A Candle in the Dark (40 page)

Disappointment unfurled inside him. He had been close. So close. Christ, what he wouldn’t give to be able to get past that cool self-assurance of hers, to see desire in her eyes and know it was for him. What he would give to know if she had really felt something just then—or if it was just his imagination.

He pulled at the buttons on his shirt until he felt the slight breeze on his chest. “Maybe you could—maybe you could cook something,” he said helplessly.

She looked at him doubtfully. “I could try.”

“Maybe—” He floundered for a suggestion. “Maybe a cake.”

“A cake?”

“Yeah. A cake.”

“Cain,” she said, smiling, “I’ve never baked a cake in my life.”

He shrugged. “How hard could it be?”

She laughed then, relaxing against the tree. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried. But I do know my mother couldn’t do it. She would always ask Mrs. Williams to bake on my birthday.”

“Who was Mrs. Williams?”

“Our neighbor. She cooked for us. It’s all part of being a lady, you see, Mr. D’Alessandro. Ladies make tea. They do not cook.” She said the last emphatically, with an exaggerated accent.

Her teasing was irresistible. Cain grinned. “I see. Ladies eat, though, I take it.”

“Of course, though eating is vulgar, really. The thing to do is to take tiny bird bites at dinners, and then go home and gorge yourself on the servants’ stew. That way, you at least look delicate.”

“I suppose you were delicate even when you had your face buried in birthday cake.”

“I did not have birthday cake,” Ana said grandly. “I had bread pudding. It was my favorite.” She closed her eyes at the memory. “Bread pudding with raisins and cherries. And brandy sauce that Mrs. Williams lit on fire. God, I loved that pudding.” She opened her eyes again, sighing. “I haven’t tasted it for years. Not since she died.”

“Our cook used to make chocolate bread pudding with custard,” Cain remembered. “I never cared for it much myself.”

“No?” She raised an eyebrow at him. “What did you like then?”

He shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

“You do too,” she accused. “There must have been something. Chocolate cake, maybe? Or custard? Perhaps lemon tarts?”

“
Not
lemon tarts.”

“Then it was chocolate cake.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Cain leaned against the tree beside her, close enough so their shoulders brushed. Heated desire shot through him at the touch, and he tried to ignore it, to keep his voice light. “It was marzipan.”

“Marzipan,” she repeated thoughtfully. “My mother liked it too. I have no idea how to make it.”

“I think you grind up almonds with sugar,” he suggested hopefully.

She laughed. “Sorry, D’Alessandro.
You
make marzipan if you want it. I don’t even know where to get almonds here.”

The sound of her laughter, the joyful teasing, made Cain feel so warm and good that he longed for it to go on forever. For the moment, he forgot his desire, and just wished for this camaraderie to continue. Perhaps they wouldn’t ever have to go back to the
quincha
. Perhaps they could just lean here, against this tree, and talk about favorite foods and neighbor women until the end of time. Perhaps—

“I wish I knew how to make that bread pudding,” she said thoughtfully. “I did watch Mrs. Wilson make it now and then.”

“Do you remember it at all?”

“A little.” She pushed away from the tree and shrugged. “Bread crumbs and sugar. I think—no, I know—there were eggs.”

She looked so forlorn for a moment that Cain felt an overwhelming urge to touch her, but he knew if he did she would withdraw, and that was the last thing he wanted. So he restrained himself forcibly, crossed his arms over his chest. “Why don’t you make it, then?”

She threw him a disgusted look. “Why don’t
you
make it? It would probably be better.”

“Probably.”

Ana’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Are you telling me you know how to cook?”

“Well.” Cain shrugged with exaggerated humility. “A little.”

“How much is a little?”

“More than you, if you can only make tea,” he pointed out. “This is how I see it,
querida
. With your memory, and my skill, we should be able to turn out a pretty edible bread pudding.”

“Your skill?” she asked doubtfully. “How much skill is that?”

“
I
can at least boil an egg,” he informed her.

She laughed. “That’s hardly a recommendation.”

“It’s more than boiling water. Do you want my help or not?”

Ana thought for a moment, and then she nodded. “Very well, you can help. But only if you promise not to take over. This is my thank you, after all.”

“As you wish.” He held out his hand to her. “Shall we get started?”

