Page 25 of The Boss
They didn’t head back to the office. Instead Leif turned left, toward the wide sweep of windows and the modern sofa that faced the city. He didn’t sit. He stopped with his hands in his pockets and the skyline burning behindhim.
“Dessert,” he said, after a pause long enough to have been a test. “Non-negotiable.”
She blinked. “You keep dessert components on hand the way other men keep ammunition?”
He angled her a look over his shoulder. “Both keep people alive.” Then, softer, “Come on.”
They drifted back into the kitchen as if drawn by a tide. He lit a small burner and warmed cream and sugar with a split vanilla bean, the air blooming into something lush and expensive. She found berries in the fridge, black as ink and the red of a warning light, rinsed them, shook off water in thecolander. When she leaned to set them on a towel, his palm was suddenly at the small of her back—steadying, unnecessary, searing. She went still.
“Careful,” he murmured, not moving hishand.
“I’m the one with the knife skills,” she said, but the words came out quiet, softened by the heat ofhim.
He let his touch linger another beat, then withdrew. “Careful,” he repeated instead, the word heavy with double meaning, before he turned back to the stove.
He whisked egg yolks with sugar until the mixture went pale, set the bowl over barely simmering water, and worked it with the sort of unhurried attention that seemed almost indecent. She watched his wrists, the play of tendon and vein, the precise patience of a man who could flay a ledger or a lie. He folded in the cream, and the custard went glossy. She dipped in a fingertip, tasted, and couldn’t hold back a sound that would have made her blush if she had any blush left to give. He heard it and stole another taste from her fingertip.
“What is it?” she asked, throatdry.
“Sabayon,” he said. “My grandmother’s way. Less sweet. More heat.”
“Like you,” she said before she could stop herself.
He didn’t smile. He set a crystal coupe in front of her, spooned in the pale gold, and scattered the berries. Then he did the same for himself. They didn’t go back to the table. They ate standing too close at the counter, sharing one spoon without discussing it. When she put it into his hand, her fingers slipped over his. When he returned it, his knuckles grazed her mouth like an accident that neither of them believed.
“This is obscene,” she said around a spoonful.
“Exactly,” he said. “I’m tired of being civilized.”
She laughed, surprised by the brightness of it after the day they’d had, and the tension in him answered with a subtle looseness, as if he would have paid cash to hear that sound again.
They finished the sabayon without haste, which was strange, because nothing about them seemed slow. He rinsed the coupes and set them upside down on a linen towel. She turned to reach for the lights, to leave the kitchen in a wash of dim gold, and found him already there, palm above her head, fingers curled around the switch. The heat of him poured along her front without a single point of contact.
“Leif,” she said, not a warning.
His eyes moved over her face as if cataloging small, significant flaws, places a man could hide or tell the truth. “You’re good in my kitchen,” hesaid.
“I’m good everywhere.” It should have sounded smug. It sounded like a confession.
He made a quiet sound that could have been agreement. Then he flicked the lights, leaving only the city to illuminate them, and stepped back. Space opened. Breath returned.
“Come see this,” he said, and led her toward a slim door she’d assumed was storage. It opened onto a narrow balcony that jutted into air and wind. Night had found the city. The river was a black ribbon that caught and returned small, mean lights from the south side. Far off, sirens stitched a line through the dark and stopped.
The evening air cooled her overheated skin. It smelled like wet concrete and the ghost of rain. She braced her forearms on the tempered glass and looked down, then out. The world was held at bay by inches of material. Leif came beside her but not against her. The not-touch branded her like aburn.
“I used to come out here when my father was around,” he said after a while, voice unadorned. “He didn’t like heights. Iliked the reminder that everything you build can still fall.”
She turned her head. The wind moved hair across her mouth. He had to fight the impulse—she could see it—not to tuck it back. “I thought you didn’t believe in falling.”
“I believe in gravity,” he said. “I just don’t intend to be surprised by it.”
She looked back at the river. “You said something at dinner,” she murmured. “About loyalty following current.”
He made a small affirmative sound.
“Mine doesn’t,” she said. “Mine is the rock the current breaks around. It doesn’t move when the water changes direction.”
He was quiet long enough for the wind to say something. Then, softer than the wind: “I know.”
