Oh, yeah? challenged a little voice in her head. And pigs might fly.
The Chardonnay was as delicious in its own way as the Brunello at lunch. Cory didn’t know much about different wines but it was obvious Nick did. All part of the image, she told herself, before feeling a little ashamed of the cattiness which had prompted the thought.
‘Can I help?’ she asked as she sat watching him deftly cut the pork loin into thin strips before covering it and putting it with the other ingredients he’d pulled out of the fridge, already prepared for cooking—a man who thought of everything.
He took a swallow of his wine before saying, ‘You could set two places in the dining room if you like.’
‘We’re not eating in here?’ The dining room table was enormous for two, besides which the informality of the kitchen was less conducive to a romantic teête-à-teête, surrounded as they were by gleaming pans and kitchen utensils.
‘Is that what you’d prefer?’ And, as she nodded, he said, ‘So be it. Cutlery and everything else you’ll need is in the cupboard to your left.’
They ate the first course almost immediately and it was truly delicious. Nick seemed determined to be the perfect host, making her laugh with one amusing story after another and displaying none of the intuitive and disconcerting probing which had so bothered her during the afternoon.
He wouldn’t let her help with the main course, so Cory sat sipping her wine as she watched him cook the pork strips until they were brown all over, at which point he added the garlic, ginger, spring onions, pineapple chunks and other ingredients.
He was perfectly relaxed and at ease in the kitchen, adding the oyster sauce to the stir-fry with one hand and dealing with the noodles and prawn crackers with the other, whilst talking of inconsequential things. Cory could only marvel at him. She wasn’t too bad a cook when she put her mind to it, but she didn’t particularly like an audience and certainly couldn’t have coped with Nick watching her.
Cory ate the ginger and pork stir-fry in a delicious haze of well-being, only protesting very slightly when Nick refilled her empty glass. ‘This food is so good,’ she said, wrapping a noodle round her fork and transferring it to her mouth. ‘I can’t make my meals taste like this.’
He smiled lazily. ‘The secret is in using fresh ingredients, like the root ginger and garlic. I never buy my herbs and spices in packets.’
Cory gave a hiccup of a laugh and then put down her glass of wine which she had just picked up. She suddenly realised she’d had quite enough. It was deceptively potent stuff.
‘What’s funny?’ he asked softly.
She tried very hard to pull herself together. ‘Just that I never imagined we’d be discussing the pros and cons of herbs and spices,’ she said in a voice which was shaky with the amusement she was trying to quell. ‘You didn’t strike me as that sort of man when I met you, that’s all.’
‘What sort of man did you think I was then?’ he asked lightly.
Cory considered her answer, forgetting she wasn’t going to drink any more wine and taking several sips as she surveyed him through dreamy eyes. ‘A he-man type,’ she stated.
‘And they don’t cook?’
‘I don’t know.’ Wrapped in contentment and lulled into a false sense of security she forgot to be careful. ‘They might do. You do, so other men might, I suppose.’
‘What about William?’ Nick asked softly. ‘Didn’t he spoil you by at least cooking breakfast now and again?’
‘I never had breakfast with William. I’ve never had breakfast with anyone.’ She finished the last of the wine, holding out her glass for a refill as she spoke out the thought in her head without thinking about what she was revealing. ‘I suppose you have to sleep with someone to wake up to breakfast with them.’
There was the merest of pauses before Nick said, ‘It helps.’
There was a quality to his voice which brought Cory back to earth more effectively than a bucketful of cold water.
Much later she realised that at that point she could still have saved the situation if she hadn’t lost her head. She could have made some light innuendo which suggested that bed wasn’t the only place people made love or deflected the assumption she had heard in his voice in some other way. Then maybe—maybe—she might have fooled him.