“You mean, you can do something clever with this stuff?”
“I can try.”
Chase grinned as he plucked the other cans from the shelves, opened them and put them on the counter.
“I should have known. I’d almost forgotten how inventive you were with Spam, the first couple of years after we were married.”
“Inventive?” Annie said, as she drained the tuna into the sink.
“Sure. Seems to me I can remember Spam casserole, sautéed Spam, grilled Spam...”
“A can of Spam, a couple of onions and some potatoes.”
“Which recipe was that?”
“All of them,” Annie said, laughing. She dug around in the shelves beneath the stove, took out a skillet and put it on a burner. “I kept giving the same concoction different names, to keep us from going whacko.”
“Now she tells me. So, what’s on the menu tonight?”
“How about Tuna Surprise?”
“What’s the Surprise?”
“Managing to turn this mess into something edible,” Annie said, and laughed. “Here. Start dicing the potatoes. I’ll heat up some oil and slice the rest of the onions.”
“Suppose you supervise while I do the work. It’s my fault we’re stuck out here, in the tail end of nowhere, so it’s only fair I get to make dinner.”
“Let’s face it, Cooper. We’re trapped in a place most people would kill for, so stop apologizing and start dicing.”
Annie splashed some oil into the skillet, then leaned past Chase and placed it on the burner. Her breast brushed lightly across his arm, and he felt himself harden like stone. Desire, an overpowering need for her, for Annie, the mother of his child and the passion of his youth, surged through his blood, pumping hard and hot, and pooled low in his belly.
He jerked away. As he did, his elbow knocked against the knife and it clattered to the floor.
“Damn,” he said, as if it mattered, as if anything mattered but wanting to take his wife in his arms.
Milton Hoffman’s face, the face of the man she loved, rose before him as if it were an apparition. Hoffman, who couldn’t love Annie as much as he did because, dammit, he did love her. Not again, but still. He’d never stopped loving her, and it was time to admit it.
“Annie,” he said in a low voice.
Annie looked up. The temperature in the kitchen felt as if it had gone up ten degrees.
The message was there, in Chase’s eyes. Her heart leaped in her chest. She told herself not to be a fool. What was happening here wasn’t real. Reality was the papers that had legally severed their marriage. It was a woman named Janet, waiting for Chase back in New York.
On the other hand, hadn’t some philosopher said reality was what you made of it?
“Annie?” Chase whispered. He reached toward her and she swayed forward, her eyes half-closed...
The smell of burning oil filled the kitchen.
Annie swung around, grabbed the skillet and dumped it into the sink.
“We’ll have to start over,” she said, with a shaky laugh. She looked at Chase. “With the cooking, I mean.”
Chase nodded. Then they turned away from each other and made a show of being busy.
* * *
Annie fried more onions, parboiled the diced potatoes and put together a tuna casserole.
Chase made the coffee and opened a package of crackers and a box of cookies.
When everything was ready, they carried their meal into the living room, arranged it on the low, lacquered table and sat, cross-legged, on the black-and-white cushions. They ate in silence, as politely and impersonally as if they were strangers who’d been asked to share a table in a crowded coffee shop.
Afterward, they cleaned up together. Then Annie took a magazine from a stack she’d found in the kitchen.
Chase said he’d take another walk.
Annie said she’d read.
But she didn’t. The black-and-white cushions didn’t offer much in the way of comfort. Besides, her thoughts kept straying away from the magazine, to the hours looming ahead. There was an entire night to get through. She and Chase, sharing this cabin. And that bedroom.
How would she manage?
She jumped when Chase stepped into the living room.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t meant to startle you.”
“That’s okay.” She folded her hands over the closed magazine, her fingers knotted tightly together. “I was thinking,” she said carefully. “I mean, it occurred to me...”
“What?”
Annie took a breath.
“Well, there is one advantage to being here by ourselves.”
Chase looked at her. His eyes were burning like coals. “There’s a definite advantage.”
There was no mistaking his meaning. Annie felt her heart swell, as if it were a balloon, until it seemed to fill her chest.