“Did you tell her about me?” She pinched the edges of the salad bowls between her fingers.
“Just a few basics. She’s not the one you have to worry about.” He turned his back to her, and she nearly dropped the bowls.
“Worry about?” She set the dishes on the table harder than she’d intended and they sent a clacking sound through the air that made her grit her teeth.
“I mean about being nosy. April just has to hear someone needs her help and she’s the first to offer a hand. Emily’s the cop—or at least she’s going through the police academy right now. She’s the one who’d want your life story.”
Jane scooped her hair back from her face and said, “It’s a good thing she’s busy with the academy, then.”
She hovered over the salads, her face turned away from him, waiting for a reply. All she got was the crinkling of foil.
“Do you like garlic bread?”
She supposed she did, as the smell of that bread had been making her mouth water ever since she’d left the bedroom. She took a deep breath. “I do.”
He emerged from the kitchen, a plate of spaghetti and meatballs in each hand, a wedge of garlic bread balanced on the edge of the plates.
Rob tipped his head back. “Do you want to get some silverware? It’s in the drawer by the toaster.”
She ducked around him into the kitchen and pulled open the drawer. She grabbed two place settings and spun around, almost bumping into Rob, who’d already delivered the food to the table.
His eyes widened for a split second as his gaze dropped to the utensils clutched in her hands. “Knives for spaghetti?”
“Those meatballs looked pretty big. I’d prefer to cut mine with a knife civilly instead of trying to saw it with the edge of the fork and have it shoot across the table.” Her lips turned up at the corners, but her grip on the silverware tightened. He didn’t trust her with a knife in her hand.
Would he ever forget their meeting in the desert? What had he expected her to do when confronted with a stranger at night in the desert after someone had just tried to kill her?
Of course, Rob didn’t know her whole story, and just as she’d been about to tell him, El Gringo Viejo had come between them. She couldn’t tell him now. He’d never believe her.
“Good point.” He scooted past her, his body tense. “I’ll get some water. I’d offer you some wine, but I’m not sure your head needs alcohol right now—unless you want some.”
“Water is fine.” All she needed was to get drunk and babble her troubles into his sympathetic ears—ears that didn’t seem so sympathetic now. Although maybe if she got loaded, her inhibitions would fall away and she might remember something of her life before the crash. She’d have to ask her psychiatrist if that would work—when she got one.
She positioned the silverware on either side of the plates in perfect order. How did she remember inconsequential stuff like place settings but not her own name? Another question for her future shrink.
She sat in front of one plate and waited until Rob returned with the glasses of water before plunging her fork into the steaming pasta. She twirled the spaghetti around the tines and sucked it off her fork. The red sauce dribbled on her chin and she dabbed it with a paper towel.
He pulled the salad bowl toward him and stabbed at a piece of lettuce. “How long do you plan to stay in Paradiso?”
“Until I feel safe.” That was no lie. How could she go out into the world with people trying to kill her? They thought she was dead. They wouldn’t be looking for her. Would they be watching the TV for news about a car wreck with a dead body burned to a crisp? And when they didn’t see it, would they go back?
“You don’t like the spaghetti?” Rob jabbed his fork in the air toward her plate.
“It’s good.” She picked up the knife and cut one of the huge meatballs in half and then quarters. “You see how neat that is?”
“I guess I’d better not stuff the whole thing in my mouth like I usually do.”
Prodding the other meatball on her plate with her fork, she shook her head. “You’re lying. I can’t imagine you doing that.”
“What would make you feel safe?”
She dropped her fork. Was he trying to catch her off guard?
“Oh, just to know my ex isn’t looking for me.” She toyed with the pasta. “Do you feel safe?”
Two could play this game.
His dark brows shot up. “From you?”
She picked up the knife and plunged it into a meatball. “Are you afraid I’m going to stab you in the night?”
“Are you?”
“I already slept under your roof one night—uneventfully. Besides, I didn’t mean feel safe from me. Do you feel safe from your past?”
The Adam’s apple in his neck bobbed as he swallowed—and he didn’t even have any food in his mouth.
“My past? I feel safe. I escaped it, remember?”
She tilted her head. “Did you?”
“What does that mean?” He gulped some water. “Are you sure you’re not a shrink? You talk like one.”
“How do you know what a shrink talks like?”
“Got me.” He formed his fingers into a gun and pointed at her. “Are you kidding? With my upbringing, the school was always sending me to the school psychologist. ‘Are you okay, Roberto?’ ‘How does that make you feel, Roberto?’”
He’d changed his voice with the questions to mimic a woman.
“How did it all make you feel? The violence? The instability?”
He pushed away his salad and attacked his spaghetti. “Made me feel like taking control of everything and never letting go. Made me feel like hunting down every drug dealer and giving him some rough justice.”
His words caused goose bumps to ripple across her skin, but
