She made a wish that her mother would be home before she and Max had to talk to each other. It might take her a minute or two to get back into their casual friend mode. If she were honest with herself, it might take a little longer.

She tossed a tablespoon of butter into the already heated pan and eyed the dining room floor. If she had any hope of getting into a platonic state of mind, she'd also have to eat in the kitchen.

Luck was a funny thing. At times it felt like it ran like a river, and there'd be parking spots, rebates on your favorite sour cream, a low maintenance marriage, a daughter who sang like an angel in the elementary school talent show...

Then luck turned. Isn't that what people said? Luck turned. Turned where exactly? Into the ditch? The parking lot of a slaughter house? The reactor of a nuclear waste plant?

Her only good luck had been Ellen coming home before she and Max had been unbearably awkward not talking about what they didn't need to talk about. Friends had very little reason to talk about things like, well, sex with each other.

But at two in the morning, staring up at the ceiling, this time from the couch, she didn't feel lucky. She felt alone, the way she'd remain for all eternity because it was the only logical solution to relationships. Don't have one. Forget the river of luck. People made their own and they made it by avoiding ditches.

In the next room she heard Max stir, the sheets rustling as he rose. She held her breath, sensed his door open the rest of the way. And then from the doorway, he said, hmmm something.

Hmmm what? She heard him come closer, but she didn't know what to say back because she'd missed what he'd said. She couldn't answer, could she? She considered what to do and made a hmmm noise she didn't even notice.

He leaned over the back of the couch, shirtless she could tell even in the dim. "What?"

God, she wasn't going to commit herself to his what ? when she'd missed the hmmm something. What answer did he want her to give?

"What?" he leaned closer, and she could see his squint.

She lay perfectly still, afraid to breath. Was it a yes or no? Well, no would be a good bet if she wanted to stay out of the ditch, but what if he'd worded his offer like a weird voting issue where the no really meant that you supported the proposition?

"You okay?"

She sat upright for that one because she knew the answer to are you okay? She was. She was clear and committed to her clarity and... she grabbed his neck and pulled him down, kissing him hard on the lips.

He lost his balance and half fell over the couch, his upper body across hers, his feet off the floor, his hands tight around her waist. She kissed down the muscles of his neck to the hollow of his throat before it curved into more hard chest.

Propping his hands on either side of her, he vaulted the rest of the way over the couch until he was on her and she was arching beneath him and then he rolled, taking her with him as he toppled onto the floor, his head barely missing the corner of the coffee table.

He let out a whoosh of breath, mumbled, "Damn, woman, you're gonna kill me."

She didn't respond. It was a given. She bit his nipple, and he got on his feet, grabbed her arm and dragged her into his bedroom, closing the door behind them, and tumbling her down on the bed.

She lay there looking at him, a fired-up fighter in the dark. She smiled and tapped her knuckle on the headboard. "Bring it."

"I'm making an early Thanksgiving dinner tonight."

Gwen looked up from snapping her travel mug lid, the whole domestic scene too much for her, but Max just shrugged. "For your Mom. Going away."

"Oh." She considered there was no getting out of it. He'd done them a real kindness, and the least she could do was be a friendly face across the table... She glanced into the dining room, her eyes going right to the spot they'd, well, they'd... Her eyes jerked up and back to him, but he was busy pouring Ellen some coffee.

She made a break for it, heading out of the kitchen, and confirming over her shoulder. "I'll bring dessert."

He listened for the opening, closing of the door, and checked the clock. Nine a.m. and he guessed it was already a mistake. By six p.m. he'd know. Sometimes forcing someone's hand didn't work. Mostly it did. He'd had it work dozens of times, hadn't he? Maybe hundreds. Pushing a subject until he got the reaction shot he wanted. He was no paparazzi driving a celebrity to hit him, but sometimes a little pressure really got you the reaction you wanted.

When he'd been in Caracas and the soldier had come after him, he'd captured that violent fury and managed to escape with very little bruising. It helped to know who you could outrun, and he could definitely outrun Nicola. He just wasn't sure he could outrun nineteen-year-old Max.

She knocked on Deb's door, hated that she felt relieved when Deb wasn't there. She wanted things to be right between them. She just didn't want to make things right between them. The making of it would involve conflict and difficulty and the odd verbal wrestling people did when they weren't in agreement.

How hard was agreement anyway? Why were some people so good at compromise and some people so not? And who were the nots to tell the good ats that they were wrong? It wasn't wrong to get along, to let another person win if it meant that much to them. Not everyone was built to fight for what they wanted.

She opened the double doors to the kitchen and spotted Ty bent over a textbook, a mess of notes scattered around him. Apparently she wasn't the only one suffering. "That bad for you too, huh?"

He glanced up. "It's stupid. Deb's crazy if she thinks we can get all this before the semester ends."

She noticed that his eyes were red but still very attractive. Leave it to Ty to be handsome enough that even sleepless he could be a model for eye drops. "I don't think it's Deb."

"Deb told me to study all these chapters. Who gave you the bad news?"

