* * *
‘This is delicious but—correct me if I’m wrong—it’s not pasta,’ Damien said.
He’d changed into a denim shirt and jeans and they sat opposite each other at the refectory table that Harriet had set with blue woven mats, matching linen napkins and one of her herbs in a colourful pottery pot.
‘Changed my mind,’ she confessed. ‘It’s paella.’
‘What’s it got in it?’
Harriet rested her elbows on the table and dangled her fork in her fingers. ‘Let’s see, chicken and prawns, rice, saffron, of course, tomatoes, onions, garlic, baby peas—that’s mainly it. I guess people have their own variations but that’s mine.’
‘If you’d told me I could have brought some Sangria.’
Harriet put her fork down and picked up her wine glass. ‘It’s a very nice Beaujolais.’
‘Thanks. So,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘cooking is another of your accomplishments. You’re a talented girl.’
‘That’s about the sum of it, though,’ she said wryly. ‘And I don’t think I was born to cook. It came about through necessity.’
‘How come?’
She explained about how she’d grown up.
‘So that’s why you’re so protective of your brother,’ he commented. ‘I suppose in a way I’m the same with Charlie. Our father died when he was seventeen. I’ve been standing in loco parentis ever since.’ He grimaced.
Harriet pushed her plate away and picked up her glass. ‘Charlie’s a honey,’ she said warmly.
Damien narrowed his eyes. ‘He hasn’t been chatting you up, has he?’
‘Not at all. He’s been trying to pin me down, if anything. As in trying to work me out. He believes, he says, anyway, I’m not like anyone else he’s met. Mainly, from what I can gather—’ she shrugged ruefully ‘—because of my work ethic.’
‘How’s it going, work-wise?’
Harriet studied her wine. ‘Another week should do it.’
‘You would have finished before I came home, if things had run to schedule, in other words.’
Harriet took a sip of her wine, put the glass down and plucked a basil leaf from the herb pot and crushed it between her fingers. ‘Yes.’
He shrugged. ‘Still hell-bent on being fancy-free, in other words?’
‘Ah.’ Harriet got up and collected their plates. She took them to the sink then opened the fridge and withdrew a lemon meringue dessert. She put it on the table, together with a tub of ice cream.
‘If that’s meant to placate me,’ he said with a sudden wicked gleam of amusement in his dark eyes, ‘you’ve hit the right button, ma’am. I cannot resist lemon meringue. Just don’t tell the cook. He believes he and only he can make a perfect meringue. Incidentally, I’m in his black books.’
Harriet looked a question at him.
‘He wanted to cook dinner for me.’