It was a solid plan, and worked right up to the point where it came to luring Sarita back to bed. Domitian showered, used the razor he found in the drawer to shave, and then brushed his teeth before heading downstairs to suck back some blood. He heard banging from the kitchen as he passed through the living room from the bedroom door to the office door, and wondered what Sarita was doing but didn’t stop to check. After draining four bags, he went back up, though, and straight to the kitchen, his nose twitching. There was a heavy stench of something burning in the air, and his footsteps slowed warily as he passed through the dining room to the kitchen.
“There you are!” Sarita greeted him in a tone he would have said was a cross between “I’m super annoyed and trying not to show it” and “June Cleaver’s got nothing on me” good cheer. In other words, it was super fake and tinged with the threat of violence. One glance around the chaos in the kitchen told him why. His Sarita was brilliant, beautiful, sexy, and he was sure she had many talents . . . but cooking obviously wasn’t one of them, he decided as she announced, “I made us breakfast.”
“Si. I see that,” Domitian murmured, his gaze sliding over burned toast, bacon that was raw on the ends and burned in the middle, and eggs so underdone the tops of the whites were clear. No, the woman could not cook, he thought and sat down in the chair at the island when she indicated it, determined to eat every last bite if it killed him.
“I’m not as good a cook as you,” Sarita announced as she settled next to him. “But you made me dinner last night, so I thought I’d handle breakfast.” Shrugging, she confessed, “Breakfast for me is usually cereal or toaster strudels, though, and they didn’t have those here, so I did the best I could.”
It was such an unapologetic apology that Domitian was hard pressed not to chuckle. The woman had no problem acknowledging her few flaws or failings and even seemed to accept having some as inevitable. He really liked that about her. Too many people tried to be perfect at everything, or made excuses for not being perfect. Sarita just shrugged as if to say “I did my best. Take it or leave it.”
He was more than happy to take it, Domitian decided and picked up his knife and fork, then paused to glance at Sarita when she began to make choking, gagging sounds.
“Oh God,” she muttered after spitting out the piece of toast and egg she’d apparently combined to put in her mouth. “Oh, ick. No, put those down.” She slapped at his hands, making him put down his fork and knife, then snatched up both her plate and his and stood to carry them around the island, saying, “We can’t eat this. It’s awful. Those eggs are raw.” Opening the cupboard under the sink, she tossed both meals into the garbage, plates and all, and kicked the door closed with a shudder. “Ugh. I hate raw eggs.”
Exasperated, Sarita walked to the refrigerator, opened it to peer inside, and asked, “How about a cheese sandwich instead? I can manage that.”
Shaking his head, Domitian stood and walked up behind her to catch her by the shoulders and urge her back toward the chair she’d just left. “How about you sit down and relax and I make breakfast?”
“Oh, but you cooked last night,” she protested. “I could try again. Maybe French toast or something. That’s just toast dipped in eggs and milk then fried, right? Although, I’ll have to see if they provided any maple syrup here first. Do you guys get maple syrup down here or is that a Canadian thing? I don’t recall ever having it when we lived here.”
Sarita had escaped his loose hold and made a dash for the cupboards, but he caught her and turned her back toward the stools at the island. “Sit. It will be my pleasure to cook for you. I enjoy it. In fact you are the reason I learned to cook.”
“What?” she asked with surprise, dropping onto the chair and turning to look at him.
“It is true,” Domitian assured her, opening the refrigerator to pull out more bacon and eggs. “If you will recall, I lost my appetites back—”
“Before Christ was born,” Sarita finished for him dryly. “Yeah, I remember.” Frowning now, she said, “Speaking of which, if you didn’t eat before meeting me, why did you own a restaurant?”
“I like them,” he said simply. “It is where people go to celebrate happy events. Besides, I do not only own restaurants. I have a couple of hotels and a nightclub too. In fact, prior to encountering you I had always spent more time overseeing the nightclub than at any of the restaurants. I usually left those up to the managers I hired to run them.”
“So why were you at the restaurant the night my father took me?” she asked curiously.
“That was pure luck,” he assured her as he pulled out a clean frying pan and set it on the range. “The previous manager had left rather abruptly due to health issues. That was not the lucky part,” he added dryly, before continuing. “The lucky part was that I hired a replacement for him, but had to train him myself. And then you walked in.” Smiling, he shook his head. “Suddenly I was much more interested in the food than in the management end of the business. Meeting you reawakened my appetites,” he explained.
“All your appetites?” she asked, her eyebrows rising. She’d only been thirteen. Surely his interest in sex hadn’t—
“All of them,” he admitted solemnly as he began to lay the strips of bacon in the pan one after another. Turning the flame on under the frying pan, he added, “Of course, there was nothing to do about the reappearance of my physical desire. You were far too young. But food . . .” He shook his head. “Not only did I rediscover my delight in it, but I found I had a great desire to learn to cook the meal you ate that first time. You seemed to enjoy it so, and I wanted to be able to make it for you. So I had our chef teach me how to make it, and found I enjoyed cooking as much as eating.”
“So you learned to cook?” she asked, watching him turn the bacon.
“Si. I hired a manager to oversee all the businesses for me and flew to Europe to attend the best culinary schools available. I spent ten years training.”
“Ten?” Sarita squawked with surprise as he turned the bacon.
“Si. I had time to fill while I waited for you to grow up,” he said with a shrug. “And I wanted to learn it all. I wanted to be able to make anything your heart desired. I wanted to ply you with delicacies no one else could.”
“Ten years,” she said thoughtfully. “Were you here then the second time we ate at your restaurant? The night before we returned home after Grandfather’s funeral?”
“Si. I had returned just three weeks before,” Domitian admitted and smiled as he recalled that day. “You cannot imagine how shocked I was when my manager came to tell me someone had asked him to thank the chef for such a lovely meal and I glanced out to see you and your father just making your way to the door to leave my restaurant.”
“Your private detective hadn’t told you I was here in Venezuela?” Sarita asked a bit archly.
Domitian shook his head. “His report came the day after you left. Which,” he added, “was probably a good thing in the end.”
“Why was it a good thing?” she asked with amusement.
“Because you were no longer a child,” he said wryly. “You were twenty-three, a fully grown woman.” He dropped some butter in the empty pan to melt and began cracking eggs into a bowl as he recalled the wash of emotion and desire that had rolled over him at just knowing she was near. “You were leaving, your back was to me, and I could not see your face. For a moment, I just stared at your back, hoping you would turn so that I could see your face. But you did not. Once the door closed behind you I did not think, I just rushed after you. But it was a busy night and there seemed to be a waiter or customer in my way every couple of feet. By the time I got outside you and your father were gone.
“I struggled that night,” Domitian admitted solemnly. “When I first found you at thirteen, I had determined I would not claim you until you had worked at your chosen career for at least two years. At the time you returned to my restaurant you had returned to university to get your master’s degree in criminology after taking only one year off to work.”