Chapter Twenty-Three

FOR A SPLIT SECOND, a flicker of dismay shot through Rachel when she recognized Alex’s neighborhood and he pulled into his parking lot. “Are we stopping here first?”

“No, this is our final destination. You said you trusted me. Does that still count? I can take you home if not. Or we can go do something else.”

Alex looked so uncertain that her doubts of moments before vanished. “No. I’m curious what you have planned.”

He turned the ignition off and then jumped out so he could open the door for her. He held out his arm and she took it, letting him escort her into the building.

“I feel a little guilty,” he admitted. “You’re gorgeous. It seems unfair for me to keep you all to myself.”

She licked her lips and decided to answer honestly. “I dressed for you, not for them.”

He trailed a finger down her bare arm, once more making her think he was going to kiss her. But at that moment, the elevator arrived at the lobby level with a ding, and the doors slid open to reveal an elderly lady. She scowled at them as if reading their minds.

Alex cleared his throat. “Good evening, Mrs. Tajikian.”

“Humph,” she said, looking between the two of them suspiciously. They moved past her onto the elevator and the doors closed before they both started laughing.

“Let me guess. She doesn’t approve of gentlemen having lady visitors?”

“She doesn’t approve of anything that I can tell.” Alex punched the button and the elevator moved silently upward, delivering them to the penthouse level. Alex fumbled for his keys and opened the door, then stepped aside for her to enter.

Rachel inhaled deeply. Enticing aromas wafted through the space, both familiar and foreign. From the stereo in the corner, the soft strains of traditional-sounding European music greeted them. She had to listen for a moment before she realized the lyrics were in Russian.

“What is this?”

He turned to her, once more looking uncertain. “I’m making dinner for you. Food I grew up with.”

Something caught in her chest and held. “Really?”

“I know it’s not anything fancy, but I thought . . . well, you always cook for everyone else, don’t you? I thought you might like someone to do the same for you.”

Tears pricked Rachel’s eyes. “It’s perfect. Really. No one ever cooks for me because they think I’ll critique the food.”

“I’m counting on you not being an expert on Baltic cuisine. And if you are, these are family recipes, so you’re not allowed to criticize.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. This is a treat.” She slid onto one of the barstools and folded her hands while she waited for him to take his place on the other side of the island.

Alex took off his jacket and tossed it onto one of the dining chairs, then found a plain gray apron and tied it on. “This won’t be a coursed meal or anything. I’m not good enough to time it all, and my mother used to serve everything at once anyway.”

“You do realize that I don’t eat like I’m at a restaurant when I’m home, right?”

“I’m surprised you cook for yourself at home at all.”

“I usually don’t. Unless it’s a huge batch of soup that I can eat all week at two in the morning.”

Alex lifted a lid on a pot that already sat on the cooktop. She caught a glimpse of bright-red liquid as the steam escaped the pot. “Borscht?”

“Naturally. Now I need to get the dumplings on and make the sauce for the pork. It won’t take that long. I hope.”

Rachel watched as he moved about the kitchen. “You look pretty comfortable over there for someone who says he never cooks.”

“Well, I helped make these things with my mother dozens of times when I was younger. They’d have friends from the university over, and they’d eat and drink vodka until the wee hours of the night. I’ll admit, I had to call my mom for the recipes, but at least I remember what they’re supposed to look and taste like.”

Rachel leaned forward. “What was it like to grow up Russian in America?”

“I wouldn’t say that I did. I’d say I grew up American in a Russian household.” Alex paused for a second, wooden spoon poised in his hand while he thought. “My parents are . . . I don’t even know how to classify them. They are all about the opportunities in America and taking part in them, and at the same time, they’re very protective of their own traditions. Yet they were the furthest from traditionalists when they were back in the old country —exactly why they left in the first place.”

“That must have been some sort of tug of war on you.”

“I guess so,” Alex said. “More so for Dina. But she was closer to them than I was. They encouraged my independence from the start. With Dina, they were always overprotective, maybe because she was an unexpected late-life baby. I don’t know. We grew up speaking Russian at home, but it was to be English only outside. They talked about how bad things had been in the Soviet days, but everything had to be ‘the Russian way.’”

“It sounds like they were mourning a way of life there that should have been,” Rachel said.

Alex looked at her thoughtfully. “You’re probably right. Maybe that’s why they went back when they got the opportunity. They wanted it all, and in the end, they did the best they could to merge both together. I can’t help but think the blend was always lacking to them.”

“When you miss something that much, all you can think about is how it should have been and how you can get it back. Or something like it.”

“What was it that you missed?” Alex must have sensed her ambivalence, because he went back to cutting mushrooms so he wasn’t looking her straight in the eye.

She traced the countertop’s patterned stone with her fingertip. “A real family, I guess. My dad left my mom when I was young and we never had a ton of money. Hartford, Connecticut, isn’t an affluent area to begin with, and my mom had to commute hours to work. I always had this fantasy that one day I would come home and it would all be different, that we would be like one of those TV families that sat down to dinner together every night.”

“Is that why you started cooking?”

