A Slow Boil (12 page)

I finally began to relax, realizing the silliness of my
‘problem.’  I wasn’t the first girl to ever have a crush on her boss and I
wouldn’t be the last.  Things would work themselves out, they always
did.  With that reassuring thought, I finally felt myself begin to drift
asleep.

The next morning Mr. Hunter was already in the kitchen reading a
newspaper when I came downstairs.  We said our good mornings as I helped
myself to coffee.

“Mr. Hunter, would it be all right if I invited Britt over for a
while this morning?”

“Of course it would.  You don’t have to ask me first. 
Just don't play your records too loud.”

He looked up at me for the first time and took in the fact that I
was wearing my dress and my hair was down.

“Miss Lane, how many times do I have to warn you about sneaking in
extra hours?”

“Oh, I’m not working, don’t worry.  I just decided to put
this on now so I don't have to change later.”  That wasn’t completely
untrue, right?

“Hmm.”  He decided to accept my explanation.  “I was
thinking of making myself some eggs. Would you like some?”

“I don’t know what I’m in the mood for yet,” I said, opening the
fridge to check out my options.  The apples were still there and weren’t
getting any fresher.  I pulled one out and held it up to him.  “Okay
if I have this?”

He nodded with an ‘of course’ expression on his handsome
face.  Then he got up, came over, and stood just behind me.  He
pointed to the package that held tonight’s pork tenderloin, and said simply,
“Dinner?”

“Yep.  No surprises for you tonight.”

He reached over my shoulder and pulled two eggs out of the bin.

“That’s no fun.”

“Well, the day is young.  Maybe I’ll think of
something.”  I took a bite of the apple.

He had moved over to the stove and was cracking the eggs into a
pan.  I watched his fingers deftly handle the shells.  Oh, to be an
eggshell.

“When I saw the pork in the fridge, I realized that if you bring
home something you don’t want me to eat, let me know.  I wouldn’t cook the
tenderloin, obviously, but other ingredients might disappear into my lunch if
you don't warn me first.”

“Okay, no problem.  Stay away from the artichoke in the
produce drawer and don’t go anywhere near the watercress.”

“And now I know the rest of the menu,” he said with an exaggerated
sigh.

“You might think you do.”

“Are you sassing me, Miss Lane?”

“What if I am?” I teased back.

He’d picked up a spatula and was fiddling with his eggs.

“Don’t make me bend you over my knee and teach you a
lesson.”  He waved the spatula at me and raised one eyebrow.

“You wouldn’t!”

“No,” he laughed, “I would never.”

“Then why would you say that?” I was half laughing, half
indignant.

He came and stood in front of me, putting one finger under my
chin. “Because I haven’t seen you blush yet this morning, and we can’t have
that, can we? Ah, there it is.”

Britt was duly impressed with the house.

“My God, this guy must be filthy rich!”  She exclaimed as I
showed her the library.

“Sh.  He’s working right down the hall.  He might hear
you.”  Mr. Hunter’s door was closed, and I’d closed the library doors
behind us, but Britt was by far the loudest thing I’d heard in the house since
I started working here.

“What exactly does he write?  Best-sellers?” She asked in
almost a whisper.

“I don’t actually know.  I’ve never asked him.”

“Sylvia, Sylvia, Sylvia.”  She shook her head in dismay as if
dealing with a slow child. “There’s this thing?  It’s called Google? 
It’s on the internet. Do you know what the internet is?”

“Shut up, Britt.  I’ve just never thought to look him
up.  Sue me.”

“No, sue this guy.  Get him to sexually harass you or
something.  Then all of this could be yours.”  She spun around with
her arms extended.

“He lets me use it whenever I want already.  And he’d never
harass me.  He's too much of a gentleman.”

“Lure him in, girl.  Show some skin.”

“Will you stop?”

“What’s this you’re wearing, anyway?”  She fingered my
sleeve.

“It’s my uniform.”

“Uniform?  It looks like a normal dress.”

“He didn’t like me in my regular clothes.  He said he wanted
me to look more like an employee and not a student, so he got me this to
wear.  Since I wear it for work, it’s a uniform.”

“Turn around.”

I gave her a spin.

“It fits you perfectly.”

“I know.  And it’s comfortable, so I didn’t make an issue out
of wearing it.”

“That color looks really good on you, too.”

“He chose the color.  It’s the same as the curtains in his
office.”

“Why do you have it on now if you’re not technically working yet?”

Britt’s questions were starting to make me feel a little
squirmy.  “I could tell yesterday morning when I was in my jeans and
t-shirt that he didn’t like it, so I just decided to wear this all day from now
on.  It’s no big deal.”

She came even closer and peered into my eyes.  Then she
lifted my hands and examined my palms.  Finally she picked up a strand of
my hair and gave it a sniff.

