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“You’ve thought it at the window.”

She turned back to face us.

“He’s big,” she said, her eyes gone dreamy. “He’s tragic. He’s respectable. Half the county’s curious about him and the other half owes him a favor. The grannies would empty their savings in a heartbeat. Rain, sweetheart, light of my life, the roof would be coppered by sundown and⁠—”

“Asha.”

“—and I know just who to ask.” She smiled at me the way lightning smiles at a barn.

Out in the square, the most honest male in three counties suddenly became very interested in the buckle of a strap that may never have come loose.

The back of his neck had gone dark.

He’d heard every word.

CHAPTER TEN

GORAN

Rain had heard Asha inside the bakery. I’d heard her from across the square.

After collecting Rain, we started for home.

Neither of us said the word booth for three miles of road, and we went inside the cottage still not saying it.

While she hung up her shawl, I went to the kitchen and put the pan on.

“Let me help,” she said, coming up behind me.

“No need.”

“That’s what you’ve said every day since I moved in.” She’d shoved her sleeves up already.

“Kitchen’s mine.”

“I know. I don’t work it.” She came and stood at the height of my elbow and looked up. “Goran. I’ve run a shop since I was nineteen. I’m not decorative. Give me a job.”

There was no arguing with her when she said things like that. I’d watched her do it to Mrs. Piddock. Old Tom. It worked every time, even this one.

I gave her the knife and the onions and stepped back.

She was good at it. Fast hands, and she talked the entire way through about the fair and the tins and what the grannies were saying. She didn’t look up, because she was working.

I stood in my kitchen with nothing to do.

It was never a chore. This was how it was done. Ogres fed their mates. I’d been dreaming about doing it across a market for two years and under my roof for over a week, and she thought she was being waited on.

So I let her cook my supper. I watched her do it. It cost me more than the meat.

She put the onions in the pan, reached for the salt, and stopped, blinking at the food. She turned around with the knife in her hand and glanced up at me before turning back to the pan, then looked up at me again.

“Oh,” she said.

“Hm.”

“You like doing this.” The words worked their way out of her mouth. “You’re not being polite. You’ve been—” She lifted the knife, studying it. “This is your field. I’ll get out of it.”

She set the knife on the board, handle toward me.