Page 53 of Pumpkin Spice and Promises

“Matt.”

“It wasn’t tragic. It was just quiet.” He tapped the spoon on the pot rim. “And then it turned out I loved it. Best hour of the day, even now. You put good things in a pot, and you pay attention to them, and it comes out better than it went in.” A small pause, the spoon going around. “Not much else works like that.”

It landed in me sideways, that—the picture of a quiet kid in a quiet house, finding the one room where the care you put in came back out again. He didn’t say it was sad, so I didn’t take it as sad. But I filed it away with the rest of what I was learning about Matt Hartford, which was that every soft thing about this man had been built by hand, by him, on purpose, out of whatever was lying around.

“And Becca? She cook too?”

“Becca,” he said, with the gravity of sworn testimony, “used to set the smoke alarm off making toast.” Almost a smile, remembering. “She took dish duty.”

He tapped the spoon on the pot rim, considered it, and then held it out to me across the counter, one hand cupped underneath to catch the drip, his eyes coming up to mine.

“Here. Tell me it needs anything. I dare you.”

So I leaned in and tasted sauce off a wooden spoon held perfectly steady by Matt Hartford in his warm kitchen, his gaze dropping to my mouth and staying there, and if you want to know what the sauce needed, it needed nothing; it was perfect, and I’d have told him so if I could have remembered any words in any language.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, low, entirely too satisfied about it, and turned back to the stove. “Set the table, Starling. And quit looking at me like that, or nobody’s eating tonight.”

I set the table.

“Nine,” I announced, after taking my first bite.

He looked up. “Nine.”

“Solid nine. Genuinely excellent.”

“Out of ten?” He asked, brow furrowed.

“Out of ten,” I confirmed, grinning at his confusion.

Something moved across his face that I’d never seen there before—he was pleased, actually pleased, and trying to hide it, and failing, and then all at once he narrowed his eyes at me. “Where’s the tenth point?”

“It’s withheld.”

“On what grounds?”

“On the grounds that we tasted off the same wooden spoon back there, Officer, which is a health code violation, and I’d hate to think what the county would say.”

“You put your mouth on my spoon. I didn’t force you.”

“You offered me the spoon.”

“I offered you a taste. There’s a difference. You went in like you were being timed.”

“That’s slander,” I said, “and I’ll be docking a further half point,” and Matt Hartford laughed with his whole chest, head back, both hands flat on the table.

Dinner went long. We didn’t hurry. He told me about the academy, and I told him about the year the maze flooded, and at some point, I stopped keeping track of the conversation and just let it happen. When I finally got up to wash my hands, I took the long way back, because his house was warm and I was in no rush to be anywhere.

On my way back from the bathroom, I passed an open door and slowed, because I am nosy and a cracked door is a personal invitation.

“Becca’s room, historically,” Matt said from the kitchen, reading my pause through the wall the man has no right to read me through. “She used to stay here sometimes, off and on, back before Levi. Hasn’t needed it in a good long while.” A beat, and then, drier, “You can rate the hospital corners if you want. I know you want to.”

“Nine,” I called back. “Improper pillow technique.” But I stood there one more second before I moved on, my hand on the doorframe, because it was such a him room—kept ready, kept warm, for somebody who was happy now and didn’t need it—and something about it made me want to walk back into the kitchen and get my arms around him and not explain why. So that’s what I did. He was at the sink, and I came up behind him and wrapped my arms around his warm, solid back and pressed my face between his shoulder blades, and he went still, and then he put one wet hand over both of mine and held on, and neither of us explained anything, and the water ran.

“Hi,” he said, finally, amused, a little rough.

“Hi. I’m helping with the dishes.”

“Is that what this is?”