“What are you doing?”

“Checking you for signs of zombie-ism.”

“Good lord, Britt, you’re being ridiculous.”

“Probably.  But you can’t be too careful around zombies,
especially ones in pretty dresses that enhance their natural features.  Do
you have any idea how good this dress makes your ass look?”

“What?”  My voice came out almost as loud as hers had been
before.

“That’s what I thought.  You never look in the mirror, do
you?  You are rocking this dress.  You're making me want one.”

“Jesus, Britt, are you sure?”  I craned my neck over my back
but of course couldn’t see anything.  Suddenly the way Mr. Hunter watched
me vacuum his office yesterday started to make sense.  Had he been
checking me out?  Why did I hope that maybe he had?  Oh right, the
‘problem.’

“Of course I’m sure.  I never lie.”

“It’s just a coincidence it fits me well.  It’s not like he
took my measurements.”

She gave me an odd look.  “I’m not talking about the fit, I'm
talking about how it looks.  That was no coincidence.”  Then she
finally took pity on my discomfort and changed the subject.

“So, I was thinking about a weekend trip to
LaPorte
. 
Do you want to?”

“This weekend?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“Sure, that sounds good.  I can leave Friday night after
dinner.”

“Good.  I’ll call you Friday and we’ll work out the
details.  I already know a place where we can stay, and my dad said we
could use his car.”

“I can’t wait.  There’s an art museum there I’ve been dying
to visit.”

“I’ll do art museums with you during the day if you come out to
clubs with me at night.”

“Deal.”

“Deal.”

Britt left around eleven, and Mr. Hunter left at twelve.  As
I fixed myself a light lunch, I wondered what his Wednesday appointment could
be.  And I wanted to know more about why Mrs. Sheridan had quit.  I’d
heard her version of it, but I wanted to hear his.  Had he tried to touch
her hair?  I felt nauseous at the thought of it.  He’d told me I was
the only employee he’d ever wanted to touch and I wanted to believe him. 
Oh, I so wanted to believe him.  Dwelling on the things I didn’t know
about Mr. Hunter eventually led me to Britt’s question this morning about what he
wrote.  Now there’s something I can solve, I thought, putting my plate in
the sink and hurrying up to my room.

I got my laptop up and running and typed his name in my search
bar.  The first page of results were a couple of athletes, a musician, a
dentist, but no writer.  I scrolled through a few more pages of
increasingly obscure Facebook accounts and then tried my search again, this
time specifying author, writer,
co
-author, anything I
could think of.  Still nothing.  I even checked to see if he was affiliated
with Noble and sighed in frustration as I continued to sort through
non-results.  The closest I got was a Hunter College in New York, which I
was amused to see housed the Culinary Institute of America.  Even Google
was linking Mr. Hunter to cooking.

The urge to snoop was almost overwhelming as I cleaned his office
that afternoon.  I’d decided after a fruitless fifteen minutes on my
computer that Mr. Hunter must write under a pseudonym or maybe he was a
technical writer or a ghost writer.  Or maybe his money came from
somewhere else altogether, and he merely dabbled in writing and hadn’t
published yet.  Or maybe he didn’t write at all; he’d never said he
did.  Britt was the one who told me that and although she never lied, she
was wrong on occasion.

My mind was still bubbling with ideas as I cleaned his
windows.  I’d managed to dust his desk without opening any drawers and
felt very proud of my self-control.  Then it occurred to me that although
these huge windows were in so many of the rooms, the ones in the office were
the only ones Mr. Hunter asked me to clean.  Ah, that was something else I
could do to repay Mr. Hunter, I could clean the other windows on days I had
extra time, like today.  Not only had I started my work a little earlier than
usual, but not having to vacuum the office meant I was finishing up in here at
two.

I wasn’t especially looking forward to doing a whole extra bank of
windows, but I carried the stepladder and cleaning supplies into the library
and got started.  At three I watched as Mr. Hunter drove up.  He saw
me at the window and raised his eyebrows in a question.  I gave him a
reassuring smile and wave, and it wasn’t long before I heard his footsteps on
the stairs.

“Miss Lane, what you doing?”

“What does it look like?  I’m exercising my arms.”

“This isn’t necessary.  I have a service that comes in twice
a year and does big jobs like the windows and rugs.  I only have you do my
office windows because I spend so much time in there and I like them cleaned
more often.”

“Well, I had extra time today and just thought I’d keep
working.  I’m almost done so is it okay if I finish?”

“I guess it’s all right, if you’re sure you don't mind.”

“I’m sure.”

He strolled around the room for a bit, looking at his books, while
I continued working. I was finally down to the lowest tier of panes and had to
get down on my knees to reach them.  Mr. Hunter continued to linger in the
room, eventually seating himself at the piano and lifting the lid. A few notes
floated into the air, and I glanced over at him.  He was watching me work.

