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Callum had made himself at home in my kitchen. He looked comfortable putting the food away in my empty cupboards. He looked good in my kitchen.
I busied myself with dragging the fold up wooden table out of the storage closet and two chairs. Setting them up on the veranda, I tried to make them comfortable with cushions from the armchairs in the living room. The seats were ok for half an hour, and then the slats bit into my arse. I preferred my oversized bean bag for scouting missions on the internet and a bottle of red wine by my side.
At least there was something I could offer for the meal, and that was wine. An old client of mine was so grateful that I found him his sports magazine, he sent a dozen cases of Rioja to my PO Box. I still had half of that left.
While Callum chopped and behaved like a chef, I knelt down next to his legs. He looked down at me and smirked. I hid my face and grinned, the position was not lost on me, and I wondered for a moment what it would feel like to have his fingers thread through my hair to hold it in place.
Grabbing the nearest red wine bottle, I stood, twisted the cap and left the wine to breathe.
Filling the saucepan full of water, Callum placed it on the electric hob and then tried to figure out how to turn it on. I didn’t know, having never used the cooker.
“Have you ever used this oven? It looks spotless,” he said, opening and closing the oven door for the fourth time.
“Nope. There must be a mains switch, let me look in the cupboard,” I said and crouched down again where I had taken out the wine. I had to shift the boxes to the side to reach the back, and that’s when I saw a bright red switch. Flicking it down and coming away from the cupboard, Callum held out his hand to help me up.
Taking his hand was the most normal thing in the world. It was strange to believe I'd only met him four hours earlier and yet I felt like I've known him all my life. I took his hand and stood up and then moved to the kitchen doorway. My resistance to touching him was weak.
“I’m going for that shower now, I won’t be long,” I said, leaving him to it and hurrying away. His heated gazed followed me out of the room.
Adaline
By the time I’d showered and changed, the aroma of spaghetti bolognese had filtered through to my bedroom. It smelled fabulous. I wish I had the culinary gene, but I never could cook or bake. At school in home economics, everything turned out either burned or undercooked. When I lived at home, there were no proper pots and pans to practice cooking. It meant that I never trusted that I wouldn’t give myself food poisoning. With the hours I kept, it made sense to go in search of food when I was hungry, I left it to the last moment to eat. Almost to the point of fainting. I didn’t drink enough water after cycling. I was thankful I lived in a city where there was a takeaway or restaurant every ten steps. Plus, most of them delivered. I hoped Callum hadn’t found my drawer full of takeaway menus.
I pinned my hair up into a bun, it was still damp from the shower, but I didn’t want to blow dry it. It was just dinner with my new tenant, not a date. Standing in the doorway to the kitchen, I watched as Callum tasted the bolognese simmering in the saucepan. He closed his eyes as he hummed his approval. It was quite a turn on, his voice was beautiful and masculine. His shaved head suited him, but I wanted to know why he had a shaved head. There were no signs of a receding hairline. There had to be a reason, but it seemed rude to ask him why. I’m sure he wouldn’t ask why I always wore my hair up in many styles.
“Shall I leave you to it?” I asked.
“No, stay and keep me company,” he said while covering the saucepan with the glass lid. “Now you’re out of the shower, I’ll leave it to bubble away for a while and then put on the spaghetti. Tell me about how you met Steph and Elliott,” he asked.
“I met Steph first in school and then Elliott a short while after. We shared a moment at the start of the school year, poking fun at the headmaster. From then we were firm friends. They never made me feel unwelcome as their third wheel. I’m sure they wanted to shake me off.”
“Yeah, they’re great at that, I met them at University. They were there to study, and I was building a stage in the drama hall. It’s a small world we both know them.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said and hopped up onto the counter to watch him work. We fell silent while he cooked.
He pulled off basil leaves from the plant he’d bought and put them in a pile on the chopping board. Next, he grated parmesan cheese into a bowl. He moved with ease around my kitchen like he had been there many times before tonight. In the large cloth bag, he pulled out dinner plates and cutlery.
My handbag was still on the counter where I’d dumped it earlier. While Callum finished making dinner, I concentrated on the notebook to make a start on the ball arrangements. Scribbling over the pages, I made a list of the people I need to speak to in the coming days.
Accessing the email account was a priority, I hadn’t had time to access it after I spoke with Steph. She’d reset the password for me. I walked through the kitchen to get my laptop and brought it back to where I was sitting. I liked that Callum didn’t want to chat. He’d asked a question, I’d answered it, and then there were no further questions. The way I preferred it. Logging into the email account for the charity ball, I glanced through the messages to find that well over five hundred unread messages were waiting for me.
Slamming the lid of the laptop down a little too loud, Callum glanced over at me and raise an eyebrow. I waved away his concern, and he went back to making dinner. Callum took a teaspoon of the spaghetti sauce and brought it over to where I was sitting. He nudged my knees apart and stood in between them. He waited for me to open my mouth without asking and let me take the sauce from the spoon.
An indecent moan left my lips, it was the best spaghetti sauce I had ever tasted. This man in my kitchen was a culinary genius. He could cook for me anytime. I’d closed my eyes to savour the taste and felt his thumb graze the corner of my lips. My eyes sprang open, and he was inches away from me. He wiped away the stray drops of the sauce and then sucked on his thumb. I froze to the spot not knowing what to do next. My hand wanted to curl around his bare neck and bring him down for a kiss.
Callum stepped back, his eyes telling me he would have liked to have kissed me.
While Callum went to check on the spaghetti, I lifted the lid of the laptop once more. Typing in my long password to bring the screen back to life. I once again scanned the hundreds of messages. Scrolling down, it looked like they'd all been sent in the last 4 days and from one person.
“I wonder who Darlene is,” I voiced aloud.
“What’s that?” He said.
“I agreed to organise the charity ball this year. I’m taking over from an event organiser who quit the job. There seems to be a hell of a lot of emails from Darlene, and she’s not happy.”
If he answered, I didn’t hear. Taking a deep breath, I scrolled to the bottom to the oldest email first. Reading through everyone's questions, it appeared my predecessor had answered no emails or any queries about dietary requirements. She’d ignored the basic questions of what time people needed to be at the hotel and when they could expect their official invitation. The musicians wanted to know what time they needed to arrive to set up their equipment.
While she had ignored the questions, everything had been booked which eased my angst about taking over a job. I’d just read the final email when a large dish was waved in front of my nose. The smell was fantastic. I closed the laptop lid, looked at Callum who was holding two dishes. Hopping down from the counter I followed him outside to the table. Two wine glasses that weren’t mine and water glasses with a pitcher of water sat in the middle of the table.
