Eric came up behind me and dropped a kiss on the back of my neck, sending a pleasant shiver down my spine. “See any of your favorites?”

“Hm. No Charlotte Brontë. No Jane Austen.” I grinned at him over my shoulder. “And where’s your Harry Potter collection?”

“In the boys’ room,” he said.

That did it. Or it would have, if I hadn’t fallen for him already.

My fingers skimmed the spines. “Oh, look, Bill Neal’s Southern Cooking. I used to eat at his restaurant all the time when I was in college! Well, when I could afford it. Crook’s, in Chapel Hill.” Unable to resist the feel of a book in my hands, I took down The French Laundry Cookbook and flipped to the title page. Signed by the author. “Thomas Keller,” I said reverently. “You met him?”

“I worked for him at Per Se.” Keller’s New York restaurant. He said it so casually, as if he rubbed elbows with legends all the time. “I learned a lot from him.”

“Until you left the nest,” I said.

“He kicked me out.” Eric’s voice was easy. Amused. “Time to fly on my own, yeah? Cook my own food. Find my own voice.”

I turned my head. “You should write a cookbook.”

I knew he hadn’t. I would have bought it.

“What I have to say, I say with food.”

“I get that. But not everybody has the chance to eat at your restaurant. You could share your recipes, your food, your story with more people,” I said with building enthusiasm for the idea. “People who might never come to New York.”

He shook his head. “I am a cook, not a storyteller.”

“A cook with a James Beard Award,” I pointed out.

“Awards do not make me a writer.” He met my gaze and smiled. “Maybe you should write my cookbook.”

“I . . . You’re not serious.”

“You are a writer, yeah? Lifestyle journalist,” he corrected. “You wrote about restaurant openings, you said.”

Oh God. He remembered.

“I didn’t set out to be a food writer,” I said. “I just . . . I needed a job. A writing job. I wanted to stay in New York. And I love to eat. Writing for the Empire City Weekly . . . It was a way to explore the city. To try new foods. Knishes. Noodles. Everything sort of snowballed from there.”

He turned me in his arms. Boy, he smelled good. Like cherries and wine, like laundry soap and woodsmoke. “Jo, you don’t need to apologize for doing what you love. Not to me.”

But I did. I was already using him for inspiration. Without his knowledge. For him to suggest that I draw on his experience, his recipes, his passion in the kitchen, to write a book—his cookbook, with his name in big letters on the front . . .

“I don’t want to take advantage of you,” I said.

“Maybe I am taking advantage of you.”

“I don’t think so.” I had to tell him about the blog.