She knew she should not want so badly to be with him. After this afternoon, when she’d felt the power of his desire, and with it another startling stab of her own, Ana knew the best thing to do was to stay away from him. She had seen his kind of desire before, knew where it led, and was afraid of the hurt she would see in his eyes when she inevitably refused him.

If she refused him.

No,
when
, she told herself forcibly. Other men had made the mistake of thinking she cared about them, thinking she desired them as well. Those men she hadn’t cared about, with those men she had welcomed the disillusionment of sex. Sex was just her job, after all, and the sooner they realized she felt that way, the better. But those men weren’t Cain. She did care about him, and because of that, she wouldn’t be able to face his disappointment once he realized her feelings were those of a friend only, not a lover.

Most certainly not a lover.

She felt stronger at the very thought. The words helped her discount her growing feelings for him over the last days and her strange reaction to him just now, outside. Helped her ignore the way her stomach clenched and her blood raced when he walked into the
quincha
carrying a bowl of eggs.

“Well, here they are,” he said, setting them on the table. He looked up at her and smiled, a broad, flashy smile that warmed Ana to her very center. “I hope that’s everything. I think Serafina and Dolores will rush in here in a panic if I ask for anything else.”

Ana turned away, busily checking the items on the table, even though she’d checked them moments before he walked in. “Yes. That’s everything. I think. No cherries, but I suppose the bananas will do.” There was no yeast bread, either, just torn-up corn tortillas. But they were enough like bread, weren’t they? They certainly tasted like bread…

“So.” Cain rolled his shirtsleeves up and looked at her expectantly. “Tell me what to do.”

“Well, I don’t know.” Ana eyed the table, trying to remember. What had Mrs. Wilson done? She had beaten eggs, Ana remembered. She looked up, smiling triumphantly. “I think we beat the eggs first.”

“How many?”

Her smile died. “I—I don’t know.”

“Well, we’ve got seven here. That’s probably enough, don’t you think?”

Ana grasped on to his logic. After all, he knew and she didn’t. “I’m sure it is.”

“Good.” He turned the bowl over. Eggs spilled out, rolling across the table, and together they grabbed for them. Cain winced as one hit the ground with a splatter. “Six eggs,” he amended, chagrined.

Ana laughed. “I’m sure six is enough.” She handed the eggs to him, one at a time, while he cracked them into the bowl, then stood back when he took up a fork and began whipping them wildly. Egg flew out of the bowl, spattered all over his white shirt.

Cain stopped and looked down, a disgusted look on his face. “Damn.”

“There’s probably one whole egg on your shirt,” Ana pointed out with a smile. “If you’re not more careful, there won’t be any left.”

He tossed back his hair and leveled the fork at her. “I don’t need suggestions from you. If you want to serve this surprise for dinner, you’d best get started.”

He was right, of course. Ana sat and picked up the knife, cutting the bananas into thin slices. The sun slanted over the table, glinting off the knife and warming her skin, and she paused and stared at the dust motes glittering in the light breeze.

This was so nice, she thought, watching the motes and listening to the low timbre of Cain’s humming and the clattering of the fork against the bowl as he whipped the eggs. If nothing else was like those days in the kitchen with Mrs. Wilson, this was. This warm familiarity, the sense that she wasn’t alone, that if she wanted to say something—anything at all—there would be someone to answer back. Or someone to just nod and smile and keep beating eggs. She hadn’t even realized she’d missed it, and yet she had.

“Now what?” Cain put the bowl down and waited.

She looked up at him, smiling inanely until she realized he’d asked a question. “Oh. Well, then we add sugar. I think Airs. Wilson used to soak the crumbs in milk. But there’s no milk.”

“What about water?”

She looked doubtfully at the shredded tortillas. “I suppose that would work as well. It’s wet, anyway.” She lifted the jug and poured a steady stream into the bowl, watching while the tortillas floated to the top. Gently she pushed them down again. She looked up at Cain just in time to see him breaking pieces off a cone of brown sugar.

“Do you think this is enough?” he asked, holding up the cone.

“I don’t know. I thought you were the one who knew how to cook.”

“This is a little more complicated than boiling an egg, Ana.”

“An hour ago you were convinced that was all the skill you needed.”

“Well, that was an hour ago.” He laughed slightly, shaking back his hair. “Now I’m willing to concede this might be harder.”

