As she laid the fig plate next to the foie gras plate, once again the delectable smell tickled her nose. She looked left and right. Julien was out in the dining room, and Ruben and Gloria were by the fridge. She had promised herself she wasn’t going to try his cooking out of pure irritation. But her mouth was watering. How bad could it be? It’s not like he would know, and she wouldn’t have to compliment him if she didn’t want to add to his already monstrous ego.
She just happened to have a fork in one of the pockets of her chef’s jacket, and she surreptitiously pulled it out and speared the corner of a foie gras slice. She popped it into her mouth and tossed the fork in the sink before anyone could see her.
What she could not have been prepared for was the hum of electricity that she felt once she started to chew. It was a tingling that began in her mouth and spread to the roots of her hair. She shivered. Not knowing what else to do, she closed her eyes. There were the smooth flavors of the duck fat, the tasty, rocky grains of sea salt he had used. She rolled the salt around on the tip of her tongue. But there was also something else. An aftertaste of some sort . . . She tried and tried to put her finger on it but couldn’t quite place it. It was herbal, astringent, aromatic.
Her mind flashed back to when she was eight years old and her mother had brought her to Doña Elia for a spiritual cleansing, after her mom had gotten them into a car accident by crashing into a driver who stopped short on I-95. The kindly elder had set some type of crusty-looking wands on fire and then waved them all around her head and limbs. They had a smell, those wands, and it was pungent and earthy, and the food Julien cooked tasted just like they smelled. How strange.
She mulled it over to herself. The oddest part of it all was that these foie gras didn’t appear to have any herbs on them.
Julien’s loud chuckle interrupted her thoughts as the door swung open.
“Yes, at the molecular gastronomy conference. See you,” he called to someone behind him. He walked back over to the kitchen island, where Lumi was staring dumbly at the plates.
He picked up the plate of figs. “Well, thank you for grilling the figs,” he said.
“Mm-hmm.” She nodded, then shook her head abruptly and tried to look for something else, anything else, in the refrigerator. Julien looked after her, his expression puzzled.
LUMI’S TOMATO SORBET
Makes 1 pint sorbet
10 large tomatoes
1/2 cup sugar
Juice of 1 lemon, seeded
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons ginger root, chopped
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground clove
Peel and chop the tomatoes. Combine all the ingredients in a large saucepan over medium heat for 30 minutes. Cool the mixture, then blend in a blender until smooth. Let it cool completely, then freeze in an ice cream maker. Remove the sorbet and place in a container (preferably one with a lid) and freeze for 2–4 hours before serving.
15
Julien
“It’s all right, Berta,” he called down the hall. “You can go home now.”
Berta hastened to the kitchen and stopped in the doorway, bracing herself against the first of the Sub-Zero refrigerators.
“Are you sure, Mr. Dax?” she asked cautiously.
Julien wiped the sweat from his brow and leveled his gaze with hers. “Berta, I am certain. Take advantage of this time to drive up to City Island with Julio. April is the best time to go, before all the traffic starts.”
It was only fair that after ten years in his employ, he knew what his housekeeper and her husband liked to do in their spare time.
Berta sighed. “Well then, Mr. Dax, I know I will find the kitchen more sparkling than I left it. See you tomorrow,” she said. And with a wink, she was gone before he could change his mind.
Julien grinned to himself and walked over to the minibar. He poured a stream of bourbon into a highball glass and added some gargantuan chunks of ice. Berta had not been wrong. Clean he would. But he needed a minute to think first.
He felt himself, but not himself. He felt more alive, but also more anxious. And he couldn’t deny for much longer that he felt like his blood was boiling every time that woman was around him. Letting logic prevail wasn’t working out that well after all.
Whenever her hand brushed his when she reached for the paring knife, he felt fire. When she dashed by him in the kitchen and left behind a trail of the most sublime gardenia-lime perfume, he felt fire. He wanted to devour her, one inch of bare skin at a time. All roads to her were made of fire, and she wasn’t interested in as much as a wisp of smoke from him.
“Damn it,” he cursed under his breath. Maybe she was just another one. Oh, it would help so much to believe that. Another eye-on-the-prize girl that saw her time in his company as a stepping-stone to a richer future. The road to where he stood had been paved with them.
Even Shayla. In the three years they dated, there was sex but no intimacy, and it bothered him how little that had bothered her. She had been ready to move forward, get engaged, and sweep those issues under the handspun silk rug she’d picked out for their future home.
But there was something about the way Lumi looked at him, guarded yet wide open, so attuned to his overtures, that told him she was not just another one, that told him Lumi was nothing like Shayla.
It wasn’t only her body, although he hungered for it. It was her very presence that unnerved him and made him forget everything that usually made him so unflappable. He knew other people probably would have used the term “pigheaded.”
Julien exhaled deeply and strode over to the deep fountain-style sink, ignoring the Art of Shaving gift box he’d found on his desk the day before. He was going to have to have another talk with Esme, but for the moment, he was consumed by this newfound ache.
He wasn’t used to being the only one. He had been in a couple serious relationships and a few less serious ones too . . . but Lumi hadn’t shown any signs of interest in him, beyond having him move out of the way so she could reach the knives. He could tell that she thought he was a pompous ass. But that wasn’t fair. She hadn’t given him a chance to show her his softer side. How he would enjoy that if she did.
He stood back for a moment and scrutinized the tiles composing the backsplash behind the sink. Yes, they did need scrubbing. He knelt and opened the cabinet under the sink. There it was: his treasure trove of cleaning supplies. There was Pine-Sol and Fabuloso and his trusty standby, bleach. His mother had always said, “If it’s not bleach, it’s not clean.”
He didn’t know if he would go that far, but it did work quite well. It had earned its place as a mainstay in his arsenal, lifting the most resistant stains, the ones that had potential to mar his day. He took a microfiber cloth and sprayed a light dusting of Perfect Tile over all the tiles. Then, one by one, he began buffing them with the cloth, making sure to get in and scour the edges of the grout as well. He could almost feel his mother standing next to him as he worked.
She was the one who had taught him how to keep a kitchen clean, and some of his favorite memories were of telling her about his day as they scrubbed tiles. Little had she known how much her teachings would help him keep organized in his line of work.
The backsplash of Julien’s fountain sink was white except for the occasional moonstone inlay, which caught the light and refracted it all over the kitchen. He stared at the iridescent pieces. He thought Lumi had a necklace that looked as if it were made of the same material. No, he was sure of it.