are done,’ Claire said, looking flustered and adorably pink.
‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ he asked again.
This time, to his relief, she stopped treating him like a guest who had to be waited on. ‘Could you open the wine? The corkscrew’s in the middle drawer.’
‘Sure. Would you prefer red or white?’
‘We’re having chicken, so it’s entirely up to you.’
He looked at her. ‘You’d serve red wine with chicken?’
‘Well, hey—if you can cook chicken in red wine, then you can serve it with red wine.’
He wrinkled his nose at her. ‘Am I being regimented again?’
‘No. Just a teensy bit of a wine snob,’ she said with a grin. ‘You need to learn to go with the flow, Sean. Carpe diem. Seize the day. It’s a good motto to live by.’
‘Maybe.’ By the time he’d taken the wine from her fridge, found the corkscrew in the jumble of her kitchen drawer, uncorked the bottle and poured them both a glass, she’d served up.
He sat down opposite her and raised his glass. ‘To us, and whatever the future might bring.’
‘To us,’ she echoed softly, looking worried and uncertain—vulnerable, even—and again he felt that weird surge of protectiveness towards her. It unsettled him, because he didn’t generally feel like that about his girlfriends.
‘This is really lovely,’ he said after his first mouthful. Chicken, stuffed with soft cheese and asparagus, then wrapped in parma ham. Claire Stewart was definitely capable in the kitchen, and he could tell that this had been cooked from scratch. He’d assumed that she’d be the sort to buy ready-made meals from the supermarket; clearly that wasn’t the case.
‘Thank you.’ She acknowledged his compliment with a smile.
‘But you’re not reasonable.’
She frowned. ‘Excuse me?’
‘You called yourself a reasonable cook,’ he said. ‘You’re not. You’re more than that.’
‘Thank you. Though I wasn’t fishing for compliments.’ She shrugged. ‘I used to like cooking with my mum. Not that she ever followed a recipe. She’d pick something at random, and then she’d tweak it.’
‘So I’m guessing that you didn’t follow a recipe for this, did you?’ he asked.
‘I cooked us dinner. It’s not exactly rocket science,’ she drawled.
Why had he never noticed how deliciously sarcastic she could be?
‘What?’ she asked
He blinked. ‘Sorry. I’m not following you.’
‘You were smiling. What did I say that was so funny?’
‘It was the way you said it.’ He paused. ‘Do you have any idea how delectable you are when you’re being sarcastic?’
It was her turn to blink. ‘Sarcasm is sexy?’
‘It is on you.’
She grinned. ‘Well, now. I think tonight has just got a whole lot more interesting. Are you on a sugar rush, Sean?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Working where you do, you have toffee practically on tap. Eat enough of the stuff and you’ll be on a permanent sugar rush. Which, I think, must be the main reason why you’re complimenting me like this tonight.’
No. It was because it was as if he’d just met her for the first time. She wasn’t the girl who’d irritated him for years; she was a woman who intrigued him. But he didn’t want to sound soppy. ‘Honey,’ he drawled, ‘the only sugar I want right now is you.’
She laughed at him. ‘Now you’ve switched to cheese.’
‘No. You’re the one who’s served cheese.’ He indicated the stuffing for the chicken. ‘And very nice it is, too.’
Her mouth quirked. ‘Keep complimenting me like this, and...’
‘Yeah?’ he asked, his voice suddenly lower. What was she going to do? Kiss him? That idea definitely worked for him.
‘Oh, shut up and eat your dinner,’ she said, looking flustered.
‘Chicken,’ he said, knowing that she’d pick up on the double use of the word—and he was seriously enjoying fencing with her. Why had he never noticed before that she was bright and funny, and sexy as hell?
Probably because he’d had this fixed idea of her as a difficult girl who attracted trouble. That was definitely true in the past, but now...Now, she wasn’t who he’d always thought she was. She’d grown up. Changed. And he really liked the woman he was beginning to get to know.
She served pudding next—a seriously rich chocolate ganache teamed with tart raspberries. ‘Come and work for my R and D department,’ he said, ‘because I think you’d have seriously good ideas about flavouring.’
She smiled. ‘I know practically nothing about making toffee, and if I make banoffee pie I always buy a jar of dulce de leche rather than making my own.’
‘That’s a perfectly sensible use of your time,’ he said.
She grinned. ‘It’s not so much that you have to boil a can of condensed milk for a couple of hours and keep an eye on it.’
‘What, then?’
‘I had a friend who tried doing it,’ she explained. ‘The can exploded and totally wrecked her kitchen.’
‘Ouch.’ He grimaced in sympathy, and took another spoonful of pudding. ‘This is a really gorgeous meal, Claire.’
‘I didn’t make the ganache myself—it’s a shop-bought pudding.’
‘I don’t care. It’s still gorgeous. And I appreciate the effort. Though, for future reference, you could’ve ordered in pizza and I would’ve been perfectly happy,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to spend time with you.’
‘Me, too,’ she said softly. ‘But I wanted to—well...’
Prove to him that she wasn’t the flake he’d always thought she was? ‘I know. And you did.’
And how weird it was that he could follow the way she thought. Scary, even. She was the last woman in the world he’d expected to be so in tune with.
Once he’d helped her clear away, she said, ‘I thought we could have coffee in the living room.’
‘Sounds good to me.’
‘OK. You can go through and put on some music, if you like,’ she suggested.
Claire’s
