Chapter
Twelve
Axel brownedthe short ribs hard in a steel pan, then set them in the oven. The recipe had called for wine, but Reese was pregnant, so he used stock instead. He set the table by the window for two while listening to Miles Davis. As the short ribs cooked, the rich smell of the braise slowly filled the apartment.
Her text pinged on his phone.Here.
He went downstairs and found her at the building’s street entrance. She had a Sweet Summit box balanced on one hand. “It’s a blackberry-lavender galette. I was going to get apple pie, but Brie talked me into it.”
He walked her up. At his door she went in ahead of him and took in the apartment with a slow glance, lingering on the record wall and the windows before turning back toward the kitchen.
“It smells so good in here. What are you cooking?”
“Short ribs, handmade pasta, and crusty bread.”
“That sounds so good right now.” She set her purse on the couch and examined his record collection. “This is impressive.”
“I’ve been collecting them for a long time.”
She came into the kitchen and looked at the pot through the oven glass and the mound of flour he’d staged on the counter for the pasta dough. Her eyes did the inventory and came back to him. “Give me a job. I’m not letting you wait on me like at the lake.”
He gave her the dough and showed her how to fold it, then how to run it through the pasta machine. She fed the sheet through while he caught it. They stood close, her shoulder brushing his arm. He could smell her—lilac, clean cotton, and something warmer underneath. His inner wolf purred.
He cut the sheets into wide ribbons. She asked where he learned how to make homemade pasta, and he told her the truth: a worn cookbook from a library sale and a hundred failed attempts since moving into this apartment.
He dropped the pasta into the pot and returned the water to a boil. He worked quickly to finish the meal after that. He took the short ribs out of the oven and lifted the pasta out of the water. He then mixed the pasta with the pan juices. She stood off to the side with her hip against the counter, watching him cook.
He grabbed some shallow bowls from the cabinet, divided the pasta between the bowls, placed the meat on top, and spooned the last of the braising liquid over both. He added a little parsley and black pepper. He carried the bowls to the table while she followed with glasses of iced tea. They ate with Main Street going dark below.
The short ribs fell apart under his fork, rich and tender, the sauce clinging to the pasta with garlic and the deep salt of the meat. Reese took the first bite and went quiet. Her eyes closedfor a second. Then she took another bite, slower this time, like she wanted to understand every part of it.
Axel watched her shoulders loosen, watched her attention settle on the bowl, watched the stress leave her face while she ate something he had made for her. Pride moved through him. She liked his cooking. He wanted to cook for her again.
She finished what was in her bowl, and Axel slid the last piece of short rib onto her plate.
Reese looked at it, then at him. “How did you know I was eyeing that?”
“I take feeding you very seriously.”
She laughed and cut into the rib with the side of her fork. “You cook like one of our Saturday guys. He salutes the ticket rail before every rush, like he’s reporting for duty.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not at all. He’s completely serious about it. Every Saturday. Hand to forehead. Then he starts cooking. How about you? Do you have any crazy coworker stories?”
“Ryder narrates drone footage in a documentary voice.”
She looked up. “Ha!”
“He’s like... ‘Here we see the elusive subcontractor in its natural habitat.’”
She kept laughing.
“Dom made him stop doing it on open comms.”
When they were done, they carried the bowls to the sink. He cut the galette into thick wedges and set them on dessert plates. Then he crossed to the record wall and ran a finger along the spines until he found the one he wanted.
“This calls for something special,” he said. “To match the blackberries.”
