Silver Falls - Anne Stuart [57]
“I haven’t changed my mind, David.” She was getting a headache. “I promise I’ll look at it after dinner. For now could we just stop talking about the papers, about serial killers, about your brother, about anything depressing? And that leaves out the weather as well.”
David smiled his charming smile, the one that had first attracted her, touching her cheek. Caleb had touched her cheek earlier, pushing her hair out of her eyes, and it had been electrifying. David’s touch was soft, affectionate. Safe. And that’s what she wanted. Safe.
“Of course. It’s been a miserably long day for me as well, and I think we both need to relax. We’ll have that glass of wine, and you can tell me what my father had to say when you had lunch with him.”
Shitsticks. “You get the wine,” she said in her sweetest voice. “I’ll start dinner and then come join you.”
He took his dismissal with relatively good grace, putting the papers into her unwilling hands. She wanted to go back into the darkroom and see if there was anything she could salvage. She wanted to rip the adoption papers in half and stomp on them. She wanted to grab Sophie and run like hell, not from the danger Caleb kept warning her about, but from temptation and frustration and sheer boredom.
She headed into the kitchen, grabbing the vegetarian casserole she’d taken from the freezer and putting it in the oven. The details of David’s diet were so complex that she could only face cooking once a week, and she usually spent a whole day concocting all sorts of unsavory things with soy and grains, all thanks to the cookbook David had given her as a wedding present. The one time she’d tried something new he’d protested, even though she’d adhered strictly to his dietary demands. “Too spicy,” he’d said, and she’d ended up tossing it.
Back in San Francisco, when they were dating, she found his regimen charming, and there were enough inventive restaurants in the city that she never noticed how limited her choices were. If she took Sophie and ran away for a few weeks she could eat anything she wanted, without having to worry if the smell of cooking chicken was going to turn a quiet evening into a major event.
But Sophie was right. David had already insisted on coming with her. It would be no escape at all.
Sophie was sitting at her usual spot, in the family room, cross-legged in front of the wide-screen TV, working on her homework while mournful girl singers crooned in the background. Sophie had the ability to study anywhere, and in fact, found dead silence distracting. She had her golden head buried in a book, but a moment later she looked up, sensing her mother’s eyes on her. “Hey,” she said, grinning.
“Hey, baby girl,” she replied, and the knot in her stomach loosened. No matter what mistakes she made, no matter what anyone else did, as long as she had Sophie then things couldn’t be that bad. “Lentils for dinner tonight.”
“Barf. Do I get a frozen dinner?”
“Even better, sweetheart. You get sushi. I had Sakura deliver it before I went into the darkroom. David gets so bothered by the smell of meat cooking that I thought this would be a good compromise.”
“David can…” Sophie stopped herself. “David can eat his lentils, while I get sashimi. Did you get Ahi tuna?”
“Would I neglect your favorite? You’re the only thirteen-year-old I know who loves sushi. Save a piece for me, would you? There is only a certain amount of lentils that a normal person can eat in a week. I can’t imagine how David can survive on them.”
“Well, if he ever flips out and starts hacking people up with an ax he can use the lentil defense. Not as good as the Twinkie defense but it will do. The grains made him do it.”
Rachel laughed. Not even for a moment did she stop and wonder how Sophie knew about the infamous “Twinkie defense murder” in San Francisco so long ago. The depth and breadth of Sophie’s knowledge sometimes astounded her. “I’ll mention it to him if he starts to