“Partly.” That was a portion of it, but not nearly the whole story. “But then my mom got remarried and I realized the fantasy of a family I’d always had was just that —fantasy. I regretted that I didn’t appreciate the life my mom made for the two of us, frozen pizza and all. In any case, I moved out when I was fifteen and started working and then the kitchen staff became like my family. They even call the staff dinner ‘family meal.’”

“That’s what I ruined for you,” Alex said softly.

Rachel started. Somewhere along the line, she’d stopped blaming him. He wasn’t the vindictive, careless person she’d thought he was. “The thing is, when you work enough places, you start to realize that all industry folk are like family. You’ve got a shared history, a shared language. We understand the crazy that most people don’t see. You hang around in one city long enough, and eventually everyone has worked for and with everyone else.”

“The stories of crazy chefs become like stories of Crazy Aunt Irma?”

Rachel laughed. “Exactly. You become like veterans sitting around and telling war stories. They might get embellished over the years, but everyone recognizes the parts that ring true.”

“And you miss that. The camaraderie.”

She looked him directly in the eye. “I do. And I miss the routine. The sense of purpose. The adrenaline rush. The way that, when you’re under the gun, everything else goes away. When you have a good team, when it’s all flowing, it’s magic.”

Alex set down his knife. “Then that’s what we’re getting back for you.”

“We?”

“We. Wasn’t that the whole idea of doing the supper club in the first place?”

She smiled, but it was a knowing sort of smile. “I thought you said it was an excuse to spend time with me. And to rid yourself of writer’s block.”

“Oh, it was. At least on my end.”

“Did it work?”

He smiled back. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“I mean, did it fix your writer’s block?”

Alex didn’t look at her while he cranked up the burner beneath his pan. It was going to be too hot for the butter, which he would find out in a minute, but she didn’t say anything. She wasn’t here as a chef, and she certainly wasn’t going to give him cooking pointers. Sure enough, the butter was already starting to brown when he dumped in the mushrooms. He hissed out his displeasure and turned the heat back down.

“In a manner of speaking.” He added sour cream to the mushroom sauce, making something similar to Stroganoff. Despite the overbrowned butter, it smelled delicious. He wasn’t a bad cook at all. “I’m writing, but I don’t know if anything’s going to come of it. I don’t know if I can make a book out of it.”

“Can I read it?”

He barked out a laugh. “Right now? No.”

“Why not? I could tell you if it’s any good.”

He gave her a look. She chose to call it fond and not condescending. “I’m going to let my agent make that call. You’re not unbiased.”

“Why not?”

He winked at her. “Because you’re into me. You’d be so overcome by my ability as a wordsmith that you’d say, ‘Is there anything Alex can’t do? He writes and cooks and climbs and looks good in an apron too?’”

Now it was Rachel’s turn to laugh. “Don’t forget to add your awesome humility and self-awareness.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t.” He set aside the pan on the stove and then retrieved a covered casserole dish from the oven. “Braised pork loin.”

“Smells great. One of my favorite ways to cook that cut.”

He lifted the lid and transferred the meat to a cutting board, then looked dismayed. “I should have rested it while I was making the sauce.”

Rachel smiled at his discomfiture. The timing was the hardest part of cooking, and right now he looked like a crestfallen little boy. “You’re good. Just put the sauce over the simmer burner as low as it will go and stir it every once in a while. There’s enough fat in the sour cream that it shouldn’t curdle.”

“In the meantime, I can plate up the borscht and the dumplings.” He went back for a stack of plates and two soup bowls. Rachel resisted the urge to help. This was his show, and all things considered, he was running it pretty smoothly. He ladled the borscht into bowls and topped each with a dollop of sour cream and a sprig of fresh dill —very attractive, Rachel thought, both the presentation and the look of concentration on his ridiculously handsome face.

That thought made her struggle to hold back her smile as he brought the bowls to the table. The meat had been arranged on the platter in an elegant swoop of mushroom sauce with more drizzled over the top. He’d gone to some trouble to think it through and make it restaurant-worthy. The fact he’d given it so much effort only put more weight behind her smile.

He swept his hand toward the table and pulled her chair out for her. “Shall we eat then?”

“This looks amazing.” She was rewarded with a pleased smile from him.

It was amazing, actually, especially considering he claimed he didn’t cook. The borscht held just the right amount of sweetness, the beets tender but still fresh and bright, finely diced pork giving it further flavor. The dumplings, colored green from the spinach in the dough, were tender with a delicious cheese filling. When she complimented him on the texture, he made a face.

“I can’t take credit for that. I bought them from the Russian deli. I ran out of time to make the dumplings.”

“My compliments to the deli, then.” Rachel moved on to the pork, which was tasty despite the ever-so-slightly separated mushroom sauce. “This is all good. You know, it really captures that traditional feeling. I can almost imagine your parents eating this back home.”

“Almost?” Alex looked at her quizzically. “Of course they did. These are family recipes.”

