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“Signora Scarlett is very pretty, no?” Maria made eyes at me as I passed her.
“I don’t know what you mean, Maria.” I avoided her gaze but heard her chuckling behind me as I made my way to the kitchen.
“Soon, I’ll be tall enough and won’t need it anymore,” Leo said, dragging his stool over to the kitchen counter. “And this is how you have to hold the knife if you want to keep all your fingers.”
I laughed lightly, rolling up my sleeves to get going with the meatballs. Scarlett seemingly gave Leo her undivided attention, nodding with interest and asking all the expected questions as he rattled on, barely taking a breath as he explained to her the intricate art of chopping tomatoes.
“You’re good with him,” I said, when Leo had scampered off to grab some herbs from the pantry.
Scarlett dipped her head, lifting her eyes to me. “He makes it easy. He’s a good kid.”
“Gets it from his dad,” I replied with a wry grin, adding my selection of spices to the ground beef in the bowl.
Scarlett’s laughter warmed the space between us, and it wasn’t lost on me how her presence there made it feel like a real home. I hadn’t had that feeling in forever.
“You know, I never would’ve guessed you knew your way around a kitchen,” she said, her smile reaching all the way up to her eyes, making them twinkle.
I scoffed. “With a grandmother like mine? She didn’t care that I was a boy. She used to tell me, ‘A good man must be able to feed himself.’”
My impression of my grandmother sent Scarlett into another fit of laughter, and a deep warmth spread throughout my chest. I would’ve been happy to be responsible for that sound and nothing else for the rest of my life.
The thought stopped me dead, and my hands froze up with a ball of uncooked beef between them. I shook my head to get rid of the unwanted thoughts. The domesticity of the moment was to blame. Of course, there was no possibility of a future with Scarlett, and I was better off leaving all that stuff alone.
“I’ve never heard you talk about your family before,” Scarlett said.
I gave an indifferent shrug, her observation reminding me of that plane ticket burning a hole in my inbox.
“There’s not much to say,” I replied, hoping she’d leave it at that.
“I can’t find the basil,” Leo said, returning with his arms full of other jars.
I breathed a sigh of relief, thankful for his interruption. “Try the window sill, son. We should have some fresh leaves to pick.”
“I can’t reach up there,” he said, lining up his jars of dried herbs carefully.
Scarlett slid off her chair and went over to the window above the sink. “I’ll get it,” she said. “How many do you need, Chef Leo?”
He giggled at that and replied with, “A bunch.”
We fell into an easy partnership after that. Scarlett was Leo’s right-hand woman, and I supervised one of the most chaotic spaghetti and meatball dinners of my life. There was a mess, there was belly-rolling laughter, and at one point a huge dollop of tomato juice splattered to the floor.
“We’ll get it later,” Leo said with a dismissive wave, concentrating on the freshly made pasta he was feeding into the shredder.
“Oh, we will?” I asked with raised eyebrows.
He started laughing again, knowing full well that he’d never cleaned up so much as a spoon in that kitchen.
Maria caught my eye as she came into the dining room to say goodnight. She’d obviously overheard the three of us while cooking, and the continued merriment over our lip smacking dinner. I could easily read the open expression of warmth on her face as she gave me a knowing nod.
When I turned back to the table, Scarlett was looking at me with a soft smile on her face. There was no denying that the past few hours had been the homeliest time we’d spent together in that huge, empty mansion. Even with the effort I always made to spend time with Leo, cooking together, playing in the yard… Having Scarlett with us seemed to add a different dynamic. A missing link to it all.
But I didn’t want to think about that. I couldn’t.
“Okay, Leo went out like a light,” Scarlett said, coming into the kitchen where I was clearing up after dinner.
“That’s what you think,” I replied with a chuckle. “He can’t be trusted.”
She picked up a dish towel and started wiping down the counter. “I read him a bedtime story, and he was snoring before I got to the third page.”
