He’d already hatedme.
When the man made no move to block my path, I walked toward the pantry and pulled the concealed door open. My mouth watered at the smell of caramelizing onions and woodsy thyme. Jarod was lucky to have someone in his life who could create such deliciousaromas.
I set my bag down on the pantry table, removed the paper-wrapped offering stained with juice from the bruised fruit, and carried them through another small passageway that gave onto a kitchen that couldn’t be called anything butgrandiose.
The floor was covered in weathered mosaics depicting a fleur-de-lis—the symbol of French monarchy. Did the house date back to that time in history, or had Isaac Adler purchased the tiny tiles and installed them in his kitchen? A strip of glass along the top of the far wall let in a bar of sunlight that reflected on the garland of copper pans dangling over an island which resembled an outsized butcher’sblock.
“Ma chérie, you arrived just in time.” Muriel appeared from another littlepassageway.
I couldn’t help but smile at her endearment. I extended the little basket. “I bought you someraspberries.”
“T’es unange.”
My muscles seized up. As she circled the island and eased the packet I was crinkling out of my hands, I gaped at her. Had she meantyou’re an angelliterally orfiguratively?
She selected a plump berry and popped it into her mouth, which she’d reddened with lipstick. “Hmm. . .une vraie merveille.”Hmm . . . delicious. She smiled, and it settled my nerves. If she knew what I was, she wouldn’t smile at me. “Merci.”
I shrugged. “It’s nothing,Muriel.”
“No one has ever bought me raspberries, so it is something tome.”
My wary heart slowed, and I returned hersmile.
“Are you ready to learn how to makesablés?”
It hit me that there was nowhere else I’d rather have been than in this serene kitchen in the company of this patient and warm woman. After all, I no longer had a sinner to reform; I no longer had missions to undertake or wings tocomplete.
I had absolutelynothingtodo.
Instead of feeling bereft, I feltunfettered.
Chapter 31
Iwas removingthe first batch of cookies from the oven when the kitchen’s doorway filled with the shape of a body. I almost dropped the tray. By some miracle, I managed to slide it onto the butcher block island, my hands shaking inside the ovenmitts.
“Finally taking me up on cooking classes, Jarod?” Muriel said, slicing a roll of chilled, salted chocolate dough into perfectdisks.
Gaze affixed to me, he said, “Not a chance of that ever happening, Mimi.” A smirk played on his lips, and I knew exactly what he was thinking . . . that I was a piece of gum he’d stepped on, sticking tiresomely to hisperson.
“Thank God I found myself a good disciple then,” Muriel said, sliding me awink.
“Still can’t get Amir inhere?”
“The problem with that man isn’t getting him in here; it’s getting him out of here. He inhales all of mycooking.”
“He’s part giant,” Jarod said, sticking his hands into the pockets of his suit trousers, which he wore with a tucked white button-down opened at the collar, but nojacket.
Muriel laughed. “He is, isn’the?”
Their good-natured banter felt like being chained under Damocles’s sword, conscious it was about to skewer me yet unable to move out of theway.
“What brings you to my kitchen, Leigh?” He caressed the syllable of my name instead of deforming it, surely trying to lure me into a false sense of security or to maintain a pleasant appearance in front ofMuriel.
“Baking cookies,” I said, nervesbrimming.
His smirk turned into a smile full of perfect teeth that seemed almost phosphorescent set against his dark afternoon shadow. “You don’t say. And who are you baking cookiesfor?”
“Not for you,” I said before realizing how rude that sounded, so I amended my words with, “Because you don’t likedesserts.”
