Chapter 5: The Island

At midnight I was elbow-deep in bread dough with the light over the stove on and my heart going hard.

I heard the back stairs creak.

I didn't turn around.

He came in behind me and stopped inside the door.

"Midnight," Donal said.

"I know what time it is," I said.

"You said say it again."

"I did."

I pressed the heel of my hand into the dough and pushed it away from me, and pulled it back.

He crossed the kitchen slowly.

He stopped on the far side of the island, with the whole wide marble slab between us.

He had changed into a dark T-shirt and old trousers, and his feet were bare.

I had never seen his feet.

It shook me more than the T-shirt.

"I have thought about your mouth every Sunday for eleven months," he said again, in the same low, level voice.

"Yes. I heard that."

"I've thought about your hands. I've watched them cut an onion without looking."

My hands stopped.

"I've thought about your back when you bend to the oven."

My mouth went dry.

"Donal."

"I've thought about what you sound like when you stop being careful with me."

I took my hands out of the dough.

They were white to the wrists, and I didn't wipe them.

"Come around here," I said.

"The kitchen's closed, Miss Finnegan."

He said it so calmly that I didn't understand for a second that he was throwing my rule back at me.

Then I did, and I felt the grin start up my face.

"After nine," I said. "Staff don't sit."

"You aren't staff."

"What am I?"

"At midnight?" He came around the island. "Mine, if you'll have it."

He stopped in front of me.

He was so tall that I had to tip my head back.

He put a hand on either side of my waist, over my nightshirt.

My floury hands came up to his chest and left prints on his T-shirt.

"I'll have it," I said.

He lifted me.

He did it easily and set me on the edge of the marble island with my bare legs hanging over.

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