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"I don't know how to do it," Fenella admitted with a shrug. "Honestly, my culinary expertise is limited to putting together a killer sandwich, but that's about it."

"Really?" Din drizzled olive oil into a cast-iron skillet. "Not even eggs and toast?"

She laughed. "Of course, I know how to make those, but that's it. When I was young and living at home, my mom did all the cooking, and after I left, I lived mostly in dingy hotel rooms or rundown bedsits with shared kitchens. I've never felt the need to learn."

Din laid the steaks in with a satisfying sizzle when the skillet began to smoke slightly. The rich aroma of searing meat filled the kitchen, making Fenella's mouth water.

"Would you like to learn?" Din's attention was seemingly on the steaks, but she caught his quick glance her way.

Fenella snorted. "An old dog can't learn new tricks, as the saying goes. Or doesn't really want to."

"That's not true." Din flipped one steak with a pair of tongs. "Especially not for immortals. You have eternity ahead of you to learn whatever you want, try whatever interests you." He flipped the other.

For some reason, his encouragement had sounded condescending to her, which made her bristle. "Being a homemaker isn't exactly on my bucket list," she said with a forced laugh. "I don't have visions of myself in an apron, baking cookies and waiting for my man to come back from work."

The words tasted sour on her tongue. Unbidden, images flickered through her mind of herself in a comfortable home like this one, she and Din cooking together in the kitchen while a small child sat at the counter, watching them with smiling eyes.

She could work at the Hobbit Bar in the evenings while Din taught at some local university.

Right.

Dreams were for losers.

Fenella shook her head, banishing the fantasy. That wasn't her. It had never been her, and dreaming of domestic bliss was the last thing she should be doing.

"Who said anything about homemaking?" Din said. "I meant that you can do anything that interests you. Cooking is just one skill among millions you could acquire."

The steaks continued to sizzle as Din added a sprig of rosemary and several cloves of garlic to the pan, followed by a generous pat of butter. The aroma intensified, and Fenella's stomach growled audibly.

"So, what else have you done with your long life?" she asked, eager to shift the conversation away from herself. "Apart from becoming Professor Indiana Jones, I mean."

Din's laugh was filled with warmth. "I've tried my hand at many things over the centuries. When I was young, I joined the Guardian Force for a while. That's how Max and I became friends."

She had a hard time imagining him as a soldier, but perhaps that was because she'd always known him as a civilian. Then again, when she'd met Max, he hadn't been a Guardian either. He'd taken a long break and had returned to the force only recently. Still, there was something about Max that said military, and it was absent in Din.

He just wasn't a fighter.

Not that it detracted from his appeal. Max was a simple guy, and there was nothing wrong with that, but she was more attracted to Din's complexity.

Well, now she was.

Back in Scotland, she'd been attracted to Max's overflowing confidence and brawn.

"I can't picture you as a Guardian," she said. "You are more of a scholarly gentleman."

"You are correct." Din acknowledged with a wry smile as he basted the steaks with the fragrant butter. "I wasn't particularly good at it. I'm too much of a thinker, not enough of a doer in crisis situations. Max, on the other hand, was a natural."

"So, what happened?"

Din shrugged. "I realized my talents lay elsewhere and retired. After that, I became a bricklayer for a time."

"A bricklayer?" Fenella couldn't help the surprise in her voice.

Din's hands didn't look like they belonged to someone who'd done manual labor, though she supposed immortal healing would have erased any calluses immediately, so that wasn't an indicator.

"It was peaceful work," Din said, a faraway look in his eyes. "I loved creating something tangible and lasting with my hands. There was a quiet satisfaction in it that's hard to describe." He transferred the steaks to a wooden cutting board, covering them with foil, and added another two to the pan. "But it didn't require much thinking, and I've always had a thirst for knowledge."

"So, you traded trowels for textbooks?"