“Am I bothering you, Miss Lane?”

“Oh no.  Quite the opposite.  I’d love to hear you
play.”

He did a few warm up arpeggios and then began a piece I didn’t
recognize but sounded difficult to my untrained ears.  The music alternated
between loud swells of minor chords and delicate passages of a haunting
melody.  I continued wiping at the windows but was only cleaning in theory
as I’d closed my eyes and let myself get immersed in the music.  By the
time he brought the piece to a poignant conclusion, I’d stopped moving
altogether.

“That was incredible.  What was it?”

“Rachmaninoff.”  He shook his head in self-deprecation. 
“Like I said, I’m a little rusty.”

“Are you kidding?  That was the most beautiful thing I've
ever heard.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll wash the windows in here any time if you play while I work.”

He chuckled and looked over at me, still kneeling on the
floor.  Eventually he rose, closed the piano, and headed toward the door.

“I may take you up on that.  But I assure you, my music is
far from being the most beautiful thing in the room.”

I thought about his comment while I worked on my homemade ravioli
(surprise, Mr. Hunter!).  He must have been referring to me, right? 
Did he really think I was beautiful? I knew I was okay, but beautiful? 
No, he must have meant something else.  I replayed the comment in my head
a couple times, trying to picture myself.  I’d been on the floor, kneeling
by the windows, hardly the most becoming position, but then I remembered the time
I knelt in his office, when he stood above me without speaking, and the time I
fell asleep on the dining-room floor.  Did he like seeing me kneel? 
Was that it?  If it was, it should bother me, right?  So why didn’t
it?  I decided not to think about it right now and focus on dinner. 
It wasn’t like I was going to go around kneeling at his feet.  No matter
how much I was trying to think of ways to please
him, that
was not going to happen.  Although it already had, and I’d liked it.

Wednesday’s night dinner was Italian themed, with rosemary and
garlic marinated tenderloin, artichoke and cheese stuffed ravioli, and a
watercress salad.  The ravioli was the only challenging part, as I’d never
made it by hand before, but it wasn’t that hard, just time-consuming.  I’d
never cooked artichokes before either and they took longer to steam than I’d
expected.  The tenderloin was resting and the salad was ready, but I
needed ten more minutes to finish the ravioli when six rolled around.  I
decided to serve Mr. Hunter his salad first and brought it out on a separate
plate.

“Good evening, Miss Lane.”

“Good evening, sir.  I hope you don’t mind being served in
courses tonight.” I put his salad down.

“No, not at all.”

“Good.  I need a few more minutes to finish the rest of the
meal.  Would you like a drink with your salad?”

“I'll have another glass of viognier, thank you.”

“Yes, sir.”

I pulled last night’s bottle out of the fridge and brought it back
to the dining-room, poured him a glass and left the bottle on the table, then
hurried back to the kitchen to boil the pasta and slice the tenderloin.  I
had his plate ready when he called for me, and carried it in, swapping it for
his empty salad plate.

“What’s this?”

“Pork tenderloin with artichoke stuffed ravioli, sir.”

“You made these yourself?”  He gestured to the ravioli with
his fork.

“Yes, sir.  They took a little longer than I expected. 
I’m sorry they weren't done right at six.”

He shook his head, chuckled, and started lifting one to his
mouth.  “I’m sure they'll be well worth the wait.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hunter.  Would you like more wine?”

He nodded and I refilled his glass, then smiled to him as I began
to return to the kitchen.  A slight frown crossed his features as I
left.  I ate some salad as I waited at the island, hoping he was enjoying
his dinner.  Was the flavor off in the artichoke stuffing, is that why
he'd frowned?  It has seemed fine but maybe I’d been mistaken. I was just
getting up to taste one for myself when he called me.

“Yes, Mr. Hunter?”  I said as I returned to the dining-room
and stood beside him with my hands behind my back.  His wine glass was
still full, his meal only barely eaten.  I got a sinking feeling in my
stomach that he didn’t like it as he looked up at me with a questioning
expression.

“Miss Lane, this is the best pasta I’ve ever had.”  Relief
washed over me and I smiled back at him.  “Have you tasted it yet?”

“Before it was cooked, yes, but not the finished result.”

He lifted a ravioli on his fork for me to try.  I took it
into my mouth and my eyes widened.  They had turned out well, the flavors
more combined than when raw.

“What kind of cheese did you use?”

“Asiago, sir.”

“I wish I could give you some tenderloin as well, it’s perfect.”

“I’m so glad you like it.”  The relief I felt was apparent in
my voice.

He looked up at me with a very satisfied expression, then offered
me his wine glass.  I took a sip, and gave it back to him.