“It is, I do like itspicy.” He grinned.
Tiana felt her cheeks blush at his obvious double entendre as she cut her own bite, instead of wrapping the pasta around the fork prongs, she cut it and then tasted her creation. She wasn’t sure what it was supposed to taste like, but it did taste pretty good if she said so herself.
Within a few more bites he’d finished one chicken breast and was halfway through the other and only had a little salad left. He was inhaling it. “I didn’t know you could cook,” he commented as he stuffed his fork into the pasta.
“I can’t.”
Niko fanned his hand over his meal. “All evidence to the contrary.”
“I can follow a recipe, but if you gave me a mystery box, like on those cooking shows, it would be a disaster.”
“What else did I say in the article?”
“What?” Tiana asked.
“In the article, did I say why it was my favorite meal?”
“No.” She shook her head.
He took another bite of the Greek salad and, again, made a grunting noise of appreciation. “It was my dad’s favorite thing to cook.”
“Oh.” Tiana knew that Frankie and the twins lost their dad when they were very young. “He was a firefighter, right?”
Tiana could see both sadness and love in his eyes as he nodded. “He was, yeah. My mom cooked after he died, but never this. Once we moved onto the Sterlings property, we just ate whatever my mom prepared for them. She’d bring us plates.”
“Did you like living there, at the Sterlings?” She pressed her fork into the Greek salad.
“It was…okay. I liked hanging out with Tristan and Liam, but honestly, I think it would have been a shit time no matter what. Our dad was…” He paused, cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and then took a drink of his wine. “Sorry, I never talk about this.”
“We don’t have to, I mean, you don’t have to?—”
“No, I want to. I mean, if you want to kno?—”
“I do.” She’d wanted to ask but hadn’t felt it was her place.
“My mom was out of it. As an adult, it’s obvious that she always had issues with depression and alcohol back then, she’s better now, but as a kid, especially when my dad was alive, I didn’t have a clue. I thought it was normal that all moms sometimes stayed in bed all weekend and forgot to pick kids up from the after-school program until it was dark. But when our dad was alive, he sort of overcompensated for it. He was a force of nature. He was a real-life superhero to me. He would show up at school with soot still streaked across his face, still in his turnout gear, and he’d scoop us up and take us straight to the pizza place or drive-thru. And when he was home, he cooked, cleaned, and he made games out of us being quiet so she could rest. He was pretty much a single parent when he was alive, and then he was gone.
“The job at the Sterlings was supposed to be temporary, till she got on her feet, but she never did. She worked during the day, then drank at night and cried herself to sleep. I used to be jealous that Liam and Tristan had both parents, but the truth was Dr. Sterling was never home. Honestly, I think I saw him once a week at most. He worked long hours and travelled a lot. But they had the big house, the clothes, the shoes. But the one thing they didn’t have, and the reason I would never have tradedplaces with them even if I could, was they didn’t have AJ and Frankie.”
“Have you always been close to your siblings?” Tiana felt stupid as soon as she asked the question. “I mean, of course you are, you’re a twin.”
“Yeah, I never went through that stage of hating my siblings. Maybe it’s because we are all so different. Frankie was a little force of nature. AJ was, well, AJ. They were my two favorite people then, and they still are.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Do you have siblings?” he asked.
The honest answer was she had no idea, but she didn’t answer honestly. “No.”
“Can I ask you something?” Niko looked down at his food, and Tiana could tellhewas nervous.
That was an emotion she’d never seen from him before, which made her wary. “Okay.”
“It’s none of my business, and you don’t have to answer.”
This was either going to be about money or Brock, she knew it.
“What did I do to upset you this morning when you went to Golden Years?” His eyes lifted to hers.
