"How's he doing?"
"He asked me to go to the Bozeman custody hearing for Madison."
She set down the cookie cutter and looked at him. "You're going, aren’t you?"
"I am. I’ll do whatever I can to help him get his daughter."
She nodded and dumped out the next bowl of cookie dough.
“Why did you make the cookie dough in a half-dozen small bowls? Why not mix it all at once in your big stand mixer?” he asked curiously.
“It’s my great grandmother’s recipe and I’ve never figured out how to make it taste the same and have the same lightness as when I make one batch at a time according to her recipe. I worked on it for over a year and finally gave up. It only works with the ingredients mixed in the exact amounts she wrote down.”
She rolled out the last bowl of dough, working it gently into a flat disk. "Reno, is there something I should know about you?"
He stopped in the act of putting the last cookie down on the counter in front of him.
She didn’t look at him as she started cutting stars.
He thought, for a beat, about lying. He thought, for the next beat, about telling her everything. He thought, for the beat after that, about how she’d worded the question—something I should know—without specifying how he should interpret that. She’d given him room, the way she gave everybody room.
"There is."
"And?"
"And I’m going to tell you. Just not today."
"All right."
He stared at her, shocked. "You’re not going to ask when I’m telling you, or if it’s something terrible, or if you shouldn’t be letting me be under the same roof as you and your daughter?"
"No. I asked what I needed to know for now."
She kept working.
He went back to picking up stars and spacing them out evenly on the cookie sheet.
He helped her cover the sheets of cookies with plastic wrap and carry them over to the refrigerator. He washed his hands again at the sink while she arranged the trays in the frig to her liking.
He dried his hands and stood by the marble counter, watching her as she walked back toward him. The light from one of the small, high windows in the back wall backlit her, turning her golden hair into a nimbus of pale fire around her shadowed face.
Hand-to-heart truth, she looked just like an angel who’d come down from Heaven to fetch him home. Never mind that she wore a plain, pale blue blouse with her sleeves rolled up and flour dusting the fine hairs on her forearms. She was so beautiful in that moment his breath caught in the back of his throat and he could only stare at her in awe.
She stopped in front of him and stared back at him.
He had no words. But fortunately, she didn’t seem to need any from him.
The moment grew around them, the air pulsing like a living thing against his skin, coiling around him like a rope slowly but surely pulling him toward her and her toward him.
She was the first one to give in to it and take a slow, deliberate step forward.
She laid her right hand flat on his chest and then reached up with her left hand and laid it lightly on the side of his jaw.
He held his breath, not even daring to blink lest this magical being made of golden light disappear in that instant. He waited in wonder as she rose up on her toes because he was a head taller than she was, and she slowly, very slowly, came closer to him.
Their gazes remained locked, then her mouth touched his and their eyes closed in unison.
Her lips were warm and soft and entirely real as she kissed him. He stood perfectly still and let her control the moment in its entirety. He kissed her back lightly, tasting flour on her lips along with hints of sugar and lemon.
