‘Don’t tell me, you wanted another slice of semifreddo; that’s why you’re back in the kitchen,’ Tad said.
‘I probably should, while there’s still any left.’ She pointed to the bowls they’d brought through, every one of them scraped clean. ‘It was a great choice – they loved it.’
‘Help yourself if you want a bite more – I put it back in the freezer, but you’ll be able to lop off a bit without any trouble. I’ll be back in a moment,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t being serious?—’
Tad was gone before she’d finished her sentence – maybe because she’d been a bit slow to get the words out. If she was being honest, she’d happily forgo the cheese course for another taste of that chocolate ice cream. While she was battling with her own lack of self-control, which found her seeking out the deep freeze and peering inside, Tad was back, whisking up the cheese plate and basket of crackers before heading back to the dining room.
Amy was lifting the corner on cling film when he reappeared. She heard him laugh, a hand reaching past her to pull the tin from the freezer.
‘Come on, I think you’ve earned it,’ he said, slicing a delicate piece and lodging it onto a small plate, handing it to her alongside a long-handled teaspoon.
‘I couldn’t resist another taste,’ she said.
‘There isn’t a chef alive who doesn’t find it flattering to have someone ask for seconds of their food. You are more than welcome, Amy.’
‘Well, all right then. Thank you.’
Tad made short work of rinsing the bowls and adding them to the dishwasher tray, then ripped at the poppers of his evening chef jacket, pulling it off and balling it onto a surface. He looked hot; the kitchen was warm enough to be making the edges of the semifreddo on her plate melt and begin to pool across the white ceramic. His T-shirt had telltale half-moons of sweat beneath his arms. But that wasn’t Amy’s focus. Rather, her attention was taken by the flight of grey birds taking to the wing on Tad’s right forearm, launching and twisting and driving upwards to find – what? Their destination, if there was one, remained hidden under the sleeve of his T-shirt, and Amy was fixated by the intricacy with which the birds were inked, each feather delicate and separate, and yet the series of birds still managed to move as one entity – even though they weren’t moving at all, not under their own power. It only seemed that way.
She swallowed. She’d imagined what the glimpse of tattoo she’d seen earlier in the week might be a part of, and now that she knew, it seemed the combined effect of the wondering and now knowing had made her mouth go dry. Which was unexpected. She knew plenty of people who had them; there was no reason for a few tattoos to be a big deal. She’d seen everything from a friend who had a discreet red heart on her wrist, all the way up to her cousin, Ben, who was working on covering every inch of his torso, having already sleeved both arms.
She could appreciate the artistry of them, but there hadn’t ever been anything more to the way she viewed tattoos than that. Which was why it made no sense at all that she didn’t seem capable of dragging her gaze away from Tad’s birds as they spiralled their way up his smooth, pale forearm and disappeared from view.
‘You’re spilling it.’
Tad’s words jolted Amy from her thoughts as he reached for, and straightened, the plate from which a dribble of melted semifreddo had fallen, splodging onto the glittery non-slip surface of the floor. A perfect brown drip pattern against the silvery glitter of the vinyl.
‘Oh, no. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s no problem,’ he said, spinning to find a cloth.
Doing her best to refocus on the ice cream, stepping back as he dipped onto his haunches to wipe up the mess, she spooned up some of the rapidly warming ice cream to give herself something to do.
‘Still good?’ he asked.
She tried to answer, but managed to stumble over a piece of nougat, almost choking instead of speaking.
This was ridiculous. How had Amy boomeranged back from feeling confusion and irritation for this man to now being unable to speak?
‘May I?’ He reached for another of the long-handled spoons and gestured to the side of the semifreddo closest to him.
Amy nodded. Did her best to chew the nougat as she watched him take a mouthful of the ice cream. A whisper of chocolate remained on his lip, and she found herself wondering if the bloke was incapable of eating without plastering food all over his face, or whether he was doing it on purpose. Either way it was adding another dimension to the tumble of her thoughts. It was in almost the same place as the jam from the peach tart they’d made on the night of her arrival and all she had to do was reach out and she could rub it away for him.
She shook her head, an almost imperceptible movement – she hoped – but one she needed to make in order to recalibrate. There was no way she was doing this. No way she was going to fall into a headlong crush for this man. For all the reasons she’d already outlined to herself, the exercise would be ultimately pointless and meaningless, and she had more important things to consider. Like her career. Keeping Billie happy. Producing useable copy about their experience at Casa del Cibo.
What she didn’t need was to muddy the waters with a messy hook-up, or – even worse – to develop unnecessary feelings about some bloke she’d wave goodbye to in a few days’ time.
But there was something happening to the base of Amy’s stomach that she couldn’t control. Instead of dampening down the feelings, her attempts to brush away the effect he was having on her was achieving the opposite, and heat was spreading through her belly like wildfire.
And when he smiled, took another blob of ice cream, and she watched him suck it off the spoon, Amy didn’t know where to look to quell the images now crowding her thoughts.
* * *
Hugh decided a recce was in order. Everyone was busy cutting slices of cheese or helping themselves to coffee from the machine in the corner. Nobody noticed him slip from the room and head for the kitchens.
His shuffling gait was only partly an affectation. The days when he was able to stride out and cover ground like a mountain goat were well behind him; he’d had to acknowledge that much, but he was still able to move with agency when required.
