Page 9 of A Heart of Winter
“Afraid I can’t help much. My parents didn’t keep milk in the house, so I never even tried it until I went to college. Even then, I never got a taste for it.”
I gasped in shock. “No rice pudding?”
“Never even had it,” he said, and . . . well, I didn’t exactly have an enormous repertoire of recipes to draw from. I wasn’t a bad cook, but I had just about two dessert recipes to draw from: rice pudding and butter cookies. If he didn’t like dairy at all, I wasn’t sure how I’d impress him. Then he leaned toward me. “But I’d love to give it a try.”
And oh, but that was?—
“I’m going to make it tomorrow. With—with cinnamon and cream. And gryta—stew, that is. I don’t think they have elk here, but beef should be fine. Do—do you like stew?”
He reached up, his finger brushing against my cheek as he stared into my eyes. “I’m sure it’ll be delicious.”
A cleared throat snagged both of our attention just in time for us to pull apart as a sour-faced older woman came tearing down the aisle. I half expected her to say something about two men flirting in the grocery store when she stopped next to us, but instead she gave Kai a fake smile. “Kai, honey. Good to see you back in town. Right where you belong. How are you?”
“I’m fine, Mrs. Andersen,” he said, giving her a nod and entirely ignoring the suggestion that he belonged in Minnesota. Something in his posture was tense, the earlier playfulness having fled the building entirely. “How are you?”
“Oh, you know. Masie has cancer. Bone. They say if you live long enough, you’re bound to get some kind of cancer.” We both blinked, but I hadn’t even been addressed, and apparently Kai had no idea what to say, so instead, she forged on. “My back won’t stop hurting anymore, but I suppose that’s just how it is when you get to be my age. They closed down the elementary school you kids went to and opened a new one all the way acrosstown.” She paused, and it felt oddly momentous, as though the litany of unhappiness she’d just offered was nothing, and the important thing she truly wanted to say was next. “Gerda’s been missing you. You should come over for dinner tonight.”
Kai cocked his head in faux confusion. “I talked to Gerda this morning, and she told me she was working tonight.”
“Oh did you?” Her tone changed, suddenly syrupy sweet. “Here I worried you’d forgotten all about her.” She gave me a meaningful look followed by a rather insulting once-over before turning back to Kai. “She’s missed you so much since you left town. We were glad to hear you’d come back, but then you haven’t been by even though we’re right next door.”
“I had lunch with Gerda the day before yesterday and talked to her on the phone this morning,” he told her, and as reassuring as the words might have been, his tone had gone a little frosty and clipped. “Gerda is my bestfriend, Mrs. Andersen. I’ve seen plenty of her since I’ve been back, and I never stopped calling her.”
The way he stressed the word friend made me understand—or at least, I thought I did. Mrs. Andersen wanted Kai and Gerda to have a rather different relationship than they did.
I imagined that finding him flirting with a stranger in the dairy aisle had been the last thing she’d wanted, and it’d been an unwelcome surprise. It didn’t make her behavior any better, but at least I understood why I was getting the cold shoulder.
“Now if you’ll excuse us, Johannes and I need to find some beef for the stew he’s planning to make. Maybe a nice bottle of red wine to go with it.” He turned back to the dairy case. “And cream, you said, for your pudding?”
“Cream,” I agreed, pointing out a carton for him to pick up, which he did, setting it in my cart and then guiding us both out of the aisle.
Whatever Morwenna had said, I could survive without milk. I’d managed fine for three hundred years, after all. One blizzard couldn’t be any worse than that.
For bread, maybe they’d have a nice crusty loaf in the bakery to go with my stew.
Breathless
By the time we’d finished picking up everything I needed to eat for the next week, we had not just one, but two bottles of red wine we agreed were perfect, as well as a riesling he liked and a six-pack of hard cider, which was apparently quite popular in Minnesota.
Most of it, I wanted to share with him more than I wanted it for myself.
Yes, it was true, I fell hard into crushes. But he was sweet and kind and patient and gorgeous and just . . . Everything I’d always wanted in a partner and only gotten from Morwenna for most of my life.
Even at our best, Michael had never been like that. He’d been a decent student at first, wanting very much to learn the basics of magic. Then he’d realized that it was difficult, and took time and focus instead of just wriggling your nose and willing things to happen.
He’d always wanted an easy button for every aspect of life, and that simply wasn’t how magic worked. Unless you were me trying to start a snowstorm, and no one in their right mind wanted that life.
As we were stepping into line to check out, Kai’s phone rang. He scowled at his pocket, clearly considering not answering, but after two rings, sighed and fished it out. “Mori.”
He listened in silence for a moment, frowning, glancing up at me. “I’m a little busy right now, Cate. Can’t they wait until Friday?”
Cate. It was the name of the realtor who was selling his parents’ house for him, and he was about to put her off because he was with me. It was sweet. One of the kindest things anyone had done for me in a long time, but Kai’s whole life was on hold while he tried to sell the house.
I reached out and brushed my hand over his. “You can go if you need to. We can have dinner tomorrow.”
The look he gave me at that was utterly scorching, but not in the annoyed-I-interrupted-him way. In a way that said he wanted to hang up the phone, drag me outside, and kiss me breathless right that moment.
Or more than that.
