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He was watching her, too, and she nearly clutched her robe closed before telling herself—firmly—that it no longer mattered what he saw. “I’m just throwing something together.” She dropped a bamboo cutting board onto the granite with a clatter. “I took a charcuterie class.”
“You need someone to tell you how to prepare an eighty-dollar Lunchable?”
Her jaw tightened as she turned back to the fridge. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a brat?”
“Only you.”
The words were almost a caress, stroking over her spine like a physical touch. She ignored him when he slid onto the stool to watch her, grabbing various jars and bags from her spontaneous shopping trip and setting them all out on the counter.
She had taken the class with Opal and the other women in book club. They’d been readingThe Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, and Opal had wanted to make it food-themed. They had met up at Donni’s house since she had the nicest house and most spacious kitchen and the instructor showed them how to make a board that looked like a very pretty succulent arrangement with things like radicchio and artichoke hearts and thinly sliced beef.
She made a little sunburst out of Medjool dates, filling the center with snowy-white puffs of goat cheese, with a few dried figs in clusters to act as closed bulbs. Then she constructed a little garden wall out of rosemary cracks, with rosette-like arrangements of beef prosciutto and dry-cured soppressata. It had been Marco’s favorite, and at first she had put it into the cart out of habit, but then kept it there out of spite. He couldn’t enjoy it now, so she would, instead. She curled the meat over the edges of the fence like drooping flowers, adding curls of green bell peppers and sliced green Spanish olives to make a little greenbelt. In the sky, she made a sun out of Munster cheese and sharp cheddar. Since she didn’t have anything blue, she made the sky green as well, using mixed greens from the bag of salad she bought, with small mozzarella blobs as the clouds.
It looked painfully juvenile, like one of those art projects kids made in school, but she found herself feeling proud of it. When she looked up, Rafe was watching her with such a look of concentration that she nearly balked—but then he smiled.
“What’s so funny?”
“This,” he said. “You. You’re like Zsa Zsa Gabor meets Wednesday Addams, which should be a contradiction—and yet somehow you make it work.”
“An act,” she said flatly.
“I’m not so sure.” His eyes went to her face. “I think you’ve always had that edge to you. My father was just too stupid to see it. He thought you were just another empty-headed starlet.”
She pulled her robe closed and knotted the sash. “You’re just like him,” she said. “You’re attracted to the idea of me. Not who I really am.”
“No,” he said. “I’m attracted to that vicious glint I see in your eyes when you fuck me. The one you try so hard to hide when you’re busy fooling everyone else. But you can’t fool me.”
Her arms flexed in anticipation when he slid off the stool, but instead of approaching her, he went to the fridge. She watched him pull out two bottles of the Icelandic alkaline water she loved, setting one on the counter before uncapping the other for himself.
“I’ve always liked your authenticity,” he said. “Your sense of fun. You didn’t used to apologize for being who you are or doing what you want—but now you do. Especially, for some reason, when it comes to me.”
“I wonder why,” she said.
“So do I. You should get over it. We could have a lot of fun.”
He reached over to pluck a piece of cured meat from the board. She smacked his hand away, her anger spiking when he laughed at her. “I don’t have time forfun,” she said. “Unlike you, I don’t have the luxury of sitting on my ass all day, playing with my fucking typewriter in between frolicking in the leaves.”
His smile widened, and the effect was so devastating that she found herself nearly short of breath. “You’ve been stalking me on Instagram.”
Donni made a point of fussing with her phone as she snapped a picture of her pathetic-looking board, tagging a few of the brands she’d used in the hopes that they’d send her a jar of pickles, or even a bundle of coupons. “I Googled you,” she hedged. “Don’t flatter yourself. How does that work, anyway? Do you send the typewriter pages in via telegram?”
“One of the interns transcribes the pages. As soon as your books start netting six figures, you can do whatever you want.” He leaned against the granite. “So how far did you go?”
She cleared her throat loudly. “What I don’t understand is how the attacker was able to get into the house in the first place. Didn’t you hear them come in?”
“Yes.” Rafe gave her a look that suggested he knew exactly what she was doing. “You leave your key on the front porch. It wouldn’t exactly be very difficult to steal.”
“I already thought of that,” Donni said. “But I checked on the way in, and it was still there. I’ve moved it to the key hook inside now.”
“They could have made a copy,” Rafe said grimly.
Donni gulped. She hadn’t thought of that. “I’ll call a locksmith.”
“Probably wise. What about my father’s PO box? Did you learn anything from picking through his mail?”
The packages. In the wake of everything else that had happened so far, she had forgotten all about them. “One of them contained a passport and a new ID with different names.”
That wiped what remained of the humor on his face. “He was going to leave you.”
