Page 38

Okay, that last one’s a stretch.

I’m well-aware vampires don’t actually sleep in coffins, and know that the older they get, the less they need to sleep at all, but I’m still a nosy, painfully curious woman at heart. Seeing what Cas’s bedroom looks like is none of my damn business, but I’m still half-tempted to go up and look anyway.

Instead, I turn in the other direction and head down a short hall to the guest bath, minding my own business and ignoring the slight twinge of disappointment that lodges itself in my gut.

14

Casimir

Returning home from a meeting with Serra and another potential lead on the painting I’m after, the scent of tomato and garlic and fresh aromatics greets me as I walk through the door. So do the sounds of softly playing music and the metallic clang of pots and pans coming from the kitchen.

Entirely unexpected, those sounds and smells, though not unwelcome as I walk from the foyer and into the kitchen to find Ophelia standing at the stove. She’s wearing a pair of tight black exercise pants and a loose hooded sweatshirt, her hair piled on top of her head in a messy knot, exposing her long, graceful neck.

The sight of her there stops me in my tracks.

It leaves me somewhere just to the left of reality, with no idea how I got here.

For a moment, I wonder if I’ve walked into someone else’s home, someone else’s life. A life where I don’t return each day to an empty house, cold and quiet and echoing with my own hollow footsteps.

Ophelia glances over her shoulder, giving me a challenging look like she’s just daring me to kick her out.

I’ve got no challenge for her.

It’s not the first time she’s used the kitchen in the few days she’s been parked in my driveway, and there is no force on earth that would make me even considering dissuading her from doing so.

It’s a beautiful space, renovated with the rest of the house when I moved in a few decades ago, and kept current with gleaming steel appliances and all the latest gadgets.

Not that I would know anything about using them.

The space remains largely for show, apart from when I host parties and hire in a private chef or catering team, but seeing it cluttered with the chaos of Ophelia’s cooking settles some unfamiliar emotion into the center of my chest.

Unwilling to examine it, I cross the room and grab a clean spoon out of the drawer, dipping it into the sauce Ophelia’s working on faster than she can stop me. Giving it a taste, I hum in approval.

“Good, but it needs—”

“Iknowyou’re not about to give me feedback on my Nonna’s sauce,” she interrupts, shooting me a knife-sharp glare. “And if you are, I won’t do anything to stop her when she drags herself out of her grave and spends eternity haunting your ass for the audacity.”

“It needs nothing,” I say smoothly, bowing my head in acquiescence. “It’s perfect. Far be it from me to invoke the wrath of a restless Nonna.”

Ophelia’s lips twitch, but she gives her head a shake and turns back to her work. Leaving the sauce to simmer covered on the stove, she brushes past me to the wide island at the center of the room where a ball of dough waits for her.

She’s making noodles, honest-to-godsnoodles,with some attachment to some device that I can honestly say I’ve never seen before in my life.

“I feel like I should be paying for the privilege of having a seat at the chef’s table,” I tease as I slide onto a stool on the opposite side of the island, watching her deft hands feed some of the dough into the contraption, then catch the long, perfect strands of pasta that come the other side.

She snorts a laugh, eyes still focused on her work. “Hardly. I’m mostly just winging it and going from memory.”

“Well, whatever you’re doing, it smells delicious.”

The compliment draws a flick of her gaze from the pasta to me, eyes slightly narrowed like she’s not sure she can trust it.

“Your Nonna, she taught you to cook?” I ask, and note the slight hesitation before her reply, like she’s just realized we’re being friendly.

Not formal, not strictly business, butfriendly, like two normal people.

Despite her agreeing to stay here, and despite the way she’s been making herself at home and warming up to the idea of our partnership on the Bureau case, Ophelia’s still not entirely at ease. I don’t necessarily blame her, and also don’t know why it’s so important that she’s comfortable here, but the sudden urge to keep her talking, to draw her a little further out of that shell she wears so well, is undeniable.

Maybe it’s because I can’t forget what it was like to see that shell shattered. To hear her wild abandon and taste her pleasure, to see her flushed and glassy-eyed and so impossibly real it made my chest ache.