Read For the Taking for Free Online

the land-dwellers among whom she’d lived for so long.
    He didn’t see his mother die.
    “Okay, now salads.” Loucan opened her commercial-size refrigerator and began to take out ingredients. “You probably make the quiche fillings and the pastry crusts in advance, right? Just add filling to the base when they’re about to hit the oven, a little later on? And are you doing a pasta special?”
    “How did you—”
    “I read your blackboard menu while I was unstacking the chairs. What about the cakes?”
    “Those are delivered. There’s a local woman whomakes them for me. But I do the scones. I need to get those in the oven soon.”
    “The same as American biscuits, right, only not with gravy?”
    “Here we serve them with jam and whipped cream and a pot of tea or coffee, and it’s called a Devonshire Tea. They’re very popular, all through the day. Even things like sandwiches and pasta people want as late as three or four o’clock.”
    “Tricky. Hot dogs or chicken nuggets would be easier.”
    “Hot dogs and chicken nuggets would be a disaster. My gallery clientele doesn’t have that sort of taste. They want something a little more up market and fancy. I tried a more substantial hot meal for a while. A curry or a casserole. But I found…”
    Lass stopped. His face was wooden.
    “I’m boring you stupid with this,” she said.
    Lord, what was happening to her, confiding the petty details of her business to him like this? She was rattling on like a runaway train! She, solitary Lass Morgan, who rationed small talk as if words were an endangered species, and never had deeper conversations at all. She was babbling.
    Loucan laughed. “Wait until I tell you about my past life as a bond trader. That’ll bore you stupid. This is nice. It reminds me of…well, of some good times I had once, in America, hanging out with someone I liked.”
    She went still. “Don’t.”
    “Don’t what?” He kept on deftly cutting green pepper and slicing mushrooms with his big hands, while Lass set up the mixer to put together the day’s batch of scone dough. Her own hands were clumsytoday, and she couldn’t seem to get the dough hook to click into its slot.
    “Don’t try and act as if we’re friends,” she said. “Don’t try to get through to me that way.”
    She dropped the metal mixing bowl and crossed the kitchen to the CD player. One press of a button brought music into the room—Susie’s favorite classic rock radio. Lass didn’t care what it was, as long as it was loud and fast and broke the illusion of intimacy.
    “Is that what you thought I was doing?” Loucan said. “Trying to get through to you?”
    “Yes. Weren’t you?”
    “I’m not a manipulative man, Thalassa. I don’t sneak my way into people’s good graces through flattery and insincerity.”
    His head was held at a proud angle, emphasizing the straight strength of his nose. His brown skin was incredibly smooth, considering he had to be forty years old by now. He was an able man in the prime of life, and Lass felt foolish at having accused him of behaving like a two-faced schoolgirl.
    She flushed and said weakly, “Don’t you?”
    “I go after what I want,” he continued. “But I do it openly. I’ve told you, we’ll talk at the end of the day, and then I’m sure things will get rocky and tense again.”
    “You got that right!”
    “I know you don’t want this to be happening. For now, if we can enjoy each other’s company, is that a sin?”
    “I’ll…I’ll get back to you on that,” she told him awkwardly. Lifting the lid of the big flour bin, she would gladly have crawled inside.
    A moment later, the driving, upbeat rhythm andlyrics of a song on the radio threw her back into gear at last. This was familiar. It was what she did every day, and if she didn’t get through the routine by ten or close after…
    Loucan needed her to tell him what to do from time to time, but apart from that she ignored him. She and Susie and Megan