but the car was moving quickly.
“Oh nothing,” she said and wondered how long she had been lost in thought. The car pulled into a parking lot, or at least that is what it felt like as the motion sent her rocking back and forth on the seat.
“Can I get up now?” she asked.
“Wait until I get into the garage,” he said concentrating. She waited until the car pulled into a spot and came to a stop. Will released the latch on the trunk from the inside and got out. She sat up and rolled her stiff neck. Will opened the door and held his hand out to her. She took it and got out of the car with her purse and laptop bag. She looked down at his hand in hers. She wasn’t sure they had purposely touched since the first day of work when he welcomed her to the office. He let go of her hand and moved to the trunk. He removed some bags. They seemed to be new, black luggage - must be her store-bought items. There were too many for him to carry on his own, so she took some from him. They walked to a door, and Will flashed a badge in front of a reader. “This is a high security building,” he said and opened the door for her.
“Yeah. Thanks,” she said as she moved through the door. There was a bank of mirrored elevators in the hall. He pushed the up arrow. She deduced there must be more levels of garage below them. They stepped into the elevators when the doors opened and turned around to face them again. Will slid a key into the opening next to the highest floor. “Wow. Penthouse? Nice.” Will didn’t say anything. They rode the elevator to the top floor and stepped off into a very nice apartment or maybe it was a condo. Either way, it was beautiful. “You know, this place is going to make it difficult to go back to the closet I call an apartment. Whose place is this?”
“Mine,” Will said as he carried bags around a corner. She crinkled her eyebrows and repeated what he said. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she saw the kitchen. She tried to remember if she had eaten anything, but the day seemed like it had been a week long. She put the bags she was carrying on a huge white, overstuffed chair. Everything seemed to be white, black or red - very masculine. Will came back around the corner. “I put your bags in the spare room,” he said and walked to the kitchen. “Hungry?” She was confused.
“Um, yeah,” she said and followed him into the kitchen. “Will? Won’t your wife be upset I’m here?” She didn’t know where Will and his family lived and hadn’t really considered a place like this.
“Emily and I are no longer together,” he said while opening the refrigerator. “How about Italian?”
“How about Italian? You just tell me you and your wife are separated and then go into the dinner question like it’s nothing,” she said as she closed the refrigerator and stood face to face with him. He was tall…maybe even taller than she thought. “I’m really sorry, Will.”
“It’s okay. It’s for the best,” he said looking down at her. “Now, do you like Italian? If you’re not hungry, I am.” To Kristine, Italian meant ravioli from a can or pizza take out.
“Italian is fine with me. What can I do to help?” she asked watching him pull out a pot and put it under the sink. She wanted more information on the separation. She tried to ignore the reporter questions spinning like a huge, mid-western tornado through her already over-burdened mind.
He was her boss. Their relationship was strictly professional, and she should keep it that way, right? What if he poured his heart out to her and starting crying about how much he missed his wife and kids? Would she be able to look at him the same way in the newsroom? The answer was no. She didn’t want to break her image of him. That made it easier to let the twister of questions rise back into the clouds.
“Just make yourself at home,” he said. She turned and walked around the counter to the other side of the wall and sat on a bar stool to watch him. The kitchen cabinets were white, the granite countertops were black and the walls were painted a deep red. He took a bottle of wine from a wine rack on top of the refrigerator and put it on the counter. He slid two wine glasses off the rack hanging from under one of the cabinets. He put them on the counter next to the wine and then opened the bottle with ease. When Kristine opened a bottle of wine, it looked more like a wrestling match. The bottles she opened had bits of cork floating in them by the time she was finished.
He poured the wine, twirled it so it could coat the glass and then smelled it. She was mesmerized by him. He was the most sophisticated man she had ever known. He took a sip, put the glass down and then poured one for her. She took a drink, and he smiled as he watched her.
“What,” she asked smiling back. She went to take another drink.
“That’s what I love about you,” he said, and she choked on her wine. She coughed several times and couldn’t tell if her face was red from coughing or what he had said. “You’re not pretentious. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she said as she took the napkin he handed to her. She dabbed at the tears in the corner of her eyes. “Just went down the wrong pipe,” she added. He smiled at her again and went back to making dinner. She ran through the remark again and again. Harmless - she decided. He said “that’s what I love about you” just like people say, “I’m going to kill you” or “I could just die.” Yep. That was it, she thought a little disappointed and a little relieved. She took another drink of wine - a bigger one. She started some small talk about where he learned to cook - he was making spaghetti sauce using tomatoes and fresh herbs and things she didn’t even recognize. He put a couple of black plates, knives, forks, spoons and red cloth napkins on the counter.
“Want to set the table for me?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said and stood. She started setting the glass table, and he refilled her wine glass.
“Hey, don’t forget these,” he said and put a plate of Italian bread, a small dish with olive oil in it and matches on the counter. She thought a moment about why they needed matches. She turned around and saw candles on the table. No big deal. So he likes candles burning while he eats. Only the wicks were still white all the way to the tip. He picked up the matches and came out of the kitchen. “I’ll get these,” he said. He walked past her to the table and lit each candle. His aftershave hung in the air as he went past. Nice.
She tried not to look confused and picked up the remaining items on the counter. “It will be ready in a minute,” he said and went back to the kitchen.
The sleeves of Will’s white dress shirt were rolled up to the elbow. She’d never realized he only wore white dress shirts until now. Despite the dicing of tomatoes, herbs and all of the other ingredients she didn’t recognize, he didn’t have a drop of anything on this clothing. This is how Tara Butmacher would look if she was cooking, Kristine decided with a sly smile. The smile died when she realized what she looked like on the rare occasion she had tried to cook. She’d once had to wash her hair twice to get everything out of it. She was never going to be like Tara, Emily Wentworth-Montgomery or Will. She crossed her arms in front of her as she felt an inferiority complex trying to emerge.
“Shake it off,” she told herself. “You’ll be here for what? A couple of days tops. Then you can go back to your normal life. The story will run, everyone will admire and adore you and the fact you get messy when you cook - or even the fact you can’t cook - will seem charming.” She felt better already and unfolded her arms. She even smiled with a feeling of self-satisfaction.
Dinner was fabulous - better than anything Kristine had ever had in a restaurant. Of course, after paying her outrageous rent for the extremely modest apartment, there wasn’t much left of her paycheck for fancy dining - at least not the kind of restaurants Will was probably used to patronizing.
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