She sat across from him at the long metal table. "I just mean that, you know," she raised her eyebrows indicating the floor above. "The mystery lamb month and beef chaser really put us behind."

"Nicola is one of the premier chefs in the world. I'm pretty sure she knows how to train us. The classroom stuff might not have been done by someone as professional. It's not like Deb's ever instructed in a cooking program before."

"Hmmm." She studied the scattering of Ty's notes, the rumpled sheets, some holding only half a dozen words or a poorly sketched diagram. There was a truth to what he said. She really liked Deb, thought she was a good teacher, but she was new at it. Maybe it had been partly a problem of follow through.

Ty began to flip through a battered wire bound notebook, the pages covered with smears and smudges of foodstuffs she didn't care to identify. When he didn't seem to find what he was looking for, he began to leaf through the pile of loose papers.

"Whatcha lookin' for?"

"That thing that showed, you know, the way spices came into different places."

Gwen eyed the mess of information then reached into her bag and took out four batches of recipe cards bound with rubber bands. She set down one. "Recipes." She set down the second. "Terminology." She put the third down. "Techniques." And placed the fourth in front of Ty. "History of International Cuisine, arranged chronologically to correspond with," she pulled a roll of paper out of her bag, took off the rubber band and rolled it out the length of the table. "A timetable of the spice trade in red and influx of other cultures in blue."

He laughed. "I asked you here to see if you wanted to study together, and I wanted to give you a batch of my miniature Chocolate Lava Cakes. I make them rarely and only for special people."

She felt like a,"Chocolate Lava Cake?"

"Each one opens to a pool of warm chocolate." He gave her a smile, the sly slow kind that made her wish Mranda could be there to witness it.

She considered both his natural charms, his good, good looks and delicious accent. And his cultivated charms like his culinary sleight of hand and, of course, the delicious accent. "Has anyone ever said no to chocolate lava cake?"

Ty tapped his finger on the history time line. "Have you got more of this paper?"

"Sure."

He smiled again. "No woman ever has."

Gwen pushed Max's front door open, catching it with her hip to keep the tray of chocolate lava cakes steady. After hours of helping Ty, she hoped he felt better about the material. Not everyone knew how to be organized and efficient with study skills, and she'd learned a lot getting Missy from kindergarten through high school. It always started small. Kindergarten had a coloring page then a couple of math sheets, and by third grade they'd had to make a nearly life-sized mountain lion with nothing but fake fur and googly eyes.

Missy had always done well in school, but until her last year of high school, Gwen feared she'd never learn to keep track of anything. The note cards had come from a particularly perilous science presentation when a friend of Missy's had locked her knees and passed out, giving Missy fears about her own speech. What had started as a tool to keep track of her main points had become a comfortable and easy way to take notes for just about everything she studied.

Walking into the house, she breathed in the aroma of turkey and something else, some kind of caramelized balsamic goodness. She realized she'd never come into her home with dinner already cooking. She'd been the one to warm the place with sauteed garlic in olive oil and yeasty breads and hot cider, and Steve had experienced the sensation every night when he opened the door. Missy too. But children should expect to be fed, and well fed. They might come to an appreciation later in life, when they realize the world doesn't automatically provide turkeys but parents work hard to make it seem like it does.

But Steve knew better, didn't he? Had he understand the work and appreciated it? She'd wanted him to walk in the door and relax. She'd understood his day, the work, the hours, the effort for the family, as much as she could. But she'd owed him. Wasn't that really it? She'd owed him, and they both knew it.

She walked into the kitchen where Max stirred what looked like a pan of small potatoes that turned out to be brussel sprouts. She hadn't seen that coming. "Hey."

He looked up and didn't smile but didn't frown either. He set down the spatula and took a sip from an imported beer.

"Brussel sprouts, huh?"

"Yep. Brussels okay by you?"

"It's not France."

"It's not France."

He tipped his chin to see what was on the tray. "Whatcha got?"

"Chocolate lava cakes."

"Well, you can stay."

"Well, thank you."

He smiled at her, and her grip tightened on the tray. She'd keep the tray in her hands forever so she couldn't impulsively grab him and roll around on the floor again. She'd strap the rectangular metal around her when she went to bed, like the first step in an elaborate chastity belt. She'd need another part, but stopping the chest to breast action would help.

She backed out of the kitchen, set the tray down on the dining room table. "I'm gonna take a shower and then I'll come out and help."

Max muttered something she thought might be about helping her in the shower, but she mentally put her fingers in her ears and started humming to clear the image out. The image of soaped bodies and his chest a solid and warm slidy place for her breasts to rub against and... "Be out in a minute." Shit. Her voice cracked.

He mumbled again, but she knew he didn't really say be in in a minute.

She'd lock the door just in case. To keep him out. Yeah, that's what she'd tell herself.

She'd thrown a few dinner parties for Steve's work connections, neighbors, once her mother's Spring Fling Bunco dinner when they'd been kicked out of the local steak house for harassing a waiter, sexually. But she'd never, in all the dinner gatherings, had more fun.

