Hot & Heavy (Lightning 2)

“Not surprised, just…it seems so whimsical.”

“Yeah, well. I was six. What did I know?”

“My guess? A lot.” He holds a grape up to my lips, waits for me to take it. “What happened to Bear?”

“I forgot him when we were sneaking out of one of my ‘uncles’ houses in the middle of the night.” I make air quotes around the word uncles.

Shawn’s face falls. “I didn’t mean to bring up a bad memory.”

“Not bad,” I tell him with a shrug. “Just how it was.”

He seems at a loss for words and since the last thing I want to do is talk about my childhood, I focus his attention back on the task at hand. “What can I do to help?” I nod toward the stove, where the sauce continues to simmer.

He gets the message, and I can see him gingerly backing away from the land mines that surround my childhood as he tries to lighten the mood. “After what you told me about your kitchen skills earlier? Absolutely nothing.”

I pretend to be offended, but the truth is we’re both better off if I stay on this side of the kitchen. Still, “Even I can chop some vegetables. Let me make a salad.”

“I would,” he says, leaning in to steal a kiss. “But I already made one.”

“Guess I was a sure thing, huh?”

He laughs. “You are as far from a sure thing as a person can get, sweetheart. Still, hope springs eternal. Besides, if nothing else, I like salad and I’ve never minded eating alone.”

“And now you don’t have to.”

“Now I don’t have to.” Shawn gives me another kiss. “Turns out, I don’t mind eating with someone else, either.”

He shoots a grin at me over his shoulder as he crosses to the huge pantry on the other side of the kitchen. He comes back out with two bottles of wine.

“Red or white?” he asks, holding each bottle up respectively. “I was afraid to break out the Chianti.”

“Smart move.” I nod toward the pinot noir. “Red, if that’s okay with you?”

“Perfect.” He returns the white to the closet, then drops the pinot on the counter in front of me along with two wineglasses. “Turns out I’ve found something for you to do.”

“Open the wine?”

He reaches into a drawer and pulls out a corkscrew. Slaps it on the counter in front of me. “Open the wine.”

I reach for the bottle and he leaves me to it, setting a large copper pot of water to boil on the stove before pulling a Saran-wrapped block of dough from one of the refrigerated drawers.

“Are you making bread?” I ask as the cork finally pops free from the bottle.

“Pasta,” he answers, crossing to the mixer in the corner which I now notice is fitted with the pasta making attachment.

“You make your own pasta?” I demand, shocked at the trouble he’s going through for this meal. Before him, the most a guy ever made me was coffee and toast. And that was only if I slept over and he was making it for himself, too.

“When I have time. So that pretty much means during the off-season.” He gets out a huge wooden cutting board, sprinkles it with flour and then places the unwrapped dough in the middle of the board.

I watch, fascinated, as he divides the dough into four pieces, then flours a rolling pin and rolls through the first piece. When it’s about half as thick as it originally was, he peels it off the board and starts feeding it through the machine.

He feeds it through five times, pausing to fold it over each time before rolling it through again. After the fifth time, he fiddles with the machine somehow and then rolls it through again. Fiddles with the machine. Rolls it through again.

This time it comes out one long, narrow sheet and he places it back on the floured cutting board. “I can use the attachment to cut it, too,” he tells me even as he pulls out a knife. “But I kind of like the rustic look of hand-cut pasta.”

And then he runs through it with the knife, cutting the dough into long, thin strips. “Linguine’s the easiest to make,” he says when he catches me watching him carefully. “Even a beginner can do it.”

“Not this beginner.” I pour two glasses of wine, then hold one up to his mouth so he can take a sip.