Page 50 of Savage Blooms
“What’s the occasion?” Adam asked. “Had a hankering for something more than eggs and toast?”
“You’re the occasion,” she said, like it was the simplest thing in the world. “I gave up hopes of ever having a family years ago. You’re nothing short of a miracle.”
Adam felt suddenly dizzy, like Eileen had poured half a bottle of her cooking wine right down his throat. Being looked upon with any sort of approval from Eileen, spoiled and beautiful and hard to please, was heady. But being looked at likethis, like he was the answer to her every fervent, secret prayer, was intoxicating.
“Um,” he said. What else could he possibly say in response to that? “Can I help?”
“Certainly,” Eileen said, with a wide, dazzling grin.
“What are we making?”
“Duck with rosemary jus and minced nut stuffing, yeast rolls, and a salad with radishes from the garden? Unless that’s not enough?”
“I think it will be plenty,” Adam said, sidling up next to her at the kitchen counter. “You didn’t have to do something like this just for me.”
“It’s a celebration for all of us. After all, you’re only reunited with a great cousin once, right?”
She sliced the dough into portions, then deposited alump of would-be-roll into his hands and began to instruct him in shaping the bread. Adam tried not to lose track of what he was doing, but he kept getting pulled back into her bottomless dark eyes, or gazing at her inviting mouth. She stood with her hip pressed against him, the scent of her skin and her makeup and her iris perfume cutting through the cooking smells, and if he wasn’t careful – or rather, if he was very wicked – he could see right down the open collar of her shirt.
Adam couldn’t tell if learning that he and Eileen – legally speaking if not genetically so – were related worsened his attraction to her or abated it. It was fucked up for his very not-platonic feelings about Eileen to be so tangled in his overwhelming feelings of relief and joy at being reunited with a lost relative, but they only got more tangled the longer he looked at her. He wanted to hold her hand and listen to her tell him everything about her life up until the point they met, and he wanted to lift her up onto the counter and push her pencil skirt up around her hips and kiss her pussy until she cried and, most strangely and most powerfully of all, he wanted to drop his head to her shoulder and weep.
It wasn’t technically incest, he reminded himself. They were barely related at all, and didn’t share a single strand of DNA. This was fine. He was going to be fine.
He managed to get the rolls into the oven without burning himself or committing any sort of sex crime, and Eileen seemed so proud of having completed the task thathe didn’t even point out that the rolls should probably go in last, not first. Nicola came through the kitchen door just in time to see Eileen feed Adam a bite of the minced nut stuffing, which featured too much mace but was otherwise very good.
Nicola shook the drops of rain, which had just begun to patter against the window, from her hair and sloughed off her coat.
“It smells good in here,” she said, to Eileen, not to Adam. “But sort of like burning. Is something in the oven?”
Eileen swore loudly and wrenched open the oven door, leaning down to rescue the rolls. Adam tried to catch Nicola’s eye to no avail. She didn’t look upset any more, but her eyes were rimmed red from crying, and she was making a point not to acknowledge him. He had been on the receiving end of this silent treatment often enough to know it could last minutes or days.
This was exactly why Adam had never dated Nicola. She liked to wring her hands and weep about how people weren’t kind enough to her, but if you pissed her off, even accidentally, she was cruel as anyone else.
“No need to worry!” Eileen said brightly, as though everyone was holding their breath to see how her bread would come out. “They’re salvageable! Just more browned than I intended. Hello, sparrow. Been out for a bit of fresh air?”
“I walked to the ocean,” Nicola said, sitting down at the kitchen table. She still surveyed Eileen with suspicion,but she looked a bit chastened, like she had come to the conclusion that she had been too hasty earlier in labeling Eileen a villain. What sort of villian baked bread for her houseguests, after all? “Just needed to stretch my legs and think.”
“That’s what walks are good for. Did you see Finley when you were out there?”
“No, I haven’t seen Finley all morning.”
“Hmm,” Eileen said, disapprovingly. “Neither have I.”
“Can I help?” Nicola asked. “This looks… involved.”
“It’s fun,” Eileen corrected. “And yes, you may. Chop those radishes for me, will you? And wash those spring onions while you’re at it. You’re on salad duty with Adam. I’m going to see if Finley is in the library.”
She stalked out of the room in search of her groundskeeper, leaving Adam to chop vegetables with Nicola in icy silence. This could go on for an eternity if he didn’t at least try to get through to her, so he took a risk and made a joke.
“Looks like you didn’t freeze to death out there after all.”
“I didn’t want to give you the satisfaction,” Nicola sniffed, but then she glanced at him, treating him to the privilege of her gaze.
She was still angry with him, that much was obvious. But maybe they could salvage the day together.
“Good, because I would have been bored without you. Besides, what’s the point of coming into a mysterious family if there’s no one to keep you humble about it?”
Nicola snorted. It was almost a laugh.
