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Eyes wide, she interrupted. ‘For my preference?’
‘Si—who else’s?’
‘Yoursandmine, maybe,’ she answered, and used a pair of tongs to scoop several pancakes onto her plate. She lifted another lid and found fruit. She spilled a heaped ladle-full on to her plate. ‘In our house it’s eat it or starve.’
‘Eat it or starve?’ he repeated. ‘I’m not familiar with the phrase.’
‘What there is to eat, is what there is to eat—so you eat it.’
‘But you live on a farm.’
‘A dairy farm.’ She rolled up the sleeves, revealing her delicate forearms. ‘So there’s always milk.’ She picked up her cutlery and paused. ‘Are you eating?’
‘No.’ He bowed his head towards her plate. ‘But, please...’
Knife and fork in hand, she looked at her food. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how it went?’
‘I can see how it went,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a bath.’
‘A long one,’ she agreed. ‘But that’s not what I meant.’
‘I have no desire to know what happened on the phone with your family,’ he dismissed. ‘The only family I care about is sitting at this table.’
That stung.
‘Icare,’ she whispered.
His gaze narrowed. ‘So I should?’
She heard the inflection of his words. The question.
Quietly, she put her cutlery down and gave him her full attention. ‘They’re my family. Of course they should matter.’
‘To me?’ he asked. ‘Why would they matter to me?’
A boy with dark hair curling around his ears appeared in her mind without invitation. A boy dipping torn bread into cheese and handing it to the shadow of a woman she couldn’t picture. Couldn’t conjure anything but that shadow, which appeared as clear in her mind as a photograph.
‘Don’t you understand?’ she asked.
But howcouldhe understand? Her family wasn’t perfect, but...
His gaze flicked to the left and then zeroed back on her within the flash of a millisecond. ‘Understand what?’
Flora’s heart stopped as she took in the deep frown lines between the darkly shaped eyebrows, the focused intensity of his gaze.
‘They’re your family now, too.’
Slowly he nodded, and she let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding.
His hands flexed where he’d placed them on the table. ‘What do they need?’
‘What do you mean?’
He splayed his fingers, palms forward. ‘Is the farm in some sort of financial trouble?’
‘Of course not,’ she dismissed. ‘The farm is doing well. The farm is fine. What does that have to do with anything?’
‘Their livelihood—your family home—is safe?’ He frowned. ‘Then they don’t needme.’