Rachel grimaced. She should have been more careful with her wording. “I’m sure they are. They must be very old or very new family recipes, though.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because these are definitely not Soviet-era dishes. Some of these ingredients wouldn’t have been available. The borscht is probably the same, though I doubt there would have been meat in it. But fresh sour cream and mushrooms . . . it was probably more like mayonnaise and whatever she grew in her kitchen garden.”

Alex stared at her.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. There was this deli in Brighton Beach I liked and the owner used to tell me stories.” She was babbling now, desperate to cover her faux pas when he had gone to such lengths to give her a nice meal, to impress her.

Alex started to laugh.

“What? I don’t . . . What?”

He rubbed a hand over his face. “That is exactly like my mother. Isn’t that what we were talking about? How she felt the need to invent a rosier past for herself? Of course she would be cooking her grandmother’s recipes in America. Or taking things from new cookbooks and passing them off as family tradition.”

“So I didn’t offend you?”

“Offend me? No. Inadvertently made me understand my mother for the first time in my life, maybe.”

“I take it you aren’t close?”

Alex set down his fork. “My relationship with my parents is complicated.”

“Is that why you studied psychology?”

“You’re the one who should have been the psychologist. You have an uncanny way of reading people.”

Rachel flushed. “Sorry. I guess I tend to study people too. Usually they only show you the side they want you to see. I don’t like being fooled.” She snapped her mouth shut, feeling like she’d already said too much.

But Alex simply considered her like he could see straight through her eyes into her thoughts. Then he looked down at the empty plates. “Are you ready for dessert yet?”

“I’m stuffed,” Rachel said. “I couldn’t possibly.”

“Then how about I make some tea and we go up on the roof deck?”

“Tea would be nice.” She helped him gather the plates and brought them back to the kitchen, where he quickly rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher. Then he went to the corner of the countertop and plugged in a cord coming from what looked like a metal urn.

Rachel followed and peered around him. “You have a samovar?”

“Christmas present from my mom. Which is funny, because even she uses an electric kettle.” He found a glass jar of tea leaves and put some in the samovar’s strainer pot, then filled both vessels with water and turned it on.

“How long will it take?”

“A while,” he said. “The water has to heat in the bottom and then the steam heats the tea at the top.”

“Then let’s go up. It would be a shame to miss the sunset.”

Alex held out his hand. She placed her own in it without hesitation and let him lead her to the spiral staircase. Up they climbed, and then they stepped out onto the roof deck.

“It’s beautiful tonight.” The sky looked like a rainbow, deep reds and oranges near the horizon, coloring wisps of clouds with watercolor hues against a fading blue sky. The sunsets were one thing that had struck her when she first came to Colorado, and they still hadn’t lost their impact.

“I call these Broncos sunsets,” he said. “God is clearly a football fan.”

“Maybe He is, but He roots for the Patriots.”

Alex’s mouth dropped open. “I can’t believe you would say something so hurtful and untrue.”

Rachel laughed. “Honestly, unless you’re a college team playing UConn, I don’t really care.”

“That’s almost as bad.” Alex gestured to the cushioned outdoor sofa, now piled with pillows and draped with a blanket. Rachel lowered herself to the edge of the bench and tucked one leg up beneath her.

He sat beside her and gave an exaggerated yawn before stretching one arm around her shoulders.

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Smooth move, Romeo.”

Alex laughed. “That move killed with the high school girls by senior year.”

“I bet you didn’t need those moves to kill with the girls.” That dimple alone probably got him anything he wanted.

“Contrary to what you may think, I was a bit of a nerd. Fortunately, there were enough nerdy girls in my high school that I managed to get dates for all the big events.”

“So while you were going to prom in a powder-blue tux, I was cooking for prom-goers like you.”

His expression turned serious. He combed his fingers through the ends of her hair and laid a thick wave across her shoulder. “Do you have any regrets about how you went about everything? Starting work so early?”

It might have been the first time anyone besides Ana and Melody had asked her that question. “I don’t believe in regrets. I did what I had to do at the time. I missed out on a lot, but I also accomplished more than I would have had I taken a conventional route.”

“How do you do that?” Alex asked softly, searching her eyes. “Accept everything? No second-guessing. No regrets.”

She sensed there was more to the question than curiosity. “Practice. At not wanting any more than I can have.”

The moment stretched, broken only by the soft sound of their breathing. His gaze lowered to her mouth, and her breath hitched in her chest with sudden yearning for all those things she said she had rejected. When his fingertips slid through the hair at the nape of her neck and his lips lowered to brush hers, she rose to meet him. She let herself sink into the kiss, let it swallow her up, envelop her senses. No other sensations but his taste, his smell, the warmth of his skin against hers. When he pulled her a little closer, she went willingly, stretching her arms around his neck, tunneling her fingers into his hair.

She’d avoided men because she’d been afraid of this, what happened after the instant flash fire of attraction, the desire that went deeper than the physical, the kind of madness that turned strong women into compliant, fragile shells of their former selves. And yet when she was with Alex, she didn’t feel weak or bullied or afraid. This yearning felt natural. Uncomplicated.

When they parted and she laid her palm flat against his chest to feel the steady, hard beat of his heart, she knew. From the look in his eyes, he did too.

She’d fallen. And there was no coming back.