Within a few minutes the brick softened. She flipped it and he continued to work the other side.
“This is the part where we get to work out our tension.” She handed him a long, marble rolling pin. “Hit it.”
He gave her a second glance, then took the rolling pin.
“Go ahead. You won’t hurt it.”
He tapped the slender rolling pin over the flattened block of butter.
Mariella laughed. “Oh, come on. You can do better than that.”
His fingers tightened around the smooth marble and thought about how much damage he could do. A rock. A rolling pin. It wasn’t a good time to arm him with weapons.
He set it down and stepped back. “You do it.”
She took the rolling pin and showed him how it was done. Whacking the butter into the counter, and leaving several rounded divots in the surface. Then she rolled out the divots, flattened them with the pin as it slid over the paper. She flipped the butter to do the same to the other side.
No matter how aggressively she attacked the butter, there remained something innately gentle about her. Safe. He could see her doing this with children and laughing through a cloud of flour in some perfectly simple kitchen somewhere. The watercolor image filled his mind and he committed it to memory.
Once the butter was smoothed into a thin rectangle, she set it aside. “Now it’s getting warm in here.”
She removed her sweater and tightened her apron, around a thin bronze camisole that nearly matched the golden tone of her skin.
She worked the dough into a smooth blob, flattening and flipping it, but never letting it completely lose its shape. Every motion was practiced. She knew exactly when to apply flour and when to use her hands versus the rolling pin.
“Who taught you this?”
“My grandmother. In high school, she took me to Italy to cheer me up. We spent a month visiting distant relatives. Her cousin was a pastry chef in France. It’s his recipe.”
He remembered seeing her grandmother around town. The woman was four foot tall and about eighty pounds soaking wet. Everyone was afraid of her for some reason, and they called her Italian Mary.
“Why did you need cheering up?”
She avoided his stare and placed the flattened butter over the dough. “I…had a dark moment.”
Because he left? Or was that a completely narcissistic assumption to think he could have such an impact on her? “When?”
“The summer after you left.” She folded the butter inside the dough and used the rolling pin to laminate them together.
His hand closed over hers, stilling her motions. “I should have said goodbye to you.”
She wouldn’t look at him, but she nodded. “That would have helped, but my heart still would’ve broken.”
“There was nothing anyone could have done to make me stay.” He’d meant it when he said his leaving had nothing to do with her. “You only would have made my choice harder.”
At that, she did look up at him. Her eyes shimmered like glass. “I doubt that.”
“I don’t.” He traced his thumb along her jaw. “You were the only person I felt…”
He couldn’t explain what he felt with her. Safe. Quiet. Still. She was his sanctuary, his escape. The person he missed most whenever he felt homesick.
“You feel like home,” he rasped.
She wouldn’t understand that his own home didn’t stir such feelings for him. She was where he ran to catch his breath when the walls were closing in.
He didn’t want to mislead her, but he also couldn’t bear the thought of her mistaking their connection for a meaningless fling. “You were what I missed most after I was gone.”
A startled look crossed her eyes and she turned away. “I have to preheat the oven.”
The break of their connection snapped like a limb falling from an ancient tree. It scared him. He didn’t like emotional abandonment, but that was exactly what she’d just done.
He opened up to her and she walked away. Why had he confessed such private things? He didn’t even know what he was saying. He’d had a lot to drink and it was late. It had been a long day, and he was rambling.
He glanced at his coat.
“Do you want some coffee?” she asked, returning from the back.
Maybe coffee would sober him up. “Sure. I can make it.” He looked at the complicated chrome machines along the wall. “Or…”
She laughed and set a box of German chocolate on the counter. “I’ll make it.”
He stepped back as she hit switches, ground beans, packed fancy espresso filters, and steamed milk. Whatever she made wasn’t quite coffee. It was better.
“What the hell am I drinking?”
“A salted caramel macchiato. They’re my favorite.”
She returned to the dough and butter, forming it into two separate silken slabs. When the dough got too warm or soft, she chilled that section in the freezer and worked on the other slab for a while, always keeping both at the consistency and temperature she wanted.