“Wonderful.” Ana stepped around the table to stand beside him, and looked down into the bowl. The smooth, pale yellow eggs were dotted with hard lumps of brown sugar. It didn’t look quite right, not how she remembered it, but it
had
been a long time ago. “That’s fine. Now I think we just mix everything together and put it in the oven.”

He stiffened. “The oven?”

“Yes, the oven.” Ana reached for the bowl of tortillas. “It cooks for about an hour, I think—”

“Ana, what oven?”

“What oven?” She repeated, frowning. “Why, a regular ove—” She stopped short. “Oh, my God. There’s no oven. Is there?”

“Just a clay pot.” Cain started to laugh.

“This isn’t funny,” she protested. “There’s no oven. What are we going to do?”

He sank onto the bench, still laughing. “Boil it?”

“That’s not—”

“Or we could fry it.”

Ana looked at him, and she felt her face begin to twitch, felt laughter move up her throat. She looked down at the bowl in her hands, at the tortillas floating in a pool of water, and she chuckled. “Good God, this is a mess.”

“No, it’s not.” He took the bowl from her and poured it into the eggs and sugar, stirring it once. “Now that—that’s a mess.”

She looked at it, at the pieces of tortilla floating in watery egg and the rocks of sugar bobbing above it all. It looked nothing like she’d intended, nothing like she remembered. It looked suddenly—ridiculous.

She laughed then. “This is all your fault.”

“My fault?”

“You said you could cook.”

“I said I could boil an egg.”

She pointed her finger at him. “You deliberately misled me, Cain D’Alessandro.”

He grabbed her finger, curled it back into her palm and wrapped his hand around hers. “I didn’t know how difficult this recipe would be.”

Warmth seeped through her at his touch. Ana’s mouth went suddenly dry, and the laughter died in her throat. “I—I told you I hardly remembered,” she said.

“That’s not what I heard.” His voice was soft, his eyes deep and dark and infinitely beguiling.

“Then you only hear what you want to hear.” Ana’s heart thumped in her chest so loudly she thought he must hear it.

His hand tightened on hers, and he pulled her forward, closer until she was less than an inch from his chest. “I do not,” he whispered.

“You do too.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

His head dipped closer, dark hair falling forward. Ana caught her breath, her palms were sweating. He was going to kiss her, she knew it, and she felt suddenly faint, horribly out of control. Other men had tried this, and she had avoided it, but she couldn’t remember what she’d done then, couldn’t think of anything but the fullness of his lips, and his warm breath on her face. Good God, he was going to kiss her.

But he didn’t. She knew the exact moment he decided not to, saw the desire in his eyes replaced by hesitation, heard the catch in his breath, the muttered sound that could have been a curse or a sigh. Then he dropped her hand and moved away, turning back to the pudding, and Ana knew he was going to pretend it hadn’t happened.

That was what she wanted too. Yes, it was what she wanted. Ana waited for the relief to wash over her, but instead she felt disappointment so keen it was painful. A strange, gut-wrenching disappointment that made her throat tight and sent her heart racing so she felt dizzy.

She bit her lip and clenched her hands in her skirt, feeling absurdly lost. She watched him dump the bananas in the bowl, saw his muscles flex with the movement and the dark hair beneath the flaring of his collar.

And all she could think about was how much she wished he had kissed her.

Ana tried the rest of the afternoon to forget. She helped Serafina and Dolores grind meal for tortillas, concentrating on the smooth stones and the scraping of grain, trying to tell herself she had merely been overcome by the moment, that she hadn’t
really
wanted to kiss him.

She told herself that as she helped Serafina roast the beef for dinner, kept telling herself when Dolores took the bread pudding off the fire and put it aside. The smell of sweet custard, bananas, and corn overpowered the meat for a moment, and Ana’s stomach flipped.
You felt nothing
, she reminded herself.
Nothing at all
.

But when they sat down to dinner, and Cain took his regular seat beside her, Ana’s careful protestations fled. He sat close—too close. Their shoulders brushed, his thigh pressed against hers, and his breath was hot against her cheek when he leaned down to translate. She felt shivery again, but not from cold.
You felt nothing
, she told herself again. It was only that they’d spent a lot of time together lately, and she had come to care for him a great deal. The way she assumed he cared for her.