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“I think we deserve a little something to keep us warm after being out in the cold and the snow all day, don’t you?” He catches my eye and winks at me.

I can’t help but laugh at that. Even confused and tired and ready to be done with this trip, Tate manages to bring some lightness to it all. He’s good at that.

“Sure,” I agree. “I could definitely use a drink.”

“Ares? Callan?” he calls, shaking the bottle harder in the direction of the living room where the two of them are currently sitting. “Whiskey time.”

They both agree to the drink, and Tate finds glasses in a cabinet and pours with a generous hand.

I sip at mine slowly, savoring the heat and the burn. It’s not the best stuff, not like we would find that in a small town grocery store, but it does warm me up all the way to my fingers and toes. I can feel myself loosening up, all the tension starting to bleed out of me as I drink more. And that’s nice. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to relax like this. Not since we started this stupid trip, that’s for sure.

I lean against the counter and watch as Tate starts putting things away. He puts things in the refrigerator, adds things to the cabinets, and lines up some ingredients along the counter for whatever he’s planning to feed us.

If I didn’t already know he was a chef, I might have suspected it after watching him like this. He moves with a grace and confidence in the kitchen that I don’t see from people who don’t spend a lot of time there.

I finish the rest of my drink and then stand up straight. “Is there anything I can do to help?” I ask him.

Tate flashes me a smile. “Sure. I’m not going to turn down more hands for this. You can be my sous.”

He pours us both another drink and then starts pulling out vegetables to chop.

“Should you be using a sharp knife while you’re drinking?” I ask, half teasing him.

Tate smirks and looks right at me while his knife keeps moving with impressive precision through the onion he’s dicing. He doesn’t need to look at the onion or the knife, but it moves smoothly, not cutting him at all. There’s so much casual skill on display, and I take another gulp of my drink, which does nothing to calm down the heat in my face, but gives me something to do with my hands.

“Okay, point taken. You don’t have to show off.”

He laughs. “But I like showing off. And showing off for a beautiful woman is the best thing there is.”

I watch as he works his way through another onion, then he beckons me closer to the cutting board.

“Here, it’s not hard.”

He takes the glass out of my hand and then wraps my fingers around the knife. The onion gets scraped into a bowl and Tate replaces them with a carrot on the cutting board. He stands behind me and shows me how to move the knife quickly and evenly.

“Curl your fingers in like this, so if you slip, you only get the outsides of your knuckles and not something more important.”

I mimic the way his fingers curl in, and Tate nods his approval. “Like that, yeah. Now let the knife do the work. If the knife is sharp enough, you don’t need to use a lot of force. Remember, dull knives are more dangerous than sharp ones.”

“Really?” I give him a skeptical look and then focus back on the carrots, trying to get them in mostly even pieces.

“Really. Think about how hard you have to press to cut through something thick with a dull knife. You’re much more likely to slip on something that doesn’t have a flat side to rest it on, like a carrot or a potato. The potato rolls, the knife slips, your hand is in the way.”

“But if it’s dull, wouldn’t it be harder to cut your hand the same way it’s harder to cut a potato?” I ask.

“No. Even a dull knife can mess you up if you have enough force behind it.”

Together we work through chopping up carrots, celery, and some potatoes. Tate pulls a large pot out of one of the cabinets and sets it on the stove to heat with some olive oil he found next to the stove.

He takes one look at the brand and shudders, but glugs it into the pot anyway.

“Let me guess, you’re an olive oil snob,” I tease.

“And proud of it.” I end up getting a crash course in how there are different kinds of olive oils and some are not for cooking. Some have more flavor for adding to dips or vinaigrettes. And apparently some are such low quality that they shouldn’t be anywhere near a kitchen.

It’s interesting to listen to him go off about olive oil of all things, but his passion for quality ingredients and good food is clear in every word he says. I keep asking him things, keeping him talking while I shred the rotisserie chicken he picked out and he works on the soup broth.

As it turns out, the soup he’s working on is one of the first things he learned to make when he was younger, and it’s his go-to when he needs something warm and comforting to eat.