“Did you leave room in your suitcases for seasonally appropriate clothes? Because you know it’s only going to get colder and wetter while you’re here,” she teased.
“At least I’ll eat well. Could I use this area of your counter?” He gestured to the large butcher’s block Gary had installed when the kitchen was updated from the original laundry sink and two-burner stove. A shallow dip in the center of the laminated maple spoke to the thousands of meals Anna and others had prepared over the years.
“Of course. What else can I help with?”
“Nothing at this point. The dough will need to rest about thirty minutes before I roll it out.” Leo wiped the wood with the cloth Anna provided and poured a blend of all-purpose and pasta flours onto the board. He formed a bowl shape in the center of the mound and cracked two whole eggs into the center.
“Do you have a dish? I need to separate two more eggs. Oh, and a fork.”
Anna reached into the dishwasher and handed him a clean cereal bowl and the utensil. “This size okay?”
“Perfect. And do you have some olive oil?”
“Right there.” She pointed to the bottle standing next to the stove.
He squinted at the label and returned to cracking eggs and adding the extra yolks to the mixture, leaning back and chuckling as a fine spray of flour hit the front of his shirt. “It’s been awhile since I did this. Do you have an apron I could borrow?”
She opened the deep drawer holding stacks of dishtowels and mismatched cotton napkins and fished out a ruffle-edge apron patterned in shades of 1950s’ tomato red and bottle green. Leo dropped his head so she could position the loop around his neck and sneaked in a kiss. A smattering of silvery white hairs glistened throughout his thick chestnut hair, especially above his ears. She drew the ties around his waist and secured them with a lopsided bow.
“You really should consider this as part of your daily look,” she observed.
Leo paused and looked down the front of his chest. His tried to hold a serious face while his eyes twinkled. “I think I need more ruffles. A lot more ruffles.”
They exchanged bits of casual conversation as he mixed and kneaded the dough and Anna washed leaves of the lettuces she grew in barrels on her porch. When the dough was ready, he wrapped the ball in plastic to let it rest. Outside, a southwesterly wind had picked up, sending cones and needles from the Douglas fir trees scampering over the roof.
He washed his hands, removed the flour-streaked apron, and cradled his glass of wine in one hand. “Join me on the couch?”
“Soon as I’m done with this.” She was almost finished patting the remaining lettuce leaves dry with a threadbare linen towel. Her phone rang as she moved to join her guest.
“Mom, I missed the last ferry. Can I stay with you tonight?”
Anna had no idea Gigi was on the island, and she’d never said no in the past to her daughter’s spontaneous sleepovers. Faint alarms trilled along her spine. She was entering territory for which she had no prior protocols. Her daughter would meet her lover. One of her lovers. Daniel wasn’t a lover yet, but he might be.
“Of course, you can,” she assured Gigi. “Are you hungry?”
“Starving. I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and then I lost track of time, so yeah, food would be good.”
“Then come join us.”
“Okay. See you soon.”
Us. Gigi hadn’t noticed Anna used the word.
She looked over at Leo, somewhat apologetically. “That was my daughter. She’s joining us for dinner. Are you okay with that? I’m sorry. I should have asked before I said yes, but I think you’ll like her.”
“The more the merrier,” he said. “I made enough dough for at least five or six people. Do you have any kind of a drying rack?”
“Like the kind for hanging laundry or a flat one like for cakes?”
“Laundry. Those racks with the wood dowels?”
“I do. It’s in the linen closet in the hall.”
He came off the couch and followed the direction of Anna’s uplifted arm.
“Be careful you don’t start an avalanche,” she cautioned as he rounded the corner to the hallway. “That closet’s been in dire need of organizing for years.”
A muffled reply sounded from the closet as he struggled to extract the apparatus. Leo returned to the kitchen, triumphant, the tangle of wood rods held aloft like a trophy. “Time to make the pasta!”
Anna reassembled the slightly warped pieces while Leo dusted the surface of the cutting board with fresh flour. He did the same with the rolling pin, his movements elegant and sure.
She leaned one elbow on the counter, openly appraising the man’s skill and the flourishes he added for her viewing pleasure. It was nice to have a competent cook in her kitchen after these years by herself. She’d been meaning to try her hand at pasta-making, and besides, he had a beautiful, aquiline nose and a story-filled face, and she was still experiencing post-orgasm aftershocks from their earlier encounter.
When he reached a flour-covered hand to his hair and ruffled the longish bits at the top, a random memory tapped at Anna’s shoulder. She shook it off, unsure what it had to do with anything going on in her kitchen, in this moment.
A light honk announced Gigi’s arrival. Anna went into panic mode and dashed into the living room, hurriedly rolling up the blankets and tossing them, along with the pillows, into her bedroom and closing the door.
“Leo,” she hissed, “if you call me Saffron, my daughter’s really going to wonder what’s going on here.”
“Time to drop the cloak of anonymity, I guess. I’ll go first.” He wiped his hands on the frilly apron and affected a mock
