A Forever Christmas(28)

As subtly as he could, Gabe blew out a long breath of relief, then crossed over to her at the stove. Unlike the bedlam that ensued whenever he cooked for himself, she seemed to be right at home in the kitchen.

“You’re cooking,” he marveled.

Startled by his presence, Angel swung around. Seeing Gabe, she flashed him an uneasy smile. “I hope you don’t mind. This seems to relax me,” she confessed. Like a puppy to a bowl full of treats, she’d found herself drawn to the kitchen pantry as well as the refrigerator. The rest had just happened. It was a little like being on automatic pilot.

“Mind?” he repeated, mystified. “Why should I mind? A. I like to eat and B. more important than that—” he grinned as he pointed out the obvious “—you remembered how to cook.”

The second part of his assertion seemed to surprise her, as if she’d just realized that what he’d said was true.

A rather embarrassed, although pleased, smile curved the corners of her mouth. “I guess I did, didn’t I?”

He looked over her shoulder. There were two skillets on the burners. The smaller one had the bacon in it. The larger skillet was exclusively devoted to an omelet she was in the middle of creating.

“You sure did,” Gabe told her. “Not everyone takes on making an omelet the morning after they’ve lost their memory. Looks like the pieces are starting to come together for you.”

“Yeah, but all the pieces have something to do with food,” she lamented.

“Remember, you’ve gotta start somewhere,” he reminded her of their earlier exchange. He paused by the coffeemaker and inhaled deeply. “The coffee smells great,” he enthused.

Coffee—good coffee—was his personal weakness. Pouring himself a mug, he noted out of the corner of his eye that she was watching him. Apparently she was holding her breath until he took a sip. Which he did gamely. Unable to wait patiently any longer, Angel asked hopefully, “Good?”

“No,” Gabe answered. Then, just as her face began to fall, he raised the mug in his hand high, as if to toast her with it. “It’s great,” he emphasized.

For the first time, he saw a glimmer of happiness enter her eyes. “Really?”

Gabe inclined his head. “Really,” he assured her with feeling.

Leaning a hip against the counter, he took another sip of coffee—a long one this time—and watched with interest the way she wielded the large knife in her hand. She moved it rhythmically on the chopping block, turning a red pepper into confetti, cutting the sections into equal tiny pieces.

Observing the way her hands were moving came very close to watching poetry in motion.

“Maybe you’re a professional,” he guessed out loud.

Angel raised her eyes to his face, her hands stilled for a second.

“A what?” she asked warily.

“A professional. You know,” he elaborated, “like a chef or one of those people they have on TV, hawking their cookbooks and trying to hook people on preparing meals their way.”

Angel appeared skeptical, he observed, even though she never stopped chopping. She slid the resulting heap of finely sliced vegetables into the skillet. “You really think so?”

He answered her question with a question. “How does that knife feel in your hands?”

She’d instinctively selected it from his chopping block after quickly examining all the knives mounted in the block. This one looked up to the job. How she knew that, she hadn’t a clue. But she’d been right.

Looking down at it now, she said, “Good,” then added, “Like it belongs there.”

Gabe nodded at the answer he’d expected. “Which makes you either a professional chef—or an apprentice ax murderer—and something tells me that it’s probably not the latter.”

When she laughed in response, pleasure wove through him. He liked the sound of her laughter.

It took Angel a few more minutes to finish making the omelet. Gabe was on his second mug of coffee and had done justice to three pieces of bacon, nibbling them to oblivion, when she transferred her creation onto a plate and then pushed it in front of him.

“Tell me what you think.”

He heard the hopeful note in her voice. There was no way he was about to burst her bubble even if what she’d just made tasted like shoe leather left out in the sun for three days and stuffed with rotting rattlesnakes. She was obviously making progress and he wanted to keep it that way.