Page 31 of Kai
I was curious about Kai, and I appreciated his openness, but I was also wary. “Words are usually deceiving. Actions bring proof to the pudding.”
“Understood.” He gave a crisp nod and gestured to the chair he held. “Will you sit now?”
I took the chair. I was starving, and the aromas drifting from the table made me dizzy with hunger. Perusing the spread before me, I pointed at a platter. “What’s that?”
“I caught a nicely sized opakapaka this morning.” He sat on the bench across from me.
“Fish?” My face didn’t hide my secrets well. I couldn’t prevent myself from wrinkling my nose.
“Don’t tell me.” He let out a resigned sigh. “You don’t eat fish?”
“Not really,” I said, blunt as always.
“Well, perhaps you’d like my fish,” he suggested. “It’s my grandma’s recipe, and it comes with a pineapple, coconut, and mango chutney.”
I tried not to grimace again. By the way his mouth straightened, I could tell I’d failed.
“Can I ask?” he said. “Why don’t you like fish?”
“Oh, you know.” I didn’t want to tell the pathetic story. “Picky eater, flawed tastebuds.”
“Picky, maybe, but there’s nothing flawed about you, Cece. I have a feeling you have a reason for everything you do.”
It was true, and even though my impulse was never to explain myself, this time, for reasons I couldn’t understand, I did. “If you have to know, after my mother died, my father made an art of punishing me every time I came home from boarding school whenever I refused to eat the salmon he imported from his Scottish estate.”
“You didn’t like salmon?” he asked while tossing the salad.
“It wasn’t about the salmon.” How could I explain? “It was my way of protesting Father’s exploitation of people.”
“How so?”
“He’d bought a title and a Scottish estate for next to nothing from some poor, desperate laird who didn’t have the means to feed his family or preserve his legacy. Father never played fair, and the Scottish man was only one of my father’s victims. It’s no secret that he and I used to butt heads.”
“Your sisters told me about that,” Kai said, transferring the salad onto the plates.
“He enjoyed pounding me into submission. If I didn’t eat the salmon at dinner, I had to go to bed with an empty stomach and eat the fish for breakfast, cold and straight from the fridge. If I failed to eat it for breakfast, then I had to have it at lunch. The game went on. In the end, he always won, and I had to force down the slimy salmon. By then, it tasted downright disgusting.”
“Sounds awful,” he said. “Well, guess what?”
“What?”
“You don’t have to eat this fish.” He got up. “I can defrost a steak and throw it on the grill.”
“Wait,” I said.
He eased back on the bench.
I looked from the platter to the man. Kai had gone to all this trouble to serve this beautiful meal that came with steamed rice and a salad fresher than anything I’d eaten in the past three years. I hadn’t shared a table with someone else in a long time, and this guy intrigued me. Plus, I’d made a resolution to be nice to him. I could act civilized. On occasion. Okay, on special occasions only. Like today.
“You don’t need to fix me a steak.” I sighed. “I’ll tryyourfish.”
It sounded all wrong. Like a come-on. My uppity tone transformed the words into a nearly sexual proposition. I was shit at being nice. The day’s heat burned in my cheeks.
“Let’s do it.” The wicked tilt of his voice mimicked mine. He sounded as if he’d heard the lust singing in my veins and didn’t mind it. “We’ll start with a sample, then perhaps you’ll want more ofmyfish.”
I thought of a few good comebacks for that one, but I kept them to myself. I might try his fish, but I wasn’t going to like it. Or flirt with a man who had the capacity—and the dimples—to wipe all reason from my brain. But I could at least stay on this side of rude.
He served me a small piece of fillet, garnished it with his whatever chutney, and added some rice to my plate before he set it before me.
