He motioned towards them. “I woke up early and couldn’t help noticing your maps. You have quite a collection.”
Collectionseemed a dramatic understatement. I might have suspected he was attempting to redirect the conversation away from uncomfortable emotions, but a faint thread of genuine curiosity reached me.
“They’re all the places I’ve lived in,” I said.
His gaze drifted slowly across the room, pausing to study each map like he might browse an art gallery. “All of them?”
I nodded. He approached a map pinned near the window and studied the careful lines for several moments. “Do you ever go back?”
His brow furrowed when I shook my head, and a strange sensation drifted across the bond, almost as though he resonated with the idea of leaving places behind. His finger traced the lines of a map from nearly a year ago, when the bakery had settled in a seaside town.
“Which has been your favorite?”
“It’s impossible to choose,” I said. “Each has provided its own unique experience.”
His expression softened in a way that made my heart patter strangely. “Then each seems worth remembering,” he said.
I looked away first. I tried to convince myself any information was purely practical—the more I knew about him, the greater the likelihood I could discover a way to break this enchanted connection. Yet despite the excuse, genuine interest about the places he’d wandered was beginning to sprout within me. Whether that feeling belonged to me or had crossed the connection from him, I wasn’t entirely certain.
Before I could further nourish this curiosity, Gabe turned away from my maps, and the opportunity slipped away. “I’ll leave so you can change.”
He quietly withdrew from the room, inviting the now familiar tension that always seemed to accompany our separation when the door closed behind him. Eager to escape this suffocating heaviness settling over me, I hastily dressed and joined him on the landing. Together we made our way to the brightly lit kitchen.
I motioned for Gabe to sit at the table while I retrieved ingredients from the cupboard to prepare breakfast. When I turned around with my arms filled with a loaf of bread and several jars of jam, I discovered he hadn’t moved. I cast him a questioning look.
He shuffled his feet. “May I cook for you?”
My eyebrows rose. “You know how to cook?”
I felt a sharp flash of an emotion that I tentatively identified as offense. “I’ve managed to survive in the woods for years,” he said. “Besides, I would like to do something to repay you for the trouble I caused commissioning the confection.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “I’m the one who baked the tart. Anything that went wrong is my responsibility.”
“Unless it was caused by my interference when I insisted on helping,” he countered. “Not only did I contribute my complete lack of baking experience, but I also requested a confection without considering the cost it would require from you.”
Whether our connection was lending him some of my stubbornness or I was simply learning more about his character the longer we spent together, I sensed this was not a battle he intended to surrender. I still opened my mouth to argue, but before I could, Grandmother called my name from her bedroom down the hall.
“Let the boy help, Cecelia.”
I strode to her doorway, conveniently left open wide enough to allow effortless eavesdropping. I gave her a mocking stern look. “You want to insist on allowing a customer to cook in our kitchen?”
“He’s currently our guest,” she said serenely. “And it is only proper to accommodate a guest’s wishes. Besides, I would like to sample such a sweet young man’s cooking. It’s undoubtedly delicious.”
How convenient Gabe seemed capable of transforming between customer and guest depending on whichever title would best support her argument.
I was tempted to roll my eyes, but instead a flicker of amusement bubbled up unexpectedly. I turned and found Gabe unsuccessfully attempting not to smile. Wonderful. Now I was apparently borrowing his amusement too. Good thing Grandmother couldn’t see his reaction from her room; it would only encourage her.
“You are certainly persistent in your current efforts,” I informed her. “Too bad none of your meddling will work.”
“We shall see, dear. Enjoy your unsupervised time together.” She winked, then lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Be sure to return later and satisfy an old woman’s curiosity with every juicy detail.”
With a suppressed sigh, I tucked the quilt around her, set her knitting on the bed next to her, and turned my back on her wriggling eyebrows. For as unwelcome as her matchmaking remained, I didn’t have the heart to discourage it when it brought her so much obvious delight.
I returned to the kitchen and paused in the doorway, staring. Encouraged by Grandmother, Gabe had apparently decided my approval was unnecessary. He already stood over the hearth, breaking eggs into a skillet. When he noticed me watching, his familiar blush immediately returned, though he stubbornly remained at his post.
“Forgive me,” he said. “You seemed unlikely to accept otherwise, and I truly want to thank you.”
Through the bond I sensed another emotion beneath the embarrassment—nervousness, not over the cooking itself, but over whether I would like it.