The boys were on their best and worst behavior which made them both charming and charming. Missy wasn't ignoring her, and the faint air of disapproval coming from both her daughter and her mother was easy to overlook in the shuffle of dishes and wine and general entertainment. Guy and Annie still looked so happy together, she was beginning to think that the ticket to happiness was separate languages. She just needed to find a nice non-bilingual, well, cat maybe.

Max had gone in to start the after dinner coffee, and she was heading behind him to serve the chocolate lava cakes, when she heard the knock at the door. "I'll get it."

She opened it to, "Chef Gaspard."

Chef Gaspard gave her the non-smile that would pass, from a couple of blocks away, for a smile. "Call me Nicola."

"Nicola." Gwen stood, hand on the door, and took in the black cashmere coat, the champagne color v-neck sweater and wide legged charcoal trousers, again with the drape all the way down to the pointy tips of her boots. Gwen had a second to regret her own faded green corduroys and thermal turtleneck before she turned to look over her shoulder. She tried not to yell toward the kitchen. "Nicola's here."

Max appeared in the doorway, wiping his hands on a towel and wearing a friendly unsurprised face.

Everyone at the table stared at Max, Nicola, then her, so they'd probably notice if she ran out into the street and tried to get hit by a car.

"Cher," Nicola stepped around her, eyeing her socks in what looked like disapproval, but it was hard to tell on a French face.

Gwen didn't move, but watched Nicola walk toward Max and then be introduced to everyone at the table, who tried, Gwen could tell, to not gawk too much.

Max put his hand at the small of Nicola's narrow, cashmere-sweatered back so naturally that he must have done it a million times before and maybe even be put on the planet to do it. Her willowy thinness suited his athletic movements. They were perfect, they were together, and she was, shit, staying on his couch.

Her eyes darted in panic to the spot under the table where they'd... hell, she couldn't even claim they were just friends, even though they certainly weren't more than that.

"Close the door, Mom." The request was followed by Nicola's laugh, as light and perfect as Gwen would have guessed it would be. Missy came over, brushed her hand off the knob, closed the door, and she felt herself led back to the table and pushed gently into a chair.

Missy covered the silence well. "So, Grandma, tell us what your plans are when you get home."

And Ellen did. At least she seemed to. Gwen could see her lips moving but the only thing rolling around in her head was did Nicola know, and what would happen if she found out?

"Did you make these, Gwen?" Nicola took the smallest bite Gwen had ever seen. The cakey chocolate was barely a smear on the end of her fork.

Gwen had a mouthful and lifted a finger while she swallowed. "Uh, no. Ty did."

Max shot her a look that held all the crikey Aussie annoyance he possessed for Ty. But Nicole seemed to think about it for a minute. "Ah."

Gwen tried to decipher the euro version of oh. It could be ah, I knew you couldn't bake this well or ah, Ty is that handsome crikey Aussie. It might also be ah, I am making polite conversation and not actually eating this calorie laden gateau, but ah, you have chocolate covering your front teeth. She rubbed her tongue around her mouth just in case the ah was the last one.

Then she felt the pause. The conversation had landed on her like she was it in a game of tag, and she'd let a lull occur. "I helped him study."

"You," Nicola looked genuinely amused, "helped Ty study."

"We were really study partners." She ignored the stink-eye from Max. "I know he has loads of cooking experience. I just helped him with his notes."

"The recipe cards," Missy smiled and turned to Bryan, who, Gwen noticed, smiled like he thought she was chocolate lava cake. "My mom had this card system for studying that really works. I carried them everywhere. I studied Spanish waiting in the orthodontist's office. By the time my braces came off, I was fluent."

Max raised his coffee cup. "And had lovely teeth."

Missy tipped her head in thanks.

Nicola seemed to not pay attention to anyone, but Gwen could tell her body tensed, moved, in reaction to the conversation. She wasn't missing much. Gwen tried not to look under the table, but Max must have seen her eyes shift slightly. He narrowed his and leaned down to look under it. "I was thinking about replacing the carpeting in here. What does everyone think?"

Everyone but Gwen shifted back in their chairs, an awkward scoot as they studied the floor.

Above the table, Gwen put her face down and hoped to God her cheeks weren't as red as they felt.

Nicola sat up first and waved her hand around. "You need everything new. New house. This one is plebian. I do not know why you are here. It is a mystery."

Max sat up. "It is."

Gwen distracted her flaming cheeks by focusing on pouring a fresh cup of coffee from the white carafe on the table. Carafe. Probably another one of those damn French words. Coffeepot was too plebian.

"It needs some color." Ellen dug a spoon into her cake, having scooped up most of the lava and leaving only the brown crater behind. "Maybe blue or green would be nice. It's so tan, sandy colored, but not so brown..."

"Or parquet." Hayden had taken the request seriously. "An offset diagonal would make the room appear bigger."

"Stop reading your Mom's magazines. Shit." Bryan looked at Ellen. "I mean, darn it, Hayden, man up."

But Ellen ignored the profanity and sat up straighter. "Flesh."

Gwen burned her tongue on the coffee right on the spot already injured from the first cup of the day. Even in her head the word shit came out as thit.