Page 28 of The CEO’s Assistant

"It’s okay. You've been working all day."

"So have you."

Cordelia looked at her for a second, and then she pulled open the refrigerator and took out a paper-wrapped package and set it on the counter. "Fine. Four cloves of garlic, sliced, not crushed."

Wren found a board and a knife and started on the garlic. The paper the fish had come wrapped in was folded on the counter beside her. She knew the shop. It was on Ludlow, two blocks from the office, and there was a cooler on the floor by the pantry with the ice still sitting in it. She kept slicing and didn't say anything.

Cordelia dropped the fish.

"It's fine," Wren said.

"It's on the floor."

"Five-second rule." Wren shrugged.

Cordelia looked over her shoulder at her. "That's not a rule. That's a thing people say so they can eat off the floor." She rinsed it and put it in the pan anyway.

Wren had never seen her like this. Three months of a woman who never said anything she hadn't decided to say, and here she was, arguing about eating off the floor with her sleeves shoved up and her glasses off. She looked almost… happy.

"You're slicing that too thin," Cordelia said.

Wren looked down at the cutting board and the growing pile of garlic. “I sliced it like you asked.”

"I said sliced. I didn't say translucent."

Wren looked up at her and held her eye contact. "Then it'll burn, and you'll have something to be right about."

Cordelia made a low growling sound in her throat and turned back to the pan. "Slice it thicker."

Wren smirked and sliced it thicker.

The first gust came up under the porch and something out there started knocking against the boards, and the rain hit the west windows all at once, and they both looked up.

"That wasn't in the forecast this morning," Cordelia said.

"Yes, it was."

Cordelia turned around.

"There’s a storm warning through Sunday," Wren said. "Gusts up to fifty miles per hour. They said everywhere along the coastal road would probably lose power."

"You knew that Thursday."

"Wednesday,” she clarified.

"And you drove up anyway."

"You asked me to."

Cordelia turned back to the pan. She moved the fish once and put the spatula down. "That isn't why you came."

Wren stood there with the knife in her hand and didn't answer, because there was nothing she could have said that wasn't true. Then Cordelia wiped her fingers on the towel and went to the rack and reached past the front row.

Wren knew what the rack was. Cordelia had told her in April that Eleanor had chosen every bottle in it, and Cordelia hadn't changed a single one. She'd said it lightly, then she'd opened a white and talked about her for an hour. Tonight, she didn't say anything at all. She just took a bottle from the second row and wiped the dust off it with the towel. The label had gone soft at one corner. Whoever put it there had been saving it for something. Cordelia opened it and poured two glasses and set one down in front of Wren.

"Thank you."

"It should have been drunk years ago." She was looking at the pan. "It's probably ruined."