Page 34 of The Bargain

“You do amazing things every day that impress me at work. Why would you think spaghetti would impress me?”

Sebastian looked at me for a second in wonder and then his eyes closed, and all his features scrunched up as if he’d thought about his master plan and said “Duh.”

I patted him on the stomach. “It’s a good thing you’re cute.”

“Hey!” But even that came out with a laugh.

“Show me to your pantry. Let’s see if you used all your cook’s spaghetti.” At least he’d known to boil the noodles in water and hadn’t just started by throwing them into the sauce.

Sebastian pointed to a door on the other side of the kitchen with a fancy frosted window. It was a surprisingly large closet with floor-to-ceiling shelves and not those basic wire shelves but wood ones. There was so much food and in packages I’d never seen. Was Sebastian having specialty foods flown in from overseas? I wanted to examine everything, but being in there was making my stomach growl.

“Ha! Perfect!” I snatched up a box of spaghetti and a jar of sauce. Those items appeared out of place among all the other fancy wrappers and glass jars as if she’d gotten them for Sebastian’s master plan. On my way out of the pantry, I spotted a loaf of Italian bread that probably had been delivered from the bakery that day. I snagged that as well, along with some olive oil.

“The point of having you over was not to have you cook for me,” Sebastian continued to mope.

“I’m not cooking for you. We’re cookingtogether. You get to throw out all the stuff you’ve made. I’m going to raid your fridge to see what you have in the way of fixings for salad.”

Once Sebastian cleaned away his first attempt, we got to work. Sebastian followed each of my instructions and asked dozens of questions about why I was doing what I was doing, as if he wanted to learn. The man was going to return to meals professionally cooked by a chef tomorrow. Why would he needto know any of this? But that was Sebastian in a nutshell. He wanted to understand anything he saw.

“Does this mean you grew up having a cook working for your family?” I asked as I prepared the garlic butter that would go on the bread before I toasted it in the oven.

“Actually, no. Not at all.” Sebastian paused in his tearing of the lettuce to gaze at me. “When I was a kid, my family existed right there on the edge of middle class. My parents took turns cooking our family meals. My family wouldn’t be considered rich until I was a senior in high school. Even then, my parents were reluctant to hire a cook. They enjoyed making meals for our little family. Plus, I always had a friend or two over to bum a meal. It was only later, after my sister and I moved out, that they hired a cook to come in and prepare meals four days out of the week.”

“Why didn’t you learn to cook while you were in college?”

Sebastian’s smile turned crooked, and he shrugged one shoulder. “My first year in college, I was on the meal plan, so I was eating out of the cafeteria or takeout every day. From my second year on to graduation, I was living in a house with four other friends. Rome’s parents were paying for the house, and Pierce’s family paid for food as well as the live-in chef and housekeeper.”

I stumbled to him, cackling. “Oh, my God! Can you get more spoiled?”

“It might sound nice, but they were fucking spies! Every time any of us did something even a little questionable or brought anyone back to the house for some fun, a parent was calling or showing up on our doorstep the next damn day. We couldn’t get away with anything!”

I was laughing so hard, I was wheezing. My eyes watered, blurring my vision. “You’re killin’ me!”

“How did you learn to cook? Did one of your parents teach you?”

My laughter died in my throat, and I coughed to clear it again. “No. Not really. I picked up a few things watching my dad when I was young, but most of it I learned from videos or trial and error. Ate a lot of burned meals for a while.”

I glanced over at him out of the corner of my eye as I smeared the butter on the bread, and it looked like he wanted to ask more, but nothing came out and I could breathe easier even as guilt knotted in my stomach. He was so free with the information about his past and his family. Everything about my life after Ronnie’s accident was a mess, and I wasn’t ready to talk about it. It would only destroy the cozy atmosphere. Was it wrong that I wanted to use this time together to escape my life? To pretend that I wasn’t one disaster away from shattering into a million pieces?

These nights with Sebastian were like stepping into a dream, and I wanted to protect this bubble of happiness for as long as I could.

Conversation remained relaxed and easy as I finished up the spaghetti. Sadly, he was out of defrosted meat for meatballs, but the bread and salad helped to make the meal filling enough. We continued our conversation as we ate at a small round table in a sunny breakfast nook off the kitchen. Sebastian dug out a bottle of red wine that was the best I’d ever tasted. It might have been a simple meal I’d cooked a thousand times, but everything about it seemed better because of the company smiling at me from across the table. Not to mention, the strawberry cake that Sebastian’s chef had made for dessert was positively divine.

Thankfully, Sebastian did know how to load a dishwasher. I’d tried to help him clean up when we were done, but he’d ordered me to sit on the stool at the island and sip my wine as he worked.

“And we will not be telling Carol how badly I fucked up dinner,” Sebastian announced as he dried off his hands on a dish towel.

“Your secret is safe with me,” I said, tipping my nearly empty glass at him.

“What would you like to do now? A movie?”

“Actually, I would love a tour of your home, if you don’t mind.” I stood and patted my belly full of delicious carbs. “It would give me a chance to walk off dinner and dessert.”

“I would love to.”

Sebastian hurried around the island and took my hand, threading our fingers together as he led me through his enormous house. Sebastian had us backtrack to the foyer so I could see the front parlor, the formal parlor, the lounge, the billiards room complete with two pool tables, the formal dining room, his home office, and then the most glorious room—the library. And yes, the gorgeous beauty had a rolling ladder. I had to use every scrap of willpower to keep from pulling a Belle and riding that thing down the wall. But beyond the ladder, I loved that his library wasn’t about fancy leather-bound collectibles that couldn’t ever be touched, let alone read.

Sebastian’s shelves contained classics and genre fiction, well-worn and loved paperbacks nestled in with hardbacks. This was a library that was more than a showpiece. It was a place that Sebastian frequently used.

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