Unless…
He looked at her. She couldn’t meet his gaze, which was totally out of character.
Unless the party was an excuse to cover the fact that she was doing it for him. Which would explain the blushes…
He scooped the onions into a waiting dish.
‘Anything else?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Maybe you’d prefer to miss the main course and go straight to the pudding?’
‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘Risk aversion?’ she offered. ‘I’m more at home with a tin of polish than a bottle of olive oil.’
‘Nonsense. Between us we can beat this.’
‘You can cook?’
‘I can read,’ he said, wiping his hands and taking the glossy cookery book from its stand. ‘How hard can it be?’
Ten minutes later the onions were sizzling in the pan and Ellie, stirring them carefully while they softened, decided that it wasn’t hard at all.
‘Ready?’
‘Ready,’ she said, then added each of the spices as Ben, reading from the recipe, handed them to her.
Then he added the chicken, taking charge when it started to catch. ‘Gently does it,’ he said, snatching the pan from the heat, turning it down, then returning the pan to her so that she could brown it all over. ‘Didn’t you learn this at your mother’s knee?’ he asked.
‘No. My sister did all that stuff. I was considered a liability in the kitchen.’
‘Hence the need to impress her? Your sister?’
‘Pathetic,’ she agreed. And she wasn’t just referring to her feelings of inferiority.
Why didn’t she just tell him the truth? Get it out into the open. Be honest with him. How hard could it be?
How would that sound?
Amusing? Opportunistic? Exploitative?
How would she feel if the shoes were on the other feet?
She added the water, covered the pan and turned it down to simmer, turned to him. ‘Now what?’
He shook his head. ‘That’s it for fifteen minutes.’
‘It’s that easy?’
‘Apparently.’ Then, checking the recipe, ‘Oh, no. Now you have to cover the couscous with boiling water and leave it for fifteen minutes-’
‘I think I can handle that.’
‘And when that’s done we have to add the baby onions to the stew.’
‘Stew!’ She turned on him, arms akimbo. ‘Wash your mouth out, Ben Faulkner. This isn’t a stew!’
He laughed. ‘Quite right. Sorry, ma’am. Do you want to come down the cellar and help me choose a bottle?’
The cellar. He had to be joking…
‘Of mouthwash?’
‘I think I can do a little better than that. My father was a wine dealer.’
‘Really?’ She’d assumed Ben came from a long line of academics.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve never seen it? Isn’t it part of your duties as house-sitter to inspect every part of the house for potential problems at least once a week?’
‘Spiders? Cobwebs?’ She couldn’t quite control the little shiver that betrayed her. ‘I don’t think so.’
He regarded her with something like amusement. ‘Do I detect just the hint of a phobia?’
‘A hint? Please. Do I do anything by halves?’ she asked, doing her best to smile back. ‘Imagine, if you can, a full-blown case of the screaming habdabs and you’ll be close.’
‘I’ll take that as a no, then, shall I?’
‘You get the wine; I’ll organise the table.’
A few minutes later he found her in a sheltered walled corner of the courtyard that held the last rays of the sun. He was carrying two glasses of white wine and he handed one to her, looking thoughtfully at the table, laid with a cloth, napkins, silver, a tealight candle in a fancy holder.
‘You’ve gone to a lot of trouble just for a “taste”,’ he said.
It was true. She had. She’d tried to write about the food without actually going to the bother of cooking it. She just couldn’t get the feeling right. She needed to smell the onions and spices cooking, taste them. Feel the dusk gathering around her. Test the candle…
Belatedly she saw what Ben must be seeing, and realised that it suggested an intimacy she had never intended.
‘It’s a citronella candle,’ she explained. ‘It’s supposed to deter midges. I wanted to know if it worked.’
‘Of course.’
‘Really.’ She looked at him. Oh, no…‘I’m not…’
He cocked an eyebrow.
He didn’t believe her. He thought she was trying to seduce him or something. As if she’d choose to do it with her useless cooking…
‘I’m just not-okay!’ she said, putting the glass down. Walking away. ‘I’ll go and get on with the next bit.’
Ben watched Ellie hurrying back to the kitchen. ‘Pity…’ he murmured. Pity.
The garden was absolutely still. For a while he stood there, considering exactly what that meant. Considering a future that suddenly seemed to have some meaning beyond work.
Needing a moment, he crossed the garden to the rabbit run, intending to shut Roger and Nigel away for the night. On an impulse he picked up the rabbit. He nervously burrowed his head down into the crook of his arm. Ben stroked him gently, reassuringly and after a moment he responded, looked up.
Ellie was right, he thought. He was warm. Gave back trust.
He tucked the pair of them up for the night, safe from the urban fox he’d seen loping through the garden early in the morning.
He straightened, lingered, not quite ready to return to the kitchen and Ellie. The only sound was a blackbird filling the air with his liquid song, fighting off competition from the faint ringing of a telephone in a neighbouring garden.
Ellie was ruffling a fork through the couscous when he rejoined her in the kitchen, adding more water, not looking at him again.
‘I suppose Natasha was a brilliant cook, too?’ she said, tetchily.
‘Cordon Bleu,’ he assured her, casually helping himself to another pistachio as he crossed the kitchen. ‘She could peel an onion without shedding a tear. She never got pink and flustered browning a piece of chicken,’ he said, as she slapped at him with the fork. ‘And if some small creature happened to drop on her while she was in the garden, she’d just pick it up like this…’ ignoring the way she was glowering at him, he smiled, retrieved the small spider that was scaling her shoulder and heading for her neck ‘…and put it outside.’
He walked across to the door and dropped the inoffensive creature in the nearest flowerbed. When he returned, Ellie hadn’t moved.
She tried to speak. Her mouth moved, but the words never made it.
He’d hoped that if he handled it calmly, without any drama, she’d see that it wasn’t a big deal.
Apparently not.
Clearly she’d been underplaying it when she’d owned up to the screaming habdabs; she was beyond screaming, totally incoherent with fear.
‘It’s okay, Ellie,’ he said. ‘It’s gone. You’re all right.’ For a moment she remained absolutely rigid. Then, with a shudder, she seemed to collapse against him and, putting his arms around her, he said it again. ‘It’s okay.’
Actually, with his arms around her it was. Very much okay. And in a gesture that was meant to comfort, reassure, he brushed his lips against her temple.
