Noticing her disappointment, the clerk directed her to the manager of the grocery section, who turned out to be a Frenchman.
“They sent you to me because I was a chef at the Midland Grand Hotel,” he said, sounding annoyed, flicking his hand. “Bon, I can share some recipes with you. Your cook will not have the spices for them, nor the required techniques, and we don’t have the bread on this island, mais, pas de problème, you find the spices here in the spice section.”
He rapidly dictated four recipes to his assistant, for a salad, a paste, a chicken dish, and a ground beef dish.
“That’s rather a lot of parsley,” Catriona said doubtfully, skimming the notes.
“Oui, parsley, third aisle. Go and assist the lady, Smith. Pas de problème.”
She had help for loading the bags and boxes into a cab, and she managed to unload everything on her own back at Cadogan Place. Elias wasn’t home, which suited her just fine. This could be a surprise for him; unlike her, he probably liked surprises. After moving the ingredients to the kitchen, she went upstairs and changed into a loose, old-fashioned morning wrapper. Back in the kitchen, she put on an apron.
“Right,” she said, her hands on her hips as she surveyed the pots, the knife block, the stove. She could follow simple, written instructions. She could figure out how to operate a stove.
An hour later, she had a huge, massive, grand problème. Her wrist hurt. Her eyes stung. Behind her, steam and smoke welled from the stove. The windows were running with condensation; sweat was running down her back. On the wooden cutting board, one big bushel of parsley after the next seemed to melt to a tiny heap of mush under her knife, but the instruction had underlined the finely of finely chopped, so she stuck to it. Her heart was pounding because any moment now, Elias would walk in and find her steeped in chaos; there were chicken innards in a bowl, scattered onion peels, a tomato on the floor, dirty spoons everywhere. Something crackled behind her back. The chicken. She dropped the knife and spun around. Slowly now. She put on the large, insulating mitten and carefully lifted the lid of the pot. Heat blasted her face. “Bloody hell,” she gasped.
“Hayeti,” came a low voice. “What is this?”
She yelped.
“You startled me,” she said.
Elias was a blurred, dark shape, leaning with one shoulder against the doorframe. She took off her foggy glasses and rubbed them on her apron; by the time they were back on her nose, he was next to her and lifted the hissing pot by its handles. He put it down on the cast-iron tray that was attached to the side of the stove.
“So that’s what this is for,” she muttered.
Elias straightened. The starburst pattern around his pupils gleamed golden, and for a beat, she couldn’t breathe. Something had grabbed her heart and squeezed.
“I’m sorry,” she said without thinking. “I meant for it all to be ready.”
She pointed at the mess on the cabinet counter and realized she was still wearing a gigantic mitt.
A popping sound came from the oven, causing her to flinch. Elias grabbed a tea towel, opened the oven flap, and reached into the smoke. The grate and its charred contents landed next to the pot. He flipped down the levers. He picked up the stray tomato, gave it a small toss before he put it on the counter, then turned off the faucet that had been dripping away in the background. He moved between the cabinet, the sink, the stove with ease, and within a minute, the kitchen had fallen silent. Only then, he ran a hand through his hair and glanced around as if to make sense of things. His gaze lingered on the parsley.
“I’m making tabbouleh,” she supplied. Parsley salad.
“Inshallah,” he murmured.
“All right, it might not turn into tabbouleh, it’s not coming together as I had hoped.”
His gaze became markedly intense. “You are making tabbouleh.”
“I certainly had the intention.”
He took in her frizzy hair, the wrapper, the apron. A tingling sensation danced over her skin. His expression was as intent and lustful as though she were spread out naked before him on the bed upstairs.
He hooked a finger into her apron pocket and pulled her against him. “Why are you attempting to cook for me, sweetheart?”
“I thought that perhaps, you miss your home,” she said. “You looked as though you were missing home when you told me about Ehden.”
The words came haltingly, as though they were part of a much grander confession. Elias lightly touched the back of her head.
“Ta’abrinee,” he said, his voice soft and strained.