pull out a board game in the living room or throw on a movie. Sometimes, there would be dessert. Sometimes, we’d just have drinks at nine o’clock.
But food was important, and that was probably why it made sense in my head to make food for Casey and Eli.
Kathryn was a woman who could appreciate a good meal. I’d always known that about her. As she poured the boiled macaroni noodles into a baking dish and added the cheese and cream sauce, she tapped her foot along to the music.
She caught me watching her out of the corner of my eye while I checked on the chili I had going in the crockpot.
“What?” she asked sharply.
“Nothing. It’s just nice to have another pair of hands.”
“You want to ask me about the gala, don’t you?”
I hadn’t even thought about the gala over the course of the last two days. “Yes.”
She giggled and sprinkled grated cheese into the dish. “It’s going well. Lucky for you, I’m an exceptional employee and I stepped in and made sure everything was going smoothly with your account. Almost all the RSVPs came back this morning. It’s going to be a good turn out.”
“Thank you for holding down the fort.”
“Somebody had to while you were playing Martha Stewart.”
I threw my head back and laughed. Since when had Kathryn been so funny? Since when had she been able to make me laugh like this?
She grinned, clearly pleased with herself, and stepped back. “Okay, now what? We bake it?”
“We bake it.” I nodded. “But you’re going to need about another cup of cheese in that bad boy.”
Her eyes widened. “A cup? That’s a lot of cheese.”
“Cheese is one of the main ingredients in macaroni and cheese.”
She rolled her eyes but a smile lingered on her lips. She grated more cheese, sprinkled it in, and mixed it up. I opened the oven and removed the broccoli and chicken casserole that had been baking inside. The crispy top of it sizzled and popped and oozed cheese. Kathryn watched me place it on the counter before coming to her senses and sliding the macaroni and cheese in.
She closed the door with her hip. “Now what?”
We spent the next two hours working tirelessly in the kitchen.
In those hours, I learned that my suspicions had been accurate. Kathryn wasn’t all that skilled in the kitchen. She needed a lot of direction but that was fine by me because it meant I could step in close, put a hand on her hip, and walk her through the instructions scrawled on a recipe. She’d lean into me and sip her wine while I walked her through it, and when she asked me to repeat myself, I started to wonder if I was being played.
Did she crave the closeness the same way I did?
Whenever she tilted her head back to look up at me, I’d get caught up staring into her eyes and forget what I was saying. That, of course, gave her a chance to poke fun at me. We’d laugh and tease each other and have to read the instructions all over again.
Despite the incessant but pleasant distractions, we managed to bake four more casseroles as well as make a pureed yam and carrot ginger soup. I finished the chili and transferred it into several double-serving containers to be frozen. We took each dish to my butler’s pantry where I kept a deep freezer and stacked them up neatly and orderly with the heaviest items on the bottom.
Kathryn let her hair down again and massaged her scalp. “I can’t believe how much we got done. Casey and Eli won’t have to make dinner again until the spring.”
“I’m not sure about that, but they’ll at least have a month ahead of them where they won’t have to worry about cooking. Can I pour you another glass of wine?”
“One more couldn’t hurt.”
We poured our second glass of wine we’d had over the course of two hours and made our way into the living room to put our feet up. She took one corner of the sofa and I took the other. I’d been cooking all day and could feel the tension settling in my shoulders and the back of my neck. I rolled my head around to ease the tightness as Kathryn gazed at the tree.
“So what’s his name?” she asked.
“David.”
“Old fashioned. I like it.”
“It was my dad’s name,” I said as I ran a thumb along the base of my wine glass.
“I’m sure he would feel honored