Something Innocent

Something Innocent
He looked away from me then, making my eyebrows dip into a frown.

"Nathan," I called out again.

He cleared his throat and stood up. "I'll order braised pork."

I stared at him. "I just asked you a question."

"I heard you." He was already moving toward the kitchen, opening the fridge like the conversation had wrapped itself up and filed itself away without my permission.

I watched him for a moment. The set of his shoulders. The very deliberate way he was reading the contents of his own refrigerator like it required serious concentration.

Fine. Okay. None of my business anyway. Whatever he'd been through, he'd been through it long before I showed up and he'd tell me when he wanted to or he wouldn't and honestly that was fair. I wasn't exactly handing out my own history either.

I uncurled from the couch and padded over to the kitchen.

"Move," I said.

He turned and looked at me. "What?"

"If you actually want to treat me to dinner." I nudged him aside with my elbow and looked into the fridge. "Let me cook."

"This is my kitchen."

"And that's my skill." I scanned the shelves. Eggs. Butter. Salmon. Good cream. Fresh herbs still in the bag. I turned and looked at him. "I doubt a CEO like you can make anything I'd actually enjoy eating."

He crossed his arms. "I can cook."

"Nathan. What's the last thing you made."

Silence.

"In this kitchen," I added.

More silence.

I turned back to the fridge. "That's what I thought. Sit down."

I turned back to the counter and started looking for a knife roll and he didn't argue again which was basically a confession. I found the knives in the second drawer, good ones, barely used, and pulled my hair over one shoulder and reached for the band on my wrist.

I felt him before I heard him.

He had moved from where he was standing and suddenly he was just behind me, close enough that I went still without deciding to, and his hands came up slowly and took the loose strands I'd missed, gathering them back with a patience that had absolutely no business existing in this specific moment, his fingers light and careful at the nape of my neck.

I stared at the counter in front of me.

Neither of us said anything.

He finished and stepped back and I stood there for a second longer than necessary before I cleared my throat and reached for the knife.

"Thank you," I said, very casually, to the salmon.

"Mm," he said, equally casual, moving to the other side of the counter.

I exhaled slowly through my nose and picked up the knife and started working.

I could feel his eyes on me and it made me so nervous. I bit my lower lip, my brain replaying the feeling of his fingers at the nape of my neck, the careful way he'd gathered every strand like he had all the time in the world and nowhere else to be.

Stop it.

I focused on the salmon and made my first cut.

"You've done that before," Nathan said.

I looked up. He was leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, watching my hands with something between curiosity and surprise.

"Done what?"

"That." He nodded at the fish. "The way you're holding the knife."

I looked down at my hand. Grip relaxed, blade angled correctly, the kind of thing you stopped thinking about after years of doing it until it just became the way your hand naturally sat against a handle.

"I cook sometimes," I said simply and went back to work.

"That's not just sometimes." He pushed off the counter and came a little closer, watching the way I was breaking down the fillet. "Where did you learn that?"

"My mother." I kept my eyes on the fish. "She was good in the kitchen. Taught me young."

He was quiet for a moment. "Your mother cooked like that?"

"She did everything like that." I turned the fillet over. "Precise. No wasted movement. She always said if you respect the ingredient it will respect you back."

The kitchen was quiet except for the soft sound of the knife on the board.

"She sounds like someone worth knowing," Nathan said.

My hand slowed for just a second before I caught it and kept going. "She was," I said, and left it there.

He didn't push. He just straightened up and opened the fridge again, pulling things out and setting them on his side of the counter, and I watched him sideways for a moment, this man in his expensive apartment in his barely used kitchen, rolling his sleeves a little higher and looking at his ingredients with the focused expression of someone who was taking this very seriously.

"You're actually going to cook," I said.

"I never said I would not."

"I don't believe you."

"I know." He picked up a knife with a strong grip that wasn't embarrassing, which surprised me more than I expected. "When I was young there was a chef. She worked for our family for years and I spent more time in her kitchen than anywhere else in the house." Something shifted briefly in his face. "She taught me a few things."

I watched him make his first cut.

"Hm," I said.

He glanced at me. "Hm what."

"Nothing." I went back to my salmon. "You might not embarrass yourself."

"High praise."

"Highest you're getting tonight." I reached for the cream. "What are you making?"

"You'll see."

"Nathan."

"Cook your food, Lilly."

I gave him a look he didn't see because he was already focused on his own board and I turned back to my salmon and we cooked in silence for a while, just the two of us and the sound of things hitting hot pans and the smell of butter and herbs filling up the kitchen and honestly it was the most comfortable I had felt all day.

Maybe all week.

"I want to get to know you," he said.

I kept my eyes on my pan. "That was random."

"Was it."

"You could have just asked a question like a normal person."

"I'm asking now." He reached past me for the salt without looking up from his own work and I moved slightly to give him space and he said, "You first."

"Why do I go first."

"You're the guest."

"You invited me."

"You chose the location."

I opened my mouth. Closed it. He had a point and I hated that. I stirred my cream sauce slowly and thought about it and said, "Fine. What do you actually do when you're not being intimidating in lobbies and scaring off arranged dates."

He considered this seriously, which I hadn't expected. "I read."

"Read what."

"History mostly. Military strategy." He turned his food over carefully. "Architecture sometimes."

"Architecture," I repeated.

"Buildings tell you more about a person than they do." He glanced up briefly. "The way something is built tells you what the person who built it was afraid of losing."