Page 4 of Cracking with the Mountain Man

"Fine." I lean against the doorframe. "I put brown butter, fresh cardamom from the Indian grocery in Kelowna, and hand picked Honeycrisps in that pie. Fine is what you say about gas station coffee."

Something flickers across his face. If I didn't know better, I'd call it amusement. "It was good."

"Try again."

"It was really good."

"Owen."

He exhales through his nose. Boone's tail keeps wagging. "It was the best thing I've eaten in three years. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

Yes. That's exactly what I wanted to hear, because I'm a woman who spent four years cooking for a man who said everything was delicious without tasting it, and hearing someone be specific about the fact that my pie mattered makes something bloom in my chest.

"Come in," I say. "I just destroyed a chimney cake and the coffee's still hot."

He hesitates. Glances past me into the cabin, and I watch the calculation happen. How long he can stay before it counts as something. How close he can get before it violates whatever agreement he made with himself about being alone.

"I don't really do visiting."

"It's coffee. You drink it, you leave. Boone can have the chimney cake scraps from the counter."

At the word scraps, Boone pushes past Owen's legs and trots into my kitchen like he's been here before. Owen watches him go. That jaw flexes again.

"Ten minutes," he says, and steps inside.

My cabin is small. One big room that serves as kitchen and living space, a bedroom through the back, a bathroom with a clawfoot tub that convinced me to buy the place. Owen takes up too much space in it. He stands near the counter while I pour coffee, and I'm aware of him in a way that makes my hands feel clumsy. The height of him. The quiet. How he looks at everything once, quickly, taking inventory.

His eyes land on the recipe cards.

"Those your grandmother's?"

"Yeah. She kept notes on everything she ever made. Ingredients, technique, little drawings in the margins." Handing him a mug. "She taught me to cook before she taught me to read."

He takes the mug. Drinks. His expression doesn't change but he drinks again immediately, which means my coffee is better than whatever punishment he's been brewing up there.

"What are you writing?"

"Cookbook. Comfort food from around the world." Gesturing at the laptop with the blinking cursor. "Supposed to be writing the Budapest chapter today. The chimney cake had other ideas."

"What went wrong?"

"Altitude, probably. The dough keeps overproofing. And this oven runs hot."

He sets his mug down, walks to my oven, and crouches in front of it. Opens the door. Looks at the element, the seal, the thermostat dial. Closes it. "Your gasket's shot. That's why it runs hot. Air leak on the right side lets heat escape unevenly, so the left side overcompensates." He stands. "I can fix it if you want. It's a twelve dollar part."

"You can fix ovens?"

"I can fix most things."

There it is again. That flicker. Buried deep under all that granite, something warm.

Boone has found the chimney cake scraps and is eating them off a plate on the floor with the focus of a surgeon. Owen watches him, and the corner of his mouth does something that's almost a smile but doesn't quite commit.

"He was a rescue," I say. Crouching to scratch behind Boone's ears. "Wasn't he?"

A pause. "He was somebody else's dog. Before me."

Something about the way he says it shuts the question down. Somebody else's dog. Somebody gone. I don't push.