyes again, mischief dancing there. “Careful,le Comte. Good food, good wine, a little chili heat…that’s a dangerous combination.”
“Dangerous,” I echo, raising my glass to hers. “Exactly what I wanted.À votre santé?*, mon amour.”
“Santé.”
The clink of crystal rings in the quiet kitchen, which combined with her presence, bright and easy, makes this one of the best meals of my life.
“This is happiness,” she declares when we sip our champagne and eat profiteroles we picked up at the bakery.
That night, we make love with abandon. I can’t get enough of her. She can’t get enough of me. As we lie in bed, I feel the words aching to slip past my lips.
“Je t'aime?*, mon amour.”
Words that I can’t remember even saying to Simone because it has been so long since I felt even remote affection for her.
How has this woman, whom I barely know, stolen my heart, the one I didn’t even know I had?
I love my son, I have no doubt about that. But Tara? No. It can’t be. It’s too early. It’s ridiculous.
“Gustave,” she whispers, nuzzling against me as I hold her in the quiet dark.
