Page 95 of Never Too Late
‘Wait, you still know him?’ I asked as Tomas helped me off with my coat. I turned to face him once the sleeves had slipped down my arms and he folded the garment over his arm while opening a huge walnut armoire, the scent of cedar drifting from it as he did so. Carefully, he hung my coat, then his own inside before closing the doors once more.
‘Gerard is now the CFO of the family vineyard.’
‘Noooooo!’ My mouth dropped open. ‘Seriously?’
He nodded.
‘Gabby took him on?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Wow. He mustreallyhave proved himself.’
‘Oh, yes. I think he was too terrified not to! Come through to the kitchen.’
36
There is something innately sexy about watching a man cook for you. I’d discovered this the first time Tomas had made me that first omelette all those years ago. And what a revelation that had been!
‘I don’t like omelettes,’ I’d told him at the time.
‘Everybody likes omelettes.’
‘Clearly not.’
He’d made me one anyway and annoyingly was right. Apparently, I did like omelettes but only the way he made them, and not the pale, rubbery, unappetising discs I’d known prior. These were rich and creamy, the cheese melting together with orange-yolked eggs, the subtle tang of herbs adding another layer of taste. The fact that there was any taste at all, let alone layers, had been incredible to me.
And now, here we were again. This time in a high-end kitchen in a luxuriously renovated townhouse rather than my tiny studio apartment of years back with Tomas cooking on the two-ring hob that only worked intermittently – usually when the landlord came round.
He turned to the floor-to-ceiling fridge, producing a bunch of fresh salad leaves and a bottle of what appeared to be homemade dressing. Moments later, once the leaves had been gently placed on the plate and a drizzle of dressing artfully poured over them, he slid the folded omelette alongside and served it to me.
‘Bon appetit.’
‘Wow. People pay a lot of money for food that looks like this.’
‘Please start,’ he said, gesturing to me as I waited for his own supper to be ready.
That first mouthful brought all the memories rushing back and for a moment, we were back there, back before the heartbreak, back in that bubble of happiness, that hot final summer, that time when we thought we knew who we were and where we were going and that no one could change that.
‘Good?’ he asked as he plated up his own meal.
I flicked my gaze up as I finished my mouthful. ‘You already know it is.’
He slid into the seat beside me at the huge marble island, grinning. ‘True. But I wanted to make sure.’
‘It’s delicious, Tomas. Thank you.’
We chatted about everything and nothing as we ate and, once finished, Tomas brewed a cafetière of strong, aromatic coffee and poured us both a glass cupful.
‘It’s decaf,’ he said, handing mine to me.
‘I did wonder but it smells so good, it’d have been worth being kept awake all night.’
‘I’ve had enough years of not sleeping properly. I’m all for the taste without the caffeine in the evening these days.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said, sliding from the bar chair and wandering over to one of the large sash windows. Below us, a cobbled street bore the marks of thousands of footsteps and hooves, worn into the fabric of the place. Looking across, I could see the lights of Paris twinkling in the evening and there, like a scene from a film, was the stunning Tour Eiffel, its twenty thousand lights switching from static to sparkling as the hour chimed on a clock somewhere else in the house.
‘Shame you didn’t get a view with the place.’
