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"Are you cooking in a shirt with two buttons missing?"

"I'd like to know who's responsible."

"I plead the fifth." She crosses the kitchen in four steps, takes the spatula out of my hand, sets it on the counter, and with the other hand turns off the burner without once looking away from me. Her eyes have gone green. "You made tea."

"Honey's on the side."

"I see that." Her voice has gone soft and a little rough. She's very close, she smells like sleep and warm skin and lavender from the bag she must have slept beside. "Mae?"

"Mae."

"I'm going to have to buy her a new roof."

I don't answer, I can't. She puts her palms flat on my chest and walks me back until the counter's against the small of my back, then she looks up at me, steady, with a small private smile that I haven't seen yet, the one she keeps for herself, and slowly sinks to her knees on the linoleum.

"Rosey—"

"Shh." Her hands are at my belt. "You've been so busy being useful. Let me."

I've been touched by a great many people in my life and almost all of it has had a strategy. This doesn't. It's slow and lazy and unhurried, the morning light on her hair and her hands warm on my thighs, her mouth soft and sure.

I get one fist in the counter edge and the other in her curls and I say her name, and then I can't say anything. Somewhere behind me the bacon gives a last crackle. She hums, low, amused, and the sound goes through me like a plucked wire.

I come with my head thrown back, shaking, her name in my mouth and the eggs forgotten, every thought in my head gone clean and bright as glass.

She rests her forehead against my hip, laughing silently, her shoulders shaking.

"That," I say when I can speak, "was not on the menu."

"It's the chef's special." She looks up, flushed and smug and thoroughly pleased with herself, and I get my hands under her arms and lift her to her feet and kiss her like a drowning man. She tastes like me and tea and her. "You're ruining breakfast."

"I was ruining it before you came down."

"True." She pats my chest. "I'm going to shower. Five minutes. Try not to burn the house down."

"You'll be missed."

"You'll live." She pauses at the door, the robe sliding off one shoulder, one hand on the frame. For a moment, a long, ordinary, perfect moment, she just looks at me, her whole face open. "Roman."

"Yes?"

"Thank you for the faucet."

She goes up the stairs. I stand in her kitchen, undone and absurdly happy, listening to the old pipes shudder as the water comes on overhead.

The bacon's beyond saving. I scrape it into the bin and start over because I'm a man who starts over, and I set two plates on the table and a fork beside each. I set the honey dish at her place.

On the third try I get a pancake round.

The phone rings on the counter at 9:41.

I look at the screen, MARGARET HALE, and my pulse does something unhelpful. I've got a spatula in one hand and a skillet handle wrapped in a dish towel in the other, a pancake halfway through the flip. I jab the speaker button with my knuckle.

"Margaret. It's Sunday."

"It's nine forty-one, you're awake, you copied me on the emails to Maine at two in the morning, so don't pretend you were sleeping." Her voice fills the kitchen, brisk and dry and absolutely familiar. "I'm calling for two reasons. The first is that Hallett flies to Singapore at midnight and the board would like this done. The vote's moved to six o'clock tonight. I'll have you on the line. I'll need the final list by two so I can circulate it."

"Margaret—"