“What kind of forum?” I prompted when he fell silent, but only after he dished up the pasta and tore basil leaves with his fingers.
Man, I wanted to suck on those so ba?—
“The bulk of my degree, aside from lab work, I did online.” He cleared his throat. “I couldn’t exactly attend college while my family and I were throwing over theFamiglia,so I did what I could when I could while puttering around in my private lab.”
“How very Dexter of you.”
He grinned as he passed me the plate. “The scientist, right? Not the serial killer?”
I whooped. “Yeah, the scientist.”
“Chemistry’s always been like cooking to me,” he admitted, back to being sheepish. “I used to concoct stuff.”
“What kind of stuff? Like pasta?”
“That too. This ispasta alla Scarpariello. My signature dish. But, as a chemist, all kinds of shit. I made a lot of creams back in the day. Unguents?—”
“Huh. You little cosmetic scientist, you.” Then I took a bite of his penne and groaned. “Holy fuck!” What in the hell was this? It tasted like an orgasm in a bowl!
“Nice?”
“How did you turn stuff that came from the ground intothis?! Youarea magician!”
Stan chuckled, but I could sense his pleasure. “I’m glad you like it.”
“Like it?” I eyed his bowl. “There’s more in the pan, right?”
He snorted then upended some from his dish into mine and retreated to the kitchen. For a couple seconds, I savored the simple dish that tasted so much better than I’d have managed.
Upon his return, I watched him dawdle with his fork.
Stan was not a fork-dawdler, and I wasn’t about to let this pasta go to waste… “You were telling me what you made.”
“Oh, yeah. The first thing I created was a pomade?—”
My fork clattered against the dish in surprise. “Like what my granddad used to wear?”
His grin widened. “Hey, it’s not just for old people. It gives texture to styled hair! I swear mine works like a charm.”
I peered at his glossy, sexy, my-hands-needed-to-tug-on-it hair. “Do you use it now?”
“In a sense. I sold it?—”
“You did what now?!”
“I sold it. I didn’t make a fortune, but it funded the first real lab setup I purchased.”
“That’s so neat! Okay, so you used to make stuff and actually sold it.”
“I always wanted to work in a lab. It’s what I dreamed about. Then I fell in with a bad crowd, got into drugs, and my dad was murdered.” His humor faded. “Everything shifted on its head. Luc went from wanting to be a lecturer in history to needing vengeance. Rory had always focused on liberating Currau, but her goals aligned with Luc’s and they wanted to make the Italians pay.”
“What about you?” I prodded, nudging his hand and watching in satisfaction as he took a bite of his pasta orgasmica.
“When I… I fell off the wagon, vengeance helped me get clean again. It seemed the right thing to do, and those dreams and goals were pushed aside. For all of us.” I let him fall silent, sensing that he was collating his thoughts. “One thing I coulddo, once we’d established ourselves in the city, was take online courses in my spare time.
“My school provided access to an online forum and I met this woman on there. I knew she was a lot younger than me and there was something weird about how she used to talk, but she took a couple of the same courses and we got to know one another.
"I learned she enrolled in the degree to find a cure for her mom’s illness. She’d passed away a long time ago, but that was her end goal.
