Page 52 of Bean

“Hey, sunshine?”

He turned, the tips of his ears pink the way they always turned whenever I called him that.

I fought the urge to cradle his face and kiss him. “I think we have enough. I’m not going to be able to retain all this information.”

“I’m going to teach you the basics. Then you get the joys of experimenting.”

“We’ve already seen how that ends,” I warned him.

He laughed again, brightening as he leaned into me. “I have faith in you.”

“Yeah?” I hadn’t heard that in so long. Or…ever? Oh,hell.

He glanced behind him, then surged up and took a swift kiss that left me breathless and stunned despite the fact that it had lasted only a second. “Come on. We’d better get out of here.”

I followed with a rush in my steps that I couldn’t hold back.

“Cooking is mostly about timing,” Bean said. “And tasting. Obviously, you can’t sample raw eggs when you’re cooking an omelet, but with everything else, you taste as you go. And the thing I remember the best is you can always add, but you can’t subtract.”

I had my own little black book now. Well, it wasn’t black. It was a legal pad I’d swiped from work, but it served well for my notes as I wrote down everything Bean was saying. He was taking mercy on me tonight and only making me work a little.

He’d dressed a chicken for roasting, drying it off, then rubbing herbed butter under the skin before putting it in a roasting pan I hadn’t even realized I owned. After that, we washed and chopped potatoes and carrots, and I followed along with the motion of his hands, trying not to get too distracted by how damn competent he was and how much it was turning me on.

But I was half-hard and thrumming with need as I watched him stir the couscous in the pot.

“You sure you trust me to remember all this?”

“If I can do it, then trust me, you’ve got this,” he said with a wink. He was smiling, but he also looked a little run down, and part of me wanted to say screw it and order out and let him just lounge. But I knew he’d be insulted if I tried to coddle him.

“You say that, but you have a real knack for this, sweetheart. I’ve always been a damn disaster in the kitchen.”

He bit his lip and turned away, but I could see him frowning. “May I…? Could I…?”

“What is it?” I prompted gently in case it was aphasia instead of hesitation.

“It’s about your ex.”

I deflated, leaning against the counter and moving closer to him. “Anything you want to know.”

“I don’t want to, you know, feel bad for making you talk about him.”

I chuckled and reached out, tracing a line down his jaw, making him shiver. “Trust me, it’s totally fine. I don’t mind. We were married for a long time. He was a huge part of my past, even if it was all the unhappy parts.”

Bean studied my face, then nodded. “What’s his name again?”

“Gio.”

“Didhehave an Italian grandmother?”

I threw my head back and laughed. “Yeah, he did. But she died before we got married, so I never got to meet her. His mom took over that role, but she didn’t like me very much.”

“Because you were a man.”

I hummed. “She eventually got used to it, but she had dreams of him with a nice Catholic girl and half a dozen kids. She was mostly put out that we didn’t make her a grandma.”

Bean turned his gaze away. “Did he cook for you?”

I almost choked on my own tongue. “Oh, honey. No. He was as bad in the kitchen as I was. We lived on takeout and meal services.”