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“I know what you meant.”
Their eyes locked, held, and the mood in the kitchen shifted slightly, the elephant in the room suddenly lifting its trunk and braying into the space. She swallowed, reached for an olive, devoured it, glad to have a reason to keep her mouth closed.
“So who taughtyou to do this?” She asked, hours later, when the rice had cooled and Marco had set up several bowls—one with whisked eggs, one with cubes of mozzarella, one with flour and one with breadcrumbs.
“Mynonna,”he smiled with indulgence. “She loved to cook, and was determined we would all learn too.”
“I would have thought you’d have had cooks and all sorts of household staff, growing up?”
“We did. Perhaps that was why she was so determined.”
“Ah.”
“She was very wealthy, all her life. Her parents never taught her. So when she became engaged to my grandfather, she went away to Switzerland for three months, to a famous culinary school, where she learned everything. All the basics, she would say, but that was too modest. She was an excellent cook. Except, she didn’t want to know how to make fancy dinner party meals to impress her guests. She wanted to understand the meals of Italy, to know how to cook the dishes she’d always loved eating, and so she became a recipe hound, soliciting all her friends for their best family traditions and incorporating them into our own. She was extremely fussy,” he added, his affection for hisnonnaobvious in everything he revealed about her. “Only the best recipes made the cut. This was one of them.”
“Now I really can’t wait to try it,” Portia admitted.
“Well, keep stuffing,” Marco instructed, watching as she picked up a handful of rice, shaped it into a ball around a cube of mozzarella, nodding his approval. And though Portia had achieved so much in her personal life, somehow his approval of this simple, domestic act, and what this recipe had meant to his family, his grandmother, made her heart sing in a way she hadn’t expected.
They atethearancinion the deck as the day turned to night and the sky filled with the most magnificent orange and pink colours. The risotto balls were crunchy on the outside, soft and gooey inside and the flavour of the rice itself was beyond divine.
“These are nothing like thearanciniI’ve had in restaurants.”
“Restaurants rarely get it right. They see it as a way to use up old risotto.” He scrunched his nose in a gesture of disapproval that Portia found adorable.
Adorable! Marco Santoro?
God, what was happening to her?
She had stopped seeing him as he was, and was turning him into someone sweet and human, someone sheadored.Except maybe she was actually just seeing him as he really was?
Trouble danced on the periphery of her mind.
She ignored it, because it was too complicated to analyse, and in this moment, she simply wanted to enjoy. They sat and ate and marveled at the colours in the sky and talked about art and music and the rivalry between the Valentino family and the Santoros, and all the while Portia felt the pleasures of this night wrapping around her. She was so, so glad she’d agreed to come away with him.
It was a weekend not to be repeated, but that didn’t matter. It would always be a part of her memories and of who she was from this moment forward. She’d never forget this, nor the way Marco had made her feel.
They clearedthe table together and it was in the kitchen, where Portia had left her phone charging, she saw she had a message on the lockscreen. She opened it absentmindedly as Marco set about making coffee, the machine whirring with its familiar sound in the background.
Portia didn’t hear it.
The screeching in her ears overtook everything else.
It was a text from Jack.
I really missed seeingyou today, baby. Call me.
Stars filledher eyes and she suddenly found it difficult to breathe. She dropped the phone, bracing her palms on the bench.
“Portia? What is it?” Of course Marco, attuned to everything, had seen. Had observed for himself and intuited that something was wrong.
“Nothing,” she lied, closing her eyes. But then, why not be honest with him? She picked up the phone again and handed it to Marco.
The single message from Jack—she’d deleted all their former correspondence—stood like a beacon. Marco read it, lips grim, eyes impossible to see, then shifted his attention back to Portia.
“I’m fine,” she assured him, though she wasn’t fine. She wasangry.How dare Jack message her? How dare he ask her to call him? Everything was over between them. It was all done and dusted. There was nothing more to say.
“Portia,” Marco asked softly, moving closer to her, capturing her face with his hands. “You still have feelings for him.”
