“Hey, I can cook,” Max replied easily. “I just never have the time for it.”
“You? You can cook?” Bo asked in disbelief.
“Sure.”
“Really?” She stared at him. “I find it hard to believe that Eton had a home economics department.”
Max laughed. “Oh, they didn’t. But after Eton, while I was at Oxford, I developed the most desperate crush on a girl who was a member of the Tea Appreciation Society. I taught myself how to make a Génoise cake to impress her, and my cooking kind of spiralled from there.”
Bo blinked at him. “I think that might just be the poshest sentence I’ve ever heard. Did it work?”
“What, cooking?” Max shrugged. “Try my curry and let me know.”
“No. I mean, did it impress the girl?”
Max grinned. “Yep. Nacressa and I were together for four years after she fell for the charms of my soft-baked sponge.”
Nacressa. Raphaella. Bo wondered if any of Max’s ex-girlfriends had names that weren’t straight out of Debrett’s. She fell quiet, still resting her head on her arms, watching him cook for a time, feeling once again that ache of longing in her chestand trying to ignore it. Maybe it was just hunger. Maybe it was just tiredness. Or maybe, Bo thought with a nervous swallow, just maybe, it reallywas—
“You’re serious today,” Max suddenly reflected, interrupting her thoughts as he stirred a pot on the stove. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m just tired,” Bo replied quickly.
“I know. It’s not just that though. There’s something else.”
She shrugged, not knowing what else to do or say. She couldn’t very well admit the truth, could she? Couldn’t sit there and say, ‘Well, Max, remember that feeling you said I might have one day? I think I’m having it now, and for you.’ Oh no. She couldn’t do that. If London had any real hills, Max would run for them.
Instead, she shrugged again, and Max frowned. She watched as he walked to the fridge, pulling out a pot of Greek yoghurt which he then dumped into a bowl. He brought the bowl to the table with a few vegetables, sitting next to Bo and munching on a carrot thoughtfully.
“You look like Bugs Bunny,” Bo told him, without moving.
“And you look miserable as sin. What’s up with you?”
“I told you, I’m just tired.”
“And I told you; there’s something else.” Frowning again, Max dipped his carrot into the yoghurt, before bringing it to Bo’s face. She jumped when the cold liquid hit her skin, and went to rub at the mark, but Max grabbed her hand, holding her steady.
“Didn’t I once tell you that you were three times as beautiful when you smiled?”
She nodded, and Max grinned at her. He released her hand, moving his own fingers so that they now lightly gripped her chin.
“I love your smile,” he told her, dipping the carrot into the yoghurt again and tracing it across her cheeks. “I love it so much, I could look at it forever. But if you don’t feel like smiling, that’s fine.” He moved the carrot around her mouth, beforedipping it again into the yoghurt and moving it to his own face. Bo watched, mesmerized, as Max drew an exaggerated smile around his own mouth, much like a clown would wear. “Look,” he said proudly, when he was done.
“You look ridiculous,” Bo replied, and he nodded to her own face.
“So do you.”
She rolled her eyes, before pulling out her iPhone and reversing her camera. She gaped when she saw what Max had done to her. An exaggerated frown circled her mouth, the exact opposite of his exaggerated smile. Without warning, Max leaned into her, so that his face appeared in the camera image, and he reached forward and clicked a photograph of them together.
“Are you happy with yourself?” she asked him, and he nodded.
“Immensely.”
“Our first photograph together and we’re covered in yoghurt.”
“So? Look on the bright side, given our normal activities we could have a photograph where we’re covered in—”
“Ugh. Don’t say it,” Bo cut in, and Max laughed.
