who did somehow seemed even worse.
Oh, this was not good.
“House,” he finally finished. “I’ll be in my house.”
She nodded, not trusting herself to say anything. Or do anything, for that matter. Not until he was gone, and she could reboot herself back into the cooking machine she was. The cooking machine she had to be. The one driven only by her senses of taste and smell. Because the ones that dealt with hearing and seeing and, worst of all, feeling—were simply not allowed.
* * *
A ham and cheese sandwich.
Hogan had suspected the dinner Chloe set in front of him before disappearing back into the kitchen without a word was a sandwich, because he was pretty sure there were two slices of bread under the crusty stuff on top that was probably more cheese. But his first bite had cinched it. She’d made him a ham and cheese sandwich. No, maybe the ham wasn’t the Oscar Mayer he’d always bought before he became filthy, stinking rich, and the cheese wasn’t the kind that came in plastic-wrapped individual slices, but croque monsieur was obviously French for ham and cheese sandwich.
Still, it was a damned good ham and cheese sandwich.
For side dishes, there was something that was kind of like French fries—but not really—and something else that was kind of like coleslaw—but not really. Even so, both were also damned good. Actually, they were better than damned good. The dinner Chloe made him was easily the best not-really ham and cheese sandwich, not-really French fries and not-really coleslaw he’d ever eaten. Ah, hell. They were better than all those spot-on things, too. Maybe hiring her would pay off in more ways than just winning back the love of his life. Or, at least, the love of his teens.
Chloe had paired his dinner with a beer that was also surprisingly good, even though he was pretty sure it hadn’t been brewed in Milwaukee. He would have thought her expertise in that area would be more in wine—and it probably was—but it was good to know she had a well-rounded concept of what constituted dinner. Then again, for what he was paying her, he wouldn’t be surprised if she had a well-rounded concept of astrophysics and existentialism, too. She’d even chosen music to go with his meal, and although he’d never really thought jazz was his thing, the mellow strains of sax and piano had been the perfect go-with.
It was a big difference from the way he’d enjoyed dinner before—food that came out of a bag or the microwave, beer that came out of a longneck and some sport on TV. If someone had told Hogan a month ago that he’d be having dinner in a massive dining room at a table for twelve with a view of trees and town houses out his window instead of the neon sign for Taco Taberna across the street, he would have told that person to see a doctor about their hallucinations. He still couldn’t believe this was his life now. He wasn’t sure he ever would.
The moment he laid his fork on his plate, Chloe appeared to remove both from the table and set a cup of coffee in their place. Before she could escape again—somehow it always seemed to Hogan like she was trying to run from him—he stopped her.
“That was delicious,” he said. “Thank you.”
When she turned to face him, she looked surprised by his admission. “Of course it was delicious. It’s my life’s work to make it delicious.” Seemingly as an afterthought, she added, “You’re welcome.”
When she started to turn away, Hogan stopped her again.
“So I realize now that croque monsieur is a ham and cheese sandwich, but what do you call those potatoes?”
When she turned around this time, her expression relayed nothing of what she might be thinking. She only gazed at him in silence for a minute—a minute where he was surprised to discover he was dying to know what she was thinking. Finally she said, “Pommes frites. The potatoes are called pommes frites.”
“And the green stuff? What was that?”
“Salade de chou.”
“Fancy,” he said. “But wasn’t it really just a ham and cheese sandwich, French fries and coleslaw?”
Her lips, freshly stained with her red lipstick, thinned a little. “To you? Yes. Now if you’ll excuse me, your dessert—”
“Can wait a minute,” he finished. “Sit down. We need to talk.”
She didn’t turn to leave again. But she didn’t sit down, either. Mostly, she just stared at him through slitted eyes over the top of her glasses before pushing them into place again with the back of her hand. He remembered her doing that a couple of times earlier in the day. Maybe with what he was paying her now, she could afford to buy a pair of glasses that fit. Or, you know, eight hundred pairs of glasses that fit. He was paying her an awful lot.
He tried to gentle his tone. “Come on. Sit down. Please,” he added.
“Was there a problem with your dinner?” she asked.
He shook his head. “It was a damned tasty ham and cheese sandwich.”
He thought she would be offended that he relegated her creation—three times now—to something normally bought in a corner deli and wrapped in wax paper. Instead, she replied, “I wanted to break you in slowly. Tomorrow I’m making you pot au feu.”
“Which is?”
“To you? Beef stew.”
“You don’t think much of me or my palate, do you?”
“I have no opinion of either, Mr. Dempsey.”
“Hogan,” he corrected her. Again.
She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “I just happened to learn a few things about my new employer before starting work for him, and it’s helped me plan menus that would appeal to him. Which was handy since the questionnaire I asked this particular employer to fill out was, shall we say, a bit lean on helpful information in that regard.”
“Shouldn’t I be the one doing that?” he asked. “Researching my potential employee before even offering the position?”
“Did you?” she asked.
He probably should have. But Gus Fiver’s recommendation had been enough for him. Well, that and the fact that stealing her from Anabel would get the latter’s attention.
“Uh...” he said eloquently.
She exhaled a resigned sigh then approached the table and pulled out a chair to fold herself into it, setting his empty plate before her for the time being. “I know you grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Astoria,” she said, “and that you’re so new money, with so much of it, the Secret Service should be crawling into your shorts to make sure you’re not printing the bills yourself. I know you’ve never traveled farther north than New Bedford, Massachusetts, to visit your grandparents or farther south than Ocean City, New Jersey, where you and your parents spent a week every summer at the Coral Sands Motel. I know you excelled at both hockey and football in high school and that you missed out on scholarships for both by this much, so you never went to college. I also know your favorite food is—” at this, she bit back a grimace “—taco meatloaf and that the only alcohol you imbibe is domestic beer. News flash. I will not be making taco meatloaf for you at any time.”
The
