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Kylian plucks it from the air and salutes Rune with it. “My favorite.” He walks off, crunching his carrot as he goes.
Smiling, my eyes return to Rune, who blows out a heavy sigh and goes to grab a big wooden chopping board and a chef’s knife.
I sit on the edge of the counter, kicking my feet as he eviscerates an onion.
Thoroughly absorbed in watching his knife fly over the wood, I startle when he says, “You like to draw.”
I hesitate. “Maybe.”
“And you’re righthanded,” he says, head down as he nudges the onion aside and gets to work on mincing celery. “When I handed you a wooden spoon, you reached for it with your right.”
Where’s he going with this?
“So?”
He pulverizes garlic next, proving he might have forgotten his family’s recipe, but wielding a knife like a chef is instinctive. “When you saw the pencil I left beside your plate, you tucked your right hand behind your back.”
I almost do it again. I’m not entirely sure why when I don’t get the impression Rune is about to start dishing out a punishment that nearly broke me. Fear, I guess.
I observe him quietly as he gathers his chopping board of minced veggies and heads for the stove. He turns the gas on and adds a generous drizzle of oil into a big metal pot.
It’s only after he’s scraped all the veggies into the pot that he glances up at me. “Can I assume that reaction is a result of something Lawrence said or did?”
Both.
Pain and threats against my little sister. There was no way I’d pick up a pencil knowing it would be Della who paid the price for my rebellion.
I meet his eye and say nothing.
He gives me a long, probing look and nods as if I’ve confirmed everything he needed to know before he refocuses on his pot. “It’s still there, by the way. Whenever you feel like drawing, it’s right there.”
“Sure,” I say.
But I won’t be touching that pencil or the sketchpad.
Not until I know—
No, Everleigh. Leave the pencil where it is.
Rune is not a silent cook. He hums a song I don’t know under his breath, his deep, rich voice lulling me into a restful mood. Sometimes he mutters an ingredient, veers away from the pot to riffle through a cupboard. But at no point is he ever silent.
I like watching him cook, moving around the kitchen smoothly for such a big man. It’s strangely hypnotic.
“You can ask,” he says as he adds tomatoes to the pot.
I frown. “Ask what?”
“About how a Cajun cook ended up as CEO of a billion-dollar company and forgot how to make his mawmaw’s famous shrimp étouffée on the way.”
I blink. “Mawmaw?”
From his profile, he’s smiling as he adds a generous dash of salt to the pot. “What I called my great-grandma when I was a boy.” He throws a boyish grin over his shoulder. “It was just Maw when I was in a pissy mood.”
“You’re one of the mysterious Pack Ashe,” I remind him. After what Cian told me during our dance, I test out a theory. “I think the only things people know about you are what you want them to know. Or rumors.”
He nods. “We’re careful with our friends and who we let into our home and into our hearts.”
“You also never bring a woman—omega or otherwise—into this house. Unless that’s—”
