The rising sweet scent mingled with garlic and browning meat, filling the kitchen with delicious aromas. She picked up an opener and went to work on a can of tomato sauce. All the while, the man across the counter watched her with steady dark eyes, sitting as she had earlier on one of the stools, one long-fingered hand toying idly with his glass. The radio played softly, repeatedly interrupting a violin concerto or flute solo to announce the long lists of counties under the snow emergency and give ever rising figures on the amount of accumulation and increasing wind gusts. “Right now,” Jesse McCutcheon observed dryly, his elbows comfortably on the counter, “I’d be burning something. I admit back in Chicago I rarely even attempt to cook but either eat out, or pick up something on the way home.” “I love to cook,” Kerin admitted truthfully, stirring the sauce into the mixture. “I find it relaxing. I don’t have time to do much else that is creative.” “I know what you mean.
