Page 48 of He Loves Me Knot
The crowd thinned again, and Callum moved farther away.
She let out a slow, shaky breath.Stop being ridiculous, Liddy.
“Okay, these. One of my favorites.” Callum stopped at a stall and picked up what appeared to be a spiky, hairy ball, no bigger than the size of a small plum. They were a mix of colors—red, yellow, orange.
“What are they?” She wrinkled her nose at them suspiciously as he held one out.
“They call themmamónes chinoshere, but I’ve seen Asian food markets that carry them and call them rambutan. I don’t know if there’s an English translation other than that.” Callum filled a small plastic bag, then paid for them. “Try one.”
Liddy frowned. “Just . . . eat it? Hair and all?”
He grinned. “No, that’s not edible. You peel it.” He peeled the spiky red portion off, revealing a grape-like white fruit on the inside. “It’s got a big seed on the inside, but the surrounding fruit is really sweet.” He popped the whole thing in his mouth.
She took another from the bag, then followed his instructions. As the sweet fruit hit her taste buds, she gave him a surprised look. Itwasgood. Not too intense, just mild and pleasant. And aptly, sort of like a peeled grape. “Okay, I approve.”
“See? I won’t lead you astray.” He wandered toward another stall. “Now these are not sweet, but they’re possibly my favorite thing in all of Costa Rica. They’re calledpejibayes—the peach palm fruit. Ticos eat them with mayonnaise frequently.”
They continued a tour of Callum’s favorite foods, grabbing guavas, jocotes, cas, granadillas, cut sugar cane, soursoup—known as guanabana—enormous papayas, and mangoes that dripped with juice when she bit into them. As the bags of fruit they’d bought weighed down Liddy’s backpack, she felt a strange sort of happiness in her.
“Did you know that wandering around and doing stuff like this is my favorite way to get to know a new country? When I moved to England, I bought this guidebook—” She stopped short.
Yeah, he knows about the guidebook. He was there when I got it.
That seemed like a different Callum.
Actually,no, the man with herright nowseemed like the Callum she’d met that day. Like he’d walked out of that bookshop and become someone else. And now he was back, smiling and laughing at her reactions to different foods, watching her with an unnerving fascination.
He held her gaze, then quirked a brow. “I can see you being the type of woman who likes to wander through the flower stalls on Columbia Road or the Borough.”
“Guilty.” She held her palms up and shrugged. “One time, right after I’d moved, I went to Paris by myself for the weekend and just spent hours by the Bouquinistes of Paris, then drank hot chocolate and ate pastries by the river, just reading. It was heaven.”
“That sounds nice.” He nodded toward a vendor who had hot peppers displayed. “But Costa Rica is more for the thrill seekers, you know. Or are you going to read a book while going on a canopy tour?”
“Is that supposed to be a dare?” She set her hands on her hips, arms akimbo.
“It’s not a dare.” He shook his head. “I’m just saying you might have come to the wrong country for midnight strolls with poetry and some hack playingLa Vie en Roseon a poorly tuned violin.”
“Hmm.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And you don’t think I can hack it?”
“Can’t? No. I’ve been around you long enough to be firmly convinced that youcando anything you choose to do. And the past twenty-four hours have only confirmed that fact. Butwon’tis another matter.”
Given she’d just spent the past forty minutes trying new foods, his words stung. For whatever reason, she wanted, maybe even needed, Callum to believe she was up to any challenge.
“Oh, you sad, sad, compensating man. We’ll see which one of us can take the heat.”
She didn’t wait for his reaction as she marched up to the pepper vendor. “Qué es mucho spice?”
The vendor furrowed his brow at her. “¿Qué?”
Callum strolled up behind her. “What are you doing?”
She turned and looked over her shoulder at him. “Ask him which one is the spiciest.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
“You know there’s no need to go mad here, Winnick. I was just teas?—”