Recipe For Disaster

With a shrug of her shoulders, Bunty broke eye contact, turned and went back to work, focusing on the oil and herbs in the roasting tray. ‘Well, find someone else to use that trick on, Mr Rossi, because I am not playing. Anyone who puts pressure on me to do something is going to find that it does not work.’

‘In that case,’ he said, ‘let’s set out a few game rules. As far as I am concerned, Mr Rossi is my father, chairman of Rossi and Rossi, Milan. I’m Fabio. Will you call me that, Bunty?’

She whirled around to tell him what he could do with setting rules in her kitchen, and froze. His eyes were locked onto her face with an intensity that had the power to blast any sensible thought from her mind.

The air between them was so heavy with electricity that Bunty was terrified to say anything in case one word would cause a spark.

Maria walked through, waving a thin piece of paper. ‘Hi, Bunty. Frank’s been on the phone. He wants double quantity ricotta today. That okay?’

Bunty almost recoiled as though a spring had been released that had been holding her to Fabio, and, judging from the expression on his face, she had not been the only one caught up in the moment.

She paused a second to wipe her fingers on a damp cloth and to remember how to breathe again before flicking through a bundle of order sheets hanging from a metal clipboard, then changing the quantity on one.

‘No problem. That’s sixty ricotta, thirty peppers and thirty porcini. And can you tell him that the organic salami is on offer this week? Thanks. Oh – and, Maria? This is Fabio Rossi. Better get used to seeing him around. He could be here for quite some time.’

As Fabio flicked his eyes up from the press release he was working on with Jerry for the launch of his new firm, Bunty took a bowl out of the fridge, and started flouring a huge board.

What looked to him like lumps of dough appeared from nowhere and she started to thump them with the very solid rolling pin. Hard. Her hands moved swiftly, transforming the dough into a thin oblong.

When he risked looking up again, thin strips were being passed one after another through a roller clamped to the table. One after another, fast, a production line; she twiddled with something on the roller machine then started feeding the pasta through again.

He couldn’t look away. Fascinated. Entranced. Six, seven pieces of dough become transparent strips of golden pasta. Brushes. Milk. Knives.

Bunty was focused totally on the food, oblivious to his presence. Tiny squares of filled pasta shapes appeared on a metal tray on the table between them as she worked. Ravioli. It had to be ravioli.

Fabio loved ravioli.

This woman was a magician. Transforming flour and bowls into the most amazing food. A conjuror. A specialist.

There had been very few times in Fabio’s life when he’d felt inadequate. Work and study had always come easily to him, no effort required. No challenge.

This was one of those times.

All he could do was smile and get back to work, silently loading and downloading what he needed, his fingers and eyes working through a well-established sequence. This was his world. And it had nothing to do with the microcosm that whirled around him as he sat there.

Bunty might be a genius in the kitchen but this was what he excelled at. Seeing patterns. It did not matter whether it was card tricks or book-signing dates and places and people.

Especially people.

Fabio watched as Bunty moved around, chopping and adding what smelt like herbs to pans, and wondered at the woman who dominated the space.

For the last ten years of his life he had worked in an industry built on suspicion, where every employee was a possible security risk. Every contract designed to build in get-out clauses for the clients for when things went wrong.

Then there was the poker. Casinos where he had worn sunglasses during the day, indoors, to prevent other players around the table from guessing his next move. You could hide body language with practice, you could even create a poker face, but you couldn’t hide the truth in your eyes.

Bunty Brannigan showed everything to everyone.

She was completely open. Almost raw. She had never learned the art of concealment. It had been years since he had met someone so comfortable with revealing themselves to others. So happy in their own skin. And she had no idea how rare and precious a thing that was.

Occasionally he looked up to rest his eyes and check in to what was happening around him. Maria was in and out all the time, collecting orders and spooning food into plastic containers, chatting and gossiping about customers — more ready meals, more antipasti.

A young man strolled through the back door of the kitchen carrying wide trays of white and yellow cheeses. Bunty’s laughter echoed around the room as she joked with Maria and this stranger.

He had a nod from a spotty youth in chefs’ check trousers who went away loaded with plastic containers, but apart from that they ignored him. He was invisible.

When was the last time he had sat in a family kitchen and felt so at home? Because that was the bizarre thing. He felt more relaxed sitting in a corner of this busy deli kitchen than in his own serviced apartment in Milan.

Bunty was working at the stove, stirring saucepans of such delicious-smelling food it made his mouth water.

He had been standing only metres away from her when she’d faced up to him outside the restaurant last night and even in the fading light he could see the pain and shock on her face the instant she’d picked up that package and scanned the envelope.

Jerry was right. This girl was a one-woman business who had been crushed and deeply wounded by something or someone in her past.

Well, he knew what that felt like.

But it was more than that. He had trained his instincts to observe body language in the finest casinos in the world, and every one of those finely honed instincts was screaming out to him that there was no way Bunty Brannigan was going to give in and open her present any time soon.

She was as stubborn as he was. And that was something like stubborn.

He needed to catch up with Jerry in person. Time to make a move.

‘Hi, Fabio. Do you want some coffee? Just made some.’

Maria strolled up to Bunty carrying a steaming beaker, and she turned around to see her friend, just as Fabio stepped forward.

His free hand connected with Bunty’s arm to steady her for just long enough for her to step back and look into his face as though she had just that minute realised that he was still there.

His senses reeled in overload.

Her hair smelt of onions and the long joint of beef he had seen her frying earlier. And herbs. He could have smelt her hair all day. And her eyes were not only green but the colour of forest leaves in the spring tinged with copper and gold. The moment expanded, and then closed as she moved away back to her work.

‘Thank you, but no. I have to pop back to the hotel for a meeting, but I shall be back this afternoon, Bunty, and that is a promise.’ He lifted his laptop bag higher onto his shoulder, and with an embarrassed cough strolled away through the deli, well aware that the two women behind him were suspiciously silent.

Um. Maybe he should take to wearing long coats.

‘Right. Of course.’ Bunty rolled her eyes and followed Fabio out into the shop, checking out his spectacular rear as he walked through.

Incredible.

Those jeans could not have been tighter.

Bunty watched Fabio stroll away as the beginnings of a pressure headache started to build behind her eyes.

Luca would be calling soon. Her day was mad and Fabio was turning out to be more of a distraction she could not afford to take.

Bunty had just turned to go back to the counter to talk salami with Maria when a distinctive Italian male voice boomed out from behind her.

‘Bunty! Darling. Looking fabulous. Hope you don’t mind me dropping in but I simply couldn’t wait a minute longer to hear what you thought about my ideas.’