Oh, aren't you? I thought. Well then I'm definitely going home.236.

"We're just going to have something to eat and a little chat," he said kindly. "Nothing to worry about."

"All right then," I said, making a valiant effort to relax. "What are we having anyway?"

"Homemade Stilton and Muscat Grape Soup, Boeuf Bourguignonne, with Potatoes Dauphinois and my own recipe for Zabaglione for dessert."

"Really?" I asked, astonished. I hadn't put Adam down as a fancy cook-more your spuds and chops type of fellow, quantity rather than quality.

"No." He grinned at me. "Are you joking? You're getting Spaghetti Bo-lognaese and you're lucky I was even able to manage that."

"I see." I laughed.

"And if you're very good"-at this point he paused and gave me a meaningful look-"and I mean very very, then you can have some chocolate mousse."

"Oh," I said, all excited, a combination of the meaningful look and the news of the chocolate mousse. "That's great. I love chocolate mousse."

"I know," he said. "Why do you think I got it?

"And," he continued in a teasing tone. "If you're very, very very good you can eat it off my stomach." good you can eat it off my stomach."

I burst out laughing.

He was such an angel. I couldn't suppress a shiver of lust at the thought of his flat muscley stomach, although this was probably precisely the kind of reaction he was banking on. I hurriedly poured myself another glass of wine, but this time I forced myself to sip it.

He served the dinner and it was obvious that this was not something he did on a regular basis. He seemed all out of place standing at the stove.

Rushing from the sink to the stove and back to the sink again, while the pasta boiled over and the salad visibly wilted. Although it did give me a beautiful view of his butt.

Cooking, unlike most other things, did not come naturally to him, which made it all the more touching that he had gone to such bother for me.

He looked so uncertain as he carefully carried the plates over to the table and reverently placed mine in front of me.237.

"Have some more wine," he said, pouring me another glass. That made a change from his acting like the local branch of Alcoholics Anonymous not ten minutes earlier.

"Are you trying to get me drunk to take advantage of me?" I asked him, trying to sound annoyed.

"I'm trying to get you drunk so that you won't notice if the food tastes horrible." He laughed.

"I'm sure it's lovely," I assured him.

I'm sorry to relate that I couldn't eat more than a few mouthfuls. Not because it was horrible or anything. It's just that I was so nervous and the air was so fraught with tension and anticipation that I felt like saying to him, "Look Adam, darling, we both know why I'm here, so let's just cut to the chase."

He couldn't eat anything either.

But that might have been because of the food and not his nerves.

We sat facing each other at Adam's kitchen table, sliding spaghetti backward and forward on our plates, the salad totally untouched in its bowl, looking all mournful and abandoned.

Conversation was desultory.

Every now and again I'd look up at him and catch him watching me, and the look on his face made me feel hot and awkward. It eliminated any last chance of my eating anything at all. Not to mention that I was afraid that if I ate anything my stomach would be all bulgy and sticky-outy.

And what kind of stomach was that to have on a first night with a man?

Or that I would swing a forkful of food mouthward and the spaghetti would rebound onto my face with a whiplashlike effect and spatter me with red sauce.

The way I react to food when I'm around a man is a sure barometer of the way I feel about him. If I can't eat it means that I'm mad about him.

When I can manage orange juice and some toast in the morning it's the End of the Beginning. And by the time I get around to finishing the food left on his plate it's as good as over.

Either that or I marry him.

Well, that had been the pattern so far, anyway.238.

"Is that all you're going to eat?" he eventually asked, looking at the mound of food on my plate.

Hr looked disappointed.

"Adam," I said awkwardly, "I'm sorry. I'm sure that it's lovely and everything but I just can't eat. I don't know why. I really am sorry." I looked at him appealingly.

"Never mind," he said, taking the plates away.

"Will you never cook for me again?" I asked sadly.

"Of course I will," he said. "And for God's sake please don't look so miserable."

"It's only because I'm nervous," I told him. "It's not because the food was horrible."

"Nervous?" He came over to my side of the table and sat down beside me. "You've nothing to be nervous about."

"Don't I?" I asked. looking him full in the eye.

I was quite shameless.

I'd be the first to admit it.

But, goddamit, I'd wasted enough time this evening already.

"No," he murmured. "You've got nothing to be nervous about."

And, very gently, he put his arm around my shoulder and his hand on the back of my head.

I closed my eyes.

I can't believe I'm doing this, I thought wildly, but I'm not going to stop.

I inhaled the scent of his skin as his face came nearer.

I waited for his kiss.

And when it came it was beautiful. Sweet and gentle and firm.

The kind of kiss where the person doing it is very good at it but you don't feel like he became such a good kisser by practicing on thousands of others.

He stopped kissing me and I looked up at him in alarm.

What was the meaning of this?

"Was that all right?" he asked quietly.

"All right?" I gasped. "It was better than all right."

He laughed slightly.

"No, I mean, is it all right to kiss you? You know, I don't want to overstep any boundaries."239.

"It's all right," I told him.

"I know you've been hurt," he said.

"But you're my friend," I told him. "It's okay."

"I want to be more than your friend," he said.

"That's okay too," I told him.

"Really?" he said, looking at me for confirmation.

"Honestly," I told him.

Oh Jesus! I hadn't left myself much room for maneuver here.

Not that I wanted to.

He kissed me again and it was just as nice as the first time.

He drew away from me and I pulled him back.

He looked at me almost wonderingly and said, "God, you're so beautiful."

"No, I'm not," I said feeling a bit embarrassed.

"Oh, you are," he said. "You really are."

"No," I said. "Helen's beautiful."

"Look," he said, smiling. "At the risk of going all Californian on you, you're a beautiful person."

"I am?"

"You are."

A little pause.

"And you're a babe." you're a babe."

"Thanks." I laughed. "What a pity that you're so hideous."

Then he laughed. There was absolutely no vanity at all about the man, although perhaps when you're that handsome there's no need for it.

He kissed me again.

And, honestly, it was wonderful.

I felt so taken care of when I was with him and in his arms. But I also felt that I was taking care of him. That he needed me as much as I needed him.

"Do you realize that we know each other less than two weeks?" he asked me.

Oh no, I thought, does this means that he won't go to bed with me yet?

Is he going to impose some kind of time limit on it? That we can't have sex until we've known each other for three months or something?

"Yes," I agreed cautiously. "Ten days, actually."240.

"But it feels like much longer," he said. "Much, much longer."

Thank God!

"I'm so glad I met you," he continued. "You're so special."

"Im not," I protested. "I'm very ordinary."

"You're special to me."

"But why?"

"Oh, I don't know," he said. He leaned back in his chair and looked at me. "Because you're interesting and have opinions on things and you're very funny. But mostly because you're so nice...Like, basically, you're a decent person."

"I'm not always," I told him. "I mean, you should have seen me a couple of weeks ago."

And then I got annoyed with myself.

Here I was, with a lovely man telling me lovely things about myself, and I was trying to convince him that none of them were true.

It was usually the other way around. I would tell them lovely things about myself and they'd spend the rest of the time trying to convince me that none of it was true.

He leaned over and kissed me again.