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His meetings ranlonger than he’d hoped but he finished up at one in the afternoon. Angelica was in the kitchen singing along to John Mayer and dancing around as she cut up vegetables.
“Hello.”
She stopped singing and looked over at where he stood in the doorway. “Mrs. Humphries went to run errands and I wasn’t sure what you wanted for lunch. I’m making a salad but there are ingredients for just about anything you like in the fridge.”
“I’ll have a salad too,” he said. Mrs. Humphries always prepared his lunch and though he was sure that Angelica saw the makings of a lot of fabulous meals, Max didn’t cook.
Angelica went to get another plate from the cabinet and then looked over at him. “Grab a cutting board and we can chop together. I love salads but the work involved makes me usually reach for takeout.”
He had no idea where the cutting boards were and sort of stood there looking at her for a second. It was his house; he didn’t want her to think he was that lame. He started opening drawers and she chuckled.
“What?”
“The cutting boards are over here,” she said. “It’s a big kitchen. Trust me, you don’t want to just open drawers.”
“Ah, I have Mrs. Humphries for this,” he said.
“I know, but what about midnight snacks?” she asked, getting him a knife and putting some vegetables on his tray.
“I don’t eat at midnight.”
“What else don’t you do?”
“Make my own lunch,” he said dryly.
She shook her head. “Well there’s a first time for everything. Is this like ordering pizza?”
He arched one eyebrow at her. “My mother is a big believer in hiring people to do things she doesn’t want to. She passed that down to me.”
“My mom is a big believer in knowing how to do everything,” Angelica said.
“I can see that. So show me how to do this,” he said.
“Can you cook bacon?” she asked.
“Yes, I can do an omelet too.”
“Figures. Morning-after breakfast before you say goodbye to your lover, right?” she asked.
He wasn’t going to apologize for that. It was the one meal he knew how to make, well one of two actually. “I can make chicken noodle soup too.”
“You can? Why?” she asked as she handed him a package of bacon from the fridge. “Cook a few slices to crumble on the salad, I’ll do the rest.”
“Thanks,” he said. “The soup is a necessity. When I’m sick I don’t want to have staff around who might catch it. And soup…it’s the one thing my mom makes. It’s comforting.”
She stopped chopping and studied him for a long moment. He had the feeling she was going to ask something, but the way she hesitated told him it wasn’t something he was going to want to answer. He put four pieces of bacon in a cold frying pan and then turned the heat on.
“Um…about your family…?”
He put the rest of the bacon back in the fridge and let her sort of non sequitur hang in the air. He didn’t want to talk family. It didn’t matter that he’d invited them here for Christmas or that he had learned way too much about hers last night. His was different.
“Is your silence an ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ silence or a ‘give me a moment and I’ll tell you everything’ silence?” she asked as she started making a salad dressing in the bottom of the big bowl she’d taken down to assemble the salad in.
“Neither. What do you want to know?” he asked. He flipped the bacon, determined to answer her questions about his family. He was making his way through this quagmire of a relationship and if he wanted it to move forward, he was going to have to share some of his family history.
“I walked around your house while you were working and didn’t see any photos of your family,” she said. “Why not?”
“It’s a new house,” he said. Which it was, but that wasn’t why she’d seen no photos. He just wasn’t one of those people who littered their walls with family photos. There was a portrait that his parents had had done when he’d graduated college of the four of them and it hung in their penthouse apartment in Manhattan. He had a photo album his mom had sent him after Cal died of the two of them, but he didn’t like looking at it.
