Moonlight Over Manhattan(40)

“Why what?”

“Why would I be at the bottom of your list? Plenty of women would consider a doctor to be a catch.” It was clear from the look she gave him that she wasn’t one of them.

“If I’m sick, I need a doctor. If I’m dating, I need a man who interests me. That’s not you.”

Ouch.

“Just because I’m a doctor, doesn’t mean I can’t be interesting. That still doesn’t tell me why I’d be at the bottom of your list.”

“You’re the guy who yelled and made me stammer for the first time in years. I had it under control, so what you did was quite an achievement. And yes, I do realize I’m responsible for my own feelings and reactions, my soon-to-be-sister-in-law is a psychologist so I’m an expert on all that, but feelings and reactions need triggers and you were one hell of a trigger, Dr. Black. A date with you would be my idea of torture.”

“You don’t seem to be having much trouble with fluency right now.”

“That’s because I’m the one who is mad. I don’t stammer when I’m mad, only when someone else is mad.”

“So you’re allowed to be mad, but I’m not? How is that fair?”

“Life isn’t fair, Dr. Black. And I can’t believe this is the first time anyone has pointed that out to you.”

Without waiting for a reply, she headed for the stairs.

As she passed him, the most glorious aroma of herbs and red wine teased his senses. Right now he would have paid a month’s salary for the food on that tray. He had to stop himself grabbing it.

“Wait—where are you going?”

“Given that you seem to have a problem with me being in your apartment, I’m taking my food to my room.”

“You don’t have to do that. There’s a perfectly good table here, and the dog likes you being around.”

“Right now I’d prefer my own company. And if you call Madi ‘the dog’ one more time I’m taking her back to my apartment.” She walked away without looking back, leaving him with hunger pangs and the option of groveling or calling for takeout.





CHAPTER TWELVE


HARRIET PUT THE tray down on the desk in the bedroom, but didn’t touch it.

She was too upset and angry to eat.

Upset with Ethan, and angry with herself because he’d been scarily close to the truth.

When she’d planned and cooked the meal, she had assumed he’d be joining her. Not because she had designs on him romantically, but because it seemed like the civilized thing to do. She’d pictured herself serving the meal, and imagined his enjoyment at finally tasting real food instead of endless takeout meals and fast food. She’d tried to make it special. She’d even had a quick look in the kitchen cabinets to see if she could find candles for the table.

Candles?

With a groan, Harriet leaned her head against the window.

How could she have been so incredibly stupid?

This was what happened when you moved outside your comfort zone, outside the circle of people who knew you well.

Creating a home wherever she went was something she did automatically. No matter where she was, she always wanted the atmosphere to be as comforting and soothing as possible. Her siblings teased her for it. They removed cushions before they sat on the sofa, ignored napkins she placed on the table.

Before Molly had arrived on the scene, when she and Fliss had still been sharing the apartment, Daniel had often dropped in for breakfast. Sundays had become her favorite day. She’d made homemade granola and stacks of fresh pancakes, and both her brother and sister had eaten so much they could barely drag themselves to the sofa.

She particularly wanted mealtimes to be relaxing, probably because growing up they had been anything but. Every meal had been fraught with tension, and for years after she’d left home Harriet had worked hard to even want to sit at a table to eat. The solution she’d found had been to make it as different from her childhood experience as possible. She enjoyed cooking, but there was so much more to her enjoyment than simply a fascination with recipes and food.

For her, cooking and eating was symbolic of something bigger. Cooking was her way of expressing love. A way of creating a warm, comforting space, and you didn’t need a degree in psychology to know that the origins of her need for that were to be found in her childhood.

There had been nothing warm or comforting about her home growing up. Nothing warm or comforting about mealtimes. Sitting round the table together had been something to be endured. The atmosphere had been strained, the food nothing more than punctuation in an hour of rising stress levels.

Harriet had eaten little. As a child her weight had been on the low side of normal, not because she had food issues, but simply because she couldn’t seem to push it past the lump of tension wedged in her throat and chest. She’d willed mealtimes to be over as fast as possible so she could escape back to her room. Sometimes she’d ended up under the table, hiding while the battle raged above her head.

Now, she wanted fine dining and good conversation. Instead of shouting, she wanted to hear the clink of glass and the hum of laughter. She wanted everyone relaxed and focused on the food, instead of glancing at the time and wondering how quickly they could escape.

In her later teenage years she’d used candles as a method of calming herself, and it had been easy enough to add those to a meal table.