Page 21 of Prosecco with My Professor
“Well, that’s good,” she says, putting the towel aside. “I made them for you. Unless you have a nut allergy?”
“No allergies,” I say, leaning in to look at the cookies. Chocolate chip, it looks like. “What nuts are in there?”
“It’s got almond butter in it. They’re vegan cookies, so the almond replaces the butter and eggs. I’m not vegan,” she hastens to add, “but one of my best friends is. And she introduced these “best ever vegan chocolate chip cookies” to us, and well, they are really damn good.”
“Was this the friend you were with?”
Emma, who’s already flushed from the heat of cooking in a small space, blushes even further at the non-mention ofthat night. “Yes, that’s Sara.”
“I had thought that you ladies were on vacation,” I admit.
“We were. I mean, they were. They all live in Europe too, so we came together for a weekend here to, I guess, drop me off at school.”
“This in unbelievable,” I say. “I’ve been single for years, and have brought home plenty of women, but I have never brought home a student.” I run my hands through my hair and curse again.
Emma waves at the loveseat. “Sit,” she says. “These need to cool.”
Perching on the arm of the loveseat, I watch her carefully maneuver the parchment paper from the baking sheet to the counter and then rip off a section of fresh paper to line it again. “I owe you an apology, too. It wasn’t your fault that I was on edge.”
What? Oh right. Just before she pepper-sprayed me, she mentioned a guy. “Who is bothering you, Emma?”
Emma reaches into a bowl and pulls out a glob of dough. She thinks carefully before answering, paying a lot of attention to the ball of dough and not to me.
“There was this man this morning who was following me,” she says at last, placing the dough on the parchment paper.
My hands tighten into fists. “Where? When?”
“Well, so far, it was just this one run in with him this morning. I shouldn’t have told him my name, and it had me jumpy. So, when you called my name, but I didn’t know who it was, I freaked out a little.” She gives a tight laugh. “This happens in Italy, I know that. I just wasn’t expecting it to be so personal.”
I straighten. “Who is it?”
She shrugs, still working on rolling cookie dough. “Just some guy.”
“What did he look like?”
“Tall, dark hair, olive skin. He was Italian?—”
“We’re all Italian!”
Emma throws up her hands. “I don’t know! I’m not a police sketch artist.” She closes her eyes, and I force my hand to unclench. She shakes her head. “No, I don’t remember. I would recognize him if I saw him but can’t…I don’t know how to describe his face.”
My gut twists. It was bad when I thought I had been the one responsible for scaring her. I knew my own intentions, but some idiot harassing her is an actual problem. Emma shouldn’t be wary in her own home, her own neighborhood, and the Via dei Banchi Nuovi has gotten a poor start. “If you see him hanging around, you tell me, okay?”
At that, Emma looks up, giving me a long stare before she answers. “Okay, I will.”
With a few swift movements, the new cookies are in the oven, and Emma has balled up another piece of dough. She takes the two steps from the oven to offer it to me. “Cookie dough?”
I take the ball and bite in while Emma fixes herself one. The dough is gritty from the sugar and greasy, but I hardly taste the almond butter over the sweetness. The chocolate chips crunch under my teeth, and I have to admit, the dough itself is very good.
“How are your eyes?” Emma asks.
“Much better, thank you.”
She’s taken a small bite of her dough ball, and she plays with the remainder while she chews. Her hands are greasy too. “I’ve never pepper-sprayed anyone before. It was a learning experience, though I’m sorry it happened.”
I pop the rest of the dough into my mouth and lick my fingertips before rubbing my hands together. Seeing Emma was such a surprise today, but as I stand here with her, eating raw cookie dough, it occurs to me that this is an opportunity to ask some questions and get answers I thought I would have to go without. “Why did you leave that night?”
She groans and moves to the sink to wash her hands. “Damn it. I’m sorry about that, too.” She dries her hands on a flour sack towel before facing me again, folding her arms across her chest and leaning back against the counter. “I left because I was too in my head. No one has done that to me in a very long time, and I was worrying about too many things, and it was easier